Author: whskyjack

“So What”, by Miles Davis, originally released in 1959 on the studio album , Kind of Blue

The album features Davis’ ensemble sextet consisting of saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb, with former band pianist Bill Evans appearing on most of the tracks in place of Kelly.

You can listen to the whole album here

Enjoy, Jack

Credit for today’s select goes entirely to Economist Jared Bernstein. Last Tuesday he posted this on his twitter feed.

If you’re feeling forlorn behind the ascendance of venal, racism-spewing idiots, and all the other hate and dysfunction that abounds, I’ve got an antidote, or at least an essential vacation. Seriously.

Jared Bernstein

Enjoy, Jack

It’s the 20’s, young people are leaving the farm and going to the city to work in the factories. That New Orleans music had moved north to Chicago and then to New York. The radio was new, so was sound in the movies. We started to have shared experiences as a nation. Jazz, speak easies, women in short skirts……….. Grandma, who was busy raising her family, must have been shaking her head.

What I love about YouTube is access to original recordings. The quality isn’t great but you are there in the room for the first time.

The Charleston represented a decade and here it is played by its creator. James P Johnson.

ser·en·dip·i·ty /ˌserənˈdipədē/
noun: serendipity; plural noun: serendipities
the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
“a fortunate stroke of serendipity”
synonyms: chance, happy chance, accident, happy accident,

I was tempted to use Jace’s title for this Sunday’s selection for serendipity played a big part in todays selections. I was reading a story on my local NPR station web site. The next story offered was about a local musician and his strange string instrument playing Celtic music. And here is the serendipity, the YouTube algo offered up a video by one of the musicians in the group. A young man, Amando Espinoza, from Bolivia, composing wonderful music. He is using music he had heard as a child in Bolivia and fusing it with world rhythms, all played by a collection of local musicians. Not in New York or LA but in this conservative cautious cow town called Kansas City

We truly live in a golden age and as evidenced by our President, are too stupid to realize it.

I could go on but lets just relax and listen to what the world offers on our door step, enjoy.

Jack

From a comment in my Twitter feed:
“You may not know the composer but you know the song”
The Composer was João Gilberto and the song “Girl From Ipanema”
But Gilberto was more than that one song, He created a new genre of music, Bossa Nova, and brought the dance beat back to Jazz

Gilberto passed away last week at age of 88, in his life he left his mark on the music of Brazil and the world

The following are from the 1965 Grammy Jazz record of the year, Getz/Gilberto a collaboration between Gilberto and Jazz saxophonist Stan Getz

For a smooth mellow Monnday morning, enjoy.

From NPR
João Gilberto is credited by some with writing the first bossa nova, or new beat. This mid-20th century musical gift to the world drew on Brazil’s African-influenced samba tradition, but was performed without the usual battery of drums and rhythm instruments, and at much lower volumes. Gilberto’s intimate and nuanced style of guitar playing and singing, eventually central to the bossa nova sound, were reportedly developed in 1955 when he sequestered himself inside of a bathroom at his sister’s house so as not to disturb her family and to take advantage of the acoustics provided by the bathroom tiles.
In the mid-1950s, Brazil was in the midst of a post-WWII modernization inspired by a new president who wished to move the country out of third world economic status. Gilberto’s “Bim-Bom,” often named as the first bossa nova song, came from that period, and soon thereafter, the style began to sweep Rio’s cafe’s and bars. Bossa nova’s sophisticated sound became popular with a new moneyed class eager to move away from the more traditional samba sound of explosive drums and group singing. Rio de Janeiro was ground zero of the country’s cultural explosion; Gilberto, composer Antonio Carlos Jobim and poet Vinicius de Moraes were the key architects of a culture shift that forever changed their country’s musical point of reference.