Four years of productivity from Miles Davis

From November 1955 to November 1959, Miles Davis recorded 12 brilliant albums in a row:

Miles

Cookin

Relaxin

Workin

Steamin

Round About Midnight

Miles Ahead

Milestones

Porgy and Bess

Kind of Blue

Sketches of Spain

I doubt there are many periods, in any art form, that can compare with this.

(Spun off from an FB comment stream with GEL.)

Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition, "Album Album"

Listening to a jazz playlist of mine on shuffle on my pocket computer, I had the pleasure of hearing "Third World Anthem," from "Album Album", a 1984 release by Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition. I first began to listen to jazz extensively when I was a DJ at KZSU, the student radio station at Stanford University. I first did a jazz show in the summer of 1983. When I started, I knew next to nothing. But I knew Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue," and John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," so I started "So What" from the former and cued up the title track from the latter, and wondered what to play after that.

Jazz albums have good lists of personnel, so I went and got albums by all the sidemen on those two albums. One of the albums was by McCoy Tyner (pianist on the Coltrane album), and one of the sidemen on that album was Jack DeJohnette. I don't remember what Tyner album it was, but I vaguely remember it being a piano trio, which means it was almost certainly "Supertrios" from 1977.

In any case, this use of sidemen to find more records to play had quickly led me to Jack DeJohnette, and when I began to exclusively play jazz in my DJ'ing the following January, his work was a staple of my shows, and when "Album Album" came out that year, I played it to death, especially "Festival," "New Orleans Strut," and "Third World Anthem."

I spent just over a week in New York just after Thanksgiving in 1984, and I went to see Special Edition several times during their week-long gig at the Blue Note. David Murray had already become one of my favorite saxophone players by then, but I was just as impressed by John Purcell and Howard Johnson. Rufus Reid is the bassist on the album, but he was busy elsewhere, so Cecil McBee was replacing him, and I remember him as being especially great. And DeJohnette was, as always, simply a wonder on the drums.

"Album Album": one of the greatest records of the 1980s, to my ears. (Up there with "Seeds of Time," by the magnificent Dave Holland Quintet.)

Top 5 songs of 2008

Once I factor out the Grateful Dead tunes, here are my top five tracks from my last.fm charts for 2008:

Greg Brown, Canned Goods
World Saxophone Quartet, Hattie Wall
Miles Davis, Bitches Brew
Greg Brown, If I Had Known
Greg Brown, Cold and Dark and Wet

The next highest one that is not by one of those guys/bands is Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," followed by Chris Smither's "Leave the Light On."

An old Deadhead who loves jazz and folk, that's me. :-)

Zawinul, Shorter

The other Zawinul composition (besides "Birdland") that I turned to this morning was "In a Silent Way," from the Miles Davis album of the same name. And here's a video of Zawinul and Shorter doing "In a Silent Way" in 1991. It's called "Miles Davis and Friends," but Miles just stands there!

When listening to "Birdland" last night, I found a note about Zawinul's death that said he died of cancer. As my mother-in-law (two years older than JZ) is also dying of cancer right now, I found myself sobbing in front of the computer, while scatting along with the tune.