Michael Cuscuna to speak at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem (This Thurs, 07/29/10 at 6:30pm, Free)

Famed jazz writer, producer, discographer, and Mosaic Records honcho, Michael Cuscuna will be giving a free lecture at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, this Thursday at 7pm. The event is free and open to the public.

A Format Change?

Since I am planning evaluating over 100 jazz albums in my collection, most of which I intend to review, I think a change in format is in order. The haphazard Jazz Reviews section needs an overhaul. I am unsure exactly on how to proceed. Whether I should keep a separate hyper-linked archive or else just make all future reviews a regular blog post searchable via categories, tags, and the search bar. If I keep a separate section, it will definitely need to be better organized. That said, given the amount of reviewing I plan to do, a separate section might prove cumbersome. Integrating (and rewriting some of the lesser) old reviews might be the way forward.

Readers! Thoughts?

Carmell Jones – Willow Weep For Me (Riverside Records, 1965)

Carmell Jones – trumpet; Barry Harris – piano; George Tucker – bass; Roger Humphries – drums / Riverside Records, 1965

Carmell Jones was a supremely underrated West Coast trumpeter, whose sideman work with Harold Land, Booker Ervin, and Horace Silver went largely unnoticed in his era. The Mosaic Records Select three-disc box set did a lot to remedy this. Not included was Jay Hawk Talk, a Riverside Date that I believe is Jones’s only gig as a leader. It is magnificent — funky where it needs to be, tender as well. His reading of “Willow Weep For Me” above is hauntingly beautiful, one of my favorite renditions.

Today would’ve been Carmell Jones’s 74th birthday. He died in 1996, a near total unknown. Many dazzling trumpeters from his era somehow never managed to break through, which is a shame really. I’d take Carmell Jones and Tommy Turrentine and Dupree Bolton and Louis Smith over many of their more famous peers and colleagues.

Acquiring Albums Just To Have Them…

So I’ve made myself a vow. I am no longer going to acquire a jazz album just to have it. If I purchase or download an album, I have to listen to it, deeply and attentively, to be sure I want to keep it. To ensure that it is up to my level of enjoyment and not just kept in order to fill in a discography or earn eventual listening. Redundancy is an issue too. As my Lee Morgan posts of earlier this spring attest to, I can only handle so much playing in the same style. It was a revelation to go back and see that Lee had more of a dynamic than I had previously credited him but it also made me realize that while I enjoy the finest of his output in different styles, I only need so many of his blowing sessions — not almost all of them.

The fleeting rush of acquisition is a tantalizing drug. I have often fallen victim to it. To the delerium, the mania of constantly seeking new records, new knowledge, hearing how a player developed, who he played with, what sessions are available, what is rare and worth seeking. The greater the difficulty, the better the challenge, the greater the rush of attainment.

But where is the true satisfaction?

I love Don Byas to death. He is one of my all-time favorite tenor players. And when I realized this, I rushed out and got my hands on at least ten different sessions at once. I listen to them all casually for awhile but really only dedicated my ears to the Jazz In Paris series. Now I find myself wanting something new to hear from him when I have seven or eight good sessions sitting on  my hard drive that I’ve only ever listened to once or twice. Why aren’t they enough?

As I go through and listen and review these records that have sat unloved in my collection, I will grapple with these questions and see if I cannot tame the impulse to constantly collect, to still the mania, and dampen the diminishing returns that keep me constantly seeking for more.

How Much Jazz Is Too Much Jazz?

The other night, I used my iTunes album tabulator to figure out how many jazz albums I had ripped to my hard drive over the years. The answer was an astonishing 276, many of which I’ve never given more than a cursory listen to. I was a bit surprised by the number. I knew I had accumulated a significant amount of jazz over the years (being forced to fill over two-to-three hours of jazz radio programming a week for five years will do that) but I had at least figured on having given most of it an ample listen. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. At least 100+ albums were probably ripped, enjoyed briefly while filling airtime, and then either forgotten or subsumed by other aural desires. Worse still, this figure doesn’t include all the jazz I own on vinyl — another 40-60 albums easy.

I want to listen to these records and give them the attention they deserve. Some of them will be revelatory. Some of them will be deletable. It’s time to separate the wheat from the chaff and hone my jazz collection to the bone.

Lately, I’ve felt like this blog has stalled. No longer being on the radio has slowly sapped the impetus out of blogging about jazz and I don’t want to be one of those blogs that merely filters YouTube content. I’d also burned out of jazz for awhile and found my listening attentions being soaked up by electronic music, film scores, and metal. I hadn’t reviewed a jazz record in over six months and couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe it was time to wind Bop and Beyond on down.

Then I got my hands on a magnificent Max Roach album and everything snapped back into place. Jazz had resurged.

So, in order to breath some new life into this blog and my jazz listening life, I am taking it upon myself to listen and review those under-loved jazz albums that have been sitting on my hard drive gathering metaphorical dust. To take them out for a spin with open ears and see how they hold up.

I’m told that 400+ jazz albums is nothing for someone with the true mania for jazz collecting. I feel like that hysteria for constant acquisition is fading out for me. I want to appreciate what I have without constantly needing to seek out new material.

Not that I will stop buying jazz. Just more considered purchases perhaps?