Patrice Rushen: Pizzazz

While walking around in Brooklyn, showing my visiting cousin around the city, I stopped at one of the many tables of people selling records.  Looking through this guy's collection and thinking his price for a Joe Pass album was more than I wanted to pay I happened upon a copy of Patrice Rushen's 1979 release Pizzazz.  Though I am relatively unfamiliar with her catalog, I had heard a few songs by her and knew of her talent as a musician and it was worth five dollars to me to check it out... and I did.  Much to my joy this record turned out to be, what I will call, "an uplifting parade of soul".  Though trained in jazz, in this album Rushen is able to deftly maneuver a more pop sound.  Between the vocal and orchestral arrangements what is found is a sound that blends aspects of everything from Parliament to the Talking Heads to create a sound that is both soulful and oh so utterly retro-fun.

I hope you enjoy.

Let the Music Take Me  - Patrice Rushen 

Keeping the Faith in Love - Patrice Rushen 

Langston Hughes & Charles Mingus: Weary Blues

This is an album I picked up from my good friend DJ Joe-sephus, mad mad respect . It is a great recording, and needless to say because of the brilliance and high regard of its collaborators, is an important and interesting American cultural artifact.

Recorded in 1958 this album takes the groundbreaking 1926 work of Langston Hughes' Weary Blues (which includes the famous "A Dream Deffered") and pairs it with compositions written in collaboration by Charles Mingus, Leonard Feather, and Horace Parlan. Mingus has a knack, I feel, for making music that is sometimes rousing, sometimes chilling, always original, and always eloquent music. This combined with Hughes "cool" prose that itself is written with rhythms straight out of harlem makes a perfect pairing. I feel that this album, because of its stirring poetry and pristine music, can be enjoyed by jazz and non-jazz enthusiasts alike.

The effect of this recording I feel exemplifies a lot of what I look for in music; something that is both interesting and moving which in my opinion (as was previously stated) is duly accomplished both on a musical and literary level. Overall though I just love the music and the poetry. Hughes voice is unparalleled in his delivery, and the words have never meant more as a result. This album is hard to find a copy of, I saw it on Amazon with new copy's going for as much as 40 dollars. Luckily DJ Joe-sephus l was so generous, and luckily you read this blog.

Personnel

Langston Hughes -	poetry
Shafi Hadi (Curtis Porter) -	tenor sax
Jimmy Knepper -	trombone
Horace Parlan -	piano, leader
Charles Mingus -	bass
Kenny Dennis -	drums

"I'm a Bad Man"- Langston Hughes & Charles Mingus

A Dream Deffered - Langston Hughes & Charles Mingus

"Democracy Will Not Come Today" - Langston Hughes & Charles Mingus

The Whole Thing:

http://www.zshare.net/download/5838186662489c46/#

House Fire: Roy Ayers

So the other day while meandering around St. Marks I was deciding between an eight dollar copy of Sonny Rollin's Saxophone Colossus or a set of self/co-produced remixes from vibraphonist and funk/soul/jazz composer Roy Ayers.  So instead of Rollin's timeless classic I decided to go with the more adventurous purchase and happened upon one pretty interesting album.   "Virgin Ubiquity, Remixed" off Rapsterr records (2006), is an exotic mix of house, drum and bass, chopped up funk, and eerie 90's throwback that leads to a deep cutting sound that has a slippery nature overall (if that makes any sense).  I get that feeling about a lot of downbeat house music, the slippery part, but I feel that this music manages to parse the questionable impression that I get from that sound- and that I would only really expect to hear in a Spanish jean store.  Overall Ayers, I find, stays close to his roots and doesn't let this musics ambitious modern sound loose sight of the type of person to be buying Roy Ayers remixes.  This is the type of downbeat easy to feel music that is so synonymous with hip-hop, with beats tastefully unbridled by too much instrumentation or vocals,  which allows for a more sophisticated effect. I am not that educated on the issue of dance music but I know that there is some I like and some I don't, I think I like this.

Funk in The Hole - Roy Ayers (Platinum Pied Pipers Remix)

Touch of Class - Roy Ayers (Matthew Herbert's Touch of Ass Mix)

Philip Cohran and The Artistic Heritage Ensemble

Yesterday was the anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X and I think it fit to share with you an album that I picked up over winter break.  It is a "The Malcolm X Memorial (A Tribute in Music)" (1968) by Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble.  This is a really cool album that was recorded live at the Affro-Arts Theater in Chicago on Feb. 25 1968, just about three years after the death of Malcolm X.  Philip Cohran is a Chicago trumpet player that is probably most well known for his time with Sun Ra and the Arkestra and his involvement in the founding of the AACM (association for the advancement of creative musicians, I will probably talk more about this group in later posts).  Those of you from New York most likely know or can associate Cohran as the polygamist father of all seven of the brass players from the Hypnotic Brass Band aka that really great horn band in Union Square.   This album is really cool and serves as a sort of time capsule that allows us to listen to the sounds of Black Power, three years after the assassination of its most respected leader. So in this way the album can be seen as a kind of retrospective, but overall I think it is more representative of a time when jazz and urban black culture were undergoing a serious social movement affecting the consciousness of a people.  Black power in its essence was not a violent movement it was the embracing of "blackness" in rejection engendered white ideals to allow for the creation a black identity with power and self respect so as to oppose the effects of the uneven balance of power. The music takes elements from jazz, african, middle eastern, soul, and the avante garde  and blends them all into something that is undeniably relevant to the time. My favorite track is the last one (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz), not really because of the five minute drum solo but because of the epic vocals at that it builds to at the end... epic.

"The story of Brother Malcolm's life is one of the most widely known episodes in modern history. This tribute is based on Malcolm's life subdivided into four distinct parts and these four parts are a model of the four stages of the American Blacks elevation to a higher life."

-from the liner notes

Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble - Malcom X 

Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble - El Hajj Malik El Shabazz