Shifting gears away from polemics and back to the more boring subject of Jazz, here is a video of Chet Baker singing one of my favorite Jazz standards, “Time After Time“, not to be confused with another one of my favorite songs, “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper. As a matter of fact, I have an unpublished (of course) short story of the same name that references both songs of the same name.
Category Archives: Jazz
Everything But You
It’s Sunday, May 6th, and after taking a long paseo in Madrid, I arrived back at my apartment. There is nothing in the frig, the dishes are dirty, the bed is unmade, and the house is a bit messy. But, I don’t care. It is Sunday and sunny. This is the view from Inside My Window to “Evertying But You”, once again from the album The Original Ellington Suite by the Chico Hamilton Quintet with Eric Dolphy.
Filed under Digressions, Jazz, Living la vida española
The Bronx and Eric Dolphy
I guess I must be pretty bored, but I keep playing with a video clip program and combining videos, photos, and music. This time I combined my videos from driving into the Bronx from the George Washington Bridge through the Cross Bronx Expressway with one of my favorite Eric Dolphy pieces, “17 West” (with Ron Carter on cello). I am not quite sure why, maybe because of the strings, but this piece always reminds me of Leos Janácek.
Filed under Digressions, Jazz
A View From My Window
The other day I took a lovely paseo to the chamber Jazz of the Chico Hamilton Quientet with Eric Dolphy’s The Original Ellington Suite. This morning, May 5, 2007, at 11:00 am, I decided to film the quiet morning from my window in the Madrid neigbhorhood of Chamberí to “In a Mellowtone” from the same album.
Filed under Digressions, Jazz, Living la vida española
Point of Departure
My friend, William (with the abandoned blog), told me today that Andrew Hill (1931-2007) just recently passed away on April 20th. Andrew Hill was a major Jazz pianist and composer who made a name for himself in the 1960s with innovative albums for Blue Note such as Black Fire and Points of Departure. On this piece, embedded here, called “Refuge” Andrew Hills leads such greats as Joe Henderson, Kenny Dorham, and my favorite Eric Dolphy playing bass clarinet.
Filed under Jazz
A Lovely Paseo
Today was another lovely day in Madrid. The sun was shining and there was a very light breeze. When the weather is nice in Madrid, the ideal Sunday is spent in the La Latina section of town where everyone meets to eat, drink, and loiter in the sun. I was supposed to meet up with Neska for lunch, but she spent Saturday night on the town with John Travolta, and I think that she was left only with a headache and no longer a fever.
So I decided to take the day into my own hands. I grabbed by iPod Shuffle — courtesy of FON — and ventured out to take a nice stroll through my neighborhood to the sounds of The Chico Hamilton Quintet with Eric Dolphy from the album The Original Ellington Suite. What a perfect paseo with Chico Hamilton’s chamber jazz accompanied by Eric Dolphy’s flute and bass clarinet — really wonderful. Continue reading
Filed under Digressions, Jazz
Another Country
This past summer I read Another Country by James Baldwin and had wanted to write an in depth analysis of the story. I had totally forgotten about the book until now when I was listening to Louis Armstrong signing “Black and Blue”. Initially, I had purchased the book because I thought is was about an African American Jazz musician and his struggle as such. Then as I read on, I found out that the Jazz musician was only a part of the first portion of the story, even though the rest seemed to revolve around him. Nevertheless, the book rather fascinated me in its insight of people’s search for a place in the world — struggling to fit in, find love, and the injustice and violence in it all.
Filed under Digressions, Jazz, Literature
Carnet de Routes & Charles Mingus
This evening I was so excited to get home. The weekend was just beginning, but instead of going out for a night on the town, I was prepping to finish The Bastard of Istanbul, to listen to my new CD Carnet de Routes by Romano, Sclavis and Texier, and maybe even write a post about last night’s rain. A few years back I got my hands on the Suite Africaine (thanks to Fadi) and have enjoyed it thoroughly. Last week, I had ordered Carnet de Routes used because it was very difficult to find, and it had just arrived today. These two CDs are part of a series of tours the musicians made to Africa accompanied by photographer Le Querrec. The compositions supposedly trace their steps while the photographer puts them to imagery.
Unfortunately, today I had also written a post where I had embedded Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus” — a song criticizing the then Governor of Arkansas who had sent the National Guard to prevent integration in a Little Rock High School. While listening to the song, I had been reminded that Eric Dolphy often played in Mingus’ bands. This was my big mistake.
When I arrived home and began uploading Carnet de Routes into iTunes, I also did a search to see if the iTunes Store also had two important Mingus CDs with Dolphy as a sideman: Mingus at Antibes and Town Hall Concert (1964). Unfortunately, they were both available and I could not resist purchasing them both. Am I the only loser who still pays for music? Meanwhile, Carnet de Routes was uploaded and began playing. It was fantastic, so I researched Romano, Sclavis and Texier even more to find that they had in fact recently released another CD together, African Flashback. The two songs embedded here (“Look the Lobis” and “Berbere”) are from their new album.
Conclusion, another post that no one cares for about Jazz, and all I had wanted was to talk about the rain.
Filed under Jazz
Something Else
Sorry, but I still need a few days to come back to life after Semana Santa before I can return to writing irrelevant digressions. In the meantime, here is something else, Cannonball Adderley’s Somethin’ Else with Miles Davis on trumpet (even though “Autumn Leaves” is not so appropriate for spring). Actually, I had almost completely forgotten about this album until my friend, Waya, reminded me of it the other day. Enjoy or wait for the next grave error coming soon to a digression near you.
Filed under Jazz
Saint Thomas
Sorry about boring you all with so much Jazz, but Sonny Rollins’ “St. Thomas” from his album Saxophone Colossus always puts me in a good mood. There’s nothing like happy music.
Filed under Jazz
Grave Error 