In your own sweet way (Bill Evans) (LP 2528 - 2531)

Bill Evans Trio  How My Heart Sings! (Vinyl, Riverside Records, 1962) *****  

First Aid Kit  Palomino (Vinyl, Columbia Records, 2022) ****  

Fat Freddy's Drop  Live At Roundhouse London (CD, The Drop Records, 2010) *****  

Fat Freddy's Drop  Bays (CD, The Drop Records, 2015) *****  

Genre: Jazz; country rock; jazz/ rock/ reggae/ dub 

Places I remember: JB Hi Fi

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Show Type Tune (Bill Evans); 29 Palms Highway (First Aid Kit)

Gear costume: How My Heart Sings! (Bill Evans); Out Of Our Head (First Aid Kit);

Active compensatory factors: A shopping expedition recently in Palmerston North's JB Hi Fi resulted in these four albums being added to the collection.

The Bill Evans album is a remastered version from 1989 but all the original album cover details are perfectly intact.

Jazz critic, C. Michael Bailey, sums it up - "After the ballad-laden Moon Beams, producer Orrin Keepnews wanted a slightly more up-tempo recording that resulted in How My Heart Sings. Fifty years later, the recording remains painfully introspective, up-tempo or not. Evans was the Van Gogh of jazz: sensile and troubled, characteristics that expressed themselves in his playing his entire career." 

First Aid Kit are a duo from Sweden (sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg) and they sound (and look) like two California girls.

I was attracted to their sound by how they reminded me of Jenny Lewis so I listened to Palomino a lot in 2023 on Spotify.

I've noticed their album in JB Hi Fi for a while now and decided to take advantage of JB's 20% discount. This is their fifth album. I like their sound a lot, because of their Jenny Lewis-ness - most obvious on side one and 29 Palms Highway.

My recent run down of Fat Freddy's Drop revealed a gap (Bays) and I happened to notice a copy of it along with the Live at Roundhouse London ($10 reduced to 8 - I call that a bargain).

First the live one - this is from my favorite era for the band - most of these shows come from Dr Boondigga and the Big BW. The band are on form and it's London y'all!! I love the band introduction - FFD - from Lyall Bay, Aotearoa!!

Bays is a classic five-star effort as well. By this stage the guys have created a great sound from their influences but made it distinctly Fat Freddy's Drop groove style - instantly recognisable, and instantly enjoyable. 

Where do they all belong? The start of a catch up of albums on the Nemperor label is coming next.

The boy next door (Bill Evans) (LP 1094 - 1095)

Bill Evans Trio   Waltz for Debby (Vinyl, DOL Records, 1961) ****  

Bill Evans Trio   Explorations  (Vinyl, Waxtime Records, 1961) ****  

Genre: Jazz piano 

Places I remember: My Music (Taupo)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: My Romance (Waltz For Debby)

Gear costume: Milestones (Waltz For Debby)

Active compensatory factors: What I love about Bill Evans is that he is so totally in charge that I feel my body relax immediately, because I trust him implicitly.

These two albums came out in 1961, with the same personnel - Scott LaFaro on bass, Paul Motian - drums. Waltz For Debby is a live album (at the famous Village Vanguard) but the sound is as good as the studio Explorations.

Where do they all belong? Always keen to pick up more Bill Evans albums.

Jade visions (Bill Evans) (LP 1034-1036)

Bill Evans  Everybody Digs Bill Evans (CD, Avid Jazz, Originally released 1958) ****  

Bill Evans  Portrait In Jazz (CD, Avid Jazz, Originally released 1960) *****  

Bill Evans  Sunday At The Village Vanguard (CD, Avid Jazz, Originally released 1961) *****  

Genre: Jazz piano 

Places I remember: Fopp (Covent Garden)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Autumn Leaves (Portrait In Jazz)

Gear costume: What Is This Thing Called Love (Portrait In Jazz); All Of You (Sunday...)

Active compensatory factors: Everybody Digs Bill Evans was only his second album as a leader. Remarkable.

He may have made a poor album at some point, but I've yet to hear it. 

These are all trio albums and both Portrait In Jazz and Sunday At The Village Vanguard are great examples of his languid, smooth genius.

Sunday... is my favourite of the three because it sounds like he and the boys are playing in your front room! There is a real intimacy to the recording that I love.

Where do they all belong? If I see other Bill Evans albums I'll be buying them, but that's it for now. 

P.S. Just back from a holiday in Taupo where I picked up two more of Evans' albums from 1961 on vinyl!!

Tune up (Stan Getz/ Albert Dailey) (LP 960 - 962)

Stan Getz & Bill Evans  Stan Getz & Bill Evans (CD, Verve Records, 1973) ****  

Stan Getz & Albert Dailey  Poetry (CD, Blue Note Records, 1984) *** 

Stan Getz  Heart Place (a.k.a. The Sound Of Jazz Volume 11) (CD, Memo Music, 1988) ***   

Genre: Jazz 

Places I remember: The two collaborations - Kings Recording (Abu Dhabi); Heart Place - The Warehouse

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: My Heart Stood Still (Getz & Evans)

Gear costume: Funkallero (Getz & Evans); Autumn Leaves (Heart Place)

Active compensatory factors: I really like the Getz and Evans collaboration. It comes with the brilliant Elvin Jones on drums and Ron Carter or Richard Davis on bass. What a line-up!

There's something magic about a quartet anyway but when the musicians are titans it makes for something extra special.

Poetry is just tenor sax and piano and it has taken me a lot of listens to open up to it. It was recorded in 1983 and finds Getz and Dailey reaching for different types of sounds from their instruments. It's going to take a few more listens I think.

Heart Place is an inconsistent set with the eleven minutes Billie's Bounce being the most challenging to listen to. Autumn leaves though highlights the Getz brilliance well.

Where do they all belong? That's it for Stan Getz. next up in the jazz CD section is The Frank Gibson Quartet.

The Pan Piper (Miles Davis) (LP 568 - 572)

Miles Davis Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (CD, Not Now Music, 1958) ***

Miles Davis with Cannonball Adderley   Somethin' Else (CD, Not Now Music, 1958) ***** 

Miles Davis Sketches Of Spain (CD, Not Now Music, 1960) ***

Miles Davis Miles Davis and The Modern Jazz Giants  (CD, Not Now Music, 1959) *****  

The Miles Davis Sextet  Jazz At the Plaza Vol 1 (CD, Columbia, 1958 but released 1973) ***** 

Genre: Jazz 

Places I remember: HMV; the Warehouse (Hastings); Kings Recording (Abu Dhabi)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles/ Gear costume: Sur L'Autoroute (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud), Autumn Leaves (Somethin' Else); Oleo (Jazz At The Plaza Vol 1)

Active compensatory factors: I confess to being a pleb when it comes to Miles Davis. 

I love Kind Of Blue (like everybody else does) and I love the hard bop sets of the late sixties that include John Coltrane (Jazz At The Plaza), Red Garland and Thelonious Monk (Modern Jazz Giants) or Cannonball Adderley (Somethin' Else).

Ascenseur is basically a movie soundtrack. It does a good job of it too, with soundscapes to (I presume) match the visuals. Sur L'Autoroute is a good example.

Somethin' Else is really a Cannonball Adderley album with Miles as a sideman but Miles has become the much bigger name so my re-released CD version has his name front and centre. In reality Miles and Adderley are part of a great ensemble with Art Blakey on drums and Hank Jones (piano). Sam Jones (bass) rounds out the group.

Sketches Of Spain is another key album in Miles' influential body of work, but it's one I can't appreciate much, somehow. Maybe all I can say is that it's not to my taste.

The Modern Jazz Giants album is brilliant though. The vibraphone sounds of Milt Jackson add some great textures and counter foils for the trumpet throughout the album and Coltrane appears on Round Midnight.

Finally, Jazz At The Plaza Vol 1 (Vol 2 was Duke Ellington recorded at the same event). This is the group that would shortly go on to record Kind Of Blue so we're talking genius level players.

There's a party vibe going on and the sound is a little spotty on the trumpet at times but Coltrane is on fire! He must have had off nights but I've never heard them. Bill Evans is also in sublime form. Wow - what it would have been like to experience this live.  

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Where do they all belong? I haven't explored Davis beyond that late 50's/ early 60's period. At one time I bought Bitches Brew and Live Evil but quickly sold them off. Yikes - too tough for me. Free jazz, I've come to learn, is not my thing maan!

I do it for your love (Bill Evans) (LP 501)

Bill Evans Affinity (CD, Warner Bros, 1979) ***

Genre: Piano Jazz 

Places I remember: Kings Recording (Abu Dhabi)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Blue in Green

Gear costume: Great cover! 

Active compensatory factors: We start the next 500 albums with this little oddity: Bill Evans, jazz pianist and legend (he played on Kind Of Blue - enough said), here teams up with Toots Thielemans (harmonica).

It's sometimes as odd as that sounds, but also ends up being pretty cool when bass (Marc Johnson's debut), drums, and sax are added to the mix.

Gotta say, I'm an absolute sucker for the Fender Rhodes electric piano. It's such a great sound and Bill Evans is a master!

Where do they all belong? A bit of a one-off in my collection - the only album I own by Bill and/or Toots.

So What (Miles Davis) (LP 448)

Miles Davis Kind Of Blue (Vinyl, CBS, 1960) ***** 

Genre: Jazz 

Places I remember: Marbeck Records (I've got an Australian pressing - hence the different cover from the normal one)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: So What

Gear costume:  Freddie Freeloader

Active compensatory factors: It's widely acknowledged as a classic of the genre and it's easy to see why.

It's fresh, different, searching, comfortable, accessible, mysterious, dense, full of space. 

The musicians are all at a peak. By 1960 they knew each other well - often appearing together and on each other's recording dates. Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Cannonball Adderly and Bill Evans are all leaders with a wide range of albums under their own name.

Apparently, this group of musicians were only presented with sketches of the songs by Miles shortly before they were recorded, so there is a large degree of spontaneity in these performances.

Where do they all belong? This album is atop the jazz tree - nothing above it.