The breeze and I (LP 921)

Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis 4  Montreux '77 (Vinyl, Pablo Records, 1977) *****  

Genre: Jazz 

Places I remember: Tom Shaw (Facebook friend)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: This Can't Be Love (whole album available on YouTube but not on Spotify)

Gear costume: Blue Lou

Active compensatory factors: There is alchemy happening here as these titans of jazz continue into the 1970s. Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson are on a whole other wavelength. Add in Eddie 'Lockjaw' Harris blowing over the top, underneath and all around them on tenor sax and whoa! Magic ensues.

'Lockjaw' (no one is definitive on how he came by that nickname) is a tenor man that I'm not very familiar with, but one listen to The Breeze And I and I'm a convert.

Being the late seventies and Montreux, it probably goes without saying that the recording is terrific. It's like they are playing in front of me!

Where do they all belong? I'm not sure why Tom was wanting to part with this, it's an excellent addition to my jazz collection.

Bebop (Stan Getz) (LP 680 - 687)

Stan Getz  Stan Getz At Storyville 1 (CD, Real Gone Jazz, 1951) **** 

Stan Getz  Stan Getz At Storyville 2 (CD, Real Gone Jazz, 1951) **** 

Stan Getz  Chamber Music (CD, Real Gone Jazz, 1953) *** 

Stan Getz  For Musicians Only (CD, Real Gone Jazz, 1956) **

Stan Getz  Stan Getz And The Oscar Peterson Trio (CD, Real Gone Jazz, 1957) ***** 

Stan Getz  Getz Meets Mulligan In Hi-Fi (CD, Real Gone Jazz, 1957) **** 

Stan Getz  Stan Getz And Cal Tjader Sextet (CD, Real Gone Jazz, 1958) ****  

Genre: Cool Jazz 

Places I remember: The Warehouse

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: I Want To Be Happy (with Oscar Peterson Trio)

Gear costume: Tour's End (with Oscar Peterson Trio)

Active compensatory factors: These 7 albums are collected (along with Cool Velvet which has already appeared on Goo Goo) on Eight Classic Albums. 

These multi album collections are a great way to catch up on long forgotten gems.

The Storyville and Oscar Peterson hook up albums are the cream of this crop. 

For Musicians Only features Dizzy Gillespie on trademark piercing trumpet which kind of ruins the laid back vibe for me. Plus there is another alto saxophonist (Sonny Stitt) on the set which seems redundant when Stan is around.

Those Storyville sets and the Peterson album feature Stan in primo form. He lays it down like no one else in the cool jazz sub-genre.

Where do they all belong? More to come from Stan the man!

Easy does it (Oscar Peterson) (LP 450 - 455)

Oscar Peterson  Blues Etude (Vinyl, Mercury/ Limelight, 1966) ****

The Oscar Peterson Trio  Canadiana Suite (Vinyl, Mercury/ Limelight, 1964) ***

Oscar Peterson Trio with Herb Ellis Hello Herbie (Vinyl, MPS/BASF, 1969) ***

Oscar Peterson and Count Basie  Satch And Josh...Again (Vinyl, Pablo, 1978) ***

The Oscar Peterson Trio In Tokyo, 1964 (Vinyl, Pablo, ?) ***

The Oscar Peterson Trio  Night Train (Vinyl, Verve, 1963) ****

Genre: Jazz piano 

Places I remember: All are from Graham Purdy's collection. I bought The Pablo and Verve albums for him when I worked at Marbecks.

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Blues Etude (Blues Etude); Wheatland (Canadiana Suite); Blues for H.G., Seven Come Eleven (Hello Herbie); Lester Leaps In (Satch and Josh...Again)

Gear costume: The songs on Night Train spark and sizzle!

Active compensatory factors: My dad loved Oscar Peterson's piano jazz style. I don't know why, I never asked him.

The Blues Etude and Canadiana Suite albums were always in his collection from when they were released in the sixties, so his appreciation was well established by the time I was working at Marbecks in the late seventies. Roger got a huge shipment of Pablo imports in and I hunted these albums out for dad for his birthday presents.

I like his playing but I'm not as much of a fan as dad was - I keep them for sentimental reasons. Dad loved them, so they are a little piece of him that I can latch onto.

I suspect you need some understanding of piano playing (like dad had) to appreciate Peterson on a deeper level. I'm much more emotional in my appreciation. Most of those fab tracks (above) are the mid to fast paced ones, I'm not such a fan of the slow ones!

Where do they all belong? Safe and sound in my collection until I've gone and then either to my children or a good home. They belong to someone who will appreciate them.

Ray of light (Benny Green) (LP 399)

Ray Brown Some of My Best Friends Are... The Piano Players (CD, Telarc Jazz, 1995) ***

Genre: Piano jazz 

Places I remember: Inherited from Graham Purdy's collection

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: My Romance




Gear costume:  Giant Steps, Ray Of Light, How Come You do Me?  

Active compensatory factors: I love piano jazz albums, and that comes from my dad. Some people reckon that listening to classical music is the best for studying, but for me, it's always been piano jazz compilations.

This album acts as something of a compilation set, as it has a variety of genius pianists playing with the core rhythm section of Ray Brown on bass and Lewis Nash on drums. 

Those pianists: Benny Green; Ahmad Jamal; Geoff Keezer; Dado Maroni; and Oscar Peterson. Phew - quite a line-up.

The highlights come along regularly - Dado Moroni on Mr Romance, Benny Green on Ray Of Light and the Oscar Peterson tracks St Tropez and How Come You Do Me? are all wonderful expressions of jazz artistry.


Where do they all belong? This set leads off the piano jazz section in the collection.

Secret love (Oscar Peterson) (LP 282)

Oscar Peterson The Trio (Vinyl - Pablo, 1974) ****

Genre: Jazz  

Places I remember: Chaldon Books and Records  

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Blues Etude (sounds like Coltrane's frenetic blast during Chasing The 'Trane, but on piano)




Gear costume: Come Sunday

Active compensatory factors: While working at Marbecks Records in the late seventies, shipments of records from Pablo came in, in large quantities.

All were recording brilliantly, all used iconic black and white photos on the covers.

Knowing dad was a jazz fan I bought a few Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner, Duke Ellington titles for him. Although, not this featured Peterson album.

He would have really appreciated the dexterity on display her. Peterson is in breath taking form and displays his talents over a range of jazz styles.

Where do they all belong? He was extremely prolific, but the Pablo material is all top notch.

Distant ships sailing into the mist (Bob Dylan)

Jumpin' At The Woodside was a hit for Count Basie and his orchestra in 1938. It must be part of my DNA.

By the time I was a teenager in 1970 I had heard this (and many other Swing toons) many many times for a decade - bound to seep into the pores.

It popped up on the shuffle t'other day and I couldn't help but grin and think of my folks - the Swing fans.

Can you hear us pumping on your stereo? (Supergrass)

This is my 100th post on this blog. That's fairly significant I think. 100 rants about music.

What should I do to celebrate? Maybe a list of 100 somethings? Mmm no - that might be a bit of a bridge too far.

Maybe I could do a greatest hits type post of my favourite posts so far. Mmmm no again - they're all there if you want to dip into my back pages.

Instead I'd like to return to the beginning of it all and that was a post on April 13 in 2009 - just over two years ago.

Here's what I wrote:

So we (Jacky me and Samantha) were sitting in our favourite lunch place - Lush in New Plymouth's centre city - and Samantha was asking about my blogging for family/friends and why I didn't put more music posts on it and I said because a lot of wozza's place people don't read that stuff so I was limiting that from now on and Jacky (God bless her) said, "Why don't you just do a music blog and..." (I had drifted off into a distant realm). I think I said in a dreamy far away voice, "Of course - a blog just for my rants on music. But where do I start". Samantha helpfully suggested I start from the beginning!


The beginning - The beginning for me is watching the Ed Sullivan Show on New Zealand TV in maybe 1965 or 1966 (whenever NZBC got around to showing it. I was about 8 or 9) and wozza's place readers will know what effect that had on me. No surprise then that this blog is named after Lennon's walrus sound. The hooks were sharp and deep!

Actually - that wasn't, strictly speaking, the real beginning, now I come to think of it.

The real start of my musical adventures would involve my parents and their love of piano jazz and swing music. I would hear their choices around the house and gaze at the covers of the albums they owned long before The Beatles crashed my consciousness.

These would include albums by Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Smith, Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, and Frank Sinatra (my mother's favourite).

I guess what I meant, in that first post, was that the first music that was mine was the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

In that first post I also did my own responses to the regular 'All Back To Mine' quiz in Mojo magazine. Seems timely that I do an update.
What music are you currently grooving to?
I'm still constantly buying and listening to music - right now I'm listening to my latest purchases, all of which I've picked up cheaply in the local Al Ain supermarkets: The Crowded  House waifs and strays compilation Afterglow which is excellent - their cast offs are better than some band's whole careers; A compilation entitled Saturday Night Divas (Tina Turner's Steamy Windows and Lene Marlin are on there so it's pretty fine); another compilation called Metal For The Masses (Lacuna Coil, Strapping Young Lad keep Deep Purple and Scorpions company); and a Supergrass compilation of hits - Supergrass is 10. I love their chirpy Britpop fun songs.
What, if push came to shove, is your all-time favourite album?
In all my various best of lists two albums have always vied for best ever - The Beatles white album (really called 'the Beatles'), and John Lennon's 1970 solo album - 'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'. The shock of the invention and honesty in each makes them my favs by some distance.


What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?
I've an unreliable memory on this. I've always thought it was The Hollies single 'Hey Willie' that I bought from the record bar in 246 (a large mall in Queen St, Auckland). However this was in 1971 and I'd already got some albums before that for Christmas 1970 The Beatles 'Hey Jude' - from a record shop in Otahuhu and I also had a clutch of albums including a best of The Cowsills, a Monkees album and a Hollies album around this same time.


Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be?
The Mojo questions are often given to musicians of course and I'm not one. However for a while there after seeing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee in concert (I was about 10 feet away at Nambassa) I bought a blues harp and wailled along with Sonny - desperate to be as cool as he was.


What do you sing in the shower?
I wish I could sing, but a man's gotta know his limitations.


What is your favourite Saturday night song?
Let's have a Party by Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs is the finest thing to twitch around to that I know. Don't Let Go redone by Cold Chisel on their live album is also damn good.


And your Sunday morning record?
Currently it's a good time for some Jazz (Dexter Gordon), Buddha Lounge chill music or Rumer's excellent Seasons of My Soul album (makes me long to be in England too).