Brazilian Fire - Victor Feldman Tom Scott Quartet

 

The Victor Feldman - Tom Scott Quartet

 In the late 1960s, Victor Feldman and Tom Scott led a quartet with Chuck Domanico on bass and Johnny Guerin on drums that featured regularly at Donte's on Lankershim Blvd, just up the street from the corporate offices of Universal Studios. On this track you can hear why the group rarely failed to tear up the place. Things get cooking at 0.58 minutes and Victor "explodes" at 1:18 minutes. Thank goodness that Gerry MacDonald had a tape recorder going so that all this great music didn't go undocumented. From my little perch at the bar, I can still see the smiles on everyone's faces whenever Victor, Tom, Chuck and Johnny performed at Donte's. Like most Jazz clubs it was dim, but this band literally "lit it up."

Modal Jazz with The Paul Horn Quintet

 “The Paul Horn album, entitled Something Blue, was obviously influenced by the Miles Davis album, and indeed the Paul Horn group was one of the first fully to explore the new territory opened by Miles.

Paul Horn's 'Dun-Dunnee', for instance, is a forty-bar AABA tune with but one chord or scale for the eight-bar A sections. (It can be thought of as either one long G7 chord or a mixolydian scale; that is, a scale starting on G using the white keys of the piano.)”

- Bob Gordon, Jazz West Coast: The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950’s

“Though the Paul Horn Quintet has a readily identifiable sound through the blending of the leader's alto saxophone or flute with Richards' vibraphone, it is the writing rather than the instrumentation that lends these performances their most personal quality. Paul and his sidemen alike, instead of relying on horizontal melodic values alone, tend to create compositional structures in which the harmonic setting, and often the metric variations, are striking characteristics that give these works much of their originality of color and mood.”

- Leonard Feather, The Sound of Paul Horn

“One final word: if you are not a musician and can't tell a bar from a saloon, don't let this deter you. As Paul cogently observed: ‘Any layman could listen to this music and tap his foot to it without knowing there is anything so different about our approach to time or meter.’ Then he thought a moment, smiled, and added a postscript: ‘Except, of course, the layman might wonder once in a while why his foot was out of step.’"

- Leonard Feather, Profile of a Jazz Musician

Paul Horn, alto sax, flute and clarinet

Emil Richards, vibes

Paul Moer, piano

Jimmy Bond, bass

Billy Higgins, drums

Hod O’Brien at Blues Alley

“Hod O'Brien. This quiet, unassuming man makes music of far reaching import; people the world over await each new recording and attend his performances as often as they are able. Why the immense popularity of Hod O'Brien? The reasons for this phenomenon, his loyal, worldwide audience, are manifold, each person appreciating O'Brien's art from his own perspective, for his own reasons.

I'll use myself as an example.

As a pianist I marvel at Hod O'Brien's virtuosity. His single-note attack and legato phrasing and his timely and explosive use of block chords are the result of the artful blend of initial gifts with years of intense study. Consistently well articulated, each note is crafted with care and shaped lovingly to achieve maximum effect.

As an improvising musician I'm thrilled by the seemingly endless flow of O'Brien's ideas that yield melodic lines of remarkable length and complexity.

He stays with each phrase, and this tenacity allows Hod to extract every last drop of melodic truth to be found there. He chooses his collaborators well-bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Kenny Washington join again with Hod-and listens and reacts honestly, the free exchange of ideas being the hallmark of truly prepared musicians who've learned, above all, to trust.

As a jazz fan I'm gratified by the homage Hod O'Brien pays to his musical forebears, in his choice of material and in the quality of his history-deepened improvisations." - Pete Malinverni

You Don't Know What Love Is - The Ahmad Jamal Trio with Israel Crosby on bass and Vernel Fournier on drums.

 

Ahmad Jamal Trio featuring Israel Crosby on bass and Vernel Fournier on drums.

 Here’s are Kenny Washington’s thoughts about the tune:

“The Matt Dennis song Angel Eyes is one of the great torch songs of all time. Ol’ Blue Eyes owned this one. I especially love the last lyric “scuse me while I disappear.” A year earlier, Gene Ammons had had a hit with this standard. This tune is usually done as a ballad, but Ahmad takes it at a nice medium tempo. Ahmad reshapes the form of this standard like a sculptor, to fit the needs of the trio playing a chorus and a half of the melody. He uses the intro as an interlude. For the first chorus of his improvisation, he switches to the regular A-A-B-A song form of the tune. He then goes directly to the bridge and the last A section with the interlude. This form is repeated again (bridge, last A and interlude). Listen to how he changes his dynamics to a pianis­simo and brings back the bridge melody. The Gershwin classic It Ain’t Necessarily So is quoted for a second time at the last A before the intro is again stated for a powerful ending. This is another one of those performances where there’s a lot happening. This marvelous arrangement sounds so natural and the trio pulls it off with such ease.”

A Little Silver in My Pocket.

 Ralph Bowen Quintet · Jim Beard · Jon Herington · Anthony Jackson · Ben Perowsky

The Russia House and Jerry Goldsmith

The most surprising aspect of the score for The Russia House is its simplicity in instrumentation and repetition. It's hard to imagine how a score of this minuscule size and scope could be so overwhelming in its appeal. That might say something about Goldsmith's raw talent, and perhaps it speaks to three years of development on the concepts. 

His base elements are simple; a jazz trio handles the majority of the themes and underscore, with saxophone performances by Branford Marsalis (both scripted and improvised) that are nothing short of spectacular. Never once does he quiver unintentionally or even slightly miss a note. Perfection is bliss. 

Michael Lang is equally renowned for his fabulous piano performances, and he delicately establishes an elevated level of classy bar room atmosphere for Marsalis' sax. The bass, performed by John Patitucci, has a larger role in the score, not only providing a rhythm for the other two jazz performers, but also handling a large portion of the underscore. 

[The trio restatement of the theme kicks in at around 5.50 minutes of the video.]