First off, I owe big thanks to Gary Floyd for helping me get into this corner of the Internet, because he directed me to the Christmas Cocktails albums that were on one of these and then I branched from there. I've found a lot of cool out-of-print or rare stuff (sometimes vinyl rips for better or worse) on these that I've really come to treasure and yammer about to a bunch people (the aforementioned Christmas stuff, Compost, Frank Morgan, Paul Horn, Michel Legrand, Nathan Davis, Phil Upchurch, Joe Bonner), so here is my list of places I go if you'd like to get in on it. You can share your favorite music-hosting blogs too if you'd like. They're not always updated as swiftly as they used to be, so you'll have to root around the archives a little bit, and the rapidshare links might be dead if you go too far back, but it's worth it if you like to get in on cool rare music.
http://jazzhotsauce.blogspot.com : Hot Sauce Lounge has occasional jazz but mostly '50s lounge music and something called "exotica" which I've been dying to check out but haven't gotten around to yet. The blog host also graciously uploaded all of George Carlin's albums last June. Highlights:
Christmas Cocktails,
That genre-starting Exotica album which I will check out today,
George Carlin's back catalogue.
http://pharaohs-dance.blogspot.com/ Pharaoh's Dance is pretty straight-ahead rare jazz, but went through a phase of exclusively posting Japanese stuff last summer, I think it was. Highlights:
some groovy Michel Legrand soundtracks from the late '60s, more but the search function for this blog is not as helpful as you can see
http://orgyinrhythm.blogspot.com More of the same here.
A Bobby Hutcherson album where he overdubs himself on an array of percussion instruments,
this Nathan Davis album with a great cover of "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most" and some neat European-sounding stuff,
this Joe Bonner album that I blurbed about at the other board once but cannot stop endorsing, oodles more. My favorite.
http://myjazzworld.blogspot.com/ My Jazz World tends to have more soul and R&B than the other three, which is cool. I think everything here is out of print.
The quiet storm of Doug Richardson's "Night Talk," a great jazz/soul guitar album by a fella named Phil Upchurch (which is what you do on a Sunday morning), another by Phil, and a third.
http://myfavvouritesound.blogspot.com is also good but I'm getting tired of writing this out. If you get one album from this blog, make it
Life Is Round, by a collective called Compost.
I hope some of this appeals to you.
http://pharaohs-dance.blogspot.com/search?...frank+morgan%22
Dumb omission on my part. I found this Frank Morgan debut album several weeks ago, and it's simply stellar. For some biographical background, here's a guy, surely one of many, that was heralded as the next Bird, but unfortunately this also manifested itself in him getting addicted to heroin and spending time in California prisons. He went
thirty years! between these recordings and his follow-up. Anyway, he's a great alto player, but the real magic of this album is the band, which features Latin percussion and a really cool organ. It consists of three five-song sessions; the first two are great quality for 1955 and sound more like a retro act than an actual document from that year because of how ahead of his time he was. I can't stress how much I love that organ. As I said last time I blurbed about this album, it makes me want to sit in a den with paneling and wear a smoking jacket. Please check this out, guys.
http://orgyinrhythm.blogspot.com/2008/06/m...st-of-ande.html
Here's another one I neglected to feature in my first post. The write-up on the blog (by way of All About Jazz) is more than sufficient, so I don't have to write anything substantial myself. Not a perfect wire-to-wire album, since it strays from the choral aspect of the first part and loses that unique ecclesiastical flair (the first track "St. Martin de Porres" is really captivating), but MLW's piano playing is more than interesting enough to make the whole thing worth it. RIYL Charles Mingus, the human voice, and/or obscure Catholic provincial demi-gods.
If you like guitar, and I sure do, the Hot Sauce Lounge has a goddamned motherlode
here: a five-disc boxed set of Django Reinhardt sessions. The sound quality isn't perfect, since some of these recordings are, after all, over 75 years old, but the musicianship is second to none. The violinist working with Django on most of these, Stephane Grappelli, is a pretty important 20th c. music figure in his own right. I know I've really been beating you guys over the head with all this jazz shit this week, but I really feel like this is the kind of stuff that everyone needs to check out if only to appreciate the old masters. Maybe some of the metal diehards might even try it for the early-guitar-heroics aspect. What makes the guy's chops even more jaw-dropping is the fact that he did all this shit with a mutilated hand. It's pretty daunting to listen to all this in one sitting, so don't. That'd be dumb. I'd recommend starting with either Vol. 2 or 4, since those probably have the most recognizable charts. 4 has the most: "Blue Moon," "Stardust," "The St. Louis Blues," "I Got Rhythm," and "It Don't Mean a Thing." 2 has "Honeysuckle Rose," "Sweet Georgia Brown" (Harlem Globetrotters theme song for any of us who need the refresher), "It Had To Be You," and "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm."
Then as luck would have it, I was down in my basement rooting through some shelves for empty jewel cases or worthless promotional CDs that could become empty jewel cases, and I found the soundtrack to Woody Allen's
Sweet and Lowdown, a film that apparently has something to do with Sean Penn as an aspiring gypsy jazz guitarist. I haven't seen it. All but two of the fifteen cuts on this are modern studio takes, so the quality is crystal-clear, of course, but it just doesn't feel right without the imperfections that the two 1930s recordings have. Few familiar favorites here for anyone with a decent American music vocabulary: new takes on "Just a Gigolo" and "Peanut Vendor," "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Don't Mean a Thing..." again, and a good old recording of good old "Caravan," my favorite track on here. NOTE: I ripped this at like 160 VBR because I figured maybe one person at best would be interested in snagging this. If anyone really wants it at 320, PM me. Not expecting much on this front, but do check out a Django disc or two and tell me what you think. (I'm operating on the premise that not everyone is familiar with Django Reinhardt. It could be that everyone is already more than familiar, rendering me a patronizing idiot.)
wow, this place does rule. and that frank morgan album does rule, too. its wild stuff that is a precursor to the fun jams of jimmy smith.
kudos to gary floyd.
...god, i feel dirty.
I need to get all the Jimmy Smith I can find. All I've had is this one album with a nine-minute jam on "Killing Me Softly." Need more Hammond B3 in my life.
So I got around to that Martin Denny
Exotica thing. The idea of grafting Polynesian sounds (percussion and animal noises) over lounge jazz seems and is ridiculous, but I actually liked it quite a bit! It's a short album, maybe 31 minutes, and maybe that's for the better that these songs come and go rather swiftly before guys imitating macaws can get really annoying. The only song I really found irritating was "China Nights," which doesn't fit the South Pacific motif and is full of all those really patronizing Chinese music quotes, like that little "da-da-da-da da-da da-da daaaa" thing. Pissed me off. The rest of it, though, great. Enough vibraphone to keep me happy. Gary Floyd, you into this exotica stuff? Seems like just the kind of quirky obscure stuff that'd be right up your alley.
http://myjazzworld.blogspot.com/2007/11/do...zz-harp-of.html
Here's something to try out if you like taking flyers on unusual things. A harp as the lead instrument, backed by a pair of trombones and a rhythm section. Not as out there as Alice Coltrane might be, though. There's a cover of "House of the Rising Sun" on here I like a lot, but there aren't any weak tracks on here. This isn't "essential to every music fan's collection" or anything, and this is long out of print and so we're stuck with a well-worn vinyl rip, so that bothers me as someone who values audio fidelity (though I don't think I'm as can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees as true audiophiles), but not enough to ruin it, so hey, if you have half an hour to spare, by all means check this out.
