There is a vinyl set of his recordings entitled ' Solo Masterpieces ' -
I think it's 10 or 12 records - just him on the piano.
I took it out once from my public library when I was in high school. I
dont think I understood back then what I was listening to, though I did
enjoy it. I wonder if my library still has records (heck I wonder if my
library still has books!)
I also really enjoyed all the dancing footage from the Savoy and the
Roseland... I think, with exception to BBoying, people seemed to dance a
lot harder back then, with all those flips & such...
Onto some more Acid Jazzy topics, I'm really enjoying this new 12" by
Enduro, called "Lisbon". features a Charles Mingus sample. Buttery
mid-tempo jazz groove with excellent (Rhodes?) keyboard solo.
peace
Nat
What I really enjoyed in this la
On Tue, 16 Jan 2001, Steve Catanzaro wrote:
> OK, I'm weighing in again to say the 4th installment was not quite as slick as the second or third, imnsho.There seems to be alot of repetition between episodes, kinda like "In 1927, Louis Armstrong played sounds that had never been heard..." and 45 minutes later, "In 1929, Louis Armstrong played a music that people in his day found unbelievable..." and in the next episode "By 1931, Parisian audiences heard from Louis Armstrong a soulful music they never knew existed..." blah blah blah and so on and so forth.
>
> And yeah, they're laying it on awfully thick. Werner Heisenberg developed his Uncertainty Principle because of listening to Louis Armstrong in Germany? Louis' tempos aurally demonstrate Einstein's theory of General Relativity? OK, I surrender, Louis is the greatest! Now who else was out there, already?
>
> As for the portions on Duke Ellington; well, I just find it hard for pictures and stories about Duke to do anything but attract people to him and his music. I find it more credible to keep checking in with him, because his music underwent such a tremendous evolution over the 60 (!) + years he stayed at the jazz pinnacle. It was great to hear "Reminiscing in Tempo," a fully composed piece of "jazz," (an oxymoron?) that, along with other of his more popular songs, caught the ears of some of the esablished music cognescenti at Juiliard and the like. A lot of change going on from 1920-30.
>
> But the thing I liked best was the all-too brief part about Art Tatum. Damn, even in a showpiece for jazz, the "Invisible Man" remains almost invisible.
>
> What kind of a genius was Tatum? Well, I have the belief that if he and Charlie Parker did a jam session, and Bird laid some of that heavy shit on him, Tatum would have smiled and played it right back at him, and then some, at an even faster tempo!
>
> Then, I realized I didn't own any Tatum CD's. I guess I kind of felt about Tatum like Abraham Lincoln did about guns... safer not to have it around, in case you start to really doubt yourself.... Art probably turned more self-aware pianists into dentists, accountants, and and doctors then anyone in the history of music.
>
> So, , the moral of the story is, despite all the wankering about in "Jazz," I bought 4 Tatum CD's this morning. Viva la "Jazz!"
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