Charlie Byrd: Byrdland

Review # 67
Atist: Charlie Byrd
Title: Byrdland
Format: LP
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Songs: 11



Almost a year into the 30,000 Songs project, Charlie Byrd's Byrdland marks the final LP by an artist who's name begins with the letter "B."

This was a record I got from my dad and which I had never listened to prior to putting it on for review. While my copy has seen better days, I'm actually quite pleased to have this in my collection. This record is quintessential 1960s cocktail party music, without being bland or generic.

Byrd plays bossa nova influenced jazz on a classical guitar, backed by a a bass, piano, and drums. Some sparse horn work appears on some tracks, but never does it eclipse Byrd's excellent guitar playing. While I might not go so far as to use the word "virtuoso" to describe Charlie Byrd, he gets pretty close at times. His performances on this record are always precise and often innovative.

Interestingly, the music on this record manages to be a clear product of the era in which it was recorded, while also sounding fresh and interesting. It is clear that Byrd did not limit his musical intake to artists playing in the same genre as himself. Some of the songs that stand out most on this record have melodies that might be familiar to fans of other other genres of music.  One standout track is Byrd's rendition of the Beatles' "Girl" from the album Rubber Soul, which would have been released earlier the same year as Byrdland. Another interesting track is "Work Song." Drawn from the folk tradition, this is in fact an interpretation of a Mississippi cotton field song, which Simon & Garfunkel fans will note shares a melody with their "We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin,'" a song appearing on their Sounds of Silence album the same year that Byrdland was released. Sinatra fans, meanwhile, may be struck by the melody of "Manha de Carnaval," a famous bossa nova tune from the 1950s which is the basis of Frank's "A Day in the Life of a Fool." Sinatra's rendition appeared on his famous My Way album a couple of years after the release of Byrdland. Byrd makes all these songs his own, and while instrumental versions of this era often fall off the edge of the cliff between real jazz and elevator music, Charlie Byrd doesn't even approach it.

Byrdland, then, is clearly a record of it's time, drawing on a range of musical influences that were ascendant in the mid 1960s, yet does so without being derivative. Pick up a copy of this if you can, and have some friends over for martinis. You won't find many better records to listen to while you sip on a cocktail.

Here's Byrd's rendition of "Girl."
Total songs listened: 827

New Record! Count Basie: The Best of Count Basie

Review # 40
Artist: Count Basie and his orchestra
Title: The Best of Count Basie
Format: LP (X2)
Label: Decca
Year: ?
Songs: 24







Hello readers! I'm back from my honeymoon and back to reviewing records! Today I'm listening to a record I bought shortly before I left but didn't get a chance to listen to until today, Decca's double LP best of collection for Count Basie. I picked this up on the advice of my buddy Colin, who seldom steers me wrong on anything. This was no exception. While a number of the tracks on this overlap with the previously reviewed French Count Basie LP (See review # 27), this was still a good purchase at $3.

For one thing, unlike the French best of collection I reviewed previously, this record has extensive liner notes I can actually read, written by Stanley Dance. The cover of this LP is gatefold, and within are several pictures of Basie and his band as well as several pages detailing how the group formed and their rise from a locally successful band in Kansas City to a jazz phenomenon in Chicago. There's also some discussion of Basie's style of arranging tunes. Basie, according to the writer, was the master of stripping down songs to their basic elements and riffing on these simplified versions. Thus, even when he played other people's songs, they became his own as he took the bits that he liked, stripped them down, and built up from there, not unlike the folk tradition of borrowing melodic or lyrical lines from other songs and making them one's own. My knowledge of jazz isn't deep enough that I could have come to this conclusion on my own, but after reading this and listening to the record, I can really hear it. Basie's version of "Honeysuckle Rose," for instance, is recognizable as a version of that song, but has little in common in with other versions I've heard, leaving out some of the most recognizable bits of the song, and transforming the others into something  that, while not entirely different, feels like a Basie composition. The liner notes also include a chronology of the band's personnel.

The music here is also fantastic. The record includes hits like "One O'Clock Jump" and "Swinging The Blues" that make me wish I could play jazz. These tunes are mostly instrumental, but Jimmy Rushing contributes his bellowing, bluesy vocal to a handful of the songs, and Helen Humes also appears on "Blame it on My Last Affair," adding an Ella Fitzgerald-esqe vocal.These two LPs are filled with foot-tapping swing jazz numbers that are full of energy and are just plain cool. The timing is perfect, the band all clearly consummate professionals, yet at the same time they manage to sound like they're just out there having the time of their lives. I could listen to this collection of songs all day long. If you're getting into jazz and don't have any Count Basie in your collection, I think this double LP would be hard to beat.

Here's "Honeysuckle Rose." See if you can hear what Dance is talking about with regard to Basie's arrangements.

Total songs listened: 521

Count Basie: The Best of Basie Vol. 1

Review # 27
Artist: Count Basie
Title: The Best of Basie Vol. 1 (1937-1938)
Format: LP
Label: MCA
Year: 1974 (?)
Songs: 12








Like my copy of The Glenn Miller Story record, this is a French record and I had a hard time tracking down the year it was actually released. The best I could come up with, from a website where a private collector was selling some of his records, was 1974. This is actually the fourth volume of a French classic jazz collection, of which I don't have any other volumes. But that's what you get for a dollar and it was a dollar well spent.

While the record was released in the 1970s, these songs themselves, are all from the 1930s, specifically '37 and '38. That makes these recordings not the earliest in Basie's career, but certainly early ones. They fall squarely within the Bassie's classic big-band swing period and include classics like Basie's own "One O'Clock Jump" and other well known tunes like "Honey Suckle Rose." The songs are mostly fast-paced instrumental dance numbers (with a couple exceptions like the slower "Blues in the Dark," and the more up-beat "Sent For You Yesterday," both or which are blues numbers performed with a vocalist). I just had my first dance class and most of the songs on this record sound like they'd be good for practicing my steps, although some of them sound too fast for me to keep up, given my skill level. Count Basie was the king (or, I suppose, the Count) of swing-style jazz, and he and his orchestra don't disappoint for a minute on this collection. It's fun and catchy and makes you want to move your feet. I wish more people still played music like this. It makes me feel happy.

With old recordings like these, there are often problems with the sound quality, but these all sound great. Yes, like many recordings from this period, the low end doesn't come through as fully as I might like, even on my big old wooden console record player with it's beautiful, resonant sound.  But there's no tape hiss or distortion distracting from these songs, and my copy of the record is in excellent condition, so it just sounds good from beginning to end.

Like I wrote in a previous review, jazz is not my area of expertise, and this record offers little to expand my knowledge other than the recordings themselves. The notes on the sleeve are extensive, but sadly I don't speak any French. So I'll leave this review here  by saying that this is a fine collection of songs performed by a man who was a true master of his style.

If you aren't familiar with it, here's Basie and his orchestra performing "One O'Clock Jump."


Total songs listened: 332

Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington: The Great Reunion

Review # 18
Artist: Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington
Title: The Great Reunion
Format: LP
Label: Emus
Year: 1961
Songs: 7







I love Duke Ellington.  He was the first jazz artist I ever got an album by. I'll be reviewing a lot more of his stuff before this project is over, especially in the cd portion of the blog.  You put him together with Louis Armstrong and you've got a combination that's hard to beat. These two men were masters of their art form and collaborate wonderfully on this record. This is one of the best jazz records in my collection, and while I'm not an expert on jazz, I'm inclined to think it's one of the best ever recorded. I just love this album.

The line-up here is Armstrong and his regular band, plus Ellington on piano. The songs are all, according to the liner notes, arranged by Ellington, and many (all?) of them are classics from the Ellington catalogue, such as "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." But the record sounds like both of these artists. Neither eclipses the other, and the unique and enjoyable styles of both artists are clearly evident on every song.  Armstrong sings on all the tracks, and, even more than usual, he sounds like he's having a great time. The songs are full of energy.  Even the slower ones like "I've Got It Bad And That Ain't Good" and "Azalea" flow so naturally and feel like they just move along under their own power.

The swinging tunes on the record are wonderful romps. For example, the record starts with "It Don't Mean a Thing," which in my book is one of the most fun jazz tunes ever recorded. The pacing on this rendition is just right--fast, but not frantic, and we get a little bit of Armstrong's famous scatting, too.
My only complaint about this record is that it's only seven songs.  I'd love another five or six.  Apparently the "reunion" in the title is a reference to the fact that this is the second collaboration between Armstrong and Ellington. I've never heard it, but I'm going to have to get my hands on the first one, one of these days, because seven songs is just not enough when it's this good.

Here's "Azalea" if you want to check it out.

Total songs listened: 227

Louis Armstrong and the All Stars: The Glenn Miller Story **UPDATED**

Review # 17
Artist: Louis Armstrong and the All Stars
Title: The Glenn Miller Story
Format: LP
Label: MCA
Year: 1954 (?)
Songs: 10






This the French release of the soundtrack to the 1954 film The Glenn Miller Story, which starred Jimmy Stewart in the title role and also featured Louis Armstrong playing... Louis Armstrong. I haven't seen the film, and in fact didn't even know it existed until I got this record (which was only a about a week ago), but I'm curious now and probably will try to rent it. I've listed the year for this album as 1954 because that's when the movie came out and I haven't been able to find a release date for the record.

Because this is the soundtrack to a film about Glenn Miller, the songs are, not surprisingly, mostly big band renditions of Glenn Miller classics like "In the Mood" and "Pennsylvania 6-500," the latter of which features a slightly jarring telephone sound effect before each chorus. I like Glenn Miller well enough, but he's not one of my all time favorites in the jazz world. Even though I like it, there's something just a little too tame and friendly in the Glenn Miller sound for me to get deeply invested. The songs on this record are mostly nice versions of songs in Miller's repertoire, but they aren't that different from the actual Glenn Miller recordings of these songs.  Very seldom do Louis Armstrong's famous trumpet stylings really come through, and on only two songs, "Basin Street Blues" and "Otchi-Tchor-Ni-Ya" does his unique vocal appear. To be honest, I'm not totally sure how many of these songs Armstrong actually even appears on, and I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't that many.

I don't mean to suggest that this a bad record.  Far from it.  It's both a good record and sort of a cool piece of jazz history. But if you pick this up hoping for something that sounds more like a Louis Armstrong record than a Glenn Miller record, you may find yourself a bit a disappointed or at least surprised.

Also, since this is the French release of this record, I can't read the liner notes and have no idea what they're saying. They might provide some insights on the what role (if any) Armstrong played in recording the songs he's less obvious on, but I'm not sure.

In short, this is a fun jazz record and has a lot of nice cuts on it, but most of it sounds more like a Glenn Miller record than a Louis Armstrong one.

Here's a fun clip from the movie that features  Louis Armstong playing "Basin Street Blues."

Total songs listened: 220

**Update: July 5, 2011**
Over Independence Day weekend, I watched a bunch of movies, including The Glenn Miller Story. While I don't know how accurate the film was to real life, I definitely have a little more respect for Glenn Miller as an artist. The film shows his struggles in the early years of his jazz career, as a man driven to finding a new sound in jazz. It also makes it clear how unusual his arrangements were in his time. The instrumentation he was using was unheard of in his time.  No one had ever tried five saxophones with a clarinet lead before, at least not successfully. The Miller sound is still not my favorite, but I have a new found appreciation for Miller's jazz innovation after seeing the film.  It's also just a good watch, if you like old movies. Recommended.

Louis Armstrong: Louis Armstrong's Greatest Hits

Review # 16
Artist: Louis Armstrong
Title: Louis Armstrong's Greatest Hits
Format: LP
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Songs: 11





This is the first of three records featuring Louis Armstrong that I'll be reviewing over the next few days.  Louis Armstrong is one of those artists who played for so long that's at first blush, it seems like it would be kind of hard to determine which were his "greatest hits." Be that as it may, this a great record that features a lot of songs that even a casual fan of Louis Armstrong would recognize (though lacks a recording of "What a Wonderful World," which came out the year after this collection was released).  These are mostly recordings that Armstrong made in the mid-1950s, but a few of them go back to the late 20s as well, and it's a mix of studio and live tracks from performances. The recording quality is pretty good on all of them (sometimes this is not so with older recordings, especially live recordings) and the studio tracks by and large have a rich, warm sound that's really conducive to Armstrong's unique voice.

This was the first Louis Armstrong record I ever bought, and the one I've played the most. It's hard to pick out highlights from this record, because you just can't really go wrong with Louis Armstrong. I've always particularly liked his version of "A Theme from The Threepenny Opera (Mack the Knife)," although it's funny how much the tone doesn't match the lyrics.  The song sounds so happy, but when you actually pay attention, there's some pretty horrible stuff going on in the narrative.  It's a swingin' good time song about  murder. It's always struck me as odd, especially after hearing what the original version sounded like, that this has become a jazz classic. From eerie and kind of sad to swingin' good time... tale of murder. It works though, no doubt about it.

Another moment I love from this record is at the beginning of "Back O'Town Blues," the second cut on the record, when Louis sings: "I once had a woman..." and someone else from  the band shouts out "So what? I had five of 'em!" That's always cracked me up. On side two, which is all live stuff, I'm particularly fond of Armstrong's version of "All of Me," a song I've always had a fondness for anyway.

The back of the sleeve is nice in that it gives a little background on each song, when it was recorded, which band was playing with Armstrong, and how it fit into his large repertoire and career.

I'm not an expert on Louis Armstrong, or on jazz in general for that matter. I like a fair amount of it, and I tend to mostly go in for the classics, so my opinion of this record isn't based on an encyclopedic or up-to-date knowledge of jazz music. As a non-expert though, I will say that I think this a good collection of Armstrong's work, especially as an introduction for someone who may not be too familiar with his catalogue.

Total songs listened: 210

Frank Friday! Frank Sinatra and Count Basie: It Might As Well Be Swing

Review # 12
Artist: Frank Sinatra & Count Basie
Title: It Might As Well Be Swing
Format: LP
Label: Reprise
Year: 1964
Songs: 10



This is one of my favorite Frank Sinatra records ever. In fact, as far as the swinging Sinatra material goes, this the absolute best, as far as I'm concerned. Sinatra is teamed up here with one of the true masters of jazz, Count Basie, and his orchestra. The songs are arranged and conducted by another famous name in American music, Quincy Jones. You just can't go wrong with this combination, and this record is practically flawless. Starting with "Fly Me to the Moon," the first song on side A, this record always has me snapping my fingers and singing along. It puts a spring in my step. It makes me want to get dressed up for a night on the town and drink martinis. It just feels cool and classy to listen to this record.

My favorites on this collection are "Fly Me To the Moon," "The Best Is Yet To Come," and Sinatra and Basie's rendition of "Hello, Dolly!" which features lyrics that have been altered to include a loving tribute to Louis Armstrong. There's also the touching "I Wish You Love," a song in which a lover that never was wishes the best for the object of his unrequited love. One of the great things about Sinatra is that, no matter what he's singing, you feel like he means it. Thus, even though this is a mostly upbeat song, it's a little poignant as well, as the protagonist of the lyrics gracefully lets go of the one that got away.

Throughout the record, the band swings in a way that makes you wonder how it is that big bands ever went out of style, and you can feel the energy between them and Sinatra, who, according to the liner notes, shunned the isolation booth usually used by singers so that he could see the band and they could see him. It pays off. The performances are lively and just feel incredibly natural and effortless. The only song on this record I don't dig as much is the closing tune, "Wives and Lovers," which, even for 1964, is just painfully sexist. If you aren't familiar, the song basically tells all the wives listening that they need to make themselves pretty, otherwise their husbands will cheat on them with girls at the office because, well, you know how men are. I don't fool myself to think that Sinatra was a man of enlightened feminist views, but this one just goes too far and frankly (no pun intended) makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

A cool feature of this record is that on the back of the sleeve, there's an interview with Quincy Jones (or "Q" as Sinatra apparently nicknamed him) which offers some interesting insight into the recording process and what it was like to work with Sinatra and Basie.  I particularly liked this quote:

"[Sinatra is] not constricted by the melody as it was written. He bends it so that invariably it fits flawlessly into what's going on in the background. So far as I can put the essence of Frank into words, I'd say that he just makes everything work. He makes everything fit, and that's exactly what happened on these sessions."

I can't disagree.

Fly to the moon with Frank and the Count here.
Total songs listened: 151