'Dance Mania'

All I imagine are a bunch of white people awkwardly twisting their limbs as a stage full of the best mambo instrumentalists and Tito Puente are on stage.

Making fun of stuffy white people dancing aside, this is a fun, vibrant record. I really love the Latin sound (as previously noted) but I think from the mambo or Afro-Cuban sound, my favorite instrument is the piano. Jazz piano generally is one of the most fascinating. Rarely do I hear a jazz pianist who isn’t doing something totally unique.

The Latin piano is so rhythmic and such a backbone to the entire group, which you will hear if you pick up this album. Puente, of course, was a percussionist and the genius there is not lost.

Double thumbs up for putting attractive female on the album cover.

'Home Is Where The Music Is'

I took notice of Hugh Masekala recently while watching the documentary about the roots and production Paul Simon’s Graceland, Under African Skies. He toured in support of the album which was recorded in South Africa, where Simon used native musicians and singers despite the controversy of apparently condoning apartheid. 

He performed along with South African singer Miriam Makeba, who he married for two years in the mid-1960s. Aside from being a smooth jazz record, there are times when artists are significant beyond the sound of their horn or voice. Both Masekala and Makeba used the platform established by their talent to boldly represent other black South Afrikaners and oppose apartheid.

Although it’s different than what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela sacrificed in their own fights. Masekala and others – say, James Brown in the United States – also put up their careers as collateral. On certain levels, the fight for equality was Mandela and Dr. King’s jobs. Whereas Brown and Masekala could have stood on the sidelines and did jazz standards or songs about girls. Neither did and it’s a big reason their music exemplifies art’s impact on society.

Home Is Where the Music Is is a gentle smooth record released in 1972, 10 years since he'd been imprisoned on Robben Island, where he'd reside for another 10 years and 16 years before he'd be released for good. The album, I suspect, is nothing but a sort of declaration. And a salve for a scorned and angry people. Sometimes, you just don't have to yell to be heard.

'Back At The Chicken Shack'

First album featuring an artist that was an organist. The organ has never been quite as cool.

Oddly, for a guy with such renown, Jimmy Smith's birth date is in question. He was either born in 1925 or 1928. Not 1926 or 1927. Those years are right out. Maybe the "5" and "8" were smudged on the birth certificate, although you'd think a "6" could be just as easily smeared on a piece of paper. Or maybe that some family member -- like his father who got him into performing -- would be able to remember.

Smith was formally trained having gone to music colleges after serving in the navy. He also went on to record about 70 albums as the bandleader and also recording with artists from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson.

There's nothing extraordinary about Back at the Chicken Shack other than being good. I don't think it'll blow your mind, but there's way less accessible jazz out there and way worse. Nothing pretentious here.

'Kind Of Blue' & 'Bitches Brew'

Listening to all this jazz, I've learned that there is no edgier genre of music in the history of mankind. No singular group of musicians lived harder and died younger.

So, every time I listen to a jazz record, I research the players and learn more and find out just what caused their end. Because they all lived hard. And they all died young.

Wynton Kelly played piano on Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. He died at age 40 of an epileptic fit.

Jimmy Cobb, Davis' drummer, is actually still alive.

Pianist Bill Evans, as noted previously on this blog, had a lifetime addiction to heroin and other assorted hard drugs. It's noted that his heroin addiction began during his time with Davis.

Paul Chambers was a heroin addict and alcoholic. He died at age 33, four years after Kind of Blue was released.

John Coltrane died at 40 due to liver cancer, although some think it was hepatitus. He was a heroin addict.

"Cannonball" Adderley died at the ripe ol' age of 75. Thanks to a good ol' fashioned stroke.

Davis himself started his heroin addicted years before recording Kind of Blue in 1959. By the time he did Bitches Brew in 1970, jazz wasn't as associated with 1950s New York City bop and beatnik scene that purported the heroin and hard drug use.

I realize all of this destruction was a result of the time and place. Had all these musicians come about in the 1970s, they might have done some cocaine or whatever. Who knows? And don't let the guys that lived long lives fool you: There were no saints. Just the lucky.

However, so many other musical genres get labeled and associated with all kinds of ancillary things like drugs or alcohol or even women. Yet, jazz just kind of gets ignored and no one really knows the seedy underbelly of its roots. It's fascinating if nothing else.

'Sunday At The Village Vanguard'

At a certain point, the rule defines a situation other than the exception.

With that said, most jazz musicians lead full-throttle lives that lead to ultimately tragic deaths.

Bill Evans, for example, was a super popular and well-respected jazz pianist reponsible for countless albums including Sunday at the Village Vanguard, culled from five different performances at the Village Vanguard in the early 1960s.

But, he was addicted to heroin for most of his life. By the 1970s, he was addicted to cocaine. In 1980, his body said, "fuck this." He had a perforated liver, hepatitus, a bleeding ulcer, cirrhosis of the living and bronchial pneumonia. Peter Pettinger called it "the longest suicide in history."

Bassist Scott LaFaro had it worse. Ten days after recording Sunday at the Village Vanguard, the renowned bassist was killed in an automobile accident.

Drummer Paul Motian is still alive. Bucking the trend.

'The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady'

The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady is regarded by some as the greatest jazz album of all time. It features the talents of famed composer and bassist Charles Mingus.

The album is a six-part suit of avant-garde, swirling jazz music. It's a complete narrative, however, of music. That sounds ridiculous, but it's a very listenable album.

Mingus was a bit of a nut, however. He and his psychotherapist collaborated for the liner notes on the album. In his autobiography, Mingus claimed to have had 31 different affairs in his life including 26 hookers at one time. Which is either ridiculous, untrue or awesome ... or all three. He was also married five times. He claims he was married to two at the same time. He also claims to have been a pimp.

Mingus also was apparently an asshole. He'd stop the music and yell at clubgoers for clinking ice in their drinks. He'd scream at band members and run them off the stage. He punched a trombone player in the mouth, forever altering the player's ability to hit hit notes on his horn.

Mingus released 68 albums as a bandleader in his time. Maybe an asshole. Maybe dealing with burning while peeing. But he could play some jazz.

'Palo Congo'

I was playing this album in my office when a co-worker (a black man who listens to hip-hop and neo-soul) comes into my office and asks, with a certain amount of puzzlement as if I were listening to recorded farts, what I was listening to.

Palo Congo is a 1957 album from Sabu Martinez, one of the foremost Latin and jazz percussionists of all time. It wasn't the typical type of music you hear on the radio, but it wasn't anything you might hear in a Latin club or in any film. This isn't odd music or anything.

I told him that more people in the world listened to this type of music than they did his favorite music (like soccer), and that he should broaden his horizons a bit and listen to different types of music.

Like so many jazz musicians before him, Sabu Martinez died at the rather early age of 49. Fortunately, he wasn't a drug addict (or didn't die because of it), but instead a boring, unjazz gastric ulcer.

'Brilliant Corners'

Thelonious Monk played piano. On the song "Pannonica," he also played the celeste. It's a piano-like instrument that uses hammers to produce a very soft, metallic sound. It's beautiful (thus the name) and reminds me of the sound used whenever the trolley rolls through on Mister Roger's Neighborhood.

I always admire the jazz junkies that can memorize all of the players on a particular album.

Ernie Henry played alto saxophone. He played with many others include Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus through the 1940s and 1950s. He died almost mysteriously at 31 in 1957 apparently due to drugs just after finishing this album.

Sonny Rollins was 20 by the time he was playing with the likes of Monk. He still plays outliving all of his contemporaries. He, too, was mixed up in drugs, notably heroin having been busted for using as a teenager.

Oscar Pettiford was of Native American and African American heritage. Two years after recording the bass for Monk, he inexplicably moved to Denmark (maybe the schools are good there) and died a year later, in 1960s. He was 38. There is no actual explanation for his death. Rumors range from murder to a viral infection to complications from a previous car accident.

Max Roach is actually one of the foremost musicians on this album and one of the greatest jazz drummers of all time. He lead a long, full life, footnoted by his work in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

'Jazz Samba'

Is it odd that as we remember and read about Charlie Byrd or Stan Getz, their collaboration together -- Jazz Samba -- will always be one of the first few things mentioned?

I don't know how many children (if any) Getz or Byrd had. I don't really know about any of their other recordings or accomplishments in life (like Byrd being drafted into World War II and seeing combat). But, as it stands, both have Jazz Samba on their headstones. I presume they'd be pretty pleased with that.

This album was Getz' first foray into the Brazilian sound that Byrd was so famous for. Byrd, after World War II, studied guitar in New York City. He'd later study under Andres Segovia, a man that 95 percent of the population have no clue about, but is probably one of the top one percent of guitarists ever known.

Byrd also saw Django Reinhardt play while stationed in Paris.

Oh, by the way, Byrd loved sailing and had two daughters.

Getz had five kids during two marriages. He had a bit of a drug problem as a teenager. Both died of cancer, Getz of the liver and Byrd of the lung.

'The Hissing Of Summer Lawns' & 'Heijra'

Some time in the mid-1970s, Joni Mitchell made a bold decision that would forever change the trajectory of her career.

She went jazz. She released these two albums completely turning her back on the folk sound that put her on the map.

I don't know if these albums necessarily hurt her career (in album sales, or general popularity). I konw they sold pretty well, but did she lose fans by really changing things around? I don't know.

I do know that she lost me. Granted, the threshold for me to keep listening to Joni Mitchell is low. Blue I like. Otherwise, it's a crapshoot.

So, when she went all jazzy with those jazz basslines, horns and keyboards, I checked out mentally.

It is worth noting that Heijra was written as she drove by herself from Maine to California.

'Frank'

When Amy Winehouse got cool.

This kinda started the death pool watch as Winehouse began to make a name for herself for soul and jazz enthusiasts in England and started to create a buzz in the States.

Then she started to do copious amounts of drugs and alcohol and record the stupendous Back to Black album that really put her name on the tip of everyone's tongue around the world.

Frank is the ying to Back to Black's yang. It's entirely more jazzy and something my older sisters would like rather than a hipster favorite or something that would get a bunch of old-school soul brothers in England all excited.

For Winehouse, you have to wonder what he life would've been like had she never made Frank. It's probably wildly unlikely that she gets hooked on drugs although we could never truly know. Is it worth the jail time, trouble and possible earth death to have two highly-regarded pop albums. Does the money and fame really matter other than to buy more drugs? Or get drugs for free? Kinda depends on your priorities.

Although Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass and Robert Johnson died early, Winehouse will probably live forever.

'In a Silent Way'

Miles Davis' music melts. It's sound comes out of the speakers and it melts into what you're doing at the moment and that's it. It becomes part of the city soundscape, the hum of the cars on the road, the hum of the air conditioner, the crackle of the television set or just the sound of the Earth moving.

All of this is happening and Davis is happening with it. It's perfect music. It's Davis -- a trumpeter -- writing songs where the rhythym section and guitar go on for eight minutes before he even breaths and blows a note into his instrument.

Once the notes began to waft through the air, it's all over. It's part of life. Might as well be the birds singing or the crickets chirping. It's like the perfect score to a movie that you come out saying, "I enjoyed the music more than I enjoyed the experience."

With Davis, you enjoy listening more than you enjoy the experience of living, working and sleeping. This was released a decade after his more important works, but Davis showed that he's more relevent as days pass.

'A Love Supreme'

I have an African-American friend.

He's a bit of a nut, actually. We have a ton of discussions and debates about white and black culture -- mostly where the line of demarcation sits, how these cultures clash even on the most minute scale. Mostly sports.

However, he contends something that I find is not only very misguided, but preposterous: That Kenny G is insanely popular with African Americans.

My friend is one of these African Americans. So much so that he and his wife have seen him in concert.

I think this is ridiculous. Kenny G is everything that African Americans hate about white people. Well, not hate. African Americans probably hate whites more for slavery, Jim Crow, police dogs, George Wallace, burning crosses and the KKK.

Kenny G is why African Americans don't take whites seriously. African Americans love the Los Angeles Lakers. Kurt Rambis is the Kenny G of Lakers basketball.

It's stilted and played note for note as it's written on the sheet music. There's no bop. No spontaneity. Nothing cool about it. Kenny G took a traditionally black musical tradition and made it palatable for the white consumer. My friend and all black people should hate Kenny G. Like police dogs.

My argument to my friend is that he should be listening to John Coltrane and his accepting of Kenny G is like slapping the face of Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

He doesn't get it. He thinks he's rooting for James Worthy, when really he's wearing a Rambis road jersey replica. Sadness.

'Time Out'

I am a sucker for the TimeLife music infomercials. The best time to watch them was late at night when they would buy a whole hour of TV time to try and get some sucker college kid or jobless guy to buy the best of country and western or praise and worship music.

My favorite was the jazz collection. And one of my favorite eight seconds worth was music was the main saxophone riff from The Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Take Five" from "Time Out."

I always thought the guy playing sax was Brubeck, but I later learned that it was Paul Desmond and, in fact, Brubeck was the piano player.

Listening to the entire album and you realize that Brubeck is a fantastic player and he looks like the coolest guy in the room. The type of guy that you'd want to be around because he was probably nerdy enough to be humbled, but awesome enough to be cooler than you.

'A Love Supreme'

John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" is probably one of the top 10 or so pieces of art by an American. Ironically, Coltrane himself couldn't sit at just any lunch counter or drink from just any water fountain in many parts of the country.

The most compelling part of listening to this album is reading the linear notes which includes, on my copy (a live rendition in France), a little write up from noted jazz enthusiast and French painter Jacques Chesnel. The short essay is printed in French on one side and English on the other. Fortunately, they put little effort into translating the French and it comes off like French prose in English and, needless to say, the two don't gel together.

It's an interesting read for sure even if the translations are a bit skewed. And the spelling haphazard.

'Getz/Gilberto'

Man, I wish I lived in an era when albums like this was used for baby making. It's perfect, really.

I bet Jack Kerouac and all those Beats who were all into jazz just collected the tail night after night with Coltrane, Getz and whoever else.

Good times.

On top of all that, it had awesome album art and the drummer on the record was Milton Banana.

'Head Hunters'

Whenever I hear or hear of Herbie Hancock, I always think about the Chris Farley film, "Tommy Boy."

Near the beginning when Farley's character is at college and he's taking the history exam. One of the questions is fill-in-the-blank. Obviously, the answer is "John Hancock." Instead, the silly Farley scribbles in "Herbie Hancock."

The really odd thing about this isn't that Farley's character is so dumb, or that a university finals history exam would have a fill-in-the-black question that is probably the easiest question in the world.

Nor is it necessarily thought provoking that Farley's character doesn't know the answer.

I'd like to know how the character knew of Herbie Hancock. I wouldn't consider Hancock a household name. Especially as a jazz artist. Not like he's playing The Tonight Show or anything.

So the character had no clue as to who John Hancock was, but it was fairly obvious to him that the guy who signed the Declaration of Independence was Herbie.

'The Atomic Basie'

Jazz is very interesting to me and I figured out why listening to Count Basie's "The Atomic Basie."

I think pretty much all jazz is good except for all the modern stuff (1980s on) that is real electronic, overproduced with synth and keyboards and crap.

Otherwise, I can not really and truly criticize jazz music. To me, it's so well done from the musicianship to the production and songs that there is little to nitpick from a jazz idiot's point of view (see: me).

Particularly, the musicianship is perfect. Think about it: In country music, rarely do you get the best of the best of guitarists, drummers, bass players, steel guitarists, fiddle players and mandolin. Even in rock music, most of the guys thrashing around on their guitars aren't too terribly accomplished at anything, more or less the guitar (there are exceptions -- Hendrix, Stewart Copeland in drums, Paul McCartney on bass, et al).

But on just about any jazz album of note, say, in the 1950s, you are probably listening to one of the top 3 or 5 drummers, horn players, bassists and any other instrument. And the thing is, if a drummer leaves a rock band, they replace with another mediocre, ho-hum drummer.

If the drummer leaves Count Basie's band, he is then replaced with probably one of the best drummers in that genre. Same goes for saxophone, trumpet, bass, trombone or piano.

There's a certain dedication to the music and craftsmanship that is clearly missing from just about all other genres of music. This is probably why there are jazz snobs and why those jazz snobs memorize what seemingly anonymous drummer played on this record or that record.

'Birth of the Cool'

A friend of a friend once said, "If peeing in the bed is cool, then I'm Miles Davis."

No truer words have ever been uttered.

'Ellington at Newport 1956'

Hardly could we distinguish something as American and as good as jazz.

In fact, it's probably the greatest genre of music ever right up there with classical and ska.

Jazz is perfect because it combines everything we love about music: Individuality, professionalism, talent, precision, energy, love, anger, spiralling discontent, premium highs and rawness. It's dark and brooding and yet completely light and cool. Too cool.

What jazz entails is everything that at least all other genres lack in some form, to some degree.

See, American culture isn't entirely bankrupt. The nation that canonizes the likes of Paris Hilton is the same that is responsible for jazz. Not bankrupt, but certainly withdrawing more than its depositing.