Charlie Haden and the vinyl mindset

Charlie Haden
Quartet West, 1987

After a long break, I'm back blogging again. Among a million other changes to my life, I recently moved into a new place, with room for a real stereo. And that means being able to play actual records for the first time in a number of years. Funny how listening to something I haven't heard in a while can instantly forge connections to my past, and funny how having all this "new" music around mutes my consumer impulse to go out and buy new stuff.

[On a side note - I really wish I could go back in time and spend just a little more money in the Greenwich Village Tower Records in 2002. Basement chock full of vinyl that was being liquidated. Von Karajan's complete Beethoven symphonies: $3. Pristine copy of Ornette's Free Jazz: $1.50. Die Walküre: $4. White Album: $2. Obscure King Sunny Ade recording: $1. It was kind of crazy and unreal to browse down there, where Adam Smith's invisible hand created a record-collector's paradise.]

Anyway, I'm quite enjoying all the rituals of the vinyl record - carefully lifting and lowering the needle, listening to the hiss and pop (which adds texture and constantly reminds your ears that it's a recording), appreciating or cringing at the big cover art, reading the lyrics sometimes written on sleeves, smiling at the duality in the structure of a two-sided album, which some exploited and some didn't. It's a load of fun.

Which brings me to this album by Charlie Haden. One of my favorites, bought when I was a senior in high school, I believe. An avid jazz fan at that point, I really didn't listen to any other style of music for a couple of years. And since I was a bassist, this was a natural record to want. But even if I didn't, there's a serious selling point here: "Hermitage."

This track is, simply put, radiant. The tune is by Pat Metheny, about whom I can be hot and cold, but this recording really makes a case for "Hermitage" as a jazz standard. As played by the quartet (including Haden on bass and the great Billy Higgins on drums), it's atmospheric, sweet-and-sour, seemingly in constant motion yet standing still at the same time. The players explore emotional places that you wouldn't think the tune could go, especially true in Ernie Watts' sax solo, pushing at the seams of a composition that wants to be understated, and dragging the rest of the ensemble with him. It's hard to put my finger on just what makes it so memorable and great, so I suggest you listen to it yourself, and let the mood of the piece settle over you and pull you along, maybe break your heart just a tiny bit and rescue it again right after.

Other great stuff on the album - a version of "Body and Soul" wherein the main melody is never quite played, but hinted at. "Taney County" is one of Haden's countryfied jazz compositions, ridiculously simple yet so compelling, and it's just him alone with his bass. There's quite a range of approaches in this album that is nominally a mainstream straight-ahead jazz disc. There's warmth and heart in the more "out" playing, as if the players are remembering a moment in time together, or having a conversation about a shared emotional experience.

On the liner notes for one of the Quartet West albums (not sure if it's this one or "Haunted Heart"), Haden talks about evoking the spirit of Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. Some of that spirit really does come through - the feeling that everyone is widespread and disconnected for the most part, and human attachments form on the basis of unexpected things, leading to unforseen places. Quite remarkable to be able to say things like that with sound.

Get it on itunes:

Youssou N'Dour

The Lion
Youssou N'Dour, 1989

Ah the late-1980s. The "World Beat" trend had pretty much run its course, and it would be another half-decade or so before NPR began bestowing its Oprah-like blessings upon third-world flavor-of-the-month albums. This was the age of top-40 superstars exploring other musical cultures in order to grow as artists, man.

I'm being too sarcastic, because actually there was a lot of great music from that pocket of time, and because once you get past the colonial aspect of it all, really being exposed to music from around the world is a net positive for everyone listening. I wonder if Bush et al. would have a different understanding of America's place in world works if they'd been the right age to own, say, that one Ladysmith Black Mambazo album that was in every college dorm-room tape-deck right after Paul Simon's Graceland came out.

I'm also being too hard on myself, because like many others I got my introduction to the music of the great Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour from a Peter Gabriel album.

The Lion was the N'Dour album marketed to cash in on the duet "Shaking the Tree" which appeared on Gabriel's iconic So. And I bought it. And I liked it. And getting on 20 years later I still like it.

I'm no expert in the music called mbalax, but I do have a lot of appreciation for it. The music, whether in fast or slow tempo, has a percolating energy that derives from the overlapping polyrhythmic textures (the same kind of dynamic that you might find in Afrocuban musics or funk, for example, but of course with different kinds of rhythms). The instrumentation usually includes the kind of percussion I associate with Malian griot tradition, layered with a standard drum kit, and then the electric guitars, keyboards, and horn section one might find in afropop. The bass lines in particular are delightfully syncopated and keep the music pushing forward. N'Dour's voice often just sails above it all, winding and stretching and expanding. But just as often he dips down into a growl or a declamatory cadence.

I find that the transitions between these vocal "states" form some of the most compelling moments in the music. It's as if he's hinting at a path between the base guttural body and the soaring unlimited spirit. This is very dramatic in the title track, a rocking number that has one of those little pre-chorus "ramp up" sections that's so perfectly suited to its function it should be used as a model in songwriting classes. "Bamako" has a slithery chord progression over lots of talking drum - N'Dour sings on this one with a presence that's somehow bombastic and intimate at once (still trying to figure out how he manages that). I think my favorite of all the songs is "Bes," which is a beautiful minor-key 12/8 soundscape for a while. Then when the female back-up vocalists come in with their gently rising "oooh"s and the bass starts to pop a little, it transforms into something hauntingly gorgeous. There's even a real bridge section that keeps you on the edge of your seat waiting for the return of the chorus - but when we get there the backup vocalists launch into this little counterpoint on the words "don't forget me," which is somehow all the more intense for its control and reserve.

I'd be remiss not to mention lyrics here. N'Dour sings in Wolof (a Senegalese language), French, and English, often blending all three in a single song. Liner notes have translations of the lyrics into both English and French, and that's where I discovered that the song "My Daughter/Sama Doom" is basically a reworking of Yeats' "A Prayer for My Daughter," with a refrain that is achingly full of parental anxiety: "My daughter, do not follow your heart."

get it on itunes:

Spillane

Spillane
John Zorn, 1986

Well this was the first John Zorn music I ever heard - think I bought the album my first year in college. Definitely a great one for me to start with, I have to say, for lots of reasons. The album has three pieces of music on it, but I'm just going to talk about the title track.

First and foremost, Spillane is a musical exploration of the milieu, dynamics, and themes of Mickey Spillane's hardboiled detective stories. I have to say that I've never been a big fan of Spillane's writing, but obviously Zorn is. He takes what's basically tawdry derivative prose and uses it as a jumping off point for his prodigious sonic imagination.

It's one of Zorn's pastiche-style pieces, made up of a few dozen small vignettes, stitched together. Some bits are purely atmospheric soundscapes, setting a scene (rain and windshield wipers, footsteps echoing in an alley). Some are genre music of one kind or another (roadhouse blues, 50s West Coast jazz). Some are soundtrack cues in the 70s-80s Hollywood style (think synthesizer arpeggios). There are also a handful of recitations of lines from Spillane novels. More often than not, several of these things are happening simultaneously.

There seems to be an overall direction to the piece that I can only describe as dramatic. Trying to find a plot in it doesn't seem fruitful, but as a representation of fluid emotional states, or perhaps memories of emotional states, it really works for me. There are a number of musical elements that help it hang together as a whole as well, which is one reason that I think it's more successful (for me) than alot of Zorn's other work in this vein.

Really fun and beautiful piece of work, with top-notch downtown NY players, I might add. It's something to listen to with no other distractions, to let it pull you into its world for a little while. Like film that way.

itunes link: