Jazz Bastard Podcast

We start off season ten with neither a bang nor a whimper, but rather the sound of exotic auxiliary percussion and the screams of excitable brass...

After last episode's extravaganza we decided to keep our focus on larger ensembles for this outing.  It's a mix of historical issues (some better engineered than others) and two nearly brand new releases.  What do they have in common?  Ain't none of them trios.   Pop matters gets historical as we contemplate Pitchfork's deathless mediations on the "oldness" of Steely Dan...

Ornette Coleman and Blue Note - not exactly the chocolate and peanut butter of the jazz world, one might think, but for two productive years the avant garde avatar toiled in the vineyards of the hard bop powerhouse.  The label recently released "Round Trip" - a box set re-issuing the fruits of this odd collaboration - and the boys take a deep dive.  Except for the collaboration with Jackie McLean, because that gives Mike PTSD...

For all their excursions into the avant garde, fusion, post-bop, and other "edgy" forms of jazz, sometimes the boys just want to wallow right in the middle of the stream - the main part of it, you might say.  This fortnight's feast includes two instrumental and two vocal albums all centered in the tradition and happy to be there.  Mike is unmoved by the rising star this time, but who knows - her next outing may change his mind...

A great big heapin' helping of a certain blind pianist's work provides the anchor for this time's outing, as we look at one disc from six of a new box set and then fan out to look at a little known second-hand disciple of the great man along with two other stylists further removed.  Pop matters further reveals Mike's ongoing obsession with all things Buckley...

"Going Pop" can mean many different things where jazz musicians are concerned, from adding electricity (dang it, Miles, why you do that?), to covering pop songs, to actually experimenting with writing pop songs (not too many take this path and few emerge unscathed).  And then there's rare jazzer combining jazz and pop songs, as you'll soon find out...

Drummers are the under-sung heroes of the jazz world.  At their best, they lift up and enhance whatever the so-called front-liners are up to while being ready to step up and say their piece when called upon.  But every now and then things get a bit . . . sticky.  This episode explores four recordings where to varying degrees the drummer goes a little wild and oddity results...

It's time for a deep dive, listeners, and the subject this round is underappreciated West Coast keyboard wizard Hampton Hawes.  Hawes did most of his best known recordings for Contemporary Jazz, and we'll look at a couple of releases on that storied (but also underappreciated) label, as well as a collaboration with Charles Mingus and a sample of Hampton's seventies output, when the sideburns got longer and the keyboards got plugged in...

We listen to three releases from 2022, two exploring some interesting corners of jazz repertoire and one bringing back a format that thrived in the '50s.  Then, just for kicks, we get a message back from the future of 1987.  Does label Cellar Music contractually oblige its artists to cover a certain Benny Golson tune?  Listen to experience our hard-hitting investigation.   In pop matters, Mike offers Adele a sandwich.   It's a gesture of love and support, people...

Big bands tempt the ambitious jazzer with their expansive possibilities for arrangements, the variegated colors they offer, and their sheer power.  But, boy, those budgets!  These days you need a generous label or a grant or two to make things work.  We take a look at a very seventies example of the genre and then a brand new effort by a young woman barely old enough to drive...