Jazz at the College of the Pacific is a live album by Dave Brubeck Quartet. It was recorded and released in December 1953 on Fantasy Records as F 3223. The cover was designed by Ed Colker and drawn by Arnold Roth. Critic Nat Hentoff wrote on Down Beat magazine that the album “ranks with the Oberlin and Storyville sets as the best of Brubeck on record”.
Fantasy released seven additional performances from this concert in 2002 on the album Jazz at the College of the Pacific, Vol. 2. (by wikipedia)
This set is a near-classic, one of many from this period, by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Drummer Joe Dodge had just joined the group, and he works with bassist Ron Crotty in laying down a solid and subtle foundation. The real action, however, takes place up front with pianist Dave Brubeck and altoist Paul Desmond. Their individual solos are full of creative ideas on six standards — most memorable are “All the Things You Are,” “Laura,” and “I’ll Never Smile Again” — and their interaction and tradeoffs are timeless. Recommended. (by Scott Yanow)
Rare French labels
Before he hit it big with Time Out, Dave Brubeck found a niche market with the college crowd. The tweed coat and horn-rimmed glasses set were eager to soak in all that he had to offer, and Brubeck can take part of the credit for turning jazz into a more academic pursuit than it was previously held to be.
His earliest recordings, such as this one from 1953, were mostly standards recorded in various live venues at colleges around the country. While most people are familiar with Brubeck’s later Columbia records that feature all the hits, these early recordings feature a tarnished charm and a glimpse of the foundation of the West Coast sound. Here one can hear the beginnings of the polyrhythmic experiments that would evolve into forays in odd time signatures and the quartet’s ability to have multiple members soloing without muddying the sound.
Paul Desmond and Brubeck are one of the greatest teams jazz ever produced, and even at this early stage both share an ability to navigate tricky melodic concepts while still sounding smooth. Although the up-tempo numbers are the most adventurous, a lovely reading of “Laura” by Brubeck is the most conventional and the most rewarding, and “I’ll Never Smile Again” is a tune tailor made for Desmond’s dry, wistful soloing.
Many will bypass these early recordings in favor of the later concept albums, but with this album of standards in a live setting, Brubeck doesn’t disappoint and shows that he was a little ahead of the game and finding new ways to tread old paths. Those who enjoy this recording will also like the equally fine Jazz at the College of the Pacific Vol. 2, featuring more recordings from this concert. (by David Rickert)
Alternate frontcovers
Personnel:
Dave Brubeck (piano)
Ron Crotty (bass)
Paul Desmond (saxophone)
Joe Dodge (drums)
Tracklist:
01. All The Things You Are (Kern/Hammerstein II) 9.12
02. Laura (Raksin/Mercer) 3.12
03. Lullaby In Rhythm (Hirsch/Goodman) 7.25
04. I’ll Never Smile Again (Lowe) 5.28
05. I Remember You (Schertzinger/Mercer) 9.12
07. For All We Know (Coots/Lewis) 5.51
“A popular melody is as international a language as you will find anywhere in this world of ours. You don´t have to know the text to hum or whistle a happy tune – no matter what country of origin.
time either. So I rush a job. But receiving some product weeks later that reeks of all the reluctance it was crafted with feels bad. It´s embarassing to do poor work. Luckily those jobs are the exception, but at least for some reason they are always the best paying.
This is a really rare album in the history of Michael Monarch:
Faithful is Todd Rundgren’s seventh album, released in 1976.
Critic Robert Christgau called the second side Rundgren’s “clearest and most interesting set of songs since Something/Anything?” and magazine Rolling Stone’s rock critic John Milward said “the original material that fills side two is a more ambitious tribute to his influences and his strongest collection of pop tunes since his classic “Something/Anything”.”
Henry Charles Vestine (December 25, 1944 – October 20, 1997) a.k.a. “The Sunflower”, was an American guitar player known mainly as a member of the band Canned Heat. He was with the group from its start in 1966 to July 1969. In later years he played in local bands but occasionally returned to Canned Heat for a few tours and recordings.
Vestine’s love of music and the blues in particular was fostered at an early age when he accompanied his father on canvasses of black neighborhoods for old recordings. Like his father, Henry became an avid collector, eventually owning tens of thousands of recordings of blues, hillbilly, country, and Cajun music. At Henry’s urging, his father also used to take him to blues shows at which he and Henry were often the only white people present. Later Henry was instrumental in the “rediscovery” of Skip James and other Delta musicians.
His friend Fahey was to be instrumental in the formation of Canned Heat. He had introduced Al Wilson, whom he knew from Boston, to Henry and Bob and Richard Hite. Wilson, Vestine and the Hite brothers formed a jug band that rehearsed at Don Brown’s Jazz Man record Shop. Bob Hite and Alan Wilson started Canned Heat with Kenny Edwards as a second guitarist, but Henry was asked to join. The first notable appearance of the band was the following year when they played at the Monterey Pop Festival. Shortly after Canned Heat’s first album was released, Henry burst into musical prominence as a guitarist who stretched the idiom of the blues with long solos that moved beyond the conventional genres. He had his own style and a trademark piercing treble guitar sound. Vestine missed playing at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, having quit the band the previous week. In 1995, he explained to an Australian reporter that “[a]t the time, it was just another gig. It was too bad I wasn’t there, but I just couldn’t continue with the band at the time.” There had some tension between him and bassist Larry Taylor. When Taylor quit Canned Heat, Vestine returned; their alternating membership in the band was to be repeated a few more times over the years.
While Canned Heat played at Woodstock in August 1969, Henry was invited to New York City for session work with avant-garde jazz great Albert Ayler. That session work resulted in two releases on the Impulse label.
Twist of Jobim contains a single disc with 11 songs. The CD has an unusual multi-artist tribute to the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim. Some of the Twist of Jobim songs are made funky (but in a melodic and tasteful way), while others become quiet (but still passionate) ballads. Twist of Jobim are all jazz-oriented songs.
Randy Holden (born July 2, 1945) is an American guitarist best known for his involvement with the West Coast acid rock group Blue Cheer on their third album, New! Improved! (1969). Additionally, he is a painter. His album Population II From 1970 is considered to be one of the earliest examples of doom metal.
In 1969, proto-metal guitarist Randy Holden owned no less than 16 amps, each encased with 200 watts of power, which might explain why this record, Population II, has guitars that sound not like heavy metal falling from the sky, but like black holes disintegrating chunks of the earth’s core. It’s an admirable sound achieved by just Holden and drummer Chris Lockheed (who also played keyboards simultaneously), coming together to make the tracks even more unbelievable. The album is a showcase for a great guitarist who was well versed in a variety of styles, who focused on distilling everything he knows into something monolithically heavy and, for most of it, slow, like an octogenarian driving in the left lane. The end result is music that weights down on you, but ultimately feels satisfying, like the best doom metal from any decade.
Randy Holden in 2017
Where You Live is Tracy Chapman’s seventh studio album and was released September 13, 2005. The album was co-produced by Tchad Blake. It produced two singles: “Change”, and “America”.
Henry “Mule” Townsend (October 27, 1909 – September 24, 2006) was an American blues singer, guitarist and pianist.
Articulate and self-aware, with an excellent memory, Townsend gave many invaluable interviews to blues enthusiasts and scholars. Paul Oliver recorded him in 1960 and quoted him extensively in his 1967 work Conversations with the Blues. Thirty years later, Bill Greensmith edited thirty hours of taped interviews with Henry to produce a full autobiography, giving a vivid history of the blues scene in St Louis and East St Louis in its prime.
Not Fade Away is the 1992 album from The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (a.k.a. The Dirt Band) is notable for having many charting albums and singles. Two singles from this album charted. “I Fought the Law” reached 66 on the US Country charts. “One Good Love” reached 74 on the US Country charts.
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