Friday, September 28, 2007

Shut up and Listen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4LBDbcCR-E

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kevin,
Thanks for the lead to the clip. It's always a good thing to listen to what had been a rare period in American music. Seeing the performance adds a dimension that generally can no longer be achieved. I've got a couple of such DVDs that are commercially available. Mingus with Dolphy, Monk with his regulars. Rousse stands there stock still, dripping,
in a suit, shirt and tie buttoned to the neck, but such amazingly beautiful sound coming from his horn, as does from Monk's piano. There's a DVD/cd set of Coleman Hawkins which is not to be believed. I'm pretty sure that JJ Johnson is on the trombone. There are no individual credits other than Hawkins, but it is an all star gathering done on the old Dumont station in NY. It must be the early '50s. George Feniman, I believe from the old Groucho Marx TV game show is the host. Amazing viewing and listening.

I'm a little sad to report that I did attend the recent Rollins concert at Carnegie Hall. In spite of the glowing description in the NY Times, it was not his classic best. Frankly, during the second set, after the trio with Haynes and McBride, I fully expected Belafonte to start singing from the wings. The calypso flavor was over whelming. There may be nothing any better than Rollins in the '50s, but he did his hard core jazz fan base no favor with the change in his music.
That's just my opinion. The audience was heaviy on his side and applauded profusely. I think they would have applauded if he had coughed. The first set was more classic, though too short and not anywhere up to Haynes's nor McBride's usual energy levels.