aworks :: "new" american classical music

I've Found a New Baby (1926). Jack Palmer, Spencer Williams /dexter orgy/

Harvard's WHRB is streaming Dexter Gordon and related jazz for the next 2.5 days. First up for me was a 1946 Lester Young CD. Young plays on the recording with pianist Nat "King" Cole and drummer Buddy Rich but for some reason, the album also has tracks with a young Dexter Gordon playing in the style of Lester Young, including I've Found a New Baby.

I'm also reading Classic Jazz: The Musicians & Recordings That Shaped Jazz, 1895-1933 by Scott Yanow. It's mostly short biographies of early jazz musicians I mostly haven't heard. Yanow's own bio says he has probably written more jazz record reviews than anyone and "it is his goal to collect every good jazz record ever made and to have time to listen to them!"

From I've Found a New Baby:

I don't care if people think
That I am a crazy gink,
If love puts me on the blink
I'll just yell, Hey, Hey,
'cause I'm wild about my queen,

glossary: gink (not to be confused with gingrich or ginko) napster: lester young trio

You've Changed (1942). Bill Carey and Carl Fischer /the week/

The week's listening:

• Can't Get Enough
  • You've Changed. Dexter Gordon. Still stunned by this track even if in fact people don't change.
  • Double Music. John Cage and Lou Harrison. Ethos, Meadows, and UMass/Lowell recordings.
  • Copland, Harris. Lara Downes on piano. Not too crazy about her Flash-based website, though.
  • Return Of The Repressed. John Fahey.

• About Right
  • Circle in the Round. Miles Davis. The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings. I'm playing through the 6-CD set from the library but may reach saturation since I have also checked out the four-CD Jack Johnson set.
  • Tropical Hot Dog Night. Captain Beefheart. Memorable if a bit creepy.

• Got Too Much
  • The Firebird. Igor Stravinsky. Gerard Schwarz. Sorry. Joshua Kosman does give Oedipus Rex and The Nightingale a good review.
  • Faster. Ekkehard Ehlers. His Albert Ayler is cool, albeit way, way abstract.
  • Sonate No. 3. Alban Berg. Alain Neveaux. I thought I might like this but not yet.

You've Changed (1942). Bill Carey and Carl Fischer

Dexter Gordon's balladic tone here is not smooth but rather hazy, raspy and soft -- a 20th century cigarette* elegance and sophistication. Freddie Hubbard counter-balances with a clean tone on trumpet and Horace Parlan tastefully solos on piano.

Lyrics:

you've forgotten the word I love you
each memory that we've shared
you ignore every star above you
I can't realise you ever cared

*This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and/or birth defects or other reproductive harm. Proposition 65.