Ten Times Tenor: James Moody 100

James Moody Quartet - Gingerbread Boy/Giant Steps

Hey! You there! It's been 48 hours since my last blast of Old Dead Jazz Cat, and you look like you could use some Hard Bop!

March was heavy, with two major league, heavyweight centennials.

What's so cool about Roy Haynes and James Moody is that they shared a stage more than once, most principally in a band Roy hilariously titled The Fountain Of Youth, as it contained no one under the age of 80 at the time.

So by now you've sussed that James Moody -- one of the Hall Of Fame saxophone deities of our age, most certainly -- would have, like a soaring thermometer at the heated height of summertime, hit triple digits today.

Another of those ultra-rare players that's identifiable by a single note due to his unique and organically memorable, woodsy tone, he began as a professional in 1946 when, after discharge from the military, he joined the band of Bop brahmin Dizzy Gillespie.

He led his first session -- for Blue Note, because why not start with the best? -- in 1948, before moving to Europe to escape the dehumanization suffered in the US by the unwhite and unfascist.

That's where he was based and was recording, when in 1952 he had a surprise smash hit with a tune that became both a signature for him and a Jazz standard in general, Moody's Mood for Love.

Having never learned to read music up to this point, he began to study theory and orchestration, and eventually became a highly respected educator in the Music realm.

After a million sessions and tours with his own bands and guest shots with others -- including a return to Gillespie's orbit in the mid 1960s and experiments with funk and soul stylings in the funky, soulful '70s -- he settled on the late-career quartet that appears in the main part of today's (oh yes it's good) concert.

This one is, as far as I could determine, nearly totally uncirculated, and was likely dubbed by the soundperson at the desk on the first night of this festival, at the Skidmore College Jazz Institute where our hero taught.

I was able to tack on a few contemporaneous bonus cuts from 12 days earlier, at another event in upstate New York where JM was a sought-after Jazz teacher. This segment also contains a few insightful interview comments from the Maestro, which were interspersed with the music and which I rearranged to be less interruptive.

James Moody Quartet

Skidmore College Jazz Festival

JCF Theater

Saratoga Springs, New York USA

6.26.2007

01 Invitation

02 Body and Soul

03 JM speaks

04 Gingerbread Boy/Giant Steps

05 Benny's from Heaven

06 talk: JM & Todd Coolman

07 Con Alma

08 Moody's Mood for Love

09 St. Thomas

10 interview 1

11 Wave

12 interview 2

13 Polka Dots and Moonbeams

14 interview 3

15 Au Privave

16 interview 4

17 Giant Steps

Total time: 1:52:47

disc break goes after Track 07

James Moody - tenor saxophone & vocals

Renee Rosnes - piano 

Todd Coolman - bass 

Adam Nussbaum - drums

Tracks 10-17 are bonus tracks from Kilbourn Hall @ The Eastman School of Music, Rochester NY 6.14.2007

James Moody - tenor saxophone & flute

Bill Dobbins - piano

Phil Flanagan - bass

Mike Melito - drums

totally uncirculated (AFAIK) soundboard capture of indeterminate origin, edited and remastered by EN, March 2025

spectral analysis is lossless past 22 kHz

bonus tracks are from a 224/48k PAL DVD of a digital satellite broadcast of indeterminate origin

spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, making the bonus tracks equivalent to a preFM source

extracted and converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, tracked, denoised and remastered by EN, March 2025
706 MB FLAC/direct link

I shall return with one more Marchy thing on Friday, that I've been hard at play concocting and tweaking for a while, to memorialize a Goddess who departed this realm a few weeks ago.

One deity at a time, though! Today we honor the centenary of James Moody, a tenor sax superbeing born this day in 1925 and still alive in sound.... so let's get in the Mood!--J.

3.26.1925 - 12.9.2010