In Consort: Paul Winter 85

Paul Winter Consort - The Promise of a Fisherman

We'll sneak this on in under the wire for August, in celebration of a musical and ecological veteran and his milestone birthday today.

Did you know that today's guy was part of the first Jazz concert ever at the White House, as honored guest of then-First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy?

I was Today Years Old when I learned that.

That was in 1962. By 1967 our hero had formed his Consort, which he's had, in one configuration or another, ever since.

This group helped usher in both the World Music era and the era -- still, thankfully, ongoing -- in which musicians got involved in ecological activism.

I call him the John Muir of Jazz, which he'd likely appreciate.

It is alleged to have started when he heard a recording of humpback whale calls in the late 1960s.

His Consort was one of the first to incorporate the sounds of wildlife into a Jazz record, and their 1977 LP -- documented on tour in today's share fare -- featured this aspect heavily.

Their Icarus album from 1974 is where the members of the band Oregon first played together.

In 1980, he formed his own label, called Living Music, as an outlet for his vision.

This led to him becoming artist-in-residence at The Cathedral Of St. John The Divine in New York City during the 1980s and 1990s.

Perhaps the muso most associated with the Save The Whales initiative, he's also heavily involved in the preservation of wolves in the wild, and has recorded songs around their vocalizations as you'll see in the concert here.

And a mighty fine concert it is, and wouldn't you know it's another one of those lifted and reassembled from that other Gang of Wolves.

Paul Winter Consort

Bottom Line

New York City, New York USA

6.28.1978

01 Mountain Wedding/band introductions

02 Ballad In 7/8

03 Ocean Dream

04 Ancient Voices (Nhemamusasa)

05 Lay Down Your Burden

06 Happy Guru

07 The Promise of a Fisherman

08 Minuit/Whole Earth Chant

09 Wolf Eyes

10 Icarus

Total time: 1:33:30

disc break goes after Track 06

Tracks 01-08 are from the late show

Tracks 09 & 10 are from the early show

Paul Winter - saxophones, reeds, keyboards & vocals 

David Darling - cello

Nancy Rumbel - oboe, English horn, piano & vocals 

Michael Blair - drums & percussion 

Jim Scott - guitar 

John Guth - bass & guitar 

Michael Holmes - keyboards & vocals

Warren Bernhardt - piano

with special guests:

Dr. Paul Berliner - mbira & vocals

Susan Osborn - vocals

additional vocals provided by the ensemble

320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis goes to 20 kHz, making this essentially equivalent to a preFM source

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, repaired, denoised, retracked and somewhat remastered by EN, August 2024
509 MB FLAC/direct link

That wraps up August, and I've already looked at September so I'd remember to make it memorable.

Do enjoy these 93 minutes of blissness, though... I was gonna say it's a whale of a show! And a suitable celebratory artifact to honor the 85th b'day of Paul Winter!--J.

Ndegeocello Song

Meshell Ndegeocello - Headline

I've got a couple more August cards in the well, beginning with this person, who is turning 56 today.

I've never seen her play as far as I can remember, but my friend from way back in Oakland days 20+ years ago lived in the same building as her at one time, and pointed out her car to me once in the garage.

As The Simulation would have it, it's also his birthday today... and he's also a bass player.

As synonomous with Groove as any bassist alive or not, today's berfday lady has actually been around for a good long time, when you think about it.

Her first record came out over 30 years ago, yet something about her constant, project-to-project explorations of the diverse and demandingly danceable seems eternally fresh and of the current times and moment somehow.

Always reliable for records that interpret social conscience through grooves deeper than ten Grand Canyons, her concerts are themselves often whole excursions into a kind of musical activism that takes place not by spoken political polemic, but by vibrational osmosis.

That is to say, what -- in the hands of less aware and sensitive artists -- might come across as too intentional and heavy-handed, comes through in her work effortlessly and without the listener having to wonder what she means.

It's a rare gift, and further proof -- were it necessary -- that the power of The One carries with it an ability to transmit to the hips what the mind resists.

So enough of my nonsense blather, let's get to the concert, shall we?

Where this comes from in terms of origin is anyone's guess, as it only exists in public as a YouTube video where the uploader is waxing melancholically about how he'd blow the Pope to have it as lossless audio.

But then that's what Baby Jesus created Soulseek for, amirite? One person had it on there, and when I examined it, it was so lossless it went way past the range of human hearing, causing my husband's German Shepherd to start a Soul Train line with my in-laws' beagle.

Meshell Ndegeocello

Auditorium Parco della Musica

Rome, Italy

5.13.2006

01 Tariq (Love Song #3)

02 Point of No Return

03 Come Smoke My Herb

04 Love Song #1

05 Headline

06 Evolution

07 band intros over unidentified theme

08 Michelle Johnson

09 Blacknuss (outro theme)

Total time: 58:17

Meshell Ndegeocello - bass & vocals

Daniel Jones - keyboards

Michael Severson - guitar

Gilmar Gomes - percussion

Mike Kelly - bass

Adam Deitch - drums

digital capture of a seemingly uncompressed broadcast of indeterminate origin, possibly from satellite TV or radio

spectral analysis goes past 22 kHz, making this well equivalent to a preFM source

slightly edited for dead air and retracked -- with volume from halfway through Track 02 to end of show increased +2.5 dB -- by EN, August 2024
391 MB FLAC/direct link

What kicks booty about this one is that she's just starting to twist up the material for her 2007 record, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams, and because she's that sort of old-school legit she's gonna try it out on a live audience ready for something more familiar... and they're gonna love it despite the fact that it's just coming into shape. So you get a looseness that seems tight, if that makes sense.

Anyhow she was born in the appropriately tumultuous and questioning year of 1968 and is 56 today. I've always wanted to cover her, and not least because I'm always hyped to take a breather from the hypermasculinized sausage factory of this page and give some needed respect to the ladies (and the non-gender-conforming). Especially those who make music as impactful and honest as Meshell Ndegeocello does.--J.

Philly Strings: Pat Martino 80

Pat Martino Quartet - Sombrero Sam

The hot August nights are here -- OK, the hot tub August nights are here, it's not really that baking here in Oregon yet this summer so I just had a soak -- and we have a show that is (dare I say?) just as fluid and even hotter.

This avatar of guitar would have been 80 today, and he's still making other players cry tears of I'll Never Be Able To Do That Shit even though he passed from our presence 3 years ago.

As I was working on this one -- I slavered over it for 5 consecutive days because it was really all that and a bag of plectra -- I was thinking about the people watching and having their ears recalibrated in the audience.

I figured it broke down into 3 categories that night on Vallejo St. between Powell and Stockton.

First there were the women, who were probably at least partially, if not fully, disrobed by the third song.

Second there were the dates that brought the women, dudes wondering if the chicks were going back to the hotel with the band that night.

Lastly, there were the aspiring guitarists in attendance that night, who had all committed suicide at their tables by the set break.

Our birthday deity didn't dabble in Fusion for long -- he was far more notorious as a straight-ahead player -- but for the two records he did indulge that then-lucrative style, he sure did distinguish himself.

This 83-minute exercise in guitar immolation without lighter fluid is a glimpse into the power of that period of Pat Martino's career.

Soon after this, as everyone knows, he had the massive stroke and forgot how to play, which if you ask me was the Universe saying Hey Buddy, Give Someone Else A Chance, Will You?

It wasn't too long before he relearned the instrument from scratch and reclaimed his rightful rank among the six-string samurai of the Earth.

But back to this concert, which has circulated for 20 years in muddy-but-listenable form, with surges in the bass end a huge distraction that leaves the listener longing for what might have been, soundwise.

The fiery, no-prisoners playing and memorable melodies made me initiate the Sound Forge paragraphic EQ tool, among other secret weapons of audio necromancy, to get this thing as good as I could get it.

And you know what? I'd say I got it pretty good, if I do say so. Watch out for drum dervish Kenwood Dennard -- I almost moved into his loft once, in NYC in like 1989, but that's a story for his birthday someday -- who anchors the proceedings with dynamic ferocity.

Pat Martino Quartet

Keystone Korner 

San Francisco, California USA

3.2.1977

01 KRE-FM introduction

02 Joyous Lake

03 Mardi Gras/band intros

04 Sombrero Sam

05 Fall

06 Cat House 

07 Along Came Betty 

08 Dearborn Walk

09 Line Games

10 Solar Garden

11 Songbird

Total time: 1:23:13

disc break goes after Track 05

Pat Martino - guitar

Delmar Brown - keyboards

Mark Leonard - bass

Kenwood Dennard - drums

master off-air reel of the original KRE-FM broadcast, pitch corrected a ways back

edited, retracked, denoised and fairly aggressively remastered by EN, August 2024
563 MB FLAC/direct link

OK? I've got two more berfdaze at month's end before we begin to Septemberize ourselves, but I have always wanted to cover Philadelphia's own Pat Martino -- as wicked a guitar grinder as any person ever born with hands -- so I pulled out all the double- and triple-stops.--J.

8.25.1944 - 11.1.2021