Bop Therapy: Bud Powell 100

Bud Powell Trio - 'Round Midnight

We're gonna close down the September rememberings with a centennial tribute to a guy I have always wanted to put on here.

Today's forgotten hero was born into the Harlem Renaissance and ended up making his own, indelible mark on culture.

But for a savage beating by Philadelphia's "finest" in 1945, he might be considered the pre-eminent piano architect of Bebop.

That assault, combined with the electroconvulsive "shock therapy" savagery that followed, kind of ended him as a driving force in the music.

Dead by the Summer of 1966, today he is more thought of for his mental health struggles than the astonishing music and technique for playing it that he brought to the table.

Before he arrived, pianists in pretty much all styles (but especially for the stride and New Orleans cats that preceded him in the then-exploding Jazz firmament) led, so to speak, with the left hand.

Earl Powell -- we know him as Bud -- changed all that, with a vicious, hyperspeed right-hand attack that was a cross between Joe Louis and the Cecil Taylor types that would follow him.

Plucked from Cootie Williams' band in the early 1940s and dropped on the then-burgeoning Minton's Playhouse scene by his pal Thelonious Monk like a metric ton of grand pianos, he and his right-handed approach immediately made their presence felt.

He became an integral part of the development of Bop until 1948, when he had the ill fortune of wandering, after a gig and drunk, into the hands of the Philly police, as ugly an aggregation in that era as then existed in "law" (read: "coercion-enacted protection of the moneyed elite class") enforcement.

The beating that followed was so severe, it gave him debilitating headaches, and he descended further into alcoholism to quell the agony.

He eventually ended up in the infamous Creedmoor psychiatric hospital -- growing up in Queens, I could see it from my bedroom window -- being further abused with electroshock "therapy" after a second time being institutionalized after a bar fight.

After a 1950s falling out with Parker, he moved to Paris to get away from what he perceived as systematic racist abuse, and began to partially recover and begin recording again.

When he returned to New York in the mid-1960s he relapsed again, and this time he did not recover, passing away from a combination of tuberculosis and neglect in July of 1966.

Wow, that sure was an uplifting story, wasn't it? Here, let's try to forget all that and live through the music, OK? It's the only worthwhile thing shitshow humanity does that is worth talking about anyway.

  Bud Powell Trio 

Blue Note

Geneva, Switzerland

2.1.1962

01 Ornithology

02 Swedish Pastry

03 Hot House

04 I Remember Clifford

05 Just One of Those Things

06 Anthropology

07 'Round Midnight

08 Jordu

09 I Know That You Know

10 Blues In the Closet

Total time: 1:02:17

Bud Powell - piano

Michel Cortesi - bass

Jacques Cavussin - drums

off-air FM capture of indeterminate origin, sourced from the 2009 bootleg CD "Live In Geneva" on the Gambit label

somewhat retracked & remastered by EN, September 2024
280 MB FLAC/direct link

Obviously, as someone who didn't get to record after the mid-1960s, there's very few unissued or ROIO-type performances of him, but one listen to this hour of power from Swiss radio is all you'll need to understand why folks are still discussing Bud Powell almost 60 years after he left this realm.

I will go sort through October now, but don't miss out on the Bud Powell centenary swingfest as he turns the big C-Note today, or I'mma show up at your spot with the big, hairy tens unit and give you a shock to your system!!--J.

9.27.1924 - 7.31.1966

I Remember Benny: Golson Set

Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet - Vas Simeon

It's a midnight memorial Jazz Mass up in here, as we celebrate one of the music's all-time stalwarts, who left us just days ago at the ripe old age of 95.

It's a pity too, because I was pulling for him to make 100 alongside Roy Haynes and Sonny Rollins (they're getting close) and Marshall Allen (he made it), so they could go on tour as The C-Notes.

Well, 95 is pretty longevitous (I made that word up roughly .23 seconds ago and I think I like it), 'specially for a musician and 'specially times fasho for a Jazzbo.

In his time here with us, he composed probably as many standards as anyone, outside of Great American Songbookworms like the Gershwins and people like that.

I Remember Clifford (his 1956 tribute to trumpet deity Clifford Brown, who had recently died in a car crash), how many times has that been recorded?

Along Came Betty, Killer Joe, Stablemates....he's got quite a portfolio.

He sure wins the award for Most Classic Tunes Authored That I Had No Clue He Wrote Until I Researched This Post, anyways.

He started out in the early 1950s, when wild Jazzers stalked an Earth covered with Panama Red plankton, in the orbit of piano lord Tadd Dameron.

Stints with Johnny Hodges, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers soon followed, until he co-founded, in 1959, the group with which he became most associated: his Jazztet combo with flugelhorn master Art Farmer.

He toured the world co-leading the Jazztet for a few years, before beginning a side career composing incidental music for TV shows such as Mannix, Ironside, M*A*S*H and The Partridge Family(!!).

In the mid 1970s he returned to Jazz full time and led his own bands, as well as playing with the Jazztet, until he left us last Saturday.

He was the last of two remaining musicians depicted in the famous NYC photo from 1958 called A Great Day In Harlem, too. Now only Sonny remains, so can somebody please bubblewrap him immediately?

Anyway, this set of tremendousness comes from a Jazztet gig at the 1987 Montreal Jazz Festival, to which I've affixed two stellar bonus cuts -- featuring the same frontline -- from Chicago the previous summer.

Be on the lookout for trombone visionary Curtis Fuller -- he will get his own day here someday, as will Art Farmer -- in these 2 hours and 10 minutes of hard bopping blissness as well.

Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet

Festival International de Jazz de Montreal QC

Théâtre St-Denis

Montreal, Canada

6.28.1987

01 introduction

02 Whisper Not

03 Are You Real?

04 Write Soon

05 Jam 'N' Boogie

06 I Remember Clifford

07 Vas Simeon

08 Along Came Betty

09 Without Delay/FM announcement

10 Back to the City/FM announcement

11 Stablemates

12 Flashback

Total time: 2:10:37

disc break goes after Track 06

comments between songs are by Benny Golson

all compositions are also by Benny Golson 

except Tracks 04 & 12, which are by Art Farmer

Art Farmer - flugelhorn

Benny Golson - tenor saxophone

Curtis Fuller - trombone

Mickey Tucker - piano

Todd Coolman - bass (Tracks 01-10)

Juris Dudli - drums (Tracks 01-10)

Ray Drummond - bass (Tracks 11 & 12)

Marvin "Smitty" Smith - drums (Tracks 11 & 12)

Tracks 01-10 are sourced from a master off-air cassette of the original, live CBOF-FM "Jazz Sur le Vif" broadcast

Tracks 11 & 12 are bonus tracks from the Chicago Jazz Festival  Petrillo Bandshell  Grant Park, Chicago IL 8.30.1986

these are sourced from a 1st gen off-air cassette of the original WFMT-FM broadcast

all material slightly edited, repaired, denoised, retracked & somewhat remastered by EN, September 2024
926 MB FLAC/direct link

I worked on this set and the bonus baseball all day, and decided there was no time like the present to pop it up and pay homage to as elegant and prolific a player and composer as will ever breathe life into music.

I'll be back on the weekend with one (perhaps two) more Septemberinos before we move on into the Fall here.

I wanted to memorialize Benny Golson right away, though, because when I heard the news I immediately put on this Montreal performance, and was so into it I just as immediately got it prepped to put on here. There'll never be another like him, and we're down to a precious few of these human treasures like Sonny and Roy before it's truly the end of a very irreplaceable era.--J.

1.25.1929 - 9.21.2024

Bards of Canada: Leonard Cohen 90

Leonard Cohen - Famous Blue Raincoat

We'll remember the 21st day of September with a milestone birthday of someone in need of less than no introduction.

I know I've covered him a trillion times before, but I checked and it's been 7 years so we can consider the statute of repetition limitations expired for someone of this import and artistic pedigree.

That said, I wasn't going to go back to him on here, but I found and restored a concert that doesn't really circulate properly and transformed it into a somewhat more efficacious state, so here we are.

He was an award-winning poet in his native Canada before branching off and beginning his one-man assault on the Tower of Song in the 1960s.

Using the Flamenco techniques he had dabbled in when he had briefly studied guitar, he molded his words into tunes and before too long, he was considered by many as gifted a songwriter as had ever done it.

When he finally passed in 2016 at 82 -- he died the day before Trump was elected, so he must have known it was as good a time as any to depart this realm -- he was thought of by a whole lot of folks as the greatest songwriter of all time.

The sad reality is that they just don't make them like Leonard Cohen anymore.

In fact, were he to show up at the record company today, they'd tell him his songs didn't talk enough about wanting to be famous and they'd call security and have him removed.

Sad reality part two: the people you hear on the radio today could not author one single composition that could carry the water weight of a single, solitary Leonard Cohen song, were those people to live to be 10,000 years old.

You can bet your last dollar that the CIA/Mossad chucklefucks that run the "music industry" like it just that way, too, as it leaves more impressionable and talentless candidates available for the kid-diddling Kompromat they intend when it's like that, seen?

Too many Leonard Cohens around and before you know it, you might have a population that might be inspired enough by music and its ability to transmit world-altering messages to cast off the chains of their oppressors, and we cannot have that, can we?

Nope, it's better for the serfs of the ruling classes to be inundated with a billion Doja Cats and whoever the next here today, gone later today Autotuna is on the hook right this minute, I'm afraid.

That's OK, because we're venturing into the heart of Mossad territory for this show, and Lenny gonna lay down his Blues for the Jews no matter what malfeasance -- even exploding pagers and cellphones! --- the spooklets drifting around like terror tumbleweeds care to cook up.

Leonard Cohen

Mann Auditorium

Habimah Square

Tel Aviv, Israel

11.24.1980

01 Bird On the Wire

02 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye

03 Who By Fire

04 The Gypsy's Wife

05 Passin' Through

06 Lover, Lover, Lover

07 The Guests

08 Suzanne

09 The Stranger Song

10 Chelsea Hotel #2

11 The Partisan

12 Famous Blue Raincoat

13 Lady Midnight

14 So Long, Marianne

15 Memories

16 Sisters of Mercy

17 Seems So Long Ago, Nancy

18 Diamonds In the Mine

Total time: 1:50:34

disc break goes after Track 08

this is likely the complete concert

Leonard Cohen - guitar, recorder & vocals

Roscoe Beck - bass

John Bilezikjian - oud & mandolin

Bill Ginn - keyboards & accordion

Raffi Hakopian - violin

Steve Meador - drums & percussion

Paul Ostermayer - reeds & winds

Mitch Watkins - guitar

Sharon Robinson - vocals

Jennifer Warnes - vocals

Tracks 01-15:

spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, meaning this likely originates from preFM reels of indeterminate origin

sourced from the unauthorized 2016 digital fileset "The Legendary FM Broadcasts," on the Radioland label

re-edited, repaired, denoised and remastered -- with repeating material eliminated and tracks joined to flow properly -- by EN, September 2024

Tracks 16-18:

audio captured from a 320/48k HD YouTube file

seemingly sourced from a master off-air FM capture of unknown origin

captured, repaired & remastered to match preceding remainder by EN, September 2024
721 MB FLAC/direct link

Like I was saying, I went to Leonard Cohen again because any performance of his that doesn't adequately circulate needs to, especially in a form way more flowing and listenable than the original fileset was set up.

I shall return at the end of the month with two more things, including a tasty centennial celebration, but I hope you can get next to this tremendous 1980 voyage to The Holy Land with today's 90th b'day bard.--J.

9.21.1934 - 11.7.2016