Here's what I put on the plate today: The Charlie Parker quintet & sextet vol. 3, Roy Ayers Ubiquity Everybody Loves the Sunshine, and The Calvin Jackson Quartet Rave Notice.
This Charlie Parker collection is probably one of the first jazz records I ever owned. For obvious reasons the names Miles Davis and Max Roach jumped out at me and it didn't hurt that someone had placed a sticker on it that said "Great Music". Records, at least old and random collections like this, are the one thing I don't ever apply my completist nature to. I mean with comics, it's like, I need to have the full miniseries or the full run of a certain writer's or the whole series of a failed title. As great as this record is, I just feel like it'd be too overwhelming to try and hunt down volumes 1 and 2. As many collectible records as I own, and as much free time as I may have, it's just exhausting looking through dusty dollar bins. So, for stuff like this, I kind of just take what I find. Of course if it's touted as a must have, then maybe I'll put in the work and look for more. But realistically, I don't know enough of which records had the smallest runs and what pressings to look for and what differentiates some records from others, so it's too much more clutter in my head to deal with things that'll just collect dust on my shelf. Another great afternoon easy listen and I'm happy to have picked it up.
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Everybody Loves the Sunshine, as well as Rave Notice, I know for a fact I've never dropped the needle on. For this record, I bought it at a crazy time and it just kind of got forgotten about. I was getting ready to DJ a wedding and was looking for old polka records because it was a Polish wedding and they said polkas would be heavily requested (more on that in the future...maybe...). I went out of my normal path to dig some of that polka up and this caught my eye at the shop. I had work to do though listening to accordions and this got lost in a pile of records I kept buying and never listening to.
Who doesn't love that snippet off the title track, "my life - my life - my life...in the sunshine! Everybody loves the sunshine! " This album, though, is not the typical clunky piano jazz that I'd used to. It's a lot more frantic and erratic. I actually had to take a break from listening to it before flipping it over. What it lacks in smoothness of the early days of jazz, it makes up for in its more modern experimentation. Plus, this cover just makes me happy!
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Finally, The Calvin Jackson Quartet Rave Notice.
Bluntly, I have no idea who these people are. The sleeve says Calvin Jackson, at the point of this record's release, was living in Toronto because he toured the area and grew to love it. One of the quartet's members was actually a Toronto native. This I've learned strictly from reading the back of the cover. My own reasoning for picking this up: I bought this purely because I liked the juxtaposition of 1950s piano-based jazz versus the modern idea of a rave... I was trying to figure out what exactly a Rave Notice was though. It doesn't really seem like a common phrase of the time that's just gotten lost as language grew. I think it simply means exactly, and to be honest kind of boringly, what it says. This was the quartet's third or fourth album and they were referring to the enthusiastic response of their getting recognized. As well as these dudes strung notes together, they for sure were not in any way wordsmiths.
Besides the title, what drew me in to picking this up was how it features the classic Stompin' at the Savoy [sidenote: remember how great Savoy was before it changed ownership and eventually died? I miss that spot]. This record was a lot more upbeat, as you'd expect with a lead in track like Stompin' at the Savoy. If I knew how to Charleston better and had the energy in the afternoon and were in the midst of a hot summer day in the 50s reeling off of the excitement of having successfully built a time machine, I might dance to this.
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Well, that's it for this edition. I promise tomorrow I'll veer off the jazz path.
Keep listening to good music!
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