Here's Gidden's article about the list and it's suggestions
Robert Christgau's review:
" Postwar Jazz: An Arbitrary Roadmap [no label/Weatherbird, 2003] Gary Giddins Jazz, I call it. Not officially for sale and never will be, permissions being the slough of greed, vanity, and indifference they are. But available on the Net to those as know how, I am assured by one of the two nuts of my acquaintance who copied, borrowed, ripped, and otherwise purloined a six-CDR set comprising the 1945-2001 choice cuts our greatest jazz critic annotated for the June 11, 2002, Voice. Beyond the cross-generational ecumenicism Giddins champions--the assumption that jazz musicians are artists for life, so that a supernally lucid summation by 78-year-old Benny Carter takes the 1985 prize--is a music in which intellection harnesses energy and feeling and rides them hard toward the horizon. The selections are sometimes too avant for my tastes, and insufficiently electric (Craig Harris over Blood Ulmer in 1983?!); I wouldn't agree they're all "great records." But the vast majority come close enough. Among the artists I'd never have believed could dazzle me like this are Art Pepper, Gil Evans, Tommy Flanagan, Stan Getz, George Russell, and, I admit it, Sarah Vaughan. Why had I barely heard of Sonny Criss? How the fuck did I miss "Little Rootie Tootie"? A+"
A very interesting listen. Lots of tracks I haven't heard for a long time. I really enjoyed this. Thanks KC.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks, KC, for this amazing compil.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised Robert Christgau has the temerity to submit a review in which he's "surprised" by Art Pepper and "unaware" of Sonny Criss, what planet has he been living on??
ReplyDeleteChoices like this are bound to be idiosyncratic, one person's taste will never mirror another's, but I can accept a lot of these suggestions.
I have two related problems with the concept;
I find it difficult to evaluate some of the later tracks divorced from their complete albums, which have a wholeness about them (am I making any sense?)
The other is that some years are stronger than others, particularly 1959. If as inevitably happened, a track from Kind of Blue is selected, it rules out tracks by, for example Mingus, Coltrane and Ornette, that are, in my opinion, better than others from other years.
Still a great idea and thanks for sharing KC.
In his defense Christgau would be the first to acknowledge he is at best a casual jazz fan - his field has always been rock/pop - I was frankly surprised to find his review of this existed at all.
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