1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die – Part 2

0006 – Ellington At Newport 1956 – Duke Ellington

When Duke Ellington took his orchestra to the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956, the band was in need of an uplift, some humongous event that would revitalize its image in the wake of bebop, hard bop, and so many more jazz currents. Ellington got the lift he needed when he called “Diminuendo in Blue” with set-closer “Crescendo in Blue” tacked on the end. Tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves got the nod from Ellington to segue from “Diminuendo” to “Crescendo,” and he blew doors. With one rousing 27-chorus solo, Gonsalves blew a fever into the crowd and jump-started Ellingtonia for another generation.

Trouble with all this is that the living document of the Newport show is almost fully manufactured, recorded in a studio with crowd madness dubbed in. So this two-CD historical correction is an awesome addition to the centennial-era reissues on Columbia (including Anatomy of a Murder, Such Sweet Thunder, First Time: Count Meets the Duke, and Black, Brown and Beige).

The producers revisited the Newport gig after four decades because they discovered an extant Voice of America tape–the one whose microphone Gonsalves blew his solo into, and the VOA tape catches the whole Newport set in its organic glory. Alternately tender with layers of brushstroke orchestration and blazing with the band’s well-seasoned tightness, this new Newport is one for the generalist and the Ellington completist. It’s got the revived original gig as well as the original commercial release. And they make great siblings, illustrative of the live-event charm and the music industry’s dogged labors in reinventing it on record.

–Andrew Bartlett (for Amazon)

0007 – Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! – Frank Sinatra (1956)

Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! is the fourth studio album recorded by the American singer Frank Sinatra for Capitol Records, it was arranged by Nelson Riddle and released in March 1956.

It took an alternative tack after In the Wee Small Hours (1954), recording existing pop standards in a hipper, jazzier fashion, revealing an overall exuberance in the vein of Songs for Young Lovers and Swing Easy!. The original cover had Sinatra facing away from the young couple, but in 1957 Capitol altered the cover with a new image of Sinatra facing the couple. All CD releases have retained the new cover.

In 2000 “Songs For Swinging Lovers” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 306 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The album was the first ever number one album in the UK. It was knocked off the top after two weeks by Carousel (the 1956 movie’s soundtrack).

0008 – The “Chirping” Crickets – The Crickets (1958)

This is the only album released by the Crickets in Buddy Holly’s lifetime, though a solo album, Buddy Holly, was released in 1958, and a compilation of earlier material recorded by Buddy and the Three Tunes, That’ll Be The Day, came out a couple of months later. Though these days the billing Buddy Holly And The Crickets is frequently used and indeed this album was re-released in 1962 with that title, this is historical revision. Buddy had a solo career on Coral whilst also being lead singer in the Crickets on Brunswick (in the UK both were on Coral).

The “Chirping” Crickets is an obvious five-star album. As well as hit singles Oh, Boy!, Maybe Baby, That’ll Be The Day (the first single), and their equally memorable B-sides Not Fade Away, Tell Me How and I’m Looking For Someone To Love, there are six other exclusive tracks, all lovingly crafted at Norman Petty’s studio in Clovis NM or put down in an Officer’s Club at an air force base in Oklahoma City in between dates on their first tour, in order to complete the album on time, with backing vocals added back in Clovis by the Picks.

Buddy Holly’s original compositions are augmented by a number of telling covers, and in fact Oh, Boy! was not an original, having previously been recorded by Sonny West. The Crickets’ version of Chuck Willis’s It’s Too Late is surely the definitive version. Two songs were co-written by Roy Orbison, who was yet to find success as a performer, including the beautiful An Empty Cup (A Broken Date). It was to be their only album because Buddy left the group in autumn 1958 and, as we all know, 3rd February 1959 became “the day the music died”, but what a classic album it is.

This 2004 edition is clearly the one to go for because apart from the excellent digitally re-mastered sound by Erick Labson, it mops up as bonus tracks the two 1958 Crickets singles, Think It Over/Fool’s Paradise and It’s So Easy/Lonesome Tears.

0009 – The Atomic Mr. Basie – Count Basie (1957)

Bristling with excitement and electricity, this 1958 album represents the finest accomplishment of Count Basie’s “New Testament” big band. His “Old Testament” band of the late 1930s, featuring stars Lester Young, Herschel Evans, Dickie Wells, and Buck Clayton, perfected the blues-drenched, straight 4/4 rhythm of Kansas City swing.

Building on the blues foundation, this 1950s band features more ambitious compositions and a more dynamic sound and incorporates more modern developments. One constant, however, is the anchoring rhythm guitar of Freddie Green. As always, Basie can dig deeply into robust stride statements or choose each note as if he had to pay for them separately.

Neal Hefti, the primary composer and arranger here, marvelously captures the strengths of each individual musician. His arrangements sparkle exuberantly on the up tunes and create vivid and exotic moods on the slower ones; clever and innovative without ever being overblown. Beefy tenor Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, who was only in the band for a relatively short period, offers the most valuable and vital solo contributions, recalling Ben Webster’s tenderness at times, squeaking and honking like an R&B man at others.

–Marc Greilsamer (for Amazon)

0010 – Brilliant Corners – Thelonious Monk (1957)

Few composers or improvisers can match the originality of pianist Thelonious Monk. Quirky yet rigorously logical, Monk’s playful but always purposeful choice of skewed melodies and interrupted rhythm patterns gave the bebop movement, and jazz in total, a new sound that was totally modern. Although he created a surprisingly limited body of compositions, his impact on the vocabulary and canon of jazz is second to none, including such prolific giants as Duke Ellington. Brilliant Corners is a triumph of both performance and conception: the two small-group sessions, anchored by Monk, drummer Max Roach, and the bass work of either Oscar Pettiford or Paul Chambers, feature superb front-line performances by saxophonists Sonny Rollins and the tragically under-recorded Ernie Henry, as well as trumpeter Clark Terry.

The title track, which centers the collection, is one of Monk’s most unconventional pieces, skirting whole-tone, chromatic and Lydian scales; a version of “Pannonica” finds Monk doubling on celeste, while the band stretches out on “Bemsha Swing” and the blues “Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are.”

–Fred Goodman (for Amazon)