CD Odyssey Disc 1644: Various Artists

This next record holds a LOT of music and to get through it in a reasonable time frame. I had to get creative to get a full listen in and a review before my work week resumes, but the combination of the long weekend and getting out of bed early today has provided me the space and time required.

Disc 1644 is…We’ll Meet Again: 50 Wartime Favourites

Artist: Various Artists

Year of Release: 1939 to 1945 (OK – one song from 1931, but otherwise the war years)

What’s up with the Cover?  With the white cliffs of Dover in the background, we must assume this gaggle of partiers are storming the beaches of France. Despite the air support in the background, they do not look well equipped for the mission.

Or maybe this is post-war and these revelers are driving around some old equipment for shits and giggles.

How I Came To Know It: I was shopping for other music and this was sitting innocuously in a display, coyly calling out to middle aged history buffs with a penchant for war history and old timey tunes.

How It Stacks Up: This is a collection of music, not a true album, so can’t stack up.

Rating: As a compilation record, there is no rating assigned. If you want to know what I thought about it in more general terms, you’ll have to take a deep breath and read the review.

“We’ll Meet Again” is a large (fifty-song) compilation of music recorded and played during World War Two. With any compilation this big you’re going to have some winners and some losers.

It has been almost eighty years since the Second World War ended, and as time goes along, we remember the events, but it is easy to lose contact with the feel of those same events for the people who lived the experience. For much of the war, heartache and uncertainty were the order of the day, and the grief real and imminent.

In dark times I often turn to music to help sustain me, and the people living through the war were no different. You might expect music of the era to capture that uncertainty and turn dark and foreboding, but you’d be wrong. The Greatest Generation were also the “Rub dirt on it” generation. Don’t expect a lot of doleful music here – the people living through war opted for stoicism over sadness, and a stiff upper lip over a trembling one.

The word that kept circling around in my head as I listened to this collection was “escapism”. These are songs about pure love and joy, and even when the war is mentioned (as it often is) it is in a light-hearted way. Troubles with logistics and troops going without at the front line? Here’s “In the Quartermaster’s Stores” a humorous exploration that maybe the quartermaster just has bad eyesight. Young men feeling frightened at being so far from home? We have “Kiss Me Goodnight Sgt Major” asking the (presumably gruff) NCO fill in.

The marching tunes are filled with patriotic optimism. “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” and “There’ll Always Be an England” are prime examples, and these songs could double as marching tunes as well as a handy drunken sing-a-long for soldiers on leave needing to let off some steam.

There are times when this “what, me worry?” feel comes off as schmaltzy, with some singers laying on silly affectations a bit thick. Duo Flanagan and Allen are a couple of the worst offenders, but even their goofiness works once in a while (notably, “(We’re Gonna Hang Out) The Washing on the Siegfried Line)” even if this 1939 optimism was to be tragically disproved in the early years of the war.

What jumped out at me musically was how some of the specific artists were head and shoulders above their peers. Multiple Glenn Miller songs appear, and all of them were instantly recognizable. Miller was a force in this era, and his big band stylings are still as timeless and brilliant as they were when he recorded them eight decades ago.

The Andrews Sisters have many of the best songs on the record with “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” the best of all. If that song doesn’t put joy in your heart, you should double check that you have one. Other standout Andrews Sisters tunes include “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” and a duet with Bing Crosby titled “Don’t Fence Me In.”

Bing Crosby is no slouch solo either. He is one of the great vocalists of his or any time, and “San Antonio Rose” is a vocal masterpiece. Crosby practically converts mono to stereo through the richness of his tone alone.

And finally, if you want to feel all the feels, the record features a number of Vera Lynn tunes. “Yours” and “We’ll Meet Again” are the tear-jerkers of the record, laden with yearning and the heartbreak of lovers parted. “We’ll Meet Again” also doubles as another barroom sing-a-long, and features a bunch of folks singing along in unison for the latter half of the tune, underscoring this as an option for you, the listener.

I’m a military history buff, and I’ve read a LOT about the Second World War, but listening to this collection of songs from the era provided a new and more emotional way to interface with the era through its art. I didn’t love all the songs, but I did love the overall experience.  

Best tracks: Chatanooga Choo Choo – Glenn Miller; Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy – Andrews Sisters; Yours – Vera Lynn; In the Mood – Glenn Miller; (We’re Gonna Hang Out) The Washing on the Siegfried Line – Flanagan and Allen; Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition – Kay Kyser and his Orchestra; San Antonio Rose – Bing Crosby; When the Light Comes on Again (All Over the World) – Vaughn Monroe; The White Cliffs of Dover – Vera Lynn; Don’t Fence Me In – Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters; Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree – Andrews Sisters; We’ll Meet Again – Vera Lynn

CD Odyssey Disc 1606: Muddy Waters

My weekend started off in lovely fashion, catching up with some of my oldest friends (most from university days) enjoying a steak dinner a good conversation and a few drinks raised in fellowship.

Disc 1606 is…His Best: 1947-1955

Artist: Muddy Waters

Year of Release: 1997, but with music from 1947-1955

What’s up with the Cover?  Giant Head Cover returns! Here we have Muddy Waters’ giant head, looking sinister.

That’s a joke for the heraldry nerds.

How I Came To Know It: I had heard of Muddy Waters for years but it wasn’t until my friend Casey put some on for me one evening that I properly turned my attention to his work (Muddy, not Casey). One of the best gifts is the gift of musical discovery so thanks, Casey!

How It Stacks Up: This record is a compilation of music spanning eight years and so, by CD Odyssey rules, can’t stack up.

Ratings: Compilation records don’t get rated, but if they could be this one would be perfect.

There are times on this blog where I struggle with defining an album. Is it indie folk, with a hint of pop? Hard rock edging up on heavy metal? With Muddy Waters there is no confusion. This man is the blues and only the blues. Blues so pure and deep they well up from the soul like a geyser of oil, rich and grimy.

I don’t always get the blues, and I sometimes find it a bit repetitive. Of course, that is part of its charm; kicking your soul down into a groove which is simultaneously celebratory and full of pain. The blues is singing in a storm, dancing at a funeral, and shouting at the moon while lost on a moor.

While my first love of the blues is Howlin’ Wolf, there is no denying Muddy Waters is objectively the pinnacle. That warbling, deep, half-slurred delivery (occasionally punctuated with a falsetto shriek) is about as good a vocal performance as you will ever hear in this world or the next. If you are wondering what song I am referring to here, the answer is “all of them”.

Frequent readers will know I can’t abide a record with more than 14 tracks on it, but this collection of tunes from Waters’ heyday has 20 and just left me wanting more. I wouldn’t cut a single tune off the album. I don’t know enough about his catalogue to judge if these are “His Best” as advertised, but it is hard to imagine there are 20 better ones.

The guitar work on the record is great, and I was equally happy with Muddy (earlier tracks) and Jimmy Rogers (later tracks). They are different, with Muddy playing a bit more spare and Rogers, ironically a bit more “muddy.” Both are great accompaniments to Waters’ vocals.

The thing that surprised me more was how much I enjoyed the other players. Ernest “Big” Crawford on the bass is amazing, and no doubt an inspiration to all kinds of music that followed, first soul and funk and later rap and hip hop. This music centered deep in the heart, with enough oomph to pump its power across generations. I can still hear it echoing today.

The songs sound timeless, as the blues often do, but most are original compositions of Waters, with a few Willie Dixon classics thrown in for good measure, mostly nearer the end of the period. A blues composition is similar to folk song, in that there is an art to staying firmly within the traditions of the music, while at the same time creating something new. When done right, you can’t tell what era it is from, only that it is awesome.

I love Robert Johnson as much as the next guy, but let’s be honest; that tinny thirties production is irksome. Wouldn’t you love to hear blues this good that didn’t sound like they were recorded in a tin can? Enter Muddy Waters, equal to the talent of his predecessor, but with that high-end Chess production that brings you his deep, rounded tone in all its glory. The guitar and bass shake the floorboards, while Waters vocals roil the air with power that is half playful, half menace.

It all adds up to some of the greatest music ever recorded, and it was my privilege to rediscover it in my collection through what was a very lucky random selection indeed. The only downside is that the Odyssey must roll and tumble its way forward leaving this particularly blessed isle behind for now.

Best tracks: all tracks

CD Odyssey Disc 1027: Billie Holiday

I’ve been checking out a bunch of metal this week, as I reacquaint myself with what’s been going on in heavy music for the past couple of decades. It has been a welcome return to one of my earliest musical loves. I don’t’ like it all, but I like enough of it to know that there will be more metal entering my collection soon.

The early favourite is Opeth, who really blew me away. I’m looking forward to hearing more from them in the near future…on my stereo.

But now, because variety is the spice of life, some jazz.

Disc 1027 is…The Quintessential Billie Holiday Volume 9

Artist: Billie Holiday

Year of Release: 1991 but featuring music from 1940-1942

What’s up with the Cover? Not much going on here - Billie Holiday and a microphone. As Bad Santa teaches us, “they can’t all be winners, kid”.

How I Came To Know It: I learned about Billie Holiday through a woman I used to date who was a big fan. The first time I heard Billie was on a record player at two in the morning, which is exactly how you should hear her. When I saw they had put out a 9-disc set of her music I grabbed the best three I could and hoped for the best. This was one of them.

How It Stacks Up:  This is a compilation album, so by the rules of the Odyssey it doesn’t stack up.

Ratings: “Best ofs” and compilations don’t get ratings, since they’re not really albums.

There is something magical about being able to enjoy music recorded 75 years ago. That magical experience is helped along considerably when your guide is Ms. Billie Holiday.

Holiday is one of history’s great vocalists, and her combination of sweet, sad and world-worn is like a warm bath you can slip into and let your mind wander. This music is pretty far from my wheelhouse (I’m not much for jazz) but there were very few songs on this record I disliked, and a lot of that success was Holiday’s delivery.

She’s better when she’s being a bit sad, and when she sang upbeat tracks like “Let’s Do It” I found myself wishing instead for Ella Fitzgerald’s playful tones. That is the only time that happened though, and on every other song I’d take Billie singing these tunes over anyone else that was offered. This is particularly true on wistful tracks like “Georgia on My Mind” that feel like they were written for her and only her. Sorry, Ray Charles. This is just…better.

Holiday follows that classic with the sexy “Romance in the Dark,” which she delivers with an aggressive jump on the beat, brazen and unapologetic. The song also has a nice piano solo and a bit of saxophone, but at a running time of 2:12 not too much of either.

Most of the recordings on this compilation are around three minutes long, which is just enough time for Holiday to cast a spell, play a little with the melody and let some of the fine jazz musicians playing with her have a responsibly brief solo. I think I’d like jazz a lot more if it was always this restrained.

And so it was that I found myself looking up who played on “Romance in the Dark” only to find the people who’d written the liner notes complaining the song wasn’t longer. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

One song I didn’t love was “Mandy Is Two” a song about a toddler who is proud because she’s a big girl now (evidence: she knows her alphabet and can tie her own shoes). In the song Mom is sad to see her daughter growing up so quickly. Seriously, Mom – the kid is two, she’s a long way from grown up. The whole thing just felt like the world’s worst conversation to get trapped in at some society dinner party. “Ooh – did you hear that Mandy knows all her ABC’s?” “Ooh – you don’t say! That’s marvelous!”

Barf.

Much better was the classic “God Bless the Child,” a song about child poverty. Hearing Holiday sing:

“Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade.”

Is a heartbreaking observation, and a hell of a lot more compelling than whether Mandy can tie her shoes.

Holiday does a fine job of walking the line between romance and social commentary. The musical interludes on this album are beautiful and well-placed as well, but the star is Billie Holiday’s voice, which reaches across three-quarters of a century to pull your heart right out of your chest. 75 years from now she’ll still be doing it to a whole new generation of listeners.

Best tracks: Georgia On My Mind, Romance in the Dark, God Bless the Child, Am I Blue?, Solitude, I Cover the Waterfront

CD Odyssey Disc 786: Django Reinhardt

After a fairly rotten weekend it was back to…Monday. I guess that puts things in perspective.

“Anyway, here’s an album from waaaayyy back!” – I would say if I were an annoying oldies DJ.

Disc 786 is….Jazz Masters 38

Artist: Django Reinhardt

Year of Release: 1994, but featuring music from 1938 to 1947 (and one lonely outlier from 1953).

What’s up with the Cover? Django is looking like quite the smooth dandy, smokin’ a cigarette in his suit while playing one of those chords that always makes my knuckles hurt.

How I Came To Know It: One night I went to visit my friend Casey and we sat around and played music. I remember I was trying to get him hooked on Steve Earle, but was using “Train A-Comin’” to do it. Not because that is Earle’s best album, but because I had just bought it earlier that week and was still excited about it. He tried to get me hooked on Django Reinhardt, and succeeded enough for me to buy this record later that week.

How It Stacks Up: This is a compilation album of Django’s career, not a true album, so it doesn’t stack up. Even if it did, it would be the only Django album in my collection.

Ratings: you don’t rate compilations, folks. It’s not done. Someone tell Rolling Stone this obvious truth, as they have festooned their “greatest albums list” with greatest hits records. How idiotic.

When I rolled this album for review my first thought was, “Ah, Jazz, my old nemesis. Come to torment me again, have you?” Much to my pleasant surprise the torment never exceeded anything more than the musical equivalent of a light tickling.

This is jazz I can understand and – more importantly – enjoy. There’s a discernible melody throughout every song and Django’s chord changes are sometimes surprising, but the surprise is pleasant.

Sometimes he’ll start a song off with a violin traipsing about, as  he does on the sunny and cheerful “Daphne.” Regardless, it isn’t long before Django’s signature guitar sound makes an appearance, trilling and weaving their way in and out of the tune.

Django is known as one of the great guitar players of the twentieth century, and while my ear is generally better tuned to rock and roll, even I can see why. He is a master of spacing and rhythm and the tone he brings out is bright and precise. There is a joy in every note and more than a bit of sass when sass is called for.

True to the times, tracks are rarely much over three minutes in length, and yet Django manages to develop some pretty intricate themes in those three minutes. They get to the point fast, giving them lots of time to get to a second or even a third point before they’re done.

The fact that all the songs are so short means that despite the album being 16 songs long, it is still a tasteful 48 minutes of total playing time. It left me satisfied with the experience, but not overstuffed.

These songs are all instrumental so I have no idea what they’re about beyond the clues in their titles, but this is music to feel good to. It was regrettable that I was feeling so miserable listening to them for most of my walk today, but they managed to break through the grey clouds of my mood near the end despite my best efforts to continue to wallow.

I cheated a little bit when I got home and listened to the final two songs while doing some basic household stuff. I can see the allure of jazz for this sort of thing, at least Django Reinhardt. Django’s guitar made the most ordinary movements – taking off a shirt, putting on a pair of jeans, petting a passing cat (yes, Vizzini, I will feed you) – all feel like I was part of some kind of Broadway musical or a Chaplin silent movie.

This music is seventy-plus years old now, and there are times when it feels its age, particularly on the dreamy “Nuages” which is just not edgy enough to be as sexy as it wants to be. But even on the tracks I didn’t love, I still admired the ground they broke and the influence they had on everything that came after. It is like the frontal lobe equivalent of listening to Robert Johnson hit you in the hippocampus.

This album isn’t one I’ll put on very often, but it also isn’t one I can part with now that it lightened my heart on a day when I desperately needed that.

Best tracks:  Daphne, Honeysuckle Rose, HCQ Strut, Liza (All the Clouds Roll Away), Swing 48

CD Odyssey Disc 658: Various Artists

I’m just a couple of hours away from my annual football pool draft. This also means that I’m only a few days away from the regular season starting again. Yeehaw – go Dolphins!

Disc 658 is…. A Portrait of Big Band Swing

Artist: Various artists

Year of Release: 1998 but featuring music from the thirties and forties

What’s up with the Cover?  Some fellas getting their brass on. These guys look square as hell, but they were the rock stars of their day.

How I Came To Know It:  This is one of Sheila’s albums. I think she bought it because she liked big band and it was a hell of a good price.

How It Stacks Up:  This is a compilation album, so it can’t really stack up. Even if it could, this and the “Glenn Miller Story” (reviewed not that long ago, at Disc 617). are the only big band albums I can think of in my collection, so there isn’t much to compare it to.

Rating:  compilations and ‘best of’ albums don’t get a rating. That’s how the CD Odyssey rolls.

Swing was the dance music of its day, and listening to this two disc set full of the finest examples of the form, it is easy to see why. This is fun-lovin’ stuff that feels good to the ear and gets you shakin’ those parts that it feels good to shake.

There were 48 songs and over two hours of music on this album (hence my lengthy absence) and it took three full days walking to and from work to get through it all. Far from being a labour, the music generally put me in a happy mood. Listening to it everyone I passed seemed happier, the colours of the trees, houses and cars around me all seemed brighter; even the passing cars and bicycles traffic seemed to be cruising along in time with the music. I felt like I was starring in my own personal musical. I may even have danced down the sidewalk from time to time.

One of the things that kept coming back to me was how the music had a predictable quality to it, but yet never felt boring. Growing up on western popular music, I’m so used to certain chord progressions that songs always feel like they are going to go in a certain direction. Swing follows all the rules, with melodies that feel so natural it is like they were decoded directly from the Music of the Spheres.

This experience only works if you’ve grown up with western music though. A listener from a different culture might find the melodic progressions unexpected and novel, in the same way that eastern or African music surprises my ears.

In addition to a lack of melodic surprises the music is characterized by the jumping and dragging of the notes through the rhythm (I think that’s what puts the swing in Swing). Whatever it is, it makes you want to dance and even as I type this I find myself swaying in time to the music (currently “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” by Count Basie and his Orchestra).

I was talking about how damned happy this music made me over the weekend with my friend Andrew, and he made a good point. This stuff comes out of the thirties and forties which for the most part featured either economic depression or world war. Maybe Swing was exactly the tonic that the nation needed to forget its troubles. If it feels a bit vacuous or frivolous in places (and it does), then I think we can forgive it on that basis alone.

The songs were almost all three minutes long – to the point of being uncanny. I remember I used to have a “Best of James Brown” cassette tape and all those songs were also three minutes long. It didn’t take much delving into James Brown’s collection to determine that very few of his songs are that short, and they’d all been edited for length.

I don’t know much about this music – maybe radio demanded a short song – but it left me wondering if they’d been edited for length or not. I hope not, because that is always a damned shame. If there is editing, it is artfully done and the songs never feel truncated. Besides, the “extended dance mix” of any dance music is only fun if you are actually at a dance.

The sheer enormity of this package makes singling out artists and songs difficult. I recognized a lot of the Glenn Miller songs, and some other ones that are so iconic that we all know their tune (like Benny Goodman’s “It’s Only a Paper Moon” or Artie Shaw doing “What Is This Thing Called Love?”). The album is full of greats like Miller, Shaw, Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, the aforementioned Count Basie and tons of others.

These guys were all living legends in their day, and listening to them now it is easy to see why. Writing a catchy pop lick and making it feel effortless is one of the toughest things in music, and these guys have them rolling out of the horn section as easy champagne cascading down a wine-glass fountain.

After three days, I’m ready to move on to something more familiar to me, but I’ve had a hell of a good time getting to know another important branch of my musical tree.

Best tracks:  Hell if I know – after three days and 48 songs my head hurts trying to figure them all out. Lots!

CD Odyssey Disc 617: Glenn Miller (sort of)

After a great weekend of hanging with friends, including a win by my beloved Boston Bruins and the start of another season of Ultimate it was back to work today.

I was a little nervous about how this next disc would fare against the Monday blues, but it put me in a positively sunny mood on the walk both to work and then home. 

Disc 617 is…. The Glenn Miller Story

Artist: Glenn Miller’s songs, but technically arranged and played here by Joseph Gershenson and the Universal-International Orchestra and Louis Armstrong.

Year of Release: 1954, but the music originally dates from the thirties and forties

What’s up with the Cover? I think this is a variation on the movie poster. Glenn Miller is played by Jimmy Stewart, and I think that’s him on the cover pretending to play the trombone.

How I Came To Know It:  This is Sheila’s album. Sheila learned about him when she watched a 1979 made-for-TV miniseries called “The Last Convertible.” The movie is so obscure not even IMDB has a plot, but Sheila advises it was based on a book by Anton Myrer. I looked it up and it is about five young Harvard men, their women and (you guessed it) the car that came to symbolize their youth.

Anyway, the song “Moonlight Serenade” features prominently in the miniseries so that was Sheila’s introduction to big band music. When her paternal grandfather died she got a record from his collection called “The Golden Age of Dance Bands” which had “Moonlight Serenade” and other Glenn Miller remakes, all done by less famous folks.

Although “The Golden Age of Dance Bands” is not the subject of this review, it has an excerpt on the back describing the music that I can’t resist sharing:

“For we ‘squares’ over thirty, these wonderful songs are a welcome relief from the monotonous din of rock and roll. And after all – we knew how to dance in the Golden Age of Dance Bands.

Bold words, but for all I know every dance in the forties ended like “It’s A Wonderful Life” with everyone falling in the pool.

How It Stacks Up:  This is the only Glenn Miller album we have, so it doesn’t really stack up. Technically it is a soundtrack as well, although I keep it under “Glenn Miller” and never thought to add it to that list. If I had, it would have done pretty well – top third anyway, maybe around 8^th.

Rating:  4 stars

I usually prefer the aforementioned monotonous din of rock and roll to big band, but I can’t deny this album put a smile on my face and (yes) a swing in my step.

This is music for having a good time and not thinking too hard about why. No lyrics to distract you as with popular music or folk songs, and nothing too mathematically complex to muddle your frontal lobes like you get with classical. This is just melody-driven whimsy, where the horn section drives the bus and the other instruments are along for the ride.

As with pop music, the ability to consistently write a good hook should not be casually dismissed. It is hard work, yet every song on “The Glenn Miller Story” has a hook so memorable that these same songs are still routinely used in movies to establish a mood. These songs have been like old friends to generation after generation for going on 75 years now. While they aren’t as popular now as they once were, when you hear “Moonlight Serenade” or “In The Mood” you instantly know it, even if you can’t name the song off the top of your head.

Also, while not the original band, the artists brought together for “The Glenn Miller” story do a great job with the material. Conductor Joseph Gershenson was a Hollywood legend at the time this came out, not to mention the appearance of the great Louis Armstrong on two songs (“Basin Street Blues” and “Otchi-Tchor-Ni-Ya”).

Sheila also has some other albums from her grandparents by “101 Strings” which are an abomination to music, so trust me when I say that even these classics could have been ruined in the wrong hands. Instead they get the care attention and talent they deserve.

My favourites are the upbeat numbers like “Little Brown Jug” and “In the Mood.” When the band tries to interpret the blues (“Basin Street Blues”) or go off on a jazz noodle (“Otchi-Tchor-Ni-Ya”) they lose me a bit. Sorry, Louis Armstrong.

I also really dig “Pennsylvania 6-5000” a song immortalizing how you used to give someone your phone number. Some government numbers start with a 356 prefix, and I hope one day to be lucky enough to get the phone with this number so I can tell people to call me at “Pennsylvania 6-5000.”

“Pennsylvania 6-5000” also has an early use of sound effects in music – where a phone rings before the band sings out the song title in joyful unison. It reminded me of the phone ringing in “Joan Crawford” by Blue Oyster Cult, although obviously without all the overtones of undead film stars returning from the grave to torment their children.

Then again, maybe Blue Oyster Cult cut the next line of dialogue that would come after we hear the hoarse whisper of “Chrissstiinaah…mother’s home…” I imagine it would be Christina responding with “Pardon me, but I think you have the wrong number” and then Joan Crawford’s zombie replying with an indignant, “What! Is this Pennsylvania 6-5000? Operator?” And cue the horn section.

But I digress…

Back to the album, which was a lot of fun, despite Glenn Miller’s music sounding a little staid to the modern era at times (someone suggested to me today that the music needs more ‘pelvic thrusts’ which I think was an apt, if graphic, description). That said, when jazz gets too out there it loses me. I like the energy and composition of Miller’s music. He's more interested in giving you a pretty song than impressing you with how complicated he can make it, and that swing rhythm can give you plenty of kicks below the waistline, sunshine.

Best tracks:   Tuxedo Junction, Little Brown Jug, In the Mood, Pennsylvania 6-5000

CD Odyssey Disc 493: Charlie Parker

I was supposed to be practicing the guitar before writing this review but the Bruins were on TV.  I practice the guitar almost every day but the Bruins on TV is rare so I took a time out to watch it.  The Gods of Guitar Practice saw fit to reward me by having me watch us lose a two goal lead evaporate in the final six and a half minutes, as we lost to the hateful Penguins.  Well played, Guitar Practice Gods, well played.

Disc 493 is… A Proper Introduction to Charlie Parker (Star Eyes)

Artist: Charlie Parker

Year of Release:  2005, but with music from 1945 - 1951

What’s up with the Cover?  Charlie Parker blows his own horn, because that’s what Charlie Parker does.  I imagine he also addresses himself in the third person, but that’s just supposition on my part.

How I Came To Know It:  In my old job we had an intern one summer – I think he was in grade nine or ten – and he was getting job credits for school (nowadays it isn’t enough for kids to experience the drudgery of work upon graduation; they need to do it earlier – and for free).

Anyway the kid was a nice guy, and exceptionally smart, despite being only marginally reliable as a file clerk.   I took him for lunch one day, and while I imparted what I hoped was some worldly wisdom, we got to talking about music.  He was into jazz, and when I asked who his favourite artist was, he was unequivocal that it was Mr. Charlie Parker.  So I bought this album on his recommendation, because worldly wisdom isn’t age-dependent my friends.

How It Stacks Up:  This is a ‘best of’ and so it doesn’t really stack up at all.

Rating:  Best of albums don’t get rated on the Odyssey – that’s the drill, sunshine.

Brilliant jazz musicianship or aimless, harmless noodling?  Probably a bit of both defines my feelings toward Charlie Parker.

This album once again had me re-examining my complex relationship with jazz.  Although I am not a jazz fan, Parker is in my wheelhouse.  He plays pretty basic licks, and I can follow along well enough.  Somehow, I once again struggled to feel a connection to it.

It isn’t that it is instrumental; I find good classical music compelling and, like jazz, I have only a surface idea what is going on in that style.  I think it is that like a lot of jazz, I just don’t get the core emotion behind the music.

My main influences are metal and country/folk, and both those genres rely heavily on some emotional investment from the musician.  When Bruce Dickinson sings “Flight of Icarus” you can feel yourself compelled to fly so high you burn in the sun.  When Kris Kristofferson sings “Sunday Morning, Comin’ Down”, you can feel the impact of the can he kicks on your own toe, and smell the chicken down the street being cooked by some family that is – and always will be – happier than you.  It doesn’t have to always be this good, but there’s got to be something for me to hang my heart on once I come inside.

On a good day, like today on my walk home, listening to Charlie Parker makes me appreciate his virtuosity, which is considerable.  I can see myself in a European roadster, engaging in some kind of lighthearted chase scene through a sixties caper film like Walter Matthau in Hopscotch.  OK, Hopscotch was filmed in 1980, but you get the idea; it’s fun, it’s carefree and driving or walking – it is good toodling-about music.

On a bad day, like yesterday, it just sounds like someone bragging – at times almost braying – through a reed, just to show he can.  Feeling is an important part of music for me.  Just clever playing, clever note progressions, those don’t do it for me, even when they’re done by a master like Parker.

If I was going to get caught up in any kind of passion for this kind of music, I’d need more than three minutes.  Regrettably, “Star Eyes” really isn’t the proper introduction to Charlie Parker it advertises.  A lot of these songs seem like they are prematurely cut off with a clever flourish of notes (often the piano and Charlie’s saxophone playing off one another).  I think most tracks would benefit from being a little longer, and I’d like to think that’s how Charlie would’ve preferred them too.

Also, the album has way too many of these three minute tracks; twenty-five of them to be precise.  The album is seventy-eight minutes long, which is about as much as you can pack onto a compact disc.  The sheer assortment of tracks, coupled with my relative unfamiliarity with them made it hard to distinguish one from the other, even as I resolutely dug my hand in pocket as each one ended to check the names.

As I mentioned earlier, I had a pretty positive walk home with Mr. Parker tonight, and I was tempted to keep the album after all, but one experience turned the tide.  Over the weekend, my car stereo became possessed and almost devoured my favourite Neko Case CD (2006’s “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood”).  I rescued the album relatively unscathed, but I’ve been viewing the car stereo in a very untrustworthy way ever since. 

Tonight, driving Sheila to something, I decided to test the stereo’s safety for the first time since the near-fox devouring incident.  I barely hesitated as I put Charlie Parker’s “Star Eyes” into the player.  I think I cheerfully bragged to Sheila before I did it, just what risks I was subjecting it to.  A fine musician like Charlie Parker deserves a better home than that.

Best tracks:  Hell if I know – they all blended together.  I’ll pick Carvin’ the Bird, Chasin’ the Bird, and Scrapple from the Apple, because they’ve got groovy titles.

CD Odyssey Disc 32: Hank Williams

As my KISS review indicates, my early experience makes me a little bit rock n' roll. However, I'm also a little bit country.

Disc 32 is...Gold



Artist: Hank Williams

Year of Release: 2002 but the music is from the late forties and early fifties

How I Came To Know It: I come by my love of Hank Williams via my Mom, who is a fan and played him a lot while I was growing up. Many years later, I am amazed at how much good music I picked up from my Mom - most of it good old fashioned country AND western. Also a little Canadiana, but I'll talk about that when I get there.

How It Stacks Up: not applicable. This is a best of. I do have two best ofs for Hank Williams, though, and this is the better one of the two.

Rating: not applicable. Best ofs aren't fair to rate.

Hank Williams (along with Tex Ritter) is to me the grand daddy of modern American music, and the origins of Outlaw Country that I have loved so much in recent years.

Without Hank, there is no Steve Earle, no Lucinda Williams and - quite literally - no Hank Williams III (his grandson). On the downside, he also created Hank Williams Jr. - a real asstastic example of how bad new country can get.

Historically, Hank Sr.'s music is fascinating, since you can see early arrangements that become the building blocks of later music.

However, Hank Sr. is a great artist in his own right, not just a study in early country music. His voice can be both rough around the edges and mournful at the same time. No man hits falsetto like Hank does. He is a true artist with his voice.

On top of this, this recording (a 2 disc set) has some great sessional musicians playing on it. He was a big thing in his day, and he obviously attracted the best. Or they were his band. I have no idea, and I'm too much of a modernist to research it. Take that, post-modernists! With your internet and your fancy doo-dads gettin' in the way of enjoying the music!

Hank is also one of the greatest songwriters I know. His stuff runs the gamut from bluesy tracks like Move It on Over (famously covered by George Thorogood), and My Bucket's Got a Hole In It" to mournful songs of lost love like "A Mansion On The Hill" and "Your Cheatin' Heart". He also does gospel music, and one of his records is entirely spiritual. This collection has the title track "I Saw The Light" and it is a good one.

He also does a fair bit of novelty song stuff - like "Howlin' At the Moon" which has a goofy wolf howl at the end of most of the verses, but this stuff is thankfully fairly rare.

Hank was a troubled soul, and he struggled with alcoholism, drugs and hard living. These vices killed him in true rock & roll fashion (legend has it he died in the back seat of a taxi) at the tender age of 29.

For such a young career, it is packed full of incredible songwriting, performing and 50 years later Hank Williams remains one of the most influential figures in American music.

But don't buy him for that - buy him because he is a damned good listen.

Best tracks: There are a lot of good tracks, but since all must go on my MP3 player (new rule) I'll try to be judicious - Honky Tonkin', Move It On Over, You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave), I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love With You), You're Cheatin' Heart, The Angel of Death, Mind Your Own Business