Manhattan Stories (jazz album)
| Manhattan Stories | ||||
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| Live album by Charles Lloyd | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Resonance Records | |||
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Format (s) |
2 CD |
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Title (number) |
6th |
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running time |
79:51 |
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George Klabin, Michael Cuscuna , Zev Feldman |
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Studio (s) |
Judson Hall and Slugs Saloon, New York City |
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Manhattan Stories is a jazz album by Charles Lloyd , recorded in New York City in 1965 and released on Resonance Records in 2014 .
background
The two appearances of the Lloyd Quartet were recorded in the summer of 1965 in the Slugs' Saloon and in September of the same year in the Judson Hall; this took place shortly after Lloyd left the band of Cannonball Adderley . A little later he became a "crossover sensation" and a hero of the hippies and sold one million units of the LP Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey (Atlantic, 1966). Lloyd's quartet eventually turned into the legendary group of Keith Jarrett , Cecil McBee and Jack DeJohnette , with whom the classic Atlantic recordings Dream Weaver (1966), The Flowering (1966), In Europe (1966) and Forest Flower (1968) were made .
The career of the saxophonist Charles Lloyd is well documented, so Thomas Conrad in JazzTimes ; but the quartet with which he performed in Manhattan in the mid-1960s, with guitarist Gábor Szabó , bassist Ron Carter and drummer Pete LaRoca , left no well-known recordings. The content of the double album produced by Resonance Records comes from performances by the quartet in two long-closed venues, Judson Hall, on 57th Street opposite Carnegie Hall , and the Slug's Saloon jazz club , in the streets of East Village Manhattan. George Klabin, a 19-year-old Columbia student who had a jazz show on the Columbia University radio program , recorded the footage at Judson Hall; this performance was part of the 1965 edition of Charlotte Moorman's New York Avant-Garde Festival. A Charles Lloyd fan, Bjorn von Schlebrugge, recorded the music played at Slug's on a Nagra portable tape recorder.
In 2009, Feldman presented the recordings made by Klabin to Charles Lloyd in California. The music was then mixed in the Resonance studio in Los Angeles and an LP and CD edition prepared. The album's liner notes contain photos by Lee Tanner and Francis Wolff, as well as six essays by Michael Cuscuna, Stanley Crouch , Willard Jenkins , Zev Feldman and Don Heckman.
Track list
- Charles Lloyd: Manhattan Stories (Resonance Records - HLP-9016 [LP], HCD-2016 [CD])
CD 1: Live at Judson Hall, NYC, September 3, 1965
- Sweet Georgia Bright (Charles Lloyd) 17:49
- How Can I Tell You (Charles Lloyd) 11:57
- Lady Gabor (Gábor Szabó) 12:50
CD 2: Live at Slugs' Saloon, NYC, 1965
- Slugs' Blues (Charles Lloyd) 12:57
- Lady Gabor (Gábor Szabó) 13:53
- Dream Weaver (Charles Lloyd) 15:25
reception
Thomas Conrad wrote in JazzTimes about the mood at the time of the performances: “It's summer 1965. The revolution is in the American air. The Judson Hall opener is 'Sweet Georgia Bright'. Lloyd's first solo rocket goes forward but turns off course and spins in flames as Carter and La Roca pound and crash. Szabó pushes into the onslaught and Lloyd is encouraged to go higher and further. Szabó plays an amplified acoustic guitar with steel strings, the nasal twang of which sometimes sounds like a banjo . His ideas on how to interact with a horn player are unusual, focused less on comping or counterpoint than on creative conflict. Lloyd and Szabó spur each other on, but after 18 minutes the route goes through many streets, including one that Szabó drives alone, fueled by the angry free energy of Carter and La Roca. "
Szabó's violent staccato - phrasing was a perfect contrast to Lloyd so Conrad, who played instinctively lyrical. Even in the present recordings, where Lloyd plays with an impulsive devotion that is unique in his early discography, his tenor saxophone tone is glowing and rounded at the edges, not jagged.
After the passion of “Sweet Georgia Bright” follows the ballad “How Can I Tell You”, which causes a “surprising change in the atmosphere”. "Lloyd's fast, fluid runs show that key elements of his idiom were developed by 1965." The only piece that was not composed by Lloyd is Szabó's "Lady Gabor", a track that was played at both locations. Lloyd always saved his most insidious grooves for his flute. Both versions of "Lady Gabor" are in 6/4 time, "twitch and snake". “Dream Weaver” from the Slugs gig “is an obsessive, hypnotic procession from which Lloyd, who plays tenor, breaks out to scream and cry. 'Slugs' Blues' have only a hinted, frugal line that Lloyd invented on the spot. It provokes solo acts of merciless aggression from each band member. ”The production quality of this package is excellent, Conrad sums up. "The clarity, presence and approach of Klabin's sound in Judson Hall is remarkable." The second CD was "sonically rougher, but good enough to maintain the mood of the slug, the nervous, electric night air."
Dan Bilawski wrote in All About Jazz that Manhattan Stories was “a journey into the past, a journey into a long gone and lost time. It's a window into the great art of Charles Lloyd in a transitional period. ”Lloyd plays like a man obsessed during a long“ Sweet Georgia Bright, ”a number that has some impressive exchanges and overlaps between his saxophone and Szabos Guitar. “How Can I Tell You” is “a delicate musical expression with a memorable solo work, which is not played back as expected. When LaRoca's drums are in full bloom, they crowd against the dreamy character of the piece. ”The quartet ends with Szabo's“ Lady Gabor ”, a mysterious number. Bilawski recognizes the traces of the future musician of his ECM era, for example in his saxophone cadenza towards the end of “How Can I Tell” and through his flute playing on “Lady Gabor”.
The Slugs' Saloon set starts out as a snapshot of a noisy room, but the music quickly realigns the ears. The program starts with "Slugs' Blues", a number with a somewhat monk-like quality that heats up over time. "Lady Gabor" appears next, it is a more interesting alternative to the version from Judson Hall. “Szabo's trance-inducing guitar work steals the show, La Roca is nimble and dexterous, and Carter adds ballast. His bass is heard and felt here. ”The last number of this performance,“ Dream Weaver ”flow and groove.
Also in All About Jazz, Marc Corroto said that in most cases “the folklore of an event is much stronger than the actual event. The older I get, the better it was. The creed applies to so much of the remembered past. Not for the only documented recordings of the Charles Lloyd Quartet. ”The duration of each of the three tracks of the recordings of over ten minutes allows the players to expand, but each track retains a consistent motif. "Sweet Georgia Bright", which has nothing to do with " Sweet Georgia Brown ", but with Lloyd's unpredictable confrontation with Thelonious Monk's "Bright Mississippi". The gem here, however, is How Can I Tell You, Lloyd's tribute to Billie Holiday . "Lloyd begins with the sound of Coltrane's blues to create a compelling and eloquent solo of devastating elegance."
The concert in the Slugs' Saloon begins with a spontaneous blues, "Slug's Blues"; this is “rough, happy, sweaty and playing music. Ron Carter's bass is a pillar for LaRoca and Lloyd. ”In Gabor's“ Lady Gabor ”, a kind of blues raga, the guitarist's Hungarian roots and his passion for Gypsy, Asian and Indian music are revealed. Lloyd complements it with a whole palette of sounds that he creates from his flute. The Slugs version comes with the horror and cash register noise of a lot. A very happy crowd.
John Fordham only gave the album three (out of five) stars in the British Guardian and wrote under the heading “Snapshot of a powerful jazz foursome”: “Lloyd's continued interest in Hungarian music probably began with Szabó, and the guitarist's fragile, sounding sound is similar often that of a cimbalom or dulcimer on these six long tracks . The bandleader is firmly set to early Coltrane mode - although the lean, plaintive sound pops up here and there - and there are more bumpy, chatty, and upbeat, free-floating effects than what you'd be used to in Lloyd's other reflective contemporary music . But the two versions of Szabó, Lady Gabor 'with pulsating guitar hooks and flute-like lines of the Coltrane-like mid-tempo number, Slug's Blues' and Lloyds funky darkly famous and Dreamweaver' made this recording to a thrilling document and a A snapshot of a powerful quartet, so Fordham summed up. "
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Dan Bilawski: Charles Lloyd: Manhattan Stories. All About Jazz, October 1, 2014, accessed March 31, 2019 .
- ^ A b c d Thomas Conrad: Charles Lloyd: Manhattan Stories. JazzTimes, December 14, 2014, accessed March 31, 2019 .
- ↑ Discographic information at Discogs
- ↑ Marc Corroto: Charles Lloyd: Manhattan Stories. All About Jazz, September 24, 2014, accessed March 31, 2019 .
- ^ John Fordham: Charles Lloyd: Manhattan Stories review - snapshot of a powerful jazz foursome. The Guardian, December 18, 2014, accessed April 1, 2019 .