[Dixielandjazz] Holiday Gift of Music Suggestions

[Steve Barbone]

While searching the NY Times archives for musical Holiday gift suggestions,
the two below were the closest I could get to OKOM. I was looking for gifts
to young people who are not jazz oriented at the moment.

I don't know anything about "City of Dreams", surmising that it is mainly
New Orleans funk in the current genre. Not a bad gift idea for young people.
I do know about the Basie Band, recorded live at Birdland. For many years,
Basie and the big band resided at Birdland the week between Christmas & New
Years Day. I went at least twice during that week every year to see that
band back then. I remember them recording this album.

The audience was incredible. Every musician in the area would fall by, like
Sarah Vaughn, Buddy Rich, Leonard Bernstein, et al, and movie stars like,
Mel Ferrar, Audrey Hepburn, Kirk Douglas and others also showed up. They all
adored Basie and it electrified his performances. If you are a Swing fan,
and/or just want to hear "real" swing, get that album. I wish you all could
have been there to see, hear and soak up the atmosphere of Birdland & Basie
in the late 1950s, and early 1960s.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



The Boxed Set Lives

THE NEW YORK TIMES - CITY OF DREAMS by JON PARELES
Published: November 23, 2007

Leftovers? For the holidays? That¹s one way to look at this year¹s crop of
boxed sets. Now that most pop careers have already been distilled to a
handful of discs, culling has given way to expansion. Musicians and labels
are combing archives for outtakes, alternate versions, videos and other
curios, rewriting pop¹s past and revealing how good ‹ or how misguided ‹ the
original selection process was. And many of the leftovers deserve their
second chance.  

Here is a CD boxed set, recommended by the pop and jazz critics of The New
York Times. It is the only one that comes close to OKOM.

CITY OF DREAMS - A Collection of New Orleans Music

Before Hurricane Katrina, a lot of New Orleans music was cozily insular and
suffused in local lore, mingling tradition and nostalgia. The New Orleans
aficionados at Rounder Records have recorded more than 100 albums there
since the early 1980s, with musicians who were already elders ‹ including
the pianists Professor Longhair and James Booker and the singers Irma Thomas
and Johnny Adams ‹ and younger ones carrying on traditions like brass-band
music and Mardi Gras Indian songs.

³City of Dreams² includes a few vintage R&B singles. But it¹s mostly a
survey of what visitors could hear in recent decades in clubs, at Mardi Gras
or at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The label recorded working
musicians steeped in the city¹s rolling, chattering second-line rhythms and
its casual, intuitive notion of ensemble unity.

This is by no means a definitive New Orleans collection; it¹s strong on
pianists (with one CD of solos) and older R&B singers, adequate on brass
bands, stretched thin on funk. But in its informal way ³City of Dreams²
picks up the spirit of a unique local scene that took its continuity for
granted. Two years after the levees failed, with the city still depopulated,
that continuity is in question. (Rounder Records. Four CDs. $32.98.)




>From the Archives, Old Hits Dressed Up for the Season
THE NEW YORK TIMES - Published: December 7, 2007 - Ben Ratliff

Holidays are for memories, and for recording companies they¹re also good
reason to plunge into archives in order to rediscover and repackage hits,
rarities, live recordings and thematic collections. Here the music critics
of The New York Times review some of this year¹s compilations and
anthologies. 


COUNT BASIE: ŒBASIE AT BIRDLAND¹ (Roulette/EMI). For jazz big bands the
early ¹60s were the waning years, before large jazz ensembles became
untenable, impractical, the wrong mood in the wrong economy. But here, in
1961, the Basie band was still as strong as ever. This expanded version of a
great live, blues-heavy record is a perfect demonstration of how the band
could find its center of gravity in no time at all, juiced and jolted by the
drummer Sonny Payne, leaving craters of space to expose Basie¹s murmuring
piano breaks, leading beautifully into solos by Frank Foster, Thad Jones,
Budd Johnson and others. The record is rich with atmosphere too. When the
musicians aren¹t playing, they¹re talking and laughing. BEN RATLIFF