As the semester comes in for what I hope to be a gentle landing, I’m taking just a bit of extra time this morning to watch Australian Jason Moloney versus Yoshiki Takei and Naoya Inoue versus Luis Nery from Tokyo. In fact, the former is on in the background while I write this.
It seems reasonable, then, to start my music Monday with an album by Toshiko Akiyoshi. Better still, May 4th was Ron Carter’s 87th birthday making it all the more appropriate! Carter and on Toshiko At the Top of the Gate (1966) she is joined by Kenny Dorham, Lew Tabackin, and Mickey Roker. The album is pretty spendy on CD, so I purchased it as a (gasp) MP3. It’s a good album especially if you’re a Kenny Dorham fan (and honestly, who isn’t these days?) and is hardly deserving of the rather lukewarm reviews that it has received. Judge for yourself:
My other find over the past couple of weekends is a pair of early Marion Brown albums from 1966 and 1967. Readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of Marion Brown especially his classic early-1970s albums. I hadn’t expected to be so charmed by these two early albums: Marion Brown Quartet (1966) and Juba-Lee (1967). I was enticed to listen to them because they featured trumpet player Alan Shorter whose work I didn’t really know well, but they also feature Brown and Shorter along with Bennie Maupin, and Ronny Boykins and Reggie Johnson (on bass). The Quartet date includes Rahied Ali on drums. Juba-Lee is a septet expanded with Graham Moncur III on trombone, Dave Burrell on piano, and Beaver Harris replacing Ali on drums. for Marion Brown Quartet was released on ESP’ Disk and despite that labels reputation for some pretty dense and challenging recordings, Brown’s date is pretty enjoyable. Juba-Lee is a bit tricky to find, but YouTube provides (and the Ezz-thetics label produced a single CD with two tracks from both Juba-Lee and The Marion Brown Quartet on it).
You can, of course, find both on Youtube:
Finally, I am enjoying Kamasi Washington’s latest album: Fearless Momevement. I’m particularly loving the opening track “Lesanu”
It came out just a week ago, so I’m not sure how much of it you’ll be able to hear on the YouTubes, but you can check out this playlist here:
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 