01-06: The Stooges : Azkena Rock Festival 2006 - Dizzy in Greece 1956 - Don Cherry : Art Deco 1988 - Lou Rawls : Live! 1966 - Michel Petrucciani : Power of Three 1986

Not shown: Malachias Siebenhaar, Carlo Mannelli & Johann Georg Reinhardt

1685 – Malachias Siebenhaar (Czech-born German composer)
1697 – Carlo Mannelli (Italian violinist, castrato singer & composer)
1738 – Franz Xaver Murschhauser (German composer, music theorist, organist & singer)
1742 – Johann Georg Reinhardt (Austrian composer & organist)
1831 – Rodolphe Kreutzer (French violinist, teacher, composer & conductor)
1847 – Tyāgarāja [Thyagaraja, త్యాగరాజు] (Indian Carnatic composer, singer & saint)
1866 – Louis Antoine Ponchard (French tenor & singing teacher)
1906 – Gabrielle Krauss (Austrian soprano, aunt of conductor Clemens Krauss)
1933 – Vladimir de Pachmann (Ukrainian-born pianist of Russian & German ancestry)
1942 – Emma Calvé (French soprano & friend of Swami Vivekananda)
1959 – José Enrique Pedreira (Puerto Rican composer & pianist, noted for his danzas)
1987 – Domingo Santa-Cruz-Wilson (Chilean composer)
1993 – Dizzy Gillespie (American jazz trumpeter, composer & bandleader)
1995 – James Clay (American jazz tenor saxophonist & flutist)
1996 – Chubby Wise (American bluegrass fiddler)
1999 – Michel Petrucciani (French jazz pianist & composer)
2001 – Victor Braun (Canadian baritone)
2003 – Hirini Melbourne (New Zealand Māori musician, university lecturer, poet & author)
2006 – Lou Rawls (American soul, R&B & jazz singer & actor)
2007 – Sneaky Pete Kleinow (American pedal steel guitarist & songwriter, Flying Burrito Brothers et al.)
2009 – Ron Asheton (American rock guitarist, bass guitarist & songwriter, The Stooges)

If you thought yesterday was a big jazz day, with Mingus, it was only an appetizer for this huge jazz day we have today. Among our huge figures is the little pianist with the big technique, Michel Petrucciani, who was born with the condition osteogenesis imperfecta, which stunted his height but left him with average-sized hands. Petrucciani was a living testament to one's ability to overcome limitations, and his only special requirements were that the pedals of his piano be raised so he could reach them with his feet. Sometimes his small size even had its advantages - early in his career, Petrucciani's manager would often smuggle him into hotels in a suitcase in order to save money.

Aside from James Clay and Lou Rawls (who some people don't realize was a jazz singer long before he was doing the smooth soul which brought him hits during the 70s), of course there's Diz, about whose importance in the history of jazz too much cannot be said. One of the most unique and dazzling trumpeters who ever was, one of the inventors of bebop, a powerhouse who with his very physical appearance personified the coolness of jazz in the 40s and 50s. I'll not go any further, except to add that I got the chance once to see Gillespie in rehearsal a couple years before he passed, and it's a memory I know I'll always treasure.

As if that were not enough, we also remember Ron Asheton, one of the great guitarists of proto-punk; Vladimir de Pachmann and Emma Calvé, two of the most famous stars of the classical music world in the early 20th century; and Tyāgarāja, one of the very greatest composers in the history of South Indian music. I regret not being able to bring you any of Tyāgarāja's compositions today. I located what looked to be a very good record that consists largely of improvisations upon them, but as fate would have it the link directs one to the now-unreachable multiupload. Quite disappointing. But if I find something suitable later, I'll be sure to update this post and let you know about it.

11-27c: Our Labels Runneth Over

If you clicked on one of The Dead and Dying, and now you're reading this post, don't worry. Just go to the previous post.

10-16b: Eyedea & Abilities : By The Throat 2009 - Toše Proeski : Božilak 2006 - Blakey & Jazz Messengers : Free For All 1964 - Mozart String Quintets / Grumiaux et al 1976 - Wagner-Liszt Tannhäuser Overture / Bolet 1973

1983 – George Liberace (American violinist & arranger, older brother & business partner of the pianist)
1983 – Jakov Gotovac (Croatian composer & conductor)
1986 – Arthur Grumiaux (Belgian violinist & pianist)
1990 – Jorge Bolet (Cuban-born pianist & teacher, active mostly in America)
1990 – Art Blakey [Abdullah Ibn Buhaina] (American jazz drummer & bandleader, The Jazz Messengers)
1991 – Ole Beich (American rock bass guitarist, L.A. Guns, Guns N' Roses)
2005 – Len Dresslar (American jazz singer & advertising voice actor, The Jolly Green Giant)
2005 – David Reilly (American rock & electronica singer, songwriter & producer, God Lives Underwater)
2006 – Tommy Johnson (American orchestral & soundtrack tuba player, Jaws, etc.)
2007 – Toše Proeski [Тоше Проески] (Macedonian classical, pop & rock singer, songwriter, keyboardist, guitarist, actor & humanitarian)
2010 – Eyedea [Micheal Larsen] (American rapper, singer, producer & guitarist, Eyedea & Abilities)

I'm doing 10-16b before 10-16a? Well, yes, I am. Why? Because I feel like it. If you don't like it, start your own blog that nobody ever bothers to leave a comment on. ;>

Sorry, but I'll have to skip the write-up tonight. There is just too much on my plate right now. I'd love to drone on and on about Art Blakey, perhaps the quintessential hard bop drummer, but it would take me too long. I don't write quickly, tend to be too perfectionistic about my spellnig & syntax my too also, as well. Even this write-up telling you there will be no write-up is taking me forever!

Anyway, Eyedea. He wasn't one of those rappers who sang about "ho's" a lot, but we'll we're on the subject, of course the guy who voiced the Jolly Green Giant was a legitimate musician, even if you never heard him sing anything but three different notes and just that one syllable. And that little tune was so short and simple: first down a major 2nd, and then down a perfect 4th. But I bet it made you run out and grab some Niblets, didn't it?

09-28: Miles Davis Live in Europe 1967 3 Discs + DVD - Ruja ( Prog-Rock Estonia ) 1982 - Marx Brothers Original Voice Tracks 1969 - Music School Mokranjac ( Folk Music Serbia )

1649 – Ottavio Vernizzi (Italian organist & composer)
1757 – Andrea Zani (Italian violinist & composer)
1852 – Johann Friedrich Schwencke (German organist, clarinettist, composer & arranger)
1903 – Jesús de Monasterio (Spanish composer & violinist)
1914 – Stevan Stojanović Mokranjac [Стеван Стојановић Мокрањац] (Serbian composer, conductor, teacher & folklorist)
1922 – Andrejs Jurjāns (Latvian composer & folklorist)
1939 – Felicjan Szopski (Polish composer, pianist, teacher & music critic)
1947 – Francisco Santiago (Filipino composer, "Father of Kundiman Art Song")
1952 – Paul Hastings Allen (American composer)
1957 – Luis Cluzeau Mortet (Uruguayan composer, violinist, violist, pianist, choir director & teacher)
1964 – Harpo Marx (American comedian, actor & harpist)
1966 – Lucky Millinder (American jazz & R&B bandleader)
1972 – Maurice Thiriet (French composer of concert & film music)
1991 – Miles Davis (American jazz trumpeter & composer)
1993 – Fraser MacPherson (Canadian jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, flutist, pianist)
1994 – Urmas Alender (Estonian rock singer, Ruja, Propeller, Andromeeda)
1996 – Bob Gibson (American folk singer, songwriter, guitarist & banjoist)
2010 – Dolores Wilson (American operatic coloratura soprano)

Just looking at my post from last night... oh, dear... please remind me to avoid drinking & blogging in the future...

Well, it's another international soundfest today, with some of the most important composers and folklorists from Serbia, Latvia, the Philippines, and Uruguay, one of Estonia's most famous rock singers (Latvia and Estonia - how exciting to have the Baltic region so well represented), and the man who was not only a very talented harpist, but by all accounts one of the funniest people to ever appear in movies - a pretty amazing feat when you consider he was able to do it without uttering a single word.

And I'd love to say something about all of them, but let's talk about Miles Davis. What does one say about Miles? Well, there are the obvious things. He's one of the most famous figures in the entire history of jazz, and one of the most highly-regarded among both fans and critics of that music. He led not just one, but two of the greatest quintets in jazz - that they're referred to as "The First Great Quintet" and "The Second Great Quintet" ought to tell you something all by itself. And he introduced the world to another one of jazz history's most famous figures, John Coltrane.

He was not always the friendliest person in the world, and was certainly not very accessible to his many admirers. He had his substance-abuse demons, which is hardly remarkable for a jazz or rock musician. Among the all-time greats of jazz trumpet, only the tragically short-lived Clifford Brown seems to have been truly free of such issues; it's said that he hardly touched even alcohol.

As far as trumpet-playing goes, Davis was the very antithesis of the musician who wowed you with his technical prowess, his flash, or his ability to make the dogs howl with his piercingly high notes. Oh, he could play those high notes when he wanted to. But his style seemed to be marked more by what he didn't play than by what he did, a stylistic feature Davis himself credited to the influence of the spacious yet virtuosic playing of pianist Ahmad Jamal. What you really notice about Miles' trumpeting, more than anything else, is the pure corporeal sound of it - the remarkable variety of grunts and growls and groans and moans and whispers and shouts (it is, above all, an extremely vocal sound) he could coax from that horn, with just his lips, his valving fingers, and the judicious use of his Harmon mute. To the connoisseur of music, that, of course, is technical bravura to the max; for, like the ability to play so many notes in such a short span of time, the ownership of such a staggering timbral palette could come about only through sheer know-how and a great deal of practice.

But here's what I think the takeaway from Miles should be: Take any other jazz musician - let's go with trumpeters to make things otherwise the same. Louis Armstrong? The single greatest trumpeter in the New Orleans/Dixieland style. Bunny Berigan? One of the greats of the Big Band/swing era. Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro? Players who started out in swing but helped invent the new "Modern Jazz" (what we now call "bebop"), along other with other shining stars such as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Charlie Christian, and Kenny Clarke. Chet Baker? A bop player who's most associated with the West Coast/cool jazz side of things. Blue Mitchell? Great hard bop player. Don Cherry? One of the foremost players of free and avant-garde jazz from the late 50s onward.

But Miles? When he started out playing as a kid (the upper-middle-class son of a dentist from a suburb north of St. Louis), everybody was still playing swing music. Then, when bebop came around in the early-to-mid 40s, he learned how to play that; when he landed in New York in 1945, he took the town by storm, quickly becoming one of the city's hottest young players, and cutting some of his earliest records with Charlie Parker himself.

Then in 1949 is when things really started to move for Miles. The project which later became marketed as The Birth of the Cool was for all intents and purposes just that (notwithstanding some slightly earlier efforts by Lennie Tristano and his disciples). Then in the mid-50s, when there was a backlash against the cerebral, "white" sound of cool jazz, Miles became, with his First Great Quintet, one of the major players in the funkier, more gospel- and Latin-tinged sub-genre known as hard bop. Then in 1959, that year during which so much that was new in jazz appeared, Miles pioneered, along with a superb one-off band that included Coltrane and Bill Evans, modal jazz (essentially, playing over scales instead of chord changes) on Kind of Blue, considered by many to be the finest jazz album ever recorded.

By the mid-1960s, Davis was the dean of avant-garde jazz with the Second Great Quintet, although he never quite went so far as the free jazz that Ornette Coleman had pioneered, and that First Quintet alumnus Coltrane was then exploring ever-more deeply. Miles was a tad bit late to the fusion game, but with 1970's Bitches Brew, he produced, along with the studio wizardry of Teo Macero, one of its few true masterpieces. Within just months, he was touching upon the jazz-funk with which Second Quintet alumnus Herbie Hancock would make his mark as a bandleader.

So, you see... with Miles Davis, you can't say he was "this" or "that" kind of jazz musician. That's because from the late 1940s onward, he was at or near the forefront of practically every single new development that occurred in jazz - whatever he did, he did either before anyone else did it, or better than anyone else did it, or both.

Well, that's Miles Davis... or at least how I see him. Now all that's left for you to do is read more below...