One interesting path to take through an “Essential Brazil” discography is to focus on the many collaborative projects involving famous names: The titans of Brazilian music didn’t just make their own masterworks, they often found themselves as part of unusual “teams” for the purposes of exploration. Some of these, like the legendary pairing of Jobim and Elis Regina, entitled Elis & Tom, have the feeling of summit meetings. Others have less starpower wattage, but are no less musically vibrant. Here’s an annotated playlist featuring flat-out astounding collaborations:
Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto: “Corcovado” from Getz/Gilberto (1000 Recordings, pg. 308). The template for countless feisty, musically adventurous collaborations from Brazil.
Maria Bethania/Edu Lobo: “So Me Fez Bem” from Edu Lobo/Maria Bethania. Singing in an almost inconsolable heartbreak rasp, Maria Bethania seizes every emotional ripple lurking within this Edu Lobo ballad.
Baden Powell/Vinicius de Moraes: “Canto de Ossanha” from Os Afro Sambas. This meeting of dastardly guitarist Baden Powell and poet Vinicius de Moraes is one of a series of originals based on folkloric melodies. They're aimed at rousing various deities, and powerful enough to move mountains.
Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim: “Once I Loved” from Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim. (1000 Recordings, pg.708). The chairman of the board wasn’t from Brazil, but he certainly gets inside the Jobim songbook, charting a path followed by countless singers from around the world
Miucha & Jobim: “Samba do Aviao” from Miucha & Antonio Carlos Jobim. This is arguably the all-time best interpretation of a tragically underloved Jobim gem. Though her voice has a cigarette toughness, Miucha, the sister of Chico Buarque and mother of Bebel Gilberto, sings as though gliding.
Wanda Sa with Sergio Mendez & Brazil 65: “So Nice” from Brazil ’65. Before Mendez and crew made it big, they worked with the amazing Wanda Sa, whose voice illuminates every corner of this oft-heard tune.
Elis Regina & Toots Thielemans: “Wave” from Aquarela do Brazil. A typically playful and intervallically daring reading from Elis Regina; the harmonica master does OK, too.
Gilberto Gil & Jorge Ben: “Quem Mandou” from Gil & Jorge. A loose, off-the-cuff energy pervades everything on this classic one-off, which helped establish the foundation for early Brazilian funk.
Elis Regina & Antonio Carlos Jobim: “Inutil Paisagem” from Elis & Tom (1000 Recordings, pg. 398). A semester’s worth of schooling on the art of ballad singing in three minutes.
Edu Lobo/Chico Buarque/Milton Nascimento: “Beatriz” from O Grande Circo Mistico. The album, which involves many Brazil luminaries, is uneven, but this track features a transfixing Milton Nascimento vocal.
Edu Lobo & Antonio Carlos Jobim: “Moto Continuo” from Edu & Tom. Another structurally complex labyrinth-like tune from Edu Lobo (with Chico Buarque), this 1981 duet is one of Jobim’s best late-career performances.
Caetano Veloso & Gilberto Gil: “Desde Quo O Samba E Samba” from Tropicalia 2. The 1994 reunion of two enfant terribles of Tropicalia travels from simple acoustic settings to busier electronica; this languid, impossibly beautiful tune leans affectionately toward tradition.
Wanda Sa & Roberto Menescal: “Chega de Saudade” from Eu e a Musica. If you ever need to be reminded that bossa nova is eternal, cue up this easygoing recent rendition of a Jobim classic, which reunites the amazingly evocative Sa and her first guitar teacher, the composer Roberto Menescal.
Helm was one of those rare American singers, almost all of them gone now, whose voice conveyed and embodied the hardships borne by previous generations. It wasn’t just the inviting roughness in his tone – you can tell, instantly, that his singing came from a particular place and stood for a constellation of values. It carried deep knowledge of work and the sound of toil, and also the tired pride that comes with a job well done. Like Ralph Stanley (another conduit to a fast-disappearing era in music), Helm was a plain and humble singer – there are no fancy curlicues or embellishments in his best performances. Instead there are cracks and jagged edges, imperfections that become integral to the tales, part of the “romance” he laced into simple tunes that tell about the challenges of maintaining grace under duress.
That's not the only "end of the line" element at work here. Helm was also a master of the “revue” – most famously as an architect of the Band, with its strangely haunted sense of folklore and unusual revolving-door group chemistry. But he didn’t give up on revue-style entertainment when the Band disbanded in 1976 – in fact, his next project, the RCO Allstars, was in some ways an even more elaborate endeavor. This group, heard best on a live performance from New Year’s Eve in 1977, included Dr. John (still another survivor with a time-traveling voice), legendary Stax guitarist Steve Cropper, and Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass and blues harmonica master Paul Butterfield. Though the group was short-lived, the chemistry on display throughout this live record is flat-out ferocious: Here, in a whirlwind set, is a rollicking tour of American roots that suggests an appreciation for rhythmic nuance and a sense of swing that few ensembles in the history of American music have ever attained. This is directly the result of Helm’s instincts as a leader: Over and over, he assembled sensitive and stylistically diverse musicians into roaring, world-changing bands. Want proof? Check “Milk Cow Boogie” on this playlist.
Helm continued to be a revue-maker throughout his post-Band career – with the ad-hoc Midnight Rambles he organized in upstate New York as well as his remarkably strong Dirt Farmer and Electric Dirt solo projects. The appreciations of his work rightly focus on the Band and its many contributions; here’s hoping that when future generations look back on the work of Levon Helm, they’ll spend a minute on the solo output, too.
Next Stop: Michael Doucet & BeauSoleil: Bayou Deluxe. After That: Various Artists: Jai eta au bai.
Over the last few years, there’s been a flood of historically significant reissues in Cajun music. Many of these were not available during the time I was researching 1000 Recordings, so here's a short Spotify playlist designed to facilitate exploration of some roots of Cajun music. The playlist begins with a cut from Nathan Abshire, an accordionist who performed frequently with the Balfa Brothers.
Some titles that never made it to CD have surfaced in digital form, and when combined with a few carefully curated compilations, the recent releases offer a fuller picture of some of Louisiana’s trailblazing, high-spirited and criminally overlooked musicians. This playlist highlights the recordings of several pioneers whose works have been missing forever – including the superfast accordionist Iry LeJeune (whose best anthology, Cajun's Greatest: The Definitive Collection, is not on Spotify but available here), and the “Fiddle King of Cajun Swing,” Harry Choates, whose sound suggests a rollicking meeting of Cajun dance and Bob Wills-style Texas swing. Also here is Aldus Roger, a slick and soulful accordionist and bandleader who was popular in dancehalls and on TV in the ‘50s and ‘60s; his approach is lighter, more agile, than many traditional bands. Again, Spotify doesn’t have much on him – the curious should seek out A Cajun Legend, his hits collection.
For some reason, the Embed function isn't working. Please follow this link to encounter a spirited interpretation from 1984 in Japan, featuring relatively clear audio...
Blue Train
A Love Supreme
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
(under Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane: At Carnegie Hall, pg. 542).
Obviously, that's not a full accounting of a torridly productive artist. Coltrane's playing evolved at warp speed -- by the time the public caught up to one of his approaches, he was onto the next. As a result, it was impossible to reflect his overall contribution, much less each of his “periods,” with just a few titles. This playlist is designed to offer a fuller picture of Coltrane’s evolution and also his influence – it ends with several selections from tenor players whose playing contains some glimmers of Coltrane inspiration.
For an overview of Coltrane’s development, the listener would ideally start with his work as a sideman in Davis’ group (represented on the playlist by “If I Were a Bell” from Relaxin’), move to the book’s first entry, Blue Train, and then into Coltrane’s own standards records for Prestige (1958 Lush Life, which includes his intense and lyrical take on “I Hear A Rhapsody”). These show the saxophonist’s mastery of gestural shape, his pursuit of clarity not just in terms of tone but also ideas. In his most memorable solos, we marvel not just at the individual notes and lines, but the ways the lines coalesce into shapes, often stunningly memorable shapes.
From there, it’s important to spend a moment appreciating Coltrane at the height of his impressively technical “sheets of sound” powers – via “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,” recorded in 1960 for Atlantic but not released until 1964, on Coltrane’s Sound. Also on the playlist is a “holy grail” record studied by almost everyone interested in jazz: The harmonically intricate Giant Steps, represented here by “Countdown.” (Many have asked why this album isn’t on the list. Short answer: Coltrane tears it up but the rest of the group struggles a bit, and I felt it was better to introduce Coltrane with recordings that are uniformly breathtaking, not just during the saxophone solos.)
That brings us to 1961, and the beginning of Coltrane’s association with Impulse Records. Among the key titles from that first year is a rousing live set recorded at the Village Vanguard, as well as the first of many more conceptual projects, Africa/Brass. In 1962, Coltrane followed that with a duet with Duke Ellington, and a pair of his most plaintive and beautiful studio efforts, Ballads and John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. If asked to generate an open-ended list of “essential” recordings, I’d include both of these; together, they represent a pinnacle of jazz ballad playing. During roughly this same period, Coltrane sought ways to express spirituality through music; that led to his 1964 classic A Love Supreme (the opening section, “Acknowledgement,” is on this playlist). To cover his later, less structured works, I picked the rubato “Welcome” from 1965’s Kulu Se Mama, and “Consequences” from Meditations – and though the records from this period are a bit erratic, there are treasures on every one of them.
The last selection features Trane’s collaborator Pharoah Sanders, one of several tenor players who extended Coltrane’s notions into different realms. He’s the first artist in the section of the playlist devoted to “branches” emanating from the tree of Coltrane. Also here is a Coltrane-inspired classic by Archie Shepp from his spirited tribute album Four For Trane; a lovely modal tune in a Coltrane mood by Wayne Shorter (“Deluge”), and a version of the standard “Yesterdays” featuring underrated tenorman Joe Farrell working alongside Coltrane’s longtime drummer, Elvin Jones. Next is a slice of one classic record by the David Murray Octet, Ming, that shows Murray at the peak of his improvisatory powers. We end with one of the most disciplined disciples, the great Steve Grossman, and his version of “I Hear A Rhapsody” recorded in 1986.
Eric Erlandson: Letters To Kurt (Akashic Books). I haven’t read all of these searching, angry and appropriately diffuse “letters” to the late Kurt Cobain., written by the bassist and co-founder of Hole, Eric Erlandson. There are 52 of them, each one a twisted elegy to the Nirvana guitarist and reluctant grunge poster boy. They may never wind up being considered great literature, but the language has the restless staccato heave of great rock, and the descriptions (of orgasms and syringes and a “ginger cayenne jalapeno enema”) offer a window into not just a mind but a mindset – and by extension, a scene. Here’s how one missive ends: “I hear vinyl’s back in. Suffering never goes out.”
Heartless Bastards: “Only For You” from Arrow (Partisan Records). Speaking of suffering, there are few voices in current rock who manage to communicate the endless permutations of heartbreak the way Erika Wennerstrom, the frontwoman of Heartless Bastards, does. This song is one of several from the new Arrow that describe, both in words and languidly arching melodies, those tentative first steps back from the brink. It’s a flat-out astounding vocal performance. I covered this record for NPR a month ago (review here), and I’m still obsessing.
Spotify shot back a playlist (it’s here) with material from two of his releases, though alas it doesn’t include the stellar Con Sacrificio from 1984, which was completed just before Gutierriez died and is regularly mentioned as one of the decade’s lost salsa classics. I don’t have the original LPs so I can’t tell whether some selections have been omitted, but it hardly matters: What survives, against long odds after all this time, is prime hard-hitting Afro-Cuban music made in the years just before the pop-leaning Miami Sound took over in South Florida.
Like Papo Lucca, Gutierrez was a master of the recurring “tumbao” phrases that are part of the skeleton of modern salsa. Gutierrez’ cannily broken chords have a distinct modern-jazz feel – this is what McCoy Tyner would sound like fronting a dance band. And that’s just the foundation: Gutierrez was a terrifically gifted arranger, a master of audacious brass shout choruses and tight, pinpoint-precise rhythm section accompaniments. His settings are plenty energetic and sometimes busy, yet somehow allow the vocalists – primarily the tremendous Gabino Pampini – room to create loose, clearly extemporaneous melody lines.
It had been a long long time since I heard this music. During the period when Gutierrez’ band was royalty in Miami, I was in the horn section of a younger outfit called Salsa Express. We played some of the same clubs, but we were not in the same league. We were in awe of Gutierrez, and Pampini, and the entire ensemble – these guys could roar, but they were slick in the best sense, too. They’d take the stage and within minutes, you’d feel like you were in the middle of a rare happening. The singers drew listeners close, with the low-key, confident charm that often eludes modern soneros. The players got people moving, and kept them on the floor not with power but finesse: By articulating every note cleanly, they showed dancers exactly how to operate within each tune.
One warning: The sound quality is iffy in spots. But the quality of the music never wavers: If you only have a few minutes, check out “No Te Vayas” and “Vagabundeando,” and prepare to be converted.
]]>Miles Davis: Live in Europe 1967. The Paris version of “Masqualero,” on disc three of this collection of mostly unreleased live performances, lasts ten minutes. That’s all it takes to develop renewed awe for the astoundingly interactive on-the-fly genius of this ensemble. Davis’ stark melodies are set against lovely watercolor chords and endlessly elastic metric machinations – check out how often these five supremely alert musicians completely transform a mood in the space between downbeats. 2011 was a solid year of creativity in jazz – or, in the parlance of the latest Facebook “movement,” Black American Music (please, let us know when the fences and tollbooths are in place!) – but somehow everything current sounds anemic next to this.
Bon Iver: Bon Iver. Fragile songs riddled with questioning and doubt, rendered in spectacularly harmonized falsetto floral arrays. (The solo vocal tunes, deep into the record, are pretty great too….).
Wilco: The Whole Love. Here’s the balance between daydreamy folk-rock confessional and adventurous avant-downtown dissonance Wilco has been aiming for on the last few records. It seems clinical when described this way in words; in music, it sounds like pure giddy genius.
Black Keys: El Camino. Bachman-Turner Overdrive roaring out of the classic-rock deep freeze on a nasty tequila bender.
Jonathan Wilson: Gentle Spirit. Speaking of the ‘70s, here’s a slice of idyllic, gorgeously poised (and wondrously nostalgia-free) Laurel Canyon rock. Framed by intertwined guitar leads and lit from within by trance-state melodies, Wilson’s songs occupy a zone of warm, open-hearted reflection.
James Farm: James Farm. There was lots of new orchestrational thinking in improvised music this year, and among the most pleasant examples is this debut from a quartet that sounds like a real band. Imagine that.
Adele: 21. File this one under “admiration, not love.” When I first heard it, I felt that the plush production rounded off some of Adele’s crucial sharp edges. After endless repeat exposure to the songs, my quibbles with the production remain. But I have to give it up: There is just no denying that voice.
Radiohead: The King of Limbs. As with pretty much everything the band has done, this record opens genuinely new doors, suggests new combinations of texture and emotion, offers new takes on the peculiar alchemy of a rock song.
Drake: Take Care. Lots of prominent rappers kvetch about the trials of fame – Eminem dines quite well on that theme, and Kanye West blew it to smithereens on the ultra-dense My Beautiful Twisted Fantasy. Drake goes in a brutally honest introspective direction here, singing and rapping as though he’s just emerged from a meditation retreat where he discovered all kinds of loathesome things about himself. Along with Undun, below, this feels like a necessary (and overdue) course correction for commercial hiphop.
The Roots: Undun. This is the record to play for your friend who complains about the rampant ego glorification that dominates so much hiphop discourse. A musically exuberant, lyrically sobering tour through the mind of an average tortured urbandweller, Undun represents a storytelling peak for the Roots, but that’s not all: Its sung refrains (“Tip The Scales”) give voice to the sad disillusionment that settled in after those Obama-led “Yes We Can” chants died down.
The Decemberists: The King Is Dead. After unleashing a sprawling prog-rock opus, what else is there to do but create a series of diabolically focused little songs that strive for the sorrow-filled, world-weary tones of the great Hank Williams?
tUnE yArDs: Who Kill. Technology has come a long way since Solex’ monstrously inventive Low Kick and Hard Bop from 2001, and this album, which is the spiritual heir to that one, harnesses it brilliantly, dropping listeners into the middle of an African ritual one minute and a beautifully layered Joni Mitchell confession the next.
My Morning Jacket: Circuital. Epic journeys and existential mindgames coalesce into the most consistent set of songs from the band that is arguably the most consistently rousing live act on the road.
Paul Simon: So Beautiful or So What. Worth hearing just for the title track, which captures the thoughts of a numb Everyman as he struggles to comprehend the unhinged opinions and unwelcome advertisments, the trash and transcendence and “look at me” ravings that constitute the modern media assault.
Bill Frisell 858 Quartet: Sign of Life . These pensive etudes glide right across the territorial lines that divide jazz, bluegrass and chamber music, describing an elusive and endlessly fragile shadow world.
J.D. Allen Trio: Victory! This year some tenor player put out a record proclaiming The Triumph of the Heavy. It wasn’t. This is.
Various Artists: El Barrio: The Ultimate Collection of Latin Boogaloo, Disco, Funk and Soul. Fania Records was never just the incubator of New York salsa – the label was also responsible for some monstrously energetic backbeat music. Surveying commercial hits and influential album tracks, this four-disc compilation shows how the flirtatious Latin-soul boogaloo pulse of the ‘60s evolved into muscular, utterly unique strains of funk.
Gretchen Parlato: The Lost and Found. Bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding snagged all of this year’s jazz love in the media. But several people in her circle – most notably the singer Gretchen Parlato – made far more interesting records than her cluttered Chamber Music Society. Parlato has a great sense of space and impressive command of a carefully controlled stage whisper; on the best moments here (“Still,” a delightfully loose version of Wayne Shorter’s “Juju”), she kills softly.
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Amos Lee: Mission Bell; M83: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming; Iron and Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean; Lisa Hannigan: Passenger; The Weekend: House of Balloons; The Beach Boys: Smile!; The Rolling Stones: Some Girls (Deluxe Edition w/ Previously Unreleased Material).
]]>Bad Brains: A Band in DC. Documentary about the long-underappreciated punk visionaries will screen multiple times this week at SXSW. Schedule here.
Nicholas Jaar: Marks/Angles. Found this disarmingly seductive Eno-influenced tune, "Angles," after reading about the electronic musician (and Brown U undergrad) in Sunday's New York Times. Note to cratediggers: That Cartola album on top of the vinyl stack in one photograph is tremendous too.
ENTRY: Los Van Van: Ay, Dios Amparame! (1000 Recordings, page 800).
Next Stop: NG La Banda: En La Calle
After That: Fania All-Stars: Commitment
Up One Level: Sonora Poncena: “Boranda” from Gigante Del Sur (Inca, 1977).
Further Inquiry: Sonora Poncena: “A Night In Tunisia” from New Heights (Inca, 1980); Sonora Poncena: “Date Cuenta” from Determination (Inca, 1982).
Spotify Playlist: click here.
Tucked between the smooth dancefloor classics of the Fania All Stars’ Commitment is a showcase for one of the underloved giants of Latin music – the pianist and master improvisor Enrique Arsenio Lucca Quiñonez, better known as Papo Lucca.
The tune, “Piano Man,” starts with a thundering superfast trill on a single piano note, a “look-at-me” parlor trick you’d expect from Elton John.
Then sonero Ismael Quintana and his agile crew of backing vocalists begin singing the praises of Papo Lucca, the brain behind salsa powerhouse Sonora Poncena. As often happens in such tribute songs, there’s a big helping of hyperbole in the lyrics; just as you’re wondering whether all the love is over the top, Papo Lucca begins a coolheaded, wonderfully inventive solo that combines danceband theatrics with intricate, and strikingly original, bebop lines.
By the time Commitment was released in 1980, the salsa world was obviously in awe of Papo Lucca, in part because through his stewardship, Sonora Poncena had become one of the most creative ensembles in Latin music. Starting with the 1977 Gigante Del Sur, the group put out a string of electrifying records that established a high bar for salsa innovation and routinely reset it higher. Those records usually feature a few disciplined tunes designed to satisfy dancers (salsa’s core audience, after all), like the lovely “Date Cuenta” from Determination. Alongside those would typically be one or two experiments, pieces that challenged the band. To fully appreciate Papo Lucca’s genius, move from “Piano Man” to “Boranda” on Gigante Del Sur. Adapting Brazilian songwriter Edu Lobo’s account of the ravages of drought to salsa rhythm, Papo Lucca and crew conjure a brilliantly loose yet bittersweet mood in the verses. Incredibly, the catchiness of the tune carries right through the piano solo, on Fender Rhodes electric; here Papo Lucca scatsings along with his extemporaneous musings, and though he’s as technically adept as ever, what’s most striking about the solo is its lyricism. Anyone looking to understand the alchemy of a great improvisation – what makes a solo thrilling and musically profound at the same time? – will enjoy burrowing into this one.
A few years later, on a record fittingly titled New Heights, Sonora Poncena covered Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night In Tunisia.” This offers another perspective on Papa Lucca: Though he opens his solo with a big flourish in the style of the better-known piano demon Eddie Palmieri, he quickly settles into the more subtle, subversive task of renovating this oft-heard warhorse. He uses small gestures to outline the harmony, then adds splashes of unexpected dissonance that offer an entirely fresh color scheme. As with many of Papo Lucca’s solos, there’s more than dazzle involved – he’s clearly thought, at some depth, about the material and how to reframe it. For all the sparks he sends shooting through the keyboard, this “Piano Man” is really a conceptualist at heart.
]]>Thanks guys!
The podcast is available via iTunes and also on the podcast's website.
Enjoy!
]]>We'd like to hear from you!
Please send along any thoughts, insights, ideas about what you'd like to see on this site. A friend of mine offered a suggestion I like quite a bit: Observing that I've heard and written about lots of music since the publication of the book, he wondered whether it would be possible to write short essays that would pick up from the Next Stop/After That recommendations. In other words, once you've checked the Next Stop and After That, here's a further work to investigate. Another idea from a reader: To re-start the "Shadow Classics" column I used to do for NPR Music here. (A post about one such recent discovery is here.)
Thanks in advance for any/all suggestions!
]]>An incredibly diligent person named Ulysses, who lives in China, has made it much easier. He built a Spotify playlist, viewable here, that includes tracks from over 800 of the titles in the book. It's not everything, and in most cases the reader has to do further searching in Spotify to find the rest of each album, but it's a massive undertaking and a huge step. I hope it proves to be invaluable to anyone who's involved in exploring music.
If so, let's hear from you! Send along something you're excited by and we'll try to volley back a Next Stop. Or Ten. From the rather impressive Spotify database. (More on that later!)
]]>The public at large likely never heard of him.
Fischer was another example of a vanishing breed in music – a “significant unknown” whose coloristic brass, flourishes of wild strings and unusual harmonies made countless records better. (For proof, listen to the scenic psychedlia of "I Wonder U" from Prince’s Parade.)
Fischer was also a pianist with an original “sound” and approach – his lines were delicate and graceful, his chordal accompaniments richly shaded and delivered in terse bursts. As a pianist, Fischer was another branch on the tree of Bill Evans; the great Herbie Hancock describes Fischer as a “major influence on my harmonic concept.”
Crucially, Fischer was also an omnivore: In the course of his long career, he delved deeply into jazz, Brazilian music, Latin jazz and other styles, while also writing his own classical works and arranging sweeping orchestral accompaniments for countless pop recordings (everyone from Paul McCartney to Celine Dion hired him). He’d studied classical composition and wasn’t afraid to draw on that vocabulary at any time, in any setting. A quote on his website articulates his philosophy: “I relate to everything. I’m not just jazz, Latin, or classical. I really am a fusion of all of those, not today’s fusion, but my fusion.”
That quote got me thinking. In this age of hyper-specialization, when aspiring musicians are trained to gain proficiency at one bankable skillset, who will become the next Clare Fischer? Is it possible to be curious and conversant the way he was? To enter a room and engage with whatever music is happening and lift it up, just on ears and wits and broad experience? Is there even a place for that kind of renaissance man anywhere in current musicmaking?
A Few Highlights from Fischer
Cal Tjader Plays The Contemporary Music Of Mexico and Brazil (1962), piano and arrangements.
Dizzy Gillespie: A Portrait of Duke Ellington (recorded 1960). piano, arrangements.
Joao Gilberto: Joao (1991), arrangements.
Prince: Parade (1986), arrangements.
Clare Fischer: Salsa Picante (1978), piano, arrangements.
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