You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 5 Great Jazz Albums of the '90s - #33

Episode Date: March 4, 2018

Adam and Peter debate their favorite albums of the 90's - and their favorite color of Z. Cavaricci pants. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to talk about five great jazz albums from the 90s. The 90s? I love the 90s. The 90s were great. I mean I feel like it was just yesterday we were in the 90s. But also I'll say that the 90s is a very overlooked decade for jazz. I think there's really some good albums out. I'm glad we're talking about this. I think so too. I mean for me it you know I was in my 20s. It was very formative. I mean 1990. I was 20 and then 99. That was 29. You do the math. That's right. But that was a time when I was you know recording a lot and participating

in some stuff but really heavy listening. In fact, I remember right in Brown 1990 or 91 walking in, it was 90, right? When I first no, sorry, 91. When I first moved to New Orleans, I went into the Tower Records down on South Peter Street. They had a huge tower records there and I bought $700-something dollars worth of CDs. I was so excited.

I got back from like my first Europe tour and I didn't have a care in the world and just bought all this music. And it was a lot of older stuff. It was like the heyday of the CDs but a lot of new releases and things like that and I think it was a great decade for jazz music. Just the fact that there were Tower Records. That's a very

90s thing. I know, I know. Those places were so great. Exactly. All right so I'm going to kick off the five great ones and certainly like many things this could be 50 or 57. Totally. But it's five. With my friend Nicholas Payton's Gumbo Nouveau.

And I think this was right in the middle. Obviously, we're not going chronologically here, but this was right around 95, 96, 94, something like that. But this is such a great record. I go back and listen to it, like, I mean, certainly monthly, sometimes even weekly. It's just a great sounding record. Nicholas sounds great.

I think for Nicholas, he probably thinks his playing isn't super mature, but who cares? I love it. I love his arrangements, you know, and it's all like his concept. He was so young when he did this, but his concept on taking New Orleans, you know, older tunes, I mean, like West End Blues, you know, iconic tunes with the Lewis Armstrong solo, and putting his own modern spin on it is so hip.

And it's a big band, but it's not really a big band. It's a little big band. And it was fun because I got to play a lot of that music with him in small groups. And actually with the same big band, too, later on as well. But I just love the record from beginning to end. I mean, I love that era of Nicholas Payton. I think he sounds incredible. Yeah.

I'm going to go with one, and this is a bit of a homer pick because my partner here is on this record. This is Joshua Redman, Spirit of the Moment live at the Village Vanguard, one of my all-time favorite records ever, but certainly one of the best records of the 90s. It really brought not only Joshua Redmond to the forefront of a lot of people of my generation jazz fans, but you as well as Chris Thomas and Brian Blade, and I mean, amazing. As someone who sometimes sees messages directed at you, It's like a weekly basis. Someone mentions St. Thomas or something, your solo on that,

Josh's solo on that. It's incredible. Tell us what was that like? Well, it was, you know, we had, you know, recording at the Vanguard, you got a little bit of wind at your back, a little wind in your sales there, so there was that. And it was just a special time in that band because Josh had just put that quartet together.

Actually, that month. I mean, it was one of our first gigs, which is a little bit of a risky thing to say, I'm going to do a live double. Was it really? Like it was. We did a tour in Japan for two weeks right before that, and then went right to New York and did that week.

That's incredible. It was like juiced, you could tell there was some magic happening. Yeah, but the thing was, Brian, Chris and myself, the rhythm section, we had been playing together for several years in New Orleans in different situations. And Josh knew that, and we'd even play, Josh used to come down to New Orleans some before that, and we played with Roy Hargrove some.

So, I mean, he knew that there was a rapport there amongst us all. I think he just had this great idea of really wanting to capture a new group with new music. You know, the quartet he had before that was great, and they did the record, well, they did Wish, you know, with Pat Matheny. And then they did the mood swing, which is an amazing record. But that, you know, Brian, Blade is kind of the bridge between those two quartets and those two sounds because he's the only member that's there. But I think, you know, Josh just wanted to do something different, do something live. And it was a cool thing when you can kind of capture the music and the time in the moment. at a live gig.

Yeah, it's an incredible piece of art. It's one of the best live albums ever, I think. And I think it's my favorite Joshua Redmond in the 90s, which was a very fertile decade for that guy. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, next number three, I'm going to go with Kenny Garrett's songbook. A good choice. And, man, I love this record.

And I always thought it was primarily because of Kenny Kirkland's incredible playing on it. And that's certainly a big part of it. But the more I listen to it over the years, I just think it's one of the greatest jazz records ever made. I think everybody's playing, I mean, from Jeff Watts, Nat Reeves, Kenny Garrett, of course, Kenny Kirkland. I mean, it's just superior playing, superior sounds, superior compositions. It's like an old school record in a way, the way that it's put together as a story from beginning to end, but definitely for the CD era. And the compositions are just finally crafted.

They're different. They take advantage of everybody in interesting ways. And then you've just got stellar first-rate playing. So I love it. you mentioned the CD era because for me like you know Kenny Garrett's sound works so well on that like pristine CD even now it's like an MP3 is almost too thin for that I don't know I just love listening to his music on a CD and maybe it's nostalgic at this point well no he's a it's a fat sound I mean it's fat with an F and a pH simultaneously I feel like it just goes so well with that that really

that digital era of music but like high quality digital era of music I remember hearing that record that CD around the time it came out in Japan at a great coffee shop in Shinigawa. And I forget the name of the place, but that was the neighborhood. And with some incredible huge speakers, teeny little coffee, one of these jazz coffee shops where you just go and sit and have, like, you literally order a coffee, a little cup of coffee for $20. And you sit there as long as you want, and they've got a lot of LPs and CDs and an incredible sound system with like, you know, separate amps for both these speakers.

I remember listening to that record and you talk about, you know, Kenny's fat sound. I mean, the whole thing, man, it was, I can still, I still remember what it felt like. So cool. So for my next pick, I'm going to go with actually three albums of the 90s. And this is Brad Meldow's Art of the Trio's Volume 2, 3, and 4. You didn't like Volume 1. Well, Volume 1 is actually, no, Volume 1 is really, really good, but it's split up. It's half the record is McBride.

Oh, right, right. I think it's Brian Blade. It's either McBride or, it's either Blade or. It's either Blade or Hutchinson. I'm going to have to look that up. And then the other half is his classic trio with Jorge Rossi. And really the beginnings of that. In the beginnings of that, right.

So that volume one is a little just, it's really good. There's no doubt about it, but it's a little mismatched. But volumes two, three and four were all, I think they were all three of those were live at the Village Vanguard and just like that's that classic Rad Meldow trio sound with Jorge and Larry Grenadier. And I mean, it really, those records to me, first of all, I was a teenager, so, So everything you hear that's new when you're a teenager resonates with you. So for those, those stuck with me is something that's like,

I'd never heard jazz like that before. I never knew that you can get those sounds. They were covering these really interesting, you know, tunes that, you know, pop tunes or whatever, almost hipster tunes of the day. And I just, it really, really resonated with me. Such great playing. I mean, and also those records, it's just going to show you how malleable the combination of a piano trio really is.

I mean, when you can have, you know, a trio of like the Oscar Peterson trio and then this trio, and it sounds like completely different. Music is like a totally different sound. And you know, that's still going on today, but for the 90s, I think that that piano trio just had their own sound very, very quickly. Yeah, and I mean, that record, too, those recordings, especially the ones at the Vanguard, that was, you know, they tapped into that sound. That was Warner Brothers, and it was the same with what we did. with Josh was, same engineer, same producer,

and they kind of got a sound at the Vanguard, and on other recordings too. And I always think that the sound, that's kind of that sound of the 90s in a lot of ways. And even on some of Kenny Garris recordings too, and I think that was a big part of those recordings. Really

brilliantly. Can we just say, while we're doing this, shout out to the Village Vanguard for being on our list of 90s albums twice. That just shows you how timeless that room is. That's right, that's right. So, for number five, for our last one, I want to go with, we're talking about like the Warner Brothers sound, the other sound where

we started with Nicholas Payton and the Verve recordings, that was its own sound as well for the 90s. Totally. And I want to go with Joe Henderson, and this is from early 90s, Lush Life, music of Billy Strayhorn. And I think that kind of ushered in the decade in a lot of ways

with some other great recordings, but that one is just so special, but you're getting into like these conceptual records that really worked musically. You know, I mean, yeah, Joe Henderson could just walk into the studio and just play his tunes or play blueses and it's going to be a great record. But this was like there was some thought put into it and like, you know, we're going to do the music of this and the concept is going to be this. And so it was music of Billy Strayhorn, but it was also Joe Henderson paired with some of the young lions, like a lot of talk at that time about young players, the players that kind of came up right after Winton and Bramford Marcellus and Kenny Kirkland and those guys.

those young guns and so you know it's something that if the right amount of thought and planning isn't put into it, it can become just sort of a gimmick but on that record I thought it worked great. You've got Greg Hutchinson on drums, Christian McBride on bass. Young Hutch and young Christian. Young Christian. Yeah, I mean a teenage

Christian for sure. And Stephen Scott, young Stephen Scott as well on piano and then you have Joe Henderson and like the way that they play together It really, to me, typifies the cross-generational aspect of this music that we see all the time. But it's captured in a beautiful way, and I think that Billy Strayhorn's incredible compositions and the arrangements that they did and the way that was recorded with the verve sound of that time is the sort of glue that pulls it all together.

Well, and good for, I mean, to me, this record holds up with any classic Joe Henderson record. This is up there within urge for me as far as his best work. And I think it just shows you, you know, the great idea he had when he hears these young players. I mean, it's hard not to hear McBride and Gregory Hutchinson and say, like, of course, yeah, I want to record with them. But, you know, some older players aren't that open about recording something like that. Right. Good for him to see the value in these young, brilliant musicians and bring them in. I mean, it brought this whole energy to his music into those tunes that you can't, you just can't.

It's such a great record. Well, and I mean, and then that solo version of Lush Life, I think in some ways, I mean, all the amazing things Joe Henderson did before that and even after that. Totally. Some wonderful recordings, the double rainbow recording, you know, with Herbie and Elaine Lott. You know, I mean, so many great things, but that was kind of to me like the peak. And not only that recorded version, but I heard him do that throughout the 90s a number of times at jazz festivals. and each performance was a little different and more thrilling than the last.

I mean, I can still remember exactly what he sounded, like seeing him in Marciac in like 93 or 94 go into that solo version where he's doing the baseline and everything, and it's just amazing. It's awesome. Well, thank you for listening to today's episode of you'll hear it. And, you know, if you like what you hear,

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