You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - A Minimalist Jazz Record Collection - #117

Episode Date: May 26, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam discuss their favorite minimalist sounding jazz recordings. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Menace and I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Today we're going to give you a minimalist jazz record collection. Okay, so what do we mean by this? And first of all, none of our listeners could see, but you were making some really bizarre hand motions. First of all, you're talking too much for minimalism. Okay?

Sorry. I don't know what that was. That was my minimalist accent. Yeah, so, well, you can already tell we don't really understand minimalism, but it's a great documentary on Netflix that I watch. the first five minutes of. What, minimalism?

Yeah, you haven't seen this? No, I'm not too. That's great. That's the name of it. Well, let's define kind of what we mean by a minimalist jazz record collection. Do we mean the minimal amount of records to have a collection? Yeah, seven. No, it's not going to be seven.

It's going to be five. It's going to be five. Yeah, but that is minimal for us. It is minimal for us. It's too below the normal. Yeah, so I think a minimal in number of records, but also we want some form of minimalism within the recordings, hopefully, as well. I like this a lot.

I like minimalism. Okay. You got it. You started off. Mr. Five Minutes of Middle-Dist document. Did we just actually define minimalism? We joked about it, but let's define that. Okay, sure.

So I'm thinking this is, you know, kind of less is more, some restraint playing, not a lot of instruments, maybe even the artwork is a little bit less busy, kind of trying to strip things down to the bare essentials, but really high quality. Quality over quantity, right? That's minimalism.

I would say so, yeah. I don't think we're talking about a specific, like, the minimalist period or like, you know, Steve Rice or anything like that. But there are cases in all eras of jazz that have had these minimalist recordings. I think this is going to be a fairly good episode. Let's see how it pans out. Okay. All right. So let me start out with Facing You by Keith Jarrett.

Fantastic record. And minimal from the standpoint of the cover looks minimalist to me. Maybe that's just because I'm going with the black and white. But, you know, it's just piano. You know, Keith Jarrett gets a little busy at times, but to me, there's no unnecessary playing on that recording. Like, every note just needs to be there. And it's such an interesting and complete story from beginning to end with his compositions and his improvisations that, you know, I just think it's a complete. It's complete.

There's nothing extra. There's nothing unnecessary. It sounds great. And then it also serves a dual purpose. because we have some solo. I don't think we're going to have any other solo piano. And with the minimalist jazz record collection, I think we need to kind of hit,

look, it's five records. We can't hit everything, but we want to hit some important styles and some important genres. Yeah, that's a great choice, and I think it's a really good one to kick off the list because I think Keith Jarrett, just in general, has a bit of a minimalist streak.

I think so, too. He plays kind of more than you think he does when you actually break down what he plays, but he plays so lyrically that it always seems, essential. Everything you play is essential. Right. And I think that

his quality, one thing is like his quality level for recordings and performances has always been very high, which goes along with the minimalism thing that he doesn't seem to release bad records. I mean, this is sort of my favorite of his, but I mean, he doesn't put, he keeps the dogs in house

if he's got him. Yeah, that's true. All right, I'm going to go with Sonny Rollins a Knight at the Village Vanguard. This is the Sunny Rollins trio. this was 1957 this was a pianoless saxophone trio saxophone bass drums i believe it was max roach and wilbur ware yeah willberware but i don't think it's max i think it's not max roach no uh that's saxophone colossus yeah yeah keep talking about it i'll look it up it's really amazing recording um you know like i said there's no chordal instrument at all so it's uh an incredible uh tone palette they get

with just those three instruments all three players are hitting at such a high level They do a bunch of standards, and they just kill it, and the vibe of it is so good. And this, for me, is like the start of a lot of live at the Vanguard recordings, you know, can begin here. Right. Okay, so I'm looking, Wilbur Ware, absolutely, Elvin. Elvin. Oh, man, young Elvin. Yep.

Oh, and then, okay, so there's a little bit of Pete LaRoca on drums as well. That's right, yeah, because there's two volumes of this. There's two nights, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think whatever you don't have, like, when you have a typical, you know, saxophone quartet minus, the piano, that gives it such a minimalist vibe. It already does, right? I mean, it's just beautiful playing on there. All right.

So what are we up to? Number three, we're going to jump to a whole other era and go with the hot fives and hot sevens of Lewis Armstrong. I like it. And I think these are actually several recordings shoved together, which would be a little anti-minimalist. But this is going to cover such an important period, you know, right very close to the sort of genesis of jazz.

So for your minimalist collection, you got to have something from that era. And these are just some incredible and joyful records. And I think what does make the minimalist is this was when the recording technology, I think only allowed them to go up to three and a half minutes or something with the 78s. So they're short. So they had to solo in a way you had to get to it and get out and doesn't get any more minimalist than that. I love that choice.

That's not an obvious minimalist choice because of how the music feels. But it is actually minimalist records. That's great. I'm going to go my number four choice this is Miles Davis Quintet Live at the Plug Nickel

Now this isn't minimalist And the fact that there's like 12 volumes of this or whatever Right but they didn't used to be I remember when it first was released Like no one knew that they had so many nights in the can There's a whole box of it now right I remember my friend got it for Christmas one year

This huge box of plug nickel stuff or whatever So the sound of this album is so minimalist it sounds like very, very stark, even for that period of Miles's band. You know, the story was that Herbie had asked Miles, I don't know what to play, and Miles said, well, then just don't play anything. So there's a lot on this record where Herbie's not doing much of anything comping-wise. Right. So it's almost like it's like trios, sections of trios, right?

Where it's Miles and Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Yes. And then it's Wayne Shorter. and Ron Carter and Tony Williams and then it's Herbie and Ron Carter and Tony Williams And then even when Herbie's soloing He lays out with his left hand A lot of single line stuff

Yeah And they're still playing It's kind of a combination as I recall Of the standards that they've been doing With the quintets before Even going back to the Red Garland group But they're playing them in a very Like they're kind of flying through them

And just playing the essentials Sort of minimalist essentials of them Yeah Just hinting at the melodies and stuff But then playing some of the new originals And stuff The Wayne Shorter tunes and the Ron Carter stuff Two standouts on this. Herbie kills it, obviously, but I think the two stars of these albums are Wayne.

Wayne's playing on these are so, we talked about essential. Like, he's just playing such beautiful, poignant, essential stuff. And then Tony Williams, to me, makes this record, as he does, almost every album he's on. But his sound, and they're playing, like you said, they're kind of speeding through things. And he's just laying down this blanket, you know, that it's just so, like, even. and beautiful and singing on a ride symbol, it doesn't get much better than that. It's incredible.

And this kind of also covers for the collection of the whole modern period, even though it was like, whatever, 50-something years ago. It's a very modernist record that, you know, ushered in an era of guys and gals that are still trying to play like in that style. It really set the tone for the modern rhythm section and kind of modern quintet for years.

Oh, yeah, young players put out records today that still sound a little bit like this. It's definitely influential in that regard. So for our fifth and final minimalist jazz record, I guess we should stop talking so much on this episode. We should have thought of that. We were very non-minimalist with our speaking cadence. Yes.

Sound of silence. And then we should have worn like all black clothes, like a minimalist wardrobe. Well, they can't see us. We are. That's what we're wearing. Peter has a beret on. So number five, I'm going to go with Sarah Vaughn

live at Mr. Kelly's. A good choice. So, you know, we wanted to have something else live. You know, plug Nicholas live. We wanted a great vocalist. I mean, there's so many things that we didn't want to leave off. But this is a very essential record and minimalist, I think, in that it's very intimate sounding. You know, it's a great live, great room, wonderful sound.

But you just, when you listen to this record a lot, which I have for so many years, you get the feeling that you wouldn't want to miss any part of it. So other records, even as great as they are, you might say, well, this is my favorite track, this is the best. And the others are cool, but, you know, but I mean, this, just every, like, breath and everything's very close mic, and the way Sarah Vaughn, her voice is just at top level. But you just, you feel like that you would really miss out if there was anything that was missing for that recording. So very essential, very minimalist. That's awesome. I love it. Well, that concludes our list of minimalist.

You'll hear it. Just hold on, buddy. No, we're going minimalist. I wanted to give them a little bit like, you know, if you have ideas for your favorite minimalist jazz albums, please get a hold of us. You can message us on You'll Hear It.com. You can also record us a voice question. We want to hear from you. Don't forget to leave us a rating and review if you feel like it.

Oh, six stars. We're going for six now. Yeah, we're trying to break Apple. I think we're getting a little too cocky. But, again, thank you very much. And when you put your stars and don't go minimalist with the stars, go maximalists. Maximilist. Yeah, yeah.

We want some busy star work. That's right. That's right. So, well, hopefully, you'll hear it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. You can go to you'll hear it.com to get more information, submit a question, or just say hello. Wait, you can do that. Absolutely.

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