James Booker, "New Orleans Piano Wizard: Live!"

James Booker
"New Orleans Piano Wizard: Live!"
Gold (1977)
1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die

I know that I've only done 200-and-something posts so far, but it feels like I've complimented millions of bands for the variety of styles they incorporate into their music. Hip-hop groups get credit for sampling out of different genres, and alternative artists like Beck make a name for themselves almost exclusively because of blending. How about jazz? Jazz fusion is easy enough; just combine horns with whatever other instruments you want. But what if it's just one musician? Enter James Booker.

Booker was a pianist, and only the guitar can compete among instruments for genre crossover. This dude came from New Orleans, and I think we all have an idea what New Orleans jazz sounds like by now. Booker surely loved the music of his hometown but he was classically trained, and more importantly, the left-side of his brain was hyperactive. He just couldn't hold himself to one style.

Listening to "New Orleans Piano Wizard: Live!", one can pick up on the struggle Booker had balancing the energy in his hands with that of his voice. He's got quirky, nasally vocals, but he keeps himself under control. Consider how his voice maintains a subtle tone throughout the ballad "Please Send Me Somebody to Love," and compare it with his piano playing. His hands can tap out the smoothest of arpeggios or ram home a fervent glissando.

Many of his tracks open with jaunty New Orleans stride piano, but Booker can't keep himself satisfied by just repeating the same line over and over again, similar to how Stevie Ray Vaughn added flourish to nearly every vocal break with his guitar. Booker frequently adds similar flair, whether it be the previously mentioned arpeggios (on a guitar, these are called "meedly-meedlies"), or by dragging his hand down the keys for a glissando.

He demonstrates his virtuosity to the extreme during the bridges of these tracks. "Come In My Home" has him tapping the high keys at his quickest pace, but "Keep On Gwine" is more interesting because it demonstrates Booker incorporating music unrelated to jazz, and doing it smoothly. If you slow the bridge of "Gwine" down, his solo will sound more like Bach than Art Tatum. Booker was renowned for weaving elements of classical and Latin music into his own, and so slickly that it almost seems unconscious.

Moon points out that "New Orleans Piano Wizard" is a good choice when listening to Booker because it features him playing a grand piano, versus an upright. The quality of the instrument is evident based on the quality of his bridges, but much of this music sounds like it belongs on an upright piano in a shady saloon. Booker was by all accounts a character, noted for his starred eyepatch, but he didn't let the high profile gig featured on this album to change his approach to the genre.

INTERESTING FACT: One of Booker's biggest hits during his career was "Gonzo," and some believe the song inspired the title for the style of journalism practiced by Hunter S. Thompson.

Art Ensemble of Chicago, "Urban Bushmen"

Art Ensemble of Chicago
"Urban Bushmen"
ECM (1982)
1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die

When you’re a jazz band, it’s less important that you have a superstar such as Miles Davis heading the group than that everyone in the band is in sync with each other. There are plenty of groups that have had five members playing with amazing synchronization. The difference between them and the Art Ensemble of Chicago is that the AEC works with up to 300 instruments (the number they reportedly brought with them on the European tour on which they recorded “Urban Bushmen”). Primary saxophone player Joseph Jarman is listed as playing 22 in the album in the liner notes. Moon describes it as “not one big idea but a thousand little ones.”

There is however, at least one big idea at play in this recording, if not the entire career of the AEC: The group’s common theme is connecting the worlds of city music and ancestral music. The buffet of instruments, along with tribal costumes and face paint, help cement the idea. This is a live album, but the band is perhaps better seen than simply heard, because the group marches and acts in accordance with its music.

The “thousand little ideas” better describe the style of jazz music that the AEC performs. The group, much like Air and the Muhal Richard Abrams Orchestra, two groups we have already looked at, emerged from the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, an organization responsible for a large amount of free jazz artists. The number of solos here is very limited in comparison to music like that of Louis Armstrong; more emphasis is put on the interplay of the five musicians, resulting in Moon’s “thousand little ideas.”

The variety in interplay results in a variety of musical textures as well. “Sun Precondition Two/Theme for Sco” illustrates a number of them. It opens with four minutes of rapid soloing from drummer Don Moye. It then launches into an unusually organized (relatively organized for the AEC) New Orleans march complete with shouts from the band’s most well-established member, Lester Bowie. After four minutes of that, the song collapses into a cacophony of instruments and siren sound effects. Other tracks, like “New York is Full of Lonely People,” are much slower and less dense, creating a visual of empty, late night streets.

As for the band’s main theme of city versus country, back-to-back tracks “Bush Magic” and “Urban Magic” illustrate the point nicely. The former uses an interesting variety of percussion (most effectively the mark tree instrument, for an ethereal element) and whistles to create a forest feel. Jump to “Urban Magic” and horns and clarinet introduce the city feel. By the middle of the track, the rhythm has “evolved” into a modern jazz club number.

The group hits on all cylinders for both urban and ancestral locales. This group is one of the most inventive and entertaining live jazz groups of all time, and the only disappointment on this album is that you can’t see it happening.

INTERESTING FACT: The drink Odwalla is named after the track “Odwalla/Theme” from this album. The song is supposedly about a man who leads his people “out of a gray haze,” and the drink’s creator said his product leads consumers away from “the dull mass of over-processed foods.”

"Malichi" (Note: This is not from "Urban Bushmen." Alas, I could not find any YouTube links to that album, but this song gets the point across.)