One Jazz Track a Day

One Jazz Track a Day aims to help people approach jazz who don't know where to start, or consider all jazz as elevator music. It started as my attempt during the COVID-19 lockdown to provide something positive for colleagues once we all started working form home. Playlist on Spotify

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Joy to the World – Aretha Franklin

Joy to the world! The Lord has come Let earth receive her King Let every heart prepare Him room And heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature sing And heaven, and heaven and nature sing

Wishing you a great day celebrating God’s love love for us, shown in his rescue plan for humanity, Jesus – God in a bod – who came that we could know God and be restored to Him.

May God bless you this Christmas

– Bozzie

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Silent Night – Béla Fleck and the Flecktones

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Hark! The Herald Angels Sing – Wynton Marsalis

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White Christmas – Charlie Parker

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Little Drummer Boy – Count Basie Orchestra

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Jingle Bells – Duke Ellington

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God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen – Oscar Peterson

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Mary’s Boy Child – The Idea of North

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Zat You, Santa Claus? – Louis Armstrong

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Cool Yule – Kurt Elling

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Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – Ella Fitzgerald

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

I started posting one jazz track a day in a Slack channel at work on the 30th of March 2020 as my contribution to navigating Covid, lock down, isolation, working from home, supporting our collective mental health, and each other. As we move into Christmas, Australia is starting to see an optimistic hope of returning to some kind of post Covid normal, and we all pray, a brighter 2021.

Everything has a season, including one jazz track a day. I have decided to hang up my headphones at the end of this festive season, and focus on other areas. I hope you have found my posts helpful and/or enjoyable.

Between now and Christmas, I will post some favourite Christmas Jazz tracks. I don’t believe these need a write up. The subject matter is well known, and hopefully they will all speak for themselves. If you come across an artist you haven’t met before - great - it’s a new place to start exploring.

May God bless you and your family this Christmas. 

– Bozzie 🎷

It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas – Michael Bublé

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Fire – Mark Simmonds and The Freeboppers

Australian tenor saxophonist and composer Mark Simmonds passed away this year in September, aged 65. His obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald begins by capturing what it was like to hear him live:

You'd look around the room and the see the other faces, blanched and wide-eyed, as though subjected to extreme G-forces. The sound of the saxophone, so overwhelming it seemed to hit you with the force of a shockwave, combined with the torrential emotions being conveyed to make a perfect musical storm.

This was a typical concert by Mark Simmonds, perhaps the most potent musician Australia has produced on any instrument in any idiom or era, and one of the world's key tenor saxophonists of the past 45 years.

Simmonds played many main stream soul-funk, pop and rock bands, including  Dynamic Hepnotics, Jump Back Jack, Ol' 55, Bentley's Boogie Band, and Renee Geyer Band (and at least half a dozen more).

More importantly for us though, he was prominent in the Sydney jazz scene in the 70s, 80s and 90s, leading his own groups, mostly under the name of The Freeboppers. Unfortunately The Freeboppers one and only published album Fire which won the 1995 ARIA award for Best Jazz Album, isn’t on Spotify. 

Thank God for the ABC, who recorded this live session as part of the Jazztrack programme. Strangely enough, while this track Fire shares the same name as the ARIA winning album, the song is not present on that album. 

I’ve been unable to discover when this track was recorded or who was in the lineup at the time, as over the years, many of Australia's finest players passed through the band.

I think this recording of Fire captures exactly what one reviewer wrote of a 1987 Freeboppers concert

Mark Simmond's Freeboppers devastated the Basement with an unbroken hour-and-a-half orgy of rhythm and fire.

– Bozzie 🎷 🇦🇺

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Diggin' on James Brown – Tower of Power

Tower of Power are a soul / jazz-funk band from Oakland California who have been performing since 1968. At least 60 musicians have toured or recorded with the band over their 52 year history. The current line up still has two original members, founder and tenor saxophonist/vocalist Emilio Castillo, and baritone saxophonist Stephen "Doc" Kupka. The current drummer David Garibaldi is also a serial offender, working with the band from 1970–1975, 1979–1981, and 1998–present.

Today’s track however comes from the 1995 studio album Souled Out. It marked the debut of lead vocalist Brent Carter and drummer Herman Matthews. The full lineup on the 1995 album is 

Emilio Castillo - tenor saxophone, producer, background vocals, lead vocals on "Diggin' on James Brown"

Stephen "Doc" Kupka - baritone saxophone

Barry Danielian - trumpet, flugelhorn

Bill Churchville - trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone

David Mann - saxophones

Francis "Rocco" Prestia - bass

Carmen Grillo - guitar, background vocals

Nick Milo - keyboards, background vocals

Herman Matthews - drums, percussion

Lenny Castro - percussion

Jeff Lorber - guitar, producer

Brent Carter - lead and background vocals

Diggin' on James Brown was written by Emilio Castillo and recording engineer Ken Kessie. This studio version also appears on the excellent compilation album Soul With A Capital "S" - The Best Of Tower Of Power. Live versions can be found on albums like Soul Vaccination.

– Bozzie 🎷

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Spinning Wheel – James Brown

The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Dynamite, Soul Brother No. 1, JB, and The Godfather of Soul, they are all James Brown.

Everything about James Brown was big. He would boast that in a year he would perform more than 600 hours onstage, play more than 960 songs on at least eight instruments. But the instrument Brown loved above all others, was his Hammond B3 organ wrapped in a custom black leather cover with the hand cut red letters spelling out “God-father”.

James Brown once told a jazz writer than he was no organ player. He went for feel, not mastery. Like the instrument’s inventor, Laurens Hammond, JB couldn’t read music; he worked by feel, and belief. 

Spinning Wheel shows that feel and belief. The song was written by David Clayton-Thomas, the vocalist of Blood Sweat and Tears who had a hit with it in 1969. For me however it will always be associated with James Brown, his 1970 double album Sex Machine, and his Hammond B3.

Along with James Brown on organ, you can also hear Richard "Kush" Griffith and Joseph Davis on trumpet, Fred Wesley on trombone, Maceo Parker and Eldee Williams on tenor sax, St. Clair Pinckney on baritone sax, Jimmy Nolen and Alphonso "Country" Kellum on guitar, with Sweet Charles Sherrell on bass. Three drummers are credited on the album, Clyde Stubblefield, John "Jabo" Starks, and Melvin Parker, though I have been unable to find who played the kit on this track.

–Bozzie 🎷

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The Chicken – Jaco Pastorius

The Chicken is a a jazz funk standard written by Pee Wee Ellis, sax player and composer and important member of James Brown’s band. It was originally released as the B side of James Brown’s 1969 single The Popcorn. While it has been recorded by many artists, it gained wider exposure by as one of a concert staple for jazz rock fusion bassist Jaco Pastorius. 

Pastorius is the only electric bassist of seven bassists inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame, and has been lauded as one of the best electric bassists of all time. Jaco was definitely not one to confine the role of the bass to the background engine room of the rhythm section, holding things together for the “lead” instruments. Rather, he pushed his funky lyrical bass grooves front and centre, allowing the bass to take centre stage, and lead the rest of the band.

Pushing forward was a core trait of Jaco’s. He attended a Weather Report concert in Miami, and afterwards approached keyboardist Joe Zawinul, who led the band. As was his habit, he introduced himself by saying, "I'm John Francis Pastorius III. I'm the greatest bass player in the world." When the band’s then bassist Alphonso Johnson later resigned, Zawinul asked Pastorius to join the band.

It’s thanks to Jaco Pastorius that fretless electric basses are a thing. He played a number of Fender Jazz Basses over the years, but the most famous was a 1962 Jazz Bass that he called the Bass of Doom. Pastorius dug out the frets (with a butter knife according to one story) and filled the gaps with resin to smooth down the fret board. Fender began offering a fretless version of their standard Jazz Bass in the mid 1980s, and in 1999 began offering the "Fender Jaco Pastorius Jazz Bass" in their Artist series, and Custom Shop series.

With so many recordings of Pastorius playing The Chicken, I have chose one of the many live versions; this one from the album Invitation. It’s a live album recorded at various venues during a tour of Japan, featuring his "Word of Mouth" big band, and released in 1983.

– Bozzie 🎷

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Bouncin' With Bud – Bud Powell

Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell didn’t live beyond his 41st birthday, but he made a profound impact that can still be felt in contemporary jazz. 

Born in Harlem in 1924. His father played stride piano, and Bud started classical piano lessons at the age of five. By ten, he was showing interest in swing music, playing at neighbourhood parties. By 1941, Powell was playing on the Harlem club circuit, and when he was invited to tour with Duke Ellington's former trumpeter, Cootie Williams, Powell hit the road with Williams' band. 

In 1945, while on tour in Philadelphia, Powell was arrested on a charge of being drunk and disorderly. During the course of his arrest, he was brutally beaten by police. Powell was left incoherent and in great pain; when his condition didn't improve, he went from hospital to hospital and was eventually institutionalised. 

In a later incident, Powell was hit on the head with a bottle in a bar fight, leading to another 11 months in a mental institution, where he underwent treatments of electro-convulsive therapy - a new technique being developed. 

Powell was never the same afterwards, often wandering aimlessly. At the keyboard, however, Powell needed no help. Bud was one of the few musicians who could challenge Charlie Parker musically, and became a leading figure in the development of bebop, transposing the innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie onto the piano, redrawing the course of modern jazz piano.

Bouncin' With Bud is a significant track from Powell’s first album, The Amazing Bud Powell, released in 1952 from recording sessions in 1949 and 1951. On this track you can hear Bud Powell on piano, Tommy Potter on bass, Roy Haynes on drums, a 19-year-old Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone, and Fats Navarro on trumpet.

Bud Powell died of tuberculosis, malnutrition, and cirrhosis of the liver on July 31, 1966.

– Bozzie 🎷