James Taylor Song Books
Jan 17, 2012 music
What’s new in instrumental jazz these days?
The smooth jazz scene is vibrant with a steady stream of innovative new music being lead by a handful of prolific musicians/recording artists including Brian Culbertson, Chris Standring, Mindi Abair, Boney James, Euge Groove and a few others. In comparison the traditional jazz scene seems pretty dead. There’s always new jazz coming out but from what I can tell 98% of it is very generic by-the-book stuff with weak or non-existent identifiable melodies and non-distinguishable sound.
Taylor Eigsti has a handful of decent songs and Brian Bromberg put out a couple of traditional jazz albums a while back. Trombone Shorty puts an interesting rock twist on New Orleans jazz. What else is happening in instrumental jazz that stands out amongst a sea of generic music?
I think your opinion is formed from a lack of knowledge…
Some bands/people doing cool things going on in my opinion, not really ‘traditional’ jazz, but it is jazz:
Chris Potter’s Underground
Ben Monder
Chris Tarry Group
Dan Weiss Trio
Brad Mehldau
Dave Holland
Adam Rogers
Wayne Krantz
Roy Hargrove
RinsetheAlgorithem
Rez Abbassi
And some of the older guys are still turning out some great stuff.
Just to name a few of the top of my head. Perhaps your ears just don’t like it?
JAMES TAYLOR Shares His Favorite Music & Books
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Tapestry $4.02 No Description AvailableNo Track Information AvailableMedia Type: CDArtist: KING,CAROLETitle: TAPESTRYStreet Release Date: 05/25/1999… |
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Live At The Troubadour (CD +DVD) $12.47 Live at the Troubadour Carole King & James Taylor Label: Hear Music Release Date: 5/4/2010 Disc 1 1 Blossom – 3:09 2 So Far Away – 4:41 3 Machine Gun Kelly – 2:59 4 Carolina in My Mind – 4:16 5 It’s Too Late – 4:59 6 Smackwater Jack – 5:25 7 Something in the Way She Moves – 4:04 8 Will You Love Me Tomorrow – 4:12 9 Country Road – 3:49 10 Fire and Rain – 5:44 11 Sw… |
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Jim Croce Photographs & Memories: His Greatest Hits $5.70 Until his untimely death, Jim Croce was a force to be reckoned with on radio playlists. Photographs & Memories repackages some of his best work. Romantic acoustic-oriented songs were his hallmark, and songs like “Time in a Bottle,” were huge hits because of their easy sentimentality. “I Got a Name” was the singer as well-worn folk traveler, while “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and even “You Don’t Mess Aro… |
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P.S. I Love You $2.99 Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/16/2008 Run time: 126 minutes Rating: Pg13… |
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Widescreen Edition) $2.69 Mixed reviews and creepy comparisons to Michael Jackson notwithstanding, Tim Burton’s splendidly imaginative adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would almost surely meet with Roald Dahl’s approval. The celebrated author of darkly offbeat children’s books vehemently disapproved of 1971′s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (hence the change in title), so it’s only fitting that Burton … |
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Sesame Songs – Sing Yourself Silly! $5.48 Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 02/01/2005 Run time: 30 minutes… |
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The Lion King [VHS] $6.70 Anybody who struts around with Simba’s hard-won authority deserves this royal DVD read-along from Disney. Kids can recoil at Uncle Scar’s dastardly deeds en español and discover that “hakuna matata” sounds pretty much the same in Spanish, French, Italian, or German. And should the dynamic storytelling fail to thrill your 4- to 12-year-old fan, a flurry of other interactive options await. Tog… |
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The Lion King – Special Edition [VHS] $12.00 Anybody who struts around with Simba’s hard-won authority deserves this royal DVD read-along from Disney. Kids can recoil at Uncle Scar’s dastardly deeds en español and discover that “hakuna matata” sounds pretty much the same in Spanish, French, Italian, or German. And should the dynamic storytelling fail to thrill your 4- to 12-year-old fan, a flurry of other interactive options await. Tog… |
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Little Bill – Merry Christmas [VHS] $12.95 Little Bill’s creators–like those behind other cartoon series–could have strung colorful lights and twinkling ornaments around their character’s TV apartment and called it Christmas, but instead they reached for the real deal: an honest representation of a 5-year-old’s fuzzy grasp on the holiday spirit. One episode is dedicated to Little Bill’s anguish when Alice the Great’s flight is delayed on… |
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The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter Fifth Edition $50.36 Offering over one thousand years of verse from the medieval period to the present, The Norton Anthology of Poetry is the classroom standard for the study of poetry in English.The Fifth Edition retains the flexibility and breadth of selection that has defined this classic anthology, while improved and expanded editorial apparatus make it an even more useful teaching tool…. |
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9th Ward Pickin’ Parlor $17.98 Not surprisingly, Shawn Mullins’ association with Sony didn’t last long. His sophomore release for the label never found its intended audience, and with eclectic singer/songwriters not exactly in vogue in 2005, he found a more comfortable and logical home at Vanguard. Here was a company that thrived on, and had successful experience with, promoting other artists with idiosyncratic folk and folk-rock styles similar to Mullins. The feeling was mutual, since Mullins delivers a gem of an album with 9th Ward Pickin’ Parlor. With acoustic tracks recorded at the titular New Orleans studio, pre-Hurricane Katrina, Mullins has crafted a diverse offering that encompasses folk, rock, Celtic, and country, often interlocking in the same tune. He aims for early Black Crowes territory on the gospel-laced “Faith,” and gives a personal spin to a self-penned murder ballad “Cold Black Heart,” which is dominated by his work on charango, an Andean mandolin. The mandolin also plays a prominent role in “Homemade Wine,” a moody story-song ballad about leaving town that takes advantage of Mullins’ deep, expressive voice. “All Fall Down” finds its rocking heart in the Beatles’ “I Want You,” especially as it builds in intensity with circular chords that accentuate the melody. The disc’s first single, the harder-edged “Beautiful Wreck,” is also better than anything on the short-lived Thorns’ project, a band in which Mullins shared the stage with Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge (Droge helped co-write the track). Mullins goes traditional religious on the waltz-timed “Lay Down Your Swords, Boys,” which culminates in full Salvation-Army-band mode with backing vocals. Mullins taps into his inner James Taylor on the bluesy “Solitaire,” and closes out the album with a moving version of “House of the Rising Sun” that builds from acoustic to electric instrumentation as the singer interestingly takes the original female voice of the protagonist. The song seems to be his tribute to New O… |
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A League of Their Own $7.99 Various Columbia Records-affiliated pop singers contribute covers of period songs to the soundtrack of this film, which is a tribute to the all-girls baseball league that existed during World War II. James Taylor performs “It’s Only A Paper Moon” and “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” making them his own as he frequently does with material he didn’t write. Billy Joel recreates Duke Ellington’s “In A Sentimental Mood,” Art Garfunkel does nicely with “Two Sleepy People,” and The Manhattan Transfer apply their jazz vocal abilities to “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie” and “On The Sunny Side Of The Street.” The song that got the most attention, however, was Carole King’s original tune, “Now And Forever,” which hit the Adult Contemporary chart. The album is filled out with music from Hans Zimmer’s score, which is appropriate to the film’s nostalgic and inspirational themes. (Note that Madonna’s #1 hit “This Used To Be My Playground,” heard in the film, does not appear on this album for contractual reasons.) ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi |
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Arizona [Collectables] $7.99 Collectables Records’ ten-track, budget-priced 2003 Mark Lindsay compilation album Arizona is not to be confused with Lindsay’s 1970 regular Columbia Records LP of the same title. Nor is it to be confused with Sony Music Special Products’ 1998 compilation Arizona and Other States of Mind, even though it shares eight out of ten tracks with that earlier collection. Like the 1998 set, this one surveys Lindsay’s three-album career on Columbia Records, 1969-1971, by emphasizing the pop, folk, and country standards that filled out his LPs rather than the songs Lindsay introduced. In fact, this one places even more emphasis on the standards, since it drops “Silver Bird,” a Top 40 hit for Lindsay that appeared on the 1998 album, retaining only the title song, a Top Ten hit, among his single releases. Instead of being a hits compilation, the disc is primarily a collection of Lindsay’s interpretations of songs better known in versions by other performers: “We’ve Only Just Begun” (Carpenters), “Come Saturday Morning” (the Sandpipers), “You’ve Got a Friend” (James Taylor), “If You Could Read My Mind” (Gordon Lightfoot), “Something” (the Beatles), “Love’s Been Good to Me” (Frank Sinatra), “Leaving on a Jet Plane” (Peter, Paul & Mary), and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” (Johnny Cash). (The sole exception is “Bookends,” and one might surmise that the unnamed compiler mistakenly assumed that this was the Simon & Garfunkel tune, not an entirely different song.) As that list indicates, Lindsay was canvassing the lighter sounds of the late ’60s and early ’70s in the cover material he chose for his albums. He performs this material credibly, albeit in arrangements and with a crooning vocal style that fans of Paul Revere & the Raiders would have trouble recognizing. Lindsay almost made the transition from pop/rock lead singer to middle-of-the-road pop entertainer when he was making these recordings, and they demonstrate that he had the vocal chops to do so. ~ Willia… |
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Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists $29.95 James G. Kelly, Anna V. Song,Paperback, Edition: 1, English-language edition,Pub by Taylor & Francis, Inc. |
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Inner City Blues $11.98 The story behind Grover Washington, Jr.’s first session date as a leader revolves around a sheer coincidence of being in the right place at the right time. The truth is, the date for Creed Taylor’s Kudu imprint was supposed to feature Hank Crawford in the soloist’s chair. Crawford couldn’t make the date and longtime sideman Washington got the nod. His being closely affiliated with organists Charles Earland and Johnny Hammond didn’t hurt, and his alto and tenor saxophones’ tone was instantly noticeable for both its song-like quality and Washington’s unique ability to dig deep into R&B territory for his expression of feeling. Released in 1971, produced by Taylor, and arranged and orchestrated by Bob James, the list of players in this band is equally impressive: James played Fender Rhodes, there’s Richard Tee on organ, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Idris Muhammad, then-new guitarist Eric Gale, percussionist Airto Moreira, Thad Jones and Eugene Young on trumpets, trombonist Wayne Andre, and baritone saxophonist Don Ashworth. James also added a violin section and a small vocal chorus on certain tracks.Inner City Blues kicks off with its title track, a burning version of the Marvin Gaye tune with Washington lending a heft and depth to it that reveals the sophistication of Gaye’s original. From Airto’s hand drums and the hi hat whispers of Muhammad to the chunky wah-wah guitar vamp and a funky bassline by Carter, it becomes clear that Washington’s methods of deep soul articulation on his horn extend into the heart of this mix. James decorated his charts with subtle organ flourishes and his piano, but this is early jazz-funk at best. While Miles Davis was abstracting jazz on the margins, Washington and his cohorts were keeping the music in the street, in the barroom, on the radio, and in the nightclubs and bowling alleys.The tune was a hit at a time when fusion was becoming widespread; free jazz from both sides of the Atlantic was considering itself the new standard bearer… |
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James Taylor Songs, including: Fire And Rain, Steamroller Blues, Sweet Baby James (song), Country Road (song), Shower The People, Carolina In My Mind, You’ve Got A Friend, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Here Comes The Sun, Day Tripper $18.75 Hephaestus Books,Paperback, English-language edition,Pub by Hephaestus Books |
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James Taylor at Christmas $9.99 For the most part, holiday-themed albums are about as memorable as what you had for lunch a month ago. As humans continue to evolve, there’s a very good chance that we’ll develop some sort of yuletide audio bypass valve that will allow us to filter the three-and-a-half million versions of every Christmas song ever made into one solid rendition that either pleases or displeases us, and can be dealt with accordingly. That said, James Taylor’s brilliantly titled James Taylor at Christmas is about as inoffensive a collection of seasonal classics as one could hope for. The legendary singer/songwriter’s warm voice is the perfect vessel for “Winter Wonderland,” “Jingle Bells,” and the “Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)” because it makes absolutely no impression on the listener. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi |
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Knock Three Times: Encore Collection $6.98 BMG’s Knock Three Times: Encore Collection from 1999 is a solid and brief collection of light and fun tunes from ’70′s chart sensations Tony Orlando and Dawn. The ten songs include four of their biggest hits, the bubblegum pop hit “Knock Three Times,” “Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose,” and the sweet and corny “Tie a Yellow Ribbon “Round the Old Oak Tree,” as well as the hit that launched their career, “Candida.” The rest of the disc is made up of lesser songs like “Stepping Out (Gonna Boogie Tonight),” “Skybird,” and covers of the Drifters’ “Up on the Roof,” Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With,” and two James Taylor songs, “Carolina in My Mind” and “Rainy Day Man.” The disc is a pleasant if innocuous listen, but it fails as a collection because it leaves off one of the group’s Number One hits: 1975′s “He Don’t Love You Like I Love You.” If you are looking for the full view of Tony Orlando and Dawn’s talents, look for a disc with that song on it. If all you need is a quick peek, this disc will do the trick. ~ Tim Sendra, Rovi |
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Low Down and Tore Up $16.98 For his 18th album on Stony Plain, Duke Robillard leads his band — Bruce Bears on piano, Brad Hallen on acoustic bass, and Mark Teixeira on drums — through a set of covers of often obscure blues tunes from the late 1940s and early ? 50s. It’s as if he is trying to re-create the contents of a jukebox in some Chicago bar of the era, with two songs each drawn from the repertoires of Guitar Slim (“Quicksand,” “Later for You Baby”), Tampa Red (“Mercy Mercy Mama,” “Let Me Play with Your Poodle”), Sugar Boy Crawford (“Overboard,” “What’s Wrong”), Pee Wee Crayton (“Blues After Hours,” “Do Unto Others”), and Elmore James (“Tool Bag Boogie,” “The 12 Year Old Boy”), plus Eddie Taylor’s “Trainfare Home,” John Lee Hooker’s “Want Ad Blues,” Jimmy McCracklin’s “It’s Alright,” and Bobby “Blues” Merrill’s “I Ain’t Mad at You.” Some of those names are well known, while many are not, but Robillard makes a case for them all as blues masters. It is possible to hear much later music in the variety of blues styles here. “Tool Bag Boogie,” an instrumental, sounds like the track for a Chuck Berry song, for instance, while “What’s Wrong” has the same stop-and-start pattern of Muddy Waters’ “I’m a Man.” “I Ain’t Mad at You” is a jump blues in the manner of Louis Jordan. And “Do Unto Others” displays a frantic guitar riff later borrowed by the Beatles for the opening of “Revolution.” Robillard and his musicians (including guests Matt McCabe on piano on half the tracks and Sax Gordon on — what else? — sax on all but three) are not interested in polishing or updating the music; when, in Dick Shurman’s liner notes, Robillard speaks of the “crudeness” of Gordon’s playing, he means it as a compliment. The musicians are aiming at authenticity, to the extent of recording quickly and with instruments, amplifiers, and microphones that can replicate the original recordings. They succeed in bringing back to life a time and a sound that continue to serve… |
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Music $9.99 After years as one of the most prolific and successful songwriters in pop music, Carole King emerged in the ’70s with Tapestry, an album that catapulted her to the forefront of the singer/songwriter movement. While she had mined her back catalog for that album, she relied more heavily on songs written with new collaborator Toni Stern for Music. Coming out on the heels of the classic Tapestry, it’s hard not to feel like this album was a bit of a letdown. However, time has shown this album to be one of her finest. While these songs lyrically lack the simplistic beauty of Gerry Goffin-penned tunes, the melodies are very strong and Carole King adds some nice texture to her piano-based tunes with the tasteful percussion of Bobbye Hall. When King goes for grand statements, however, it doesn’t always work. Her call for peace and brotherhood works on songs like the opening track, “Brother, Brother,” but her voice is not strong enough and does not convey enough emotion to prevent uplifting tunes like “Carry Your Load” from sounding a bit hollow and preachy. But her songwriting is still in peak form, and there are many highlights including “It’s Gonna Take Some Time” (also made into a hit by the Carpenters) and “Song of Long Ago” (with backing vocals by James Taylor). ~ Vik Iyengar, Rovi |
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