Wuff

Jeff Beck died, now David Crosby. So I listened to If Only I Could Remember My Name, his solo album. It’s beyond star-studded, Wikipedia: “Guest musicians on the album include Graham Nash, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and members of Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the Grateful Dead; the ensemble was given the informal moniker of The Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra.” It’s an indulgent meandering set of songs (only five with proper lyrics) but some of the songs have a kind of appeal. The mysterious harmonies are a step beyond the Beach Boys and Beatles. To tell the truth I can’t reliably identify CS&N’s voices; Graham Nash is higher, Stephen Stills rougher?

A couple of the songs like “Tamalpais High” are so reminiscent of CS&N’s “Guinnevere”. I remember buying So Far because I’d heard some of the hits and for its Joni Mitchell cover, I couldn’t believe how great “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” was. I didn’t grasp until now that it’s a compilation album (Wikipedia: “the concoction of a greatest-hits album from two LPs and one non-LP single”); no wonder it’s so great.

David Crosby will probably be remembered as the John the Baptist heralding (and sleeping with) Joni Mitchell, not a bad place to have in history.

One of the pure joys of going through Stevie Wonder’s incredible 6 album run was rediscovering the perfect rainy-day funk of “Tuesday Breakup.”

I was in a store and heard the song, but wait! it’s Macy Gray. It turns out she recorded her own version of the entire Talking Book album on its 40th anniversary in 2012. While listening to it again, YouTube Music Premium Red Gold Google Play also volunteered Michael McDonald’s version off his second volume of Motown covers, Motown Two.

Both Macy and Michael have stronger bass than Stevie’s Moog bass on the original; both more present in the mix and doing more inventive things. (I can’t figure out who’s playing for Macy Gray, sadly there are no details on Wikipedia and Discogs, her web site is taken over, and I can’t get from any archived version of the front page of her web site on the Wayback Machine to an announcement of the album; Michael McDonald has a ridiculous set of players on his album according to Wikipedia, it could be Nathan East or Abraham Laboriel.) But:

• Stevie Wonder’s drumming is incredible. In the chorus it’s pre-proto-disco hi-hat, but it’s an organic whole with his snare. Macy’s drummer (again, ???) can’t unlearn disco hi-hat. Michael’s drummer (could be the great Vinnie Colaiuta, or Abe Laboriel Jr., or Nicky Shaw) is just tight; mostly closed hi-hat, tight fills.
• Stevie Wonder has phenomenally expressive keyboards. Macy doesn’t even try and pushes her keyboards down in the mix; Michael goes for more keyboard colors (he has all kinds of guest stars on keyboards), but none of them have the intense variations of volume and wah-wah that Stevie has.
• Stevie Wonder’s got David Sanborn’s oddly hollow sax (I think this might be Sanborn’s first big break) giving a unique feel, from the unexpected tentative bass sax notes in the intro to the muted wailing in chorus after chorus.

It’s really hard to do a better homage than the original.

And of course, Talking Book has Jeff Beck (24 June 1944 – 10 January 2023)’s lovely, lovely guitar break 😭.

Dirty Loops’ Henrik Linder (best Justin Bieber cover evar!), Vulfpeck’s Joe Dart, and YouTuber Charles Berthoud are all bass monsters in a golden age of musicianship. But “Havona” by Weather Report is a different level. In my memory Jaco Pastorius attacks with 16th notes in every DAH-DAAHHHHH refrain, but it’s a magic trick: he can suggest max propulsion even playing legato long notes. And the rest of the band pushes and pulls and drops out to keep the song building and flowing into and around his two bass solos.

It’s not head and shoulders above any other band’s bass showpiece (e.g. Yes’s “On the Silent Wings of Freedom”); Jaco assembled a penthouse on Mount Olympus.

Don’t underestimate Wayne Shorter

Now play it again (Sam) and listen carefully to Wayne Shorter hold back on sax. He’s not merely providing sax flourishes as he does on some Joni Mitchell songs; his contributions are lag bolts drilled deep in the song construction holding it together. His legato lines at 0:43 are perfect, his dah-DAAAAH two-note refrains are perfectly low-volume instead of over-the-top honking, his solo at 2:00 ending in blue notes leaves space for Jaco, his yelps at 3:01 are perfect punctuation, his trills 4:27 and on are perfect, his unison playing with Jaco 4:37 is 😘, and those staccato sax notes 5:38 decelerating the end of the song (after Jaco and Joe Zawinul have 16th-noted their hands to a pulp) are only obvious in hindsight.

It’s a phenomenal contribution to the band’s performance. Without it “Havona” would be an amazing bass performance instead of the greatest jazz fusion instrumental of all time.

Jaco Pastorius, Joni Mitchell, …

Now listen to Jaco Pastorius’ eponymous solo album (full of the best bass solos but not the best song-with-bass), his bass playing on Joni Mitchell’s Hejira, and his off-the-charts/off-the-wall funky interplay on Joni Mitchell’s live “God Must Be a Boogie Man.”

Did Paul McCartney know he wrote the greatest jazz standard since the golden age of the American songbook? The supremely confident moving bass line, the single note “Blackbird singing in the”, the early “dead of” leap in the melody, the hypnotic up-and-down melody “take these broken wings and”, later the musical explosion “into the light of a dark black night” until the upward chords pull you back into the song… it’s a toolkit of parts that begs for a jazz interpretation. Several artists whom I like recorded it recently.

Hiromi’s is solid. She near-quotes “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” a few times, which is gold. I saw her live recently and it was thrilling to hear her slide into “Blackbird.” In this album recording she starts with a two-note birdsong, and the trills and slurs also suggest birds tweeting. People are awed by her Oscar Peterson-level technique, but it’s her long cadences of chord voicings that do it for me; there’s some all too-brief chord magic starting at 3:37.

Jon Batiste has a strangely expressive intro that moves all over until it hits the groove. He plays a chord for the pedal point and moves the chords around. Then he puts a blue note into “Black BERD fly.” He makes it his own.

Brad Mehldau made a fine “Art of the Trio” recording of “Blackbird” (his trio has several other monster interpretations of modern pop songs), but his solo version is sensational. He slows it down and makes the pedal point inevitable, then moves the trilling melody all over the piano’s upper octaves… like a bird singing. It’s a masterpiece of a masterpiece.

Special bonus: disco lite Blackbird

I would love to ask Paul McCartney what he makes of all the jazz takes on “Blackbird,” while surreptitiously playing Sarah Vaughan’s version in the background. It’s nuts! Sawing wood provides the rhythm to the acoustic guitar intro, then it takes a hard left into a “Blackbird-fly way-ahh” funky disco syncopation, then the strings lead into a sub-Boz Scaggs “fly-ah-ah-ah” bridge with two jazz-funk electric guitar solos. David Paich co-wrote “Lowdown” with Boz Scaggs, and he and his dad Marty Paich produced this Sarah Vaughan album of Beatles covers a year later in 1977.