A couple of CDs plopped through the letterbox this morning:
These two new arrivals run the gamut from massively and happily more than I’d hoped for, and ‘oops, wrong item!’
The Houston Person disc went straight into the CD player, in Flo’. And, to my surprise and delight, it turned out to contain both of Person’s last two Prestige recordings, Broken Windows, Empty Hallways, and Sweet Buns & Barbeque. Both from ‘72, the year of my own ‘release’.
I thought I’d only got Broken Windows, Empty Hallways, and that I still needed to find a CD re-ish of Sweet Buns & Barbeque. But no, they’re both on this one CD… result-o-rama!!!
I’m hoping the Freedom CD will be good, as well. But there was some disappointment on opening the parcel, as I thought I’d ordered the Soul Jazz book, not the CD. So I still want/need to get the book…
Houston Person does an instrumental version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, on Broken Windows, Empty Hallways. And that got me thinking about how, whilst I have most of The Beatles’ albums on CD, I have almost nothing by any of them post-Beatles.
I do have George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, and Wings’ Band On The Run. But that’s it. No Lennon, nor any non-Wings solo McCartney. I must remedy this!
I must admit, All Things Must Pass, is, to my ears, distinctly underwhelming. and then there’s the solo stuff by Ringo. His first post-Beatles album, Sentimental Journey was universally panned. And his next, Beaucoups of Blues, is a country and Western record!
But back to Houston Person, and co. This single CD reissue of his last two Prestige recordings is great. A real treat. A stellar cast of sidemen, with such luminaries as Grady Tate, Bernard Purdie and Ron Carter, amongst others, really deliver.
In the seventies, and even right up to the present, many soi-disant jazz purists (moldy figs!) sneered at the way jazz of that period returned, somewhat, to one its many roots, inasmuch as repertoire is often culled from popular songs of the day.
I don’t mind that at all. Although of course it depends what the songs are, and how they are treated. And the arrangements here are great fun. There are elements of pop, easy-listening, and even TV or movie soundtrack. Making for a rich yet funkily jazzy whole.