NOTE: Because of tech restrictions his post is credited to me, but was written by Rob Wetstone, our in-house jazz expert and head of content

Maynard Ferguson.

He was the iconic screamer; the bravado band leader who specialized in soaring high notes, shrieks and shakes; the guy, who, according to snickering high school legend, blew so hard towards the end of his career that he had to wear Depends during concerts. He set the standard for the modern lead trumpet player from his earliest days with Stan Kenton’s Orchestra in the ’50s, and went on to lead his own big band for more than four decades, always striving to stay current (he died in 2006). There were always questions about whether he could really swing or improvise, but ultimately, no one really cared — especially not the legions of student brass players whose knees got all trembly the moment Maynard put his horn to his lips. Holy crap, at his peak, he and his band were pure adrenalin.

M.F.Horn II was released in 1972, and it remains one Maynard more memorable recordings, capturing the thrill of Maynard at the top of his game. (M.F. Horn, I, III, IV & V have yet to make it here — but there is an MF Horn VI). OK, so much of this album is completely dated — the reverbed engineering, wonky mixing, the fun, but sometimes hokey, arrangements, the track selection (all but two are covers of the hits of the day — “Country Road,” “Spinning Wheel,” “Mother”, “Theme from Shaft,” “Hey Jude”).

But damn, this band is so much fun to listen to. It’s a tight, limber and powerful instrument — nowhere more evident than on the thrilling first track, “Give It One,” the band’s live show opener. Maynard was definitely not the first jazz musician to commandeer pop hits, but he did it more effectively then most, encapsulating them in very economic and often thrilling arrangements — the whirling “Spinning Wheel,” “Country Road,” and the hopelessly clichéd but satisfying “Hey Jude” (which saw Maynard’s one and only entry into chaotic free jazz). Highly recommended for those sad brass souls who’ve spent hours in a practice room rehearsing long tones, trills and pentatonic scales.

In addition to the deluge of WMG and affiliated titles on the site yesterday, I wanted to call out a few indie releases well worth your time and credits!

Vijay Iyer Trio, Historicity: Unanimously chosen as one of the best jazz records of 2009 (but, sadly, arriving on the site too late to make our poll), Iyer & co. deliver a set of smart, restless piano jazz, the most intriguing of which is a spin through MIA‘s “Galang” (!) “Smoke Stack” is another gem, giddy, restless piano lines and darting-all-over bass. Sounds great even to these untrained ears.

Laura Veirs, July Flame: Latest lovely outing from Oregon singer/songwriter Laura Veirs. This one really stuck with me: her voice reminds me of Kristen Hersh — smoky and oaky and mysterious. eMusic’s Melissa Maerz sez:

After seven albums of rootsy folk hymns carefully plucked on a nylon-string guitar, it’s about time the Portland singer-songwriter is finally getting recognized, just in time for her best album yet. Recorded in a barn, July Flame feels as organic as a Fair Trade coffee bean, with banjo, piano and guitar wicking together a woodsy, fresh-air sound. These are naked love songs, though they’re less boy-meets-girl than girl-falls-hard-for-the-world stories. Exulting in tiny moments of beauty, Veirs celebrates the firecracker-orange of a summer peach (“July Flame”), the rustle of snakes in the grass (“I Can See Your Tracks”), the sight of sap that drips like “blood trapped inside the maple tree / the sunlight trapped inside the wood” (“Make Something Good”).

Owen Pallett, Heartland: He used to be Final Fantasy, now he’s just Owen, but that hasn’t changed the nervous sprawl of his music one iota. Heartland features Pallett’s usual intricate orchestration in the support of prim and stately pop songs. Rich in little details, Pallett comes through with another weird winner.

Billy Bragg Reissues: In addition to Bragg’s Anti- record, Mr. Love & Justice, we’ve also got Billy’s whole back catalaog remastered and reissued with bonus tracks. Bragg is a songwriter without equal, and this is the perfect opportunity to explore his stubborn, singular work.

Cold War Kids, Cold War Kids at Fingerprints: Short, live EP from indie faves CWK.

Mike Hale & Mike Reed, s/t: I don’t know anything about this pair of Mikes, but this single is rustic and rich — fans of acoustic folk and country would be well advised to invest a pair of downloads in this one.

Anything else we missed?

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, aka every non-jazz listener‘s favorite jazz record. You’ll see a lot of excellent essays this week about the impact of Blue and what it has meant to jazz and culture at large since. What you won’t see are many attempts to place the record in a contemporary context or to understand what the album and our current music culture have to do with each other, if anything at all.

While it is a very specific take, I’d like to offer up Andy Baio’s Kind of Bloop 8-bit Miles Davis tribute album that was released today as, at the very least, a unique response to today’s anniversary. Using Kickstarter, Andy raised enough money to commission completely legal covers of Kind of Blue by five prominent 8-bit artists: Ast0r, Virt, Sergeeo, Shnabula and Disasterpeace. (I know that sounded like the most made-up list of words ever, but this is real, promise.)

The results are pretty magnificent, I must say. The album is currently available only to folks who supported the original project ($5 for the download, MP3 or FLAC, and $30 for a limited-edition CD)(vinyl may come later), but it will go on sale to the general public this Thursday at 3pm EST. At the album’s homepage, you can listen to extended samples of all five recordings — they are pretty spectacular.

The really interesting bits (ha!) come with the purposeful degradation and simplification of the original recordings, which are obviously quite ornate and intricate. It’s not that the 8-bit arrangements are simplified, it’s that the creators of these new versions had to find a balance between getting the basic note structures of the original correct and also finding the real essence of the original recordings. And on that front, the record is definitely a success.

As for Kind of Blue itself, it’s all a bit daunting, isn’t it? I’m reminded of a part in Don Delillo’s novel White Noise where the protagonist observes a group of people taking pictures of a barn with a huge sign next to it reading: “The Most Photographed Barn in America.” As one character remarks to the other, the people aren’t taking pictures of a barn, they’re taking pictures of taking pictures of a barn, an unknowing self-referencing act. In its status as an icon of icons and a classic for all ages, Kind of Blue has a bit of that status. Which is all the more reason to rejoice when someone deigns to approach it in a new light.

When it comes to jazz, pretty much everything I know is bullshit. I traffic in half-truths and shallow assertions and hope that no one ever asks a followup (if they do, I’m all ears no mouth). If I’m completely honest with myself — and I’m doing my best to be — then I must admit that only three jazz albums have meant anything to me in the same way that, say, Pavement or Neil Young has: the soundtrack to Robert Altman’s Kansas City (’20s/’30s jazz comp that I loved in college), Thelonious Monk’s Alone in San Francisco and Charles Mingus‘ The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. I’ve dabbled and flirted with Miles and Ornette and Sonny and Dizzy and all the rest, but it’s never been love at first, second, third or fourth sight.

That’s the big preamble, the advance apology to all of the experts as the dilettante comes staggering in. Here I am today deigning to write about Charles Mingus of all people. I mean, honestly, WTF? But as I’ve thought about this over the past few weeks, I’ve felt less sheepish about stepping out here. Surely there are others whose ventures into jazz have been similarly high on gesture and low on return, and who would like to hear a complete and utter idiot talk about what they’ve found to connect with? Just maybe?

Let’s start with this, then: holy shit do I love Charles Mingus. I can’t tell you what kind of jazz he makes (bop? post-bop?)(I am declaring this whole post free of any crib-note Wiki/AMG research. Scout’s honor. That’s the faker’s guide, and this is all about honesty.) — and certainly it varies by album — but it’s incredibly vibrant, even when it sounds really sad.

That’s my favorite part, how mood and instrumentation and arrangements are divorced from each other, how even when the music is cheerful in tone (trumpet = positive for the most part in my idiot worldview) there’s this kinda resigned mood that it always falls back on. It’s like fake-laughter: you can guffaw like a fucking laugh track but in two seconds you know if it’s genuine. He can be romantic and beautiful and wistful and audacious and sly and cunning and a million other things, but happy not so much.

I get a lot of that from the two Mingus recordings that I spend most of my time with:

1. The Black Saint and Sinner Lady
2. “Original Faubus Fables” from Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus

I realize that Ah Um is the highly regarded one, and a month or two back I decided to finally spend some time with it after feeling a bit like I had fallen in love with the wrong woman due to its universal admiration. And yes it’s good (as much as I know what that term even means in this context) and yes there are parts I like very, very much, but in comparison to the two pieces I just mentioned, Ah Um mostly seems to benefit from really good titling. The album title is memorable and the song names are great: “Pussy Cat Dues,” “Self-Portrait in Three Colors,” “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” etc. It just sounds like a classic jazz album, you know? Very evocative.

Anyway, I am hardly qualified to speak more broadly on this (I have no idea when any of these records came out or even their relationship with each other, and will only learn as much once I’m finished with this, keeping with the no-cheating policy), but I wanted to put just a bit of context in before I talk directly about the Mingus works that I’ve connected with.

I spend most of my time with the Black Saint record. (Its become one of my most-listened to records, period.) It has this interesting post-music feel to it. It’s its own language, evolved from the music that you and I know but extrapolated into bits and smaller bits that are reassembled in a constant stream. It’s like watching a Twitter feed of notes: this comes next because it comes next and it all just spirals out from there, whatever narratives that develop partially figments of our imagination and entirely a demonstration of the talent level of the players. Or, to put it even simpler, it just *flows*.

Black Saint has a handy structure. The first piece (am I allowed to call them songs?) is called “Solo Dancer,” the second “Duet Solo Dancers,” the third “Group Dancers” and the fourth and final piece “Trio and Group Dancers” (it is also bananas). Musically these titles are very descriptive; even I can understand the logic: the album builds from simple to complex as the record goes on, with themes coming back throughout. (BTW isn’t that just a great structure for a record in general? Why don’t more people do this anymore?)

Black Saint is considered a “Latin” Mingus record, and best I can tell it’s because of a finger-picked flamenco guitar part in “Trio and Group Dancers,” which serves as a bit of a warmup to the big twelve-minute expansion with hints of mariachi and this insanely interesting structure where measure-by-measure the pace quickens — some instruments more than others — and it all kinda collapses into itself, this big implosion, and then back comes the stately, refined piano motif — untempered by a trumpet howl — that winks at modernism (so says I) and then locks into an elliptical flutter of a horn line that’s catchier than anything I know what to do with. (It kinda sounds like Vince Guaraldi.)

I don’t feel like I’m doing this record justice, but it’s this perfectly encapsulated thing, its four sections perfect quadrants, each touching a different mood and all of them, ultimately, something that feels a lot like falling in love, that “oh well let’s go for it” feeling of committing to an imagined life, a conscious devotion that feels permanent but, as this love moves on and the next comes along, is ultimately temporal. So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s unsentimental in the best possible way. It has seen it all and knows the score but just can’t help wanting to get swayed by that feeling once again.

Where Black Saint feels like the impulsiveness of being all-heart and no-brain, “Original Flaubus Fables” is pure playground, a goofy, show-offy thing that’s incredibly endearing.

The refrain is a familiar one, a nine-note trombone flirtation that I feel like I’ve heard a million times. And so this particular performance starts off pretty straight, leaning hard on the hook but with a low-in-the-mix male voice pantomiming the horn refrain, its tone casual and conversational. It’s also disarmingly political. We get our first political injection before the song begins, the vocal (Is it Mingus or someone else?) opening: “Oh lord don’t let them kill us/ Oh lord don’t let them stab us/ Oh lord, don’t let them bother us/ Oh lord no more swastikas,” and then it flirtatiously shimmies into the piece. Later the vocal returns: “Oh I am made so sick/ And ridiculous/ Two four six eight/ They’ll brainwash and teach you hate.”

As “Original Flaubus Fables” continues over its nine minutes, it devolves. It shifts into what I will stupidly call “free jazz,” by which I mean a whole lotta caterwauling. And just as it loses its thread in a long devolvement, up the theme pops again, and it bounces around like that for a while before finally stopping because, well, it seems a bit exhausted.

I’m downloading more and more Mingus, looking for more records to like, and so far I’ve enjoyed Town Hall Concert and At UCLA 1965 quite a bit. I’ve also been listening to Bitches Brew a lot (growing on me) and Lester Bowie’s The 5th Power (a great recommendation from a while back).

What I’d like to leave with is a request for recommendations, and also to hear from people about records they feel no compunction being morons about — you engage with it despite being largely illiterate of its history and context, and in fact that’s become part of the charm. Those records are the best.

Good News From Africa is a 1973 album from the South African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim that I heard for the first time last week at the suggestion of Rob, head of label relations here and in-house classical and jazz nerd/savant. It was also prominent featured in Britt Robson’s User Guide to Abdullah Ibrahim. For me, the whole record comes down to “The Pilgrim” and the softly rocking bass part, half-lullaby half-warning, a refrain that returns a few times on Good News. And the vocals that open “Ntsikana’s Bell,” the album’s beginner, the soft, not-quite-sad tone and the hyena yelps that announce Ibrahim’s essentially pop piano part, are just incredible — instantly reminiscent of so many great Smithsonian Folkways field recordings, but fit into a larger arrangement.

I know this isn’t blowing minds here, talking about what I know is a beloved record, but I’ve just really been taken with it this week, and wanted to share the love. Anyone into this album? Anyone have love to share back?

It’s supposed to be the most depressing song in the world. It was allegedly banned in Hungary because of its devastating effects. Spurned lovers were found drowned in the Danube, the sheet music clutched in their fingers. Lonely women lay back on their beds and slipped into oblivion as the gramophone needle ground through the grooves.

The song is “Gloomy Sunday” – Billie Holiday recorded the most famous version in 1941 – and a lot of the moral panic surrounding ‘the Hungarian suicide song’ is a mixture of urban myth and cannily morbid marketing. It was written in 1933, both the original Hungarian lyrics by Laszlo Javor and the English translation deal with a lost, dead lover and the singer’s own thoughts of suicide. The composer, Reszo Seress, jumped to his death from a window in 1968. Billie McKenzie of the Associates, who covered the song, also killed himself. But Bjork, Elvis Costello, Lydia Lunch and many others have all covered it too and most of them are okay.

It’s interesting that people are so ready to ascribe blame to music. It seems natural, if sad, that those of a depressive bent would be drawn to a miserable, yet beautiful, song, in the same way that those who feel alienated would tend towards Marilyn Manson (to give a reasonably contemporary folk devil.) It says a lot about music’s power, to inspire, to terrify, to confuse, that any claim of ‘the song made me do it’ is even halfway believable. Of all other art forms only film has copped as much stick. Can you really imagine paintings frequently blamed for encouraging murder, or an architectural triumph cited as a cause of lewd behaviour?

I love women that can sing. And I don’t mean just carry a tune, I mean chicks that can sang. The last time I was floored by a female solo performance was earlier this year at an Alice Smith concert at the Highline Ballroom. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ms. Smith’s smoky, folksy rendition of R&B, please do yourself a favor and Google her.

Ironically, this same venue hosted jazz prodigy Esperanza Spalding last night, yet another fly young lady with a voice and stage presence that’ll make you wanna plant trees and kiss babies and just be happy all day. She’s a 23-year-old bassist and vocalist whose classical music pursuits were sparked after watching Yo Yo Ma perform on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. She’s been honored for being the “Youngest Ever” this and that, played with incredible instrumentalists, and has released two albums, the latest of which, Esperanza, came out in May of this year. Let me tell you, hearing this woman through your headphones and hearing her live, are two totally different experiences.

Her voice is a dazzling mimic of a piano riff and a wailing soprano sax, and the girl can scat like it’s nobody’s business. During her nearly two-hour set, she switched between the double and acoustic bass, completely entranced in her compositions. The only time she came up for air was to flirt with the crowd and delight us with anecdotes about her travels and how “Precious” on Esperanza was a failed attempt at attracting a pop audience. Her Portuguese melodies were mesmerizing; duets with the pianist were beyond beautiful, and after a few glasses of wine, I got teary-eyed when she wrapped up the evening with “I Adore You.” Yeah, it was like that. It’s always invigorating to hear music that you relate to; to truly feel sound. Jazz is the classical soundtrack to my culture, but typically conjures images of legends long gone or baby boomers out for Sunday brunch. Esperanza Spalding’s presence brings something fresh to a scene that’s a little watered down and, in my opinion, could usher in a new generation of jazz enthusiasts. Her contributions could potentially sharpen the ears of ringtone pop fans and raise the bar for the quality of mass-produced music. Maybe I’m a little too excited. Any thoughts?

I love the Mercury Prize. I admit that the bands I want to win never do win (I’m so sorry British Sea Power, it’s all over for you now.) But the Mercury seems to be one of the very few awards that actually gets people talking about music, as opposed to sales figures or party planning or celebrity gossip. This year’s nominations were announced yesterday – so here they are:

Adele 19

British Sea Power Do You Like Rock Music?

Burial Untrue

Elbow The Seldom Seen Kid

Estelle Shine

Last Shadow Puppets The Age Of Understatement

Laura Marling Alas I Cannot Swim

Neon Neon Stainless

Portico Quartet Knee Deep In The North Sea

Radiohead In Rainbows

Rachel Unthank and The Winterset The Bairns

Robert Plant and Alison Kraus Raising Sand

For me it’s got to be British Sea Power. Do You Like Rock Music? is already my favourite album of this year – it’s clever without being condescending and has a sweeping, full sound without ever being pompous. That said, I think the majority of this list is pretty solid – what are your thoughts?

Charles Mingus was clearly a man for whom feline cleanliness was important. I respect the dedication to cat training shown here – it’s kind of wonderful and all true – this is from his official website (and I do love that his cat was called Nightlife.)

* I know I’m supposed to say Brighton is a city, not a town, now, but it’s just not. It’s NOT, okay?