Graham: Classic jazz DVDs will get you in a groove
by Chuck Graham on Nov. 06, 2008, under Calendar
Nostalgia never sounded better than it does in the ongoing Jazz Icons series of DVDs spiffed up from concerts televised in Europe mostly in the 1960s. As true jazz fans remember, the first two boxed sets of these genuine jazz events included historic performances from such heralded artists as Chet Baker, Duke Ellington, Dexter Gordon, Count Basie, Charles Mingus, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, Ella Fitzgerald, the list just gets longer and more impressive.
Now the third boxed set of aural gold is coming our way, looking crisp and sounding just as good as its two archival predecessors. This time out, the artists are: Sonny Rollins, Nina Simone, Lionel Hampton, Bill Evans, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Oscar Peterson and Cannonball Adderly.
These days, Rollins is enjoying the high profile of a working jazzer still going out on tour and doing it every night. Now in the seventh decade of an extremely creative life, his career has enjoyed an incredible resurgence.
Rollins’ concerts presented here took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1965 and 1968. Typical of the iconic tenorman’s restless lifestyle, his head is shaved and so is his face in 1965 but he is bearded and wearing a beret in 1968.
At both sessions he is playing with the strength you would expect of a saxophone colossus, several years after his self-imposed exile and those famous alfresco blowouts on the Williamsburg Bridge across New York’s East River.
Considering how noisy that time period was in American history, perhaps we didn’t appreciate Rollins enough back then. Europe’s jazz fans weren’t so caught up in the celebrity of who is better, Rollins or John Coltrane. The fans at these videotaped concerts loved Rollins and he loved them right back.
The DVD that feels most like a discovery of some wacky genius is the one featuring Rahsaan Roland Kirk, performing with several reed instruments hung around his neck, and a flute stuck in the bell of his tenor sax.
It is always easy to dismiss Kirk as a brilliant eccentric who tried to cover up his lack of musical ideas with the gimmick of playing so many different horns on the same song. Sometimes at the same time. And why did he hang everything around his neck? Why not have a specially designed instrument rack to stand beside, so he could simply pick and choose as his inspiration commanded.
Listening to his recordings, without any visual impact, the music does sound good . . . but not great. Yet, seeing him perform with at least 70 pounds of brass horns, padded keys and stiff little springs dangling from his shoulders, the man is a flashing neon aura of creativity.
These notes aren’t coming from a single musician but from a pile of music gear. The man in the center seemed more like a ship captain in a storm, grabbing whatever he needs to meet head-on the next wave of creativity about to wash over him.
Pure anger and intensity is in the performances of Nina Simone, playing in Holland in 1965 and in England in 1968. This was Simone at the height of her civil rights activist period. Her delivery on “Four Women” (with its signature scream of frustration, “They call me Peaches!”) is riveting. So are “Mississippi Goddam” and the equally direct “Go To Hell.”
To see Simone in her 30s, so fierce and proud siting behind that piano, is unforgettable for me.
Everyone will have a favorite moment of some kind. This boxed set is full of them. As the holiday season approaches, check the record departments of those chain bookstores and www.amazon.com. Each DVD is also sold separately.
