“The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce” Fantasy Records (1958) Thanks to Steve Talley for sending this in!

The Liner Notes: We are living in a culture of conformity, the sociologists keep telling us as they pore over statistics that indicate college students are conservative this year. That may be. But sometimes it seems as if the sociologists miss a few points such as Bob and Ray, jazz musicians and the well-honed wit that is bringing the Comedy of Dissent these nights to various clubs in the person of Lenny Bruce.Lenny Bruce is an example of something new in our society. He’s a comic right out of the jazz world. Unlike Mort Sahl, himself a razor wit flavored with a liberal dose of jazz orientation but self-confined to a political and national affairs horizon with forays into a limited social strata bounded on one side by hi-fi and on the other by the psychiatrist’s couch, Lenny Bruce ranges throughout our society. Armed with the anarchistic wit and salty speech of the jazz musician, Bruce does his satirical bits in a multitude of voices as contrasted to Sahl who is a stark, stand-up comic monologist.

Bruce’s whole orientation is that of the jazz musician and knowing this is fundamental to understanding and appreciating Bruce’s humor. Like the jazz musician’s view, Bruce’s comedy isa dissent from a world gone mad. To him nothing is sacred except the ultimate truths of love and beauty and moral goodness – all equating honesty. And like a jazz musician he expects to see these things about him in the world in a pure form. He takes people literally and what they say literally and by the use of his searing imagination and tongue of fire, he contrasts what they say with what they do. And he does this with the sardonic shoulder-shrug of the jazz man.

He is colossally irreverant – like a jazz musician. His stock in trade is to violate the taboos out loud and to say things on stage (and on this LP) which would get your nose bashed in at a party. But his outrage at society is not represented by shrill screams or loud protests. He does not pose. His is a moral outrage and has about it the air of a jazz man. It is strong stuff – like jazz, and it is akin to the point of view of Nelson Algren and Lawerence Ferlinghetti as well as to Charlie Parker and Lester Young.

Bruce improvises the way a jazz musician does. His routines on this album, for instance, are never done the same way twice but move like a soloist improvising on a framework of chords and melody. He takes a hard look at middle-class America with its Babbitts, its Lodges, and its Elmer Gantrys. He stabs the motion picture business with brutal parody and he punctures the hypocrisy in religion, politics, and other areas with an arrowtipped with poison.

Lenny Bruce is a social commentator, as is the jazz musician. It is an interesting point for speculation as to why his comedy of dissent has flourished in the jazz clubs. He terrifies other comics – the usual ones – by his material, in the same way the jazz musician terrifies the hotel bands and the mickey mouse tenor men. He is a threat. If he is real, he gives them the lie by his very existence.

For almost two decades the night clubs have wallowed in a sea of sentimentality and pious corn and bathroom jokes. That’s why Joe E. Lewis is such a relief. He is real and so is Lenny Bruce.

The jazz musician is a rebel with humor, if with a cause, and there is no more effective putdown of the political speeches, the incongruities in the news, the fetuous posing of the tent show religious carnivals than that which goes on in the conversation of the jazz musician and the humor of Lenny Bruce.

It’s ribald. Yes, and even sometimes rough. But it’s real. You have to earn the respect of the jazz musician, he doesn’t give it because he’s told to. And this attitude, a modern manifestation of the original American “show me,” is Bruce’s strength. He’s a verbal Hieronymus Bosh in whose monologue there is the same urgency as in a Charlie Parker chorus and the same sardonic vitality in his comments as in Lester Young’s reflections on a syrupy pop tune.

The jazzman may be anti-verbal, as Kenneth Rexroth says, if so, he has Lenny Bruce to speak for him with power.

– Ralph Gleason

(22 votes, average: 3.77 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“Wein, Women & Song” George Wein Sings on Atlantic Records. George Wein is the father of the modern music festival. In 1954 he produced the first Newport Jazz Festival and a few years later the Newport Folk Festival. He also produced the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Playboy Jazz Festival and many others around the world. George started his career as a jazz pianist in Boston before founding the famed Storyville jazz club and label. He has recorded and performed with many legendary musicians mostly in the classic small band swing style. I had the honor of working with George for a few years and one of my fondest memories is being invited by George and his wife Joyce to attend Miles Davis’ 60th birthday party. But the site is about lp covers and this one makes the grade on numerous counts.

(29 votes, average: 4.41 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“I guess it’s about 35 years ago when one afternoon I found this jewel in my hometown’s only record store. It’s the original from 1959, the shop’s owner looked happy to sell it, as I remember. It must have been there on his shelf since that time, ignored by everyone. As I was very young I’d never heard the name “Lightnin’ Hopkins” before and I only took a look at the Blues records ’cause there were these older guys hanging around the Jazz and Classical records giving me no chance at all. I loved the cover from the first sight and the music astonished me. I took the record home and it’s still one of my favorites after all these years and thousands of LPs that came after it.” — K. Reineke, Germany

(24 votes, average: 4.17 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“Three’s a Crowd When It’s Intimate Jazz” The Phil Moody Quintet

(17 votes, average: 4.24 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Lee Morgan Vee-Jay Records “Expoobident” (1960) with Clifford Jordan, Art Blakey, Eddie Higgins and Art Davis.     The word “expoobident” was coined by jazz vocalist and all around hipster-philosopher Babs Gonzalez as an all-purpose noun-adjective-verb to provide the most positive description possible.   This classic hard-bop set by a one-time only sextet at the height of their poignancy and power features Lee’s beautiful rendition of the standard “Easy Living” as well as Wayne Shorter’s “Fire” and the title track by Higgins.

(21 votes, average: 4.29 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Bobby Montez “Jungle Fantastique!” on Jubilee (1958) The first and best of just five Latin jazz lps by West Coast vibist Montez. “African Fantasy,” “Jungle Sunset” and “Kon Tiki” are legendary jazz dance tracks.

(16 votes, average: 3.81 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“Blues & Ballads” Lonnie Johnson with Elmer Snowden   Prestige/Bluesville (1960)

This beautiful album was engineered by Rudy Van Gelder in his Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home studio where so much jazz history was made. It features guitar innovators Lonnie Johnson and Elmer Snowden together for the first time–despite a friendship going back to the 1920s when both appeared on some of the earliest jazz and blues 78s. Johnson, the father of single-note six-string soloing, is in marvelous voice on this selection of blues, ballads, and jazz, crooning the double-entendre “Jelly Roll Baker” and the heartache-laden “Back Water Blues” (a Bessie Smith tune he first cut in 1927) with a marksman’s sense of pitch and chilling nuance. Snowden serves mostly as accompanist. But these men play so closely that they seem to be sharing every breath. –Ted Drozdowski

(24 votes, average: 4.38 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Ska Mania “The Sound of the Soil” Carlos Malcolm and his Afro-Jamaican Rhythms. (1965) Upbeat Records.

Ska bandleader Carlos Malcolm was an underappreciated figure of the music’s early days, and also made some recordings in New York in a more Americanized vein. A native of Kingston, Malcolm received formal musical training and broke into the business playing trombone with the legendary Don Drummond in a jazz group in the late ’50s. In 1962, he was tapped to head the ten-piece house orchestra of the newly established state radio organization the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation, and wrote some of the first formal ska arrangements as a result. He also composed uncredited music for the soundtrack of the first James Bond film, Dr. No (which was partly filmed in Jamaica), and formed his own group, the Afro-Jamaican Rhythms, whose music melded ska, African, Latin, and jazz rhythms. They scored hits in Jamaica with “Rukumbine” (1963) and, especially, “Bonanza Ska” (1964, a reworking of TV’s “Bonanza” theme song); they also recorded three albums, the most prominent of which was Ska Mania. During the ’60s, Malcolm also traveled to New York and recorded three albums that blended a Caribbean sensibility with American musics. The Roulette release Don’t Walk, Dance! (around 1964) was the first of these, boasting a jazzy, Latin-flavored sound; it was followed in 1966 by Sounds of the Caribbean (Scepter), credited to Carlos Malcolm & the Jamaica Brass. Perhaps the most prized item in Malcolm’s catalog, Bustin’ Outta the Ghetto (released on AJP in the late ’60s) was a collection of full-fledged funk instrumentals that touched only tangentially on Jamaican music. Malcolm eventually settled in San Diego. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide

(18 votes, average: 4.11 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“CHAINO AFRICANA” on Dot Records. “Spellbinding primitive rhythms by Chaino, percussion genious of Africa”. The music here and from other Chaino records is on a CD reissue called “Chaino Africana and Beyond”.

Chaino is one of the elusive figures of space age pop. After growing up in Chicago, Leon Johnson left home and lived a fairly wild life, eventually taking up the bongos and making a name for himself as “Chaino” (taken perhaps from the great Cuban conga player, Chano Pozo?) on the “chitlins” circuit of black nightclubs. In the late 1950s, he went to Hollywood and met producer Kirby Allan, who had recently been inspired by African tribal music during a trip to Kenya. Allan and Johnson went into the famed Gold Star studio in early 1958 to try to create an American-ized version. They eventually succeeded in getting jazz impresario Norman Granz to release some of these cuts on the luridly-titled, Jungle Mating Rhythms. At the same time, they were able to sell tracks to three different small West Coast jazz labels, Score, Tampa, and Omega, and all four albums were released virtually simultaneously. A few months later, Allan signed with the Silent Majority label, Dot (home to Lawrence Welk for a fifth album, Africana. A sixth album, Temptation, was recorded for Omega but was barely out the door before the label went bankrupt.   — Space Age Pop

(53 votes, average: 4.77 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Before parts in “The King of Marvin Gardens,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” and “The Shining” with Jack Nicholson and supporting roles in 1960’s and 70’s TV shows and blaxploitation movies, Benjamin “Scatman” Crothers sang and danced and wrote jazz and early R&B and Rock ‘n Roll.   Here’s a cool low budget lp of his.   Find a copy of his song “Keep That Coffee Hot” too!

(13 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...