Various Artists - Blues Masters, Volume 2: Postwar Chicago Blues (1992)

This blues compilation is Volume 2 in an extensive blues series of CDs from Rhino which is slowly finding its way to my collection as I continue my blues education this summer. The Chicago mentioned in the title is the one in Illinois; the war mentioned refers to World War II. The Chicago record labels that became legendary are represented on this disc, including Chess, Vee-Jay, and Cobra. The music was developed in the Mississippi Delta and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration: these blues are amplified, raw, and in-your-face, with the electric guitar taking the lead alongside powerful vocals. A great primer for me as I continue to investigate all the subgenres of blues music - I always seem to come across previously unfamiliar names in these compilations. Mostly unfamiliar tunes, but there's a few I recognize. This music all predates my birth, but still teaches this old dog some new tricks.

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks:

	Song	Artist	Year
1	Rollin' & Tumblin' Part 1	Baby Face Leroy Foster	1950
2	Just Make Love To Me	Muddy Waters	1954
3	That's All Right	Jimmy Rogers & His Trio	1950
4	Off The Wall	Little Walter & The Night Cats	1953
5	Don't Start Me Talkin'	Sonny Boy Williamson	1955
6	Evening Sun	Johnny Shines	1953
7	Smokestack Lightnin'	Howlin' Wolf	1956
8	I'm A Man	Bo Diddley	1955
9	Five Long Years	Eddie Boyd	1952
10	Sweet Woman (From Maine)	Robert Jr. Lockwood	1954
11	Mama Talk To Your Daughter	J. B. Lenoir	1955
12	Bright Lights Big City	Jimmy Reed	1961
13	You May	Jody Williams	1957
14	All Your Love (I Miss Loving)	Otis Rush	1958
15	All Your Love	Magic Sam	1957
16	First Time I Met The Blues	Buddy Guy	1960
17	Blue Guitar	Earl Hooker	1962
18	Little By Little	Junior Wells	1957

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Volume 3: Texas Blues (1992)
Volume 7: Blues Revival (1993)
Volume 8: Mississippi Delta Blues (1993)
Blues Masters Sampler (1993)

Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye (1966)

Note: the CD I listened to was the 2000 Rudy Van Gelder Edition.

Wayne Shorter was an intellectual, philosophical, spiritual man who continually asked big questions. His compositions and playing certainly reflect that transcendent approach to life. Blue Note Records describes this album thusly:

The great saxophonist & composer's goal for his daring 1965 album was to use "a wider range of colors and textures" while continuing his explorations of "life and the universe and God."

To that end, Shorter expanded his ensemble to an septet/octet. The music is energetic and challenging. It practically begged to be created in order to push post-bop jazz to a more expansive, more improvisational next level - Shorter's bandmate with Miles Davis, drummer Tony Williams, sometimes referred to it as "anti-music" or playing the opposite of what one expects. While I can appreciate the need and desire to move ahead as a musician, that doesn't mean that I necessarily enjoy listening to this album very often. I'll stick mainly with Speak No Evil or Native Dancer when I grab a Shorter album. I want to mention that Shorter was prolific around the time of this album's release as he moved forward in his work, not only as a band leader but also appearing frequently on other artists' releases and, most noteworthy, as the principal composer in the "second great quintet" of Miles Davis.

So I'm not wild about the music, but in preparing this post, I was led to a enjoyable three-part documentary series about Shorter, Zero Gravity (2023). Not perfect, but recommended nonetheless. The All Seeing Eye isn't mentioned, but the series helped put this album in context with not only Shorter's creative life, but also his personal life, '60s jazz culture, and the civil rights movement of the time.

Original liner notes by Nat Hentoff and 2000 liner notes by Bob Blumenthal. This was Shorter's ninth album as a leader, the sixth on the Blue Note label.

Shorter - tenor saxophone
Freddie Hubbard - trumpet, flugelhorn
Alan Shorter - flugelhorn (track 5)
Grachan Moncur III - trombone
James Spaulding - alto saxophone
Herbie Hancock - piano
Ron Carter - bass
Joe Chambers - drums

Reviews/ratings:

• Record World: "Wayne has produced six tunes that depict his fine writing ability and the growing maturity of his leadership."
• DownBeat (no rating): "the music is good, and if it is to your taste, you will not be disappointed."
• Billboard: ★★★★
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide (1999): ★★★★
• The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999): ★★★★

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks: The free jazz album is a programmatic five-piece suite. Of these five tracks, my favorite is the ballad Face Of The Deep, featuring a beautiful solo from Hancock. The final track, Mephistopheles, was written by Shorter's older brother Alan, who also plays flugelhorn on the track.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None, but speaking of Shorter and Miles Davis, this is one of my favorite social media posts:

Previously revisited for the blog:
Speak No Evil (1966)

Jr. Walker & The All Stars - Shotgun (1965)/Road Runner (1966)

Not something I'd usually buy, but I found this 1986 two-fer set from Motown in a smooth-sided jewel case for 50¢ at a thrift store and couldn't pass it up. The legendary tune Shotgun is such a great cut, the rest has to be good, right? Boy howdy did I luck out because this this is some fun stuff. With powerful saxophone solos and raw vocal energy, the music is all very similar, it doesn't take itself too seriously, it's made for good times, and I can't sit still.

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SHOTGUN (1965)
11 tracks, 33 minutes

Press of the time:

• CashBox: "Jammed with a flock of teen shakeables"
• Record World: "Groovy, gutsy instrumentals"
• Billboard: "Powerful album"
• Record Mirror: ★★★

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: #108
• Billboard R&B: #1

Tracks: The album contained 5 tunes that hit various Top 40 charts: Shotgun (#1 R&B, #4 pop), Do The Boomerang (#10 R&B, #36 pop), Cleo's Mood (#14 R&B), and the double A-side Shake And Fingerpop b/w Cleo's Back (#7 R&B, #29 pop).

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ROAD RUNNER (1966)
11 tracks, 35 minutes

Press of the time:

• CashBox: "should delight lots of soul fans with this groovy disk"
• Billboard: "this album can't miss"

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: #64
• Billboard R&B: #6

Tracks: This album contained 4 tunes that charted in at least one Top 40: (I'm A) Road Runner (#4 R&B, #20 pop), How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) (#3 R&B, #18 pop), Money (That's What I Want) (#35 R&B), and Pucker Up Buttercup (#11 R&B, #31 pop).

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None.

Pat Metheny Group (1978)

Note: this release was originally purchased as a LP, later replaced by the original CD release (West Germany, 1985).

This album marks the first recordings of Metheny's writing collaborations with Lyle Mays, one of the most celebrated partnerships in jazz music in the years that followed. Heavily influenced by Weather Report, it is often considered the start of Metheny's signature sound, which - to my ears - moved in the direction of jazz fusion that was more melodic, lyrical, and accessible. Plus, Metheny's clean guitar tone of the time pairs quite well with May's experimental sounds, mostly synth and piano but there's also some autoharp in there.

The album was well-received critically and commercially; it became the first of Metheny's albums to crack the Billboard 200. Plus, according to the book Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975-1984 by music scholar Mervyn Cooke,

The release stunned both ECM's management and the participating musicians by quickly selling more than 100,000 copies instead of the roughly 15,000 typically received by contemporary jazz alums, and by staying on the Billboard jazz chart for more than a year.

Can confirm. According to my info, the album was on the Billboard jazz chart from 5 August 1978 through 8 December 1979, and on the CashBox jazz chart from 5 August 1978 through 16 June 1979.

Not the first Metheny album I ever heard, but certainly one of the first and one to which I often return.

Ratings/reviews:

• CashBox: "an exquisite, graceful work"
• Record World: "[Metheny] emerges here as an excellent improvisationalist with an ear attuned to melody."
• DownBeat (★★★★½): "Metheny certainly has crafted one of the best jazz-rock concepts, and there is every indication that it will grow."
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide (1999): ★★★★
• The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999): ★★★★
• The Penguin Guide to Jazz (5th ed., 2000): ★★½

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: #123
• Billboard Jazz: #5
• Record World Jazz: #8
• CashBox: #149
• CashBox Jazz: #10
• Rolling Stone: #98

Tracks: The "hits" are fantastically memorable: the first two tracks, San Lorenzo and Phase Dance, would quickly become favorites during live shows and are my favorite tracks. The next tracks are quite enjoyable even though April Joy is simply a retread of Phase Dance. The album's closer, Lone Jack, isn't bad, it just doesn't hold my interest for long.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: Sitting around and chewing the fat in my friend David's dorm room in Berry Hall while he played his Metheny tapes, ca. Fall 1984.

Previously revisited for the blog:

:rarum IX (2004)	Travels (1983)
Different Trains (1989)	Offramp (1982)
Letter From Home (1989)	As Falls Wichita... (1981)
Still Life (Talking) (1987)	80/81 (1980)
The Falcon & The Snowman (1985)	American Garage (1979)
Rejoicing (1984)	New Chautauqua (1979)
First Circle (1984)	Watercolors (1977)

Various Artists - Blues Masters, Volume 7: Blues Revival (1993)

This blues compilation is Volume 7 in an extensive blues series of CDs from Rhino which is slowly finding its way to my collection.

The Blues Revival of the 1960s was described by blues scholar Jeff Todd Titon as "a white, middle-class love affair with the music and lifestyle of marginal blacks."

-from the CD liner notes written by Jim O'Neal, founding editor of Living Blues magazine

I was born in 1966, but I would certainly align myself with that description. It's very true, as evidenced by the subsequent '60s blues-based British Invasion (Clapton, Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc.). So what we've got here is the source material. This era brought recognition to older, established blues artists such as the ones found on this disc. Of the volumes in this series that I have heard to date, this is my favorite.

Another blues revival occurred in the late '80s with artists such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray, followed by another in the 2000s with such acts as Joe Bonamassa, The Black Keys, and the Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues series. I'm not sure if we're due for another revival, but I'm sure enjoying a personal blues revival this summer.

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks:

	Song	Artist	Year
1	Baby What You Want Me To Do	Jimmy Reed	1959
2	Three Aces On The Bottom Of The Deal (aka Blues For Gamblers & Everybody's Blue)	Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee	1966
3	Candy Man	Mississippi John Hurt	1964
4	Fannin Street	Dave "Snaker" Ray	1964
5	Write Me A Few Lines	Mississippi Fred McDowell	1964
6	Death Letter	Son House	1965
7	Boom Boom	John Lee Hooker	1962
8	Got My Mojo Working	Muddy Waters	1960
9	Born In Chicago	Paul Butterfield Blues Band	1965
10	Good Morning Schoolgirl	Junior Wells' Chicago Blues Band	1966
11	The Blues Never Die	Otis Spann	1965
12	Baby Scratch My Back	Slim Harpo	1965
13	Coming Home to You Baby	Sonny Boy Williamson	1964
14	The Death Of J.B. Lenoir	John Mayall's Blues Breakers	1967
15	On The Road Again	Canned Heat	1968
16	Blues Power	Albert King	1968
17	The Thrill Is Gone	B.B. King	1969

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Volume 3: Texas Blues (1992)
Volume 8: Mississippi Delta Blues (1993)
Blues Masters Sampler (1993)

Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage (1965)

Note: the CD I listened to was the 1999 Rudy Van Gelder Edition.

A stone cold classic with a couple of songs that have since become standards. Hancock, who wrote all the compositions, was only 24 years old when the thing was recorded and it was his fifth album as a leader. Incredible. Over the past 60 years, it's earned many accolades (see below) and deservedly so. If you need an entry point into mid-'60s post-bop jazz, this is just the album you're looking for. Highly recommended.

Hancock - piano
Freddie Hubbard - trumpet
George Coleman - tenor saxophone
Ron Carter - bass
Tony Williams - drums

Much like the earlier Empyrean Isles album, Maiden Voyage was a concept album about the open seas. Also like Empyrean Isles, the album's liner notes were written in prose style by Nora Kelly. It is suspected that the name Nora Kelly was used as a pseudonym but I can't find anything definitive on the matter. In any case, you're better off with the 1999 reissue liner notes by Bob Blumenthal.

Reviews/ratings:

• Downbeat (★★★★★): "This music communicates something good to me."
• The Penguin Guide to Jazz (5th ed., 2000): ♛★★★★
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide (1999): ★★★★½
• The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999): ★★★★

In 2017, Pitchfork ranked this album at #82 on their list of The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s while the uDiscover Music website ranked Maiden Voyage at #7 on its list of The 50 Greatest Blue Note Albums. And in 1987, this album was selected by Blue Note as one of the 25 Best Albums on the label.

In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Finally, the album is listed in the The New York Times Essential Jazz Library: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings (2002): "Maiden Voyage is a chill-out record and a chilly one; it's got early sixties ennui all over it."

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks, ranked:

1. Maiden Voyage
2. Dolphin Dance
3. Little One
4. The Eye Of The Hurricane
5. Survival Of The Fittest

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None

Previously revisited for the blog:

Best of The Blue Note Years (1988)	Head Hunters (1973)
Round Midnight Soundtrack (1986)	Speak Like A Child (1968)
Lite Me Up (1982)	Empyrean Isles (1964)
Sunlight/Feets Don't Fail Me Now (1978/1979)

Buddy Guy - Stone Crazy! (1979)

This album was released in 1979 in France and the UK, later released in the US by Alligator Records in 1981.

Guy really lets loose on this one with some extended, scorching, electrifying guitar work. Soulful pyrotechnics. The album was recorded in Toulouse, during a time when Guy was underappreciated in the American mainstream but still revered among blues fans and European audiences.

The liner notes explain better that I can:

This is the one. This is the album that his fans have been waiting for -- the album that finally captures the raw, almost-out-of-control guitar genius of Buddy Guy. It's simply Buddy and his own touring band -- no studio musicians, no ''special guests": just the solid skin-tight backing of brother Phil and one of Chicago's hottest young rhythm sections. The tunes were cut in a studio in France, but they feel just like the last smoky set at the Checkerboard Lounge, Buddy's own club in the heart of Chicago's South Side.

Buddy's fans have been waiting a long time. His last album, recorded with longtime partner Junior Wells, was an all-star jam featuring Eric Clapton, Dr. John and the J. Geils Band, but not really a guitar showcase for Buddy. In fact, it's been fourteen years since the classic album, A Man And The Blues, when Buddy, inspired by the late keyboard wizard Otis Spann, really let go in the studio. It's been twenty years since his wildman guitar and manic vocals were first heard on those great Chess 45s like The First Time I Met The Blues, My Time After Awhile and Stone Crazy.

It's his frenzied live performances that have made Buddy legendary. First, during his years of residency at Theresa's in Chicago, taking on every guitar player who passed through the Windy City. Then over a decade on the road with Junior, barnstorming through the U.S., Japan and Africa, and touring Europe with the Rolling Stones. He devastated the Montreux Jazz Festival, with the Stones sitting in. He's won the admiration of everyone who ever tried to pick the blues on guitar, from B.B. King to Eric Clapton. And always the question -- "When will Buddy really cut loose like those blazing nights on the bandstand, and get crazy again on a record?"

Here's the answer.

Reviews/ratings:

• Robert Christgau (B+): "With or without Junior Wells, Guy hasn't put so much guitar on an album since A Man and the Blues in 1967, and if anything this is wilder and more jagged."
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide (1999): ★★★½ "though somewhat self-indulgent, it's an adrenaline-fueled, rough-edged gem."

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks: Top picks are the opening one-two punch of I Smell A Rat followed by Are You Losing Your Mind?. You've Been Gone Too Long has a great groove and She's Out There Somewhere is the most traditional blues cut. The final track, When I Left Home, lets us down kinda easy at the end and that's for the best because if you're not exhausted after listening, you weren't really listening.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: Not with this particular album, but allow me to recount my experiences of December 20, 2023, a heckuva good day. On that date, I flew solo from San Antonio to Chicago, headed to a music conference/clinic. First, there was no line at TSA, the flight was on time, AND I was bumped to first class for the flight. After checking into my hotel in Chicago's theater district, I walked about 5 blocks to the south to Buddy Guy's Legends club to check out some blues. For Chicago in late December, the weather was unusually mild with highs in the 40s so the walk wasn't uncomfortable. It was early evening, and there were the usual tourists sitting at tables ordering dinner and enjoying some acoustic blues before the headliner came on. I was alone, so I just sat near the end of the bar and ordered a bourbon. I had just ordered a second drink when an older man sat in the chair at the end of the bar between me and the wall. We very briefly exchanged pleasantries but I didn't think much of it until the club employees started approaching him and saying, "Merry Christmas, boss!" Then it hit me that I was sitting next to Buddy Guy. I was able to keep my wits about me and didn't bother him again because I thought I might gush if I spoke to him again. I finished my drink, nodded to him and said "Good Night" and headed back towards the hotel. Then I had the best chicken parmesan I've ever tasted in my life at the Italian Village on Monroe St. Like I said, a heckuva good day.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Alone & Acoustic (1991)
Damn Right, I've Got The Blues (1991)