I’ve the three above. Never to the time to do a direct comparison, but the It Club is a fine Monk recording worth adding to any jazz collection.
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Oh man, my mouth is watering! The bottom one is the cover of the CD I had. There’s a really good performance of “Gettin’ Sentimental Over You” that has him playing some alternative chords that I think improve on the original. Tommy Dorsey would probably disagree, but I’m entitled to my opinion.
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If so inclined the bottom one, CD, is available on DiscOgs.
Yeah, that “humanity” is what I call “imperfection” and it’s so difficult to figure out. I like your porn analogy (I think that was a quote from the Supreme Court), but the musical one I love most is what Louis Armstrong said about the phenomenon of Swing in jazz - that if you have to explain it, you don’t get it. What I’m finding is that this feeling is enhanced by good recordings - one of the things Rudy van Gelder was famous for - somehow being better at capturing an inexplainable phenomenon.
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Back in the 1980s, I produced jazz radio programs with a guy who was born and raised in New York City. Not only was he an avid collector, he could tell you which take of which song by Bix Beiderbecke was issued, who was at the session, etc. What’s more, he read everything published about jazz history and what made the music do what it does. One summer, I paid him to teach me about jazz and it was one of the best classes I ever took. There was a French author by the name of Andre Hodeir who I think got the phenomenon of swing closest. it’s been many years, but I remember that it’s a feeling of being propelled forward and laying back simultaneously. It does have something to do with delaying the attack of notes to the right point - Hodeir in the 1930s said to watch black basketball players to see the same phenomenon in how they flow in the sport. And dance (the reason I don’t even attempt to dance after growing up in the South). And there are other elements involved - syncopation (of course), but not too much, melodic variation to the right degree, the choice of chords and progressions, the timbre of the instruments - the acoustic bass replaced the tuba because it has a dull attack and a longer delay, compared to the less-dynamic “square” sound of the oomp-ahs of tubby. It’s why the electric bass is much less often used - not all that different from a tuba. Drums are tuned lower to have a longer sustain. There’s a preference for an “s” sound in the sustain of sound - the looser snare and ubiquitous brushes.
All of this came from the preferences for sound expression brought to America aboard slave ships. Think African stringed instruments that evolved into the banjo, cymbals with the little vibrating things in them, the high-hat. The vibraphone has a full attack and longer delay. Think also about the instruments NOT used often in jazz - most of them don’t have the kind of varying sound envelope that makes swing work.
But there IS a phenomenon of swing that was born in America - it’s when the band is swinging, but the soloist is deliberately NOT, which actually enhances the swing. Sinatra was famous for this. Dave Brubeck sometimes does it well.
I am obviously into swing in a big way, but as bad as I am at dancing I was at jazz improvisation on trumpet. “Swings like a dead monkey,” they used to say.
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And every note is long, except when it is not.
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Exactly this is the reason why they can be seen as apples vs. oranges in many cases. Otherwise in my experience they are the less different sounding, the better both HW rigs get (“true” comparisons assumed).
“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”.
Timing is important for producing the sense of swing. But just as important are the silent spaces between phrases.
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“The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.”
- Mozart
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Absolutely!! You and @RonP (and Mozart) are so right. it really bugs me how modern pop vocalists seem to be afraid of silence - of waiting for that next phrase to start - so they fill the space with random warbling vocalizing. “OMG,” they seem to be saying, “we can’t let the listener have time to process that line or let the instrumentalists contribute, or possibly let someone think this ISN’T all about ME, now can we?”
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Remember that Nakamichi deck that had an elaborate set of gears and whatnot to physically flip the cassette around and re-seat it to play side B?
That was living.
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And I have - still works - a Pioneer RT-707 reel-to-reel 1/4-inch/4-track tape deck. I decided not to spring for the added feature that would auto-reverse the tape to play the other side. I’m pretty sure some cassette decks - I think the one in my car - could do that, which would have made a lot more sense than physically flipping the whole tape. Oooh, how about a device that automatically flips over a CD??? I’m going to get on that project right now.
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I had a PST that tried to do that.
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