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Chords & Notes
Blue Note Plays the Beatles
Blue Note/Virgin Records
CD, Rs. 400
SOME MIGHT be surprised to find jazz musicians performing the work of the Beatles. But aficionados are aware of the long jazz tradition of interpreting classic pop hits, a tradition that has rarely drawn on rock or modern pop. Such interpretation stands or falls by the yardstick of how much jazz, primarily solo improvisation, has gone into it and how good that is.
Here are 11 Beatles hits interpreted by some of the finest jazz musicians in their idiom.
The recordings were made from the mid-'60s to the mid-'90s. They could be disappointing to Beatles fans unfamiliar with jazz, for like the bulk of modern jazz, most of the tracks are instrumentals, devoid of the witty Beatles lyrics. However, the instrumentals here are the best tracks from the jazz fan's viewpoint.
Stanley Turrentine on tenor sax, well supported by Lee Morgan (trumpet) and McCoy Tyner (piano) gets the album off to a flying start with "Can't Buy Me Love". Morgan leads the next track, "Yesterday", again with Tyner for support along with Wayne Shorter on tenor sax. All three on each track take ripping solos.
A couple of guitarists put in equally strong performances, Grant Green on "A Day in the Life" sharing honours with an organist and a tenor saxophonist, and Stanley Jordan all by himself on "Eleanor Rigby". The drummer Tony Williams is a treat too on "Blackbird", leading a virtuoso pianist, trumpeter and soprano saxophonist who take the solos. Nearly 60 minutes of solid jazz.
Now That's What I Call Jazz
EMI/Virgin Records
Cassette, Rs. 150
EACH OF the two cassettes in this double album has nearly 74 minutes of music, just enough to fill an old-style CD. But roughly half the 37 tracks have no connection with jazz. They're just plain pop or rock without even feeble attempts at fusion with jazz in the form of solo improvisation.
More distressingly, a few of the tracks feature jazz singers who often forayed into pop. Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" is the worst of Armstrong I've ever heard, Sarah Vaughan's "'Round Midnight" is sentimentalised, while Ella Fitzgerald's "Misty Blue" is a rare flirtation with rock that doesn't even quite sound like authentic Fitzgerald!
Of the real jazz tracks, the pick could be Armstrong and Duke Ellington doing "I'm Just a Lucky So-and-So", Herbie Hancock's early virtuoso work on "Cantaloupe Island", Cannonball Adderley's "Sambop", Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free", and "Autumn Leaves" by Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis. But this last is disappointing because the original 10-odd minutes have been truncated to just over five.
There are also a few tracks that I'd call more bluesy than jazz but well worth listening to. Nina Simone sings "Work Song'' with her usual verve and panache, Lou Rawls does the bossa nova classic "The Girl from Ipanema" in unusually bluesy style, while Marlena Shaw's "Woman of the Ghetto" combines an emotive and powerful voice with some good ad-libbing.
That's still not enough to recommend this album, quite apart from its misleading contents.
JAZZEBEL
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