Album Reviews

Paul McCartney still has an unerring ear for a good melody. That’s something even his most severest critics can’t take away from him.

Before the folk revival of the 1950’s and ‘60’s fomented by the likes of The Weavers and later The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary, there were the originals like Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. He was born in the 1880’s (exact date unknown) and he died in New York City, December 6th, 1949 of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known as “Lou Gehrigs Disease.”

A terrible wrong has been corrected! Lovingly produced by Phil Ramone and engineered by the great Al Schmitt all-analogue at Shelby Lynne's insistence, the original vinyl release of this album was mastered from an 88.2K digital file and pressed at United in Nashville, America's and one of the world's worst pressing plants. 

On the opener, “Dragonfly Pie,” Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks want to lay a heavy trip on you, man. Dualing fuzz toned and wah-wah’d guitars, Mitch Mitchell (or Ed Cassidy)-like skin pounding (by Janet Weiss late of Sleater-Kinney), a plodding rhythm and a lysergic vibe produce an acid flashback swirl. Until the chorus, that is, where it becomes positively skip- on-stone jaunty.

Lou Donaldson playfully skids into a few bars of David Rose’s “Holiday For Strings” mid-solo during a cover of the Kelmar/Ruby standard “Three Little Words,” indulging himself in a bit of shtick popular back when jazz could be lighthearted, studious and physical. Sonny Rollins was and is a deft practitioner of the off-handed musical quote as are and were many of the other jazz greats of a bygone era. It’s rarely done today. Jazz is more serious and cerebral, unless it gets goofy as the drummer Matt Wilson sometimes can get.

From the NAIM archives comes this triple LP/double CD set, originally issued as two, long out of print, individual CDs, featuring Charlie Haden’s Quartet West, featuring Saxophonist Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent and the late, great drummer Billy Higgins on one session and the great, not late Paul Motian on the other.