Smooth 1957 lp by Rouse, who would make his name two years later as a sideman with Thelonious Monk, and the Vice Pres Paul Quinichette.
The style differences between Rouse’s warm round tone and Quinichette’s Lester Young sound are far less jarring than the John Coltrane-Paul Qunichette lp from the same year.
What a listen! Not only is La Roca impressive in his avant piano solos on this 1965 lp, but, man Joe Henderson has never sounded better, especially on the opener Malaguena.
If you are going to listen to big band swing, then it makes most sense to me to listen to the more jazz-informed swing from the 1930s. And this is truly jazz informed, as Lunceford’s band had Willie “The Lion” Smith, Sy Oliver, Joe Thomas etc.
I just listened to this fantastic 1964 LP by tenor great Joe Henderson, this record has his famous tune, Punjab. Kenny Dorham is the other horn and McCoy Tyner really shines on here on piano as well, especially on the title track.
I thought I had seen most of Anthony Perkins’ post-Psycho films, but I don’t think I have seen this before, or at least I forgot watching it. This gruesome film co-stars Tuesday Weld, and I cannot talk much about it without spoiling the plot, so I won’t
Well, I had become a little tired of watching some of the more forgettable of the Italian westerns, so I wanted to follow up with one of the higher examples. I wanted to watch one that I have never seen before, so I cued up an excellent Italian-language print of Sergio Sollima’s Faccia a Faccia.
Sollima directed two of my favorite spaghetti westerns The Big Gundown and it’s sequel Run, Man, Run, both starring the great Cuban actor Tomas Milian. This Sollima film was made in 1967, in between those two other films, and also stars Milian.
It is a remarkable film. A schoolteacher (played by Italian western great Gian Maria Volontè) heads to Texas for health reasons, and gets caught up with an outlaw. The film contrasts the schoolteacher slowly evolving into a ruthless criminal while the outlaw sowly develops a conscience. A third major character is played by Wiliam Berger, an Austrian-born American actor in his first of many Italian roles. Berger plays a Pinkerton detective going undercover to capture Milian’s gang. (I just read that Berger was once a roommate with Keith Richards?!?! I wonder what year that was?)
This epic film made up for watching a couple of merely ok westerns.
Watched a handful of movies recently, as I have been home, sick.
I watched another early spaghetti western, this one directed by Mario Caiano in 1965. It stars Anthony Steffen as Shenandoah, a US marshall faking to be a villian to catch the murderer of his wife. It was a good western, but not up to the level of a Leone film, of course.
I watched this wild, stylistic, mod, yakuza film from 1966 by director Seijun Suzuki. This movie had a whole lotta crazy going on. The studio thought this director had gone too far, so cut his budget, which forced him to leave out various connecting action shots, giving it a surreal quality, matched by the incredible visual style.
Wild record from this NY band from 1981. I like this better than No Wave. Sci-fi themes, treated guitar and saxophone puts this in Hawkwind territory, right? Well, maybe… they call what they do heavy metal, but no, this is really a deranged take on punk rock.
An incredible record on Impulse Records from 1962. I listened to the opening cut over and over (a version of Caravan), while Hubbard’s trumpet solo is amazing, tenorman John Gilmore’s solo on this tune and other are incredibly inventive. Also features Curtis Fuller on trombone.