The title track, a cover of Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia," which features some of the most raucous drum playing you're likely to hear, and some very good in-the-pocket bass playing from Jymie Merritt.
The title track is best known for its balls-to-the-wall everybody gets some time approach. Wayne Shorter on Tenor, and Lee Morgan on trumpet go bananas, with art egging them on every step of the way.
Blakey is schooling his young players, and they as you might expect, deliver the goods. Damn I wish I could go back in time and see these groups perform live. The secret of these records, why they are so good, they all sound like a live recording, they are full of fiery youthfulness. Like Blakey's Free For All from 1966, the recording equipment almost can't handle the power, Charles Mingus and the early to mid-60's Coltrane quartet is this way too.
I love the unaccompanied solos from Morgan and Shorter, with Art vocally urging them on, it's irresistible. The track is one of those from jazz that made me realize that jazz was not exactly the sterile music of grandpa.
I love Blakey's drumming on these classic Blue Notes, subtle he is not! Heck, that's only the first track, and admittedly the rest of the album is a minor let down compared to the power of the first track, but believe me, the rest is still high-quality hard-bop. Also the 1958 RCA recording of the same name is worth checking out too, alt saxophonist Jackie McLean is in support on that one, and the title track kicks it.
The other tracks:
Wayne Shorter's "Sincerely Diana" charges out of the gate and is typical of the Wayne Shorter sound, reminds me of something from one of his own Blue Note albums. I love the groove on this track. Morgan again shows why he was one of the best.
Bobby Timmons' "So Tired" is a nice little funky soulful track, that reminds me of Horace Silver to tell you the truth. Nice theme here. Shorter digs in nicely, he doesn't sound like Coltrane at all here, I never thought he sounded that much like Coltrane anyway, ever.
As Morgan solos on the track I am left digging the bass of Jymie Merritt, what an underrated player. I like the steady pulse underneath the solos. Then he comes out of it walking again, solid!
Lee Morgans "Yama" offers a a retreat from the powerful previous compositions. A soulful blues that soothes the soul. Very tasteful piano from Timmons, and the soft strut of Merritt's bass lead us to Morgan and Shorter's turns, and they turn the heat up a bit. Nice break from the power for sure. I love Shorter on this track, he doesn't offer a cliche at all, the mysterious sound he plays with is perfect, and a bit surprising, I wonder how he was initially taken as a soloist by the general public back then, he's not cliche at all.
Morgan's "Kozo's Waltz rounds out the session. Boy Morgan and Shorter are tight as twins right here, I wonder how many takes this took? This music is from 1960, Shorter seems to be in total control of his tone and phrasing, he sounds like Wayne Shorter all the way.
I don't hear Coltrane at all in Wayne's playing. People outside of us jazz nuts don't know anything about how great Shorter was and still past 80 years of age. 55 years ago his sound is fully developed, had he never went on to be the composing spirit of the Davis Second quintet, his legacy was already cemented by these and his own Blue Notes.
Truthfully I always felt Weather Report hurt Wayne's legacy, after the first few albums it felt like Joe Zawinul's game. I wish Wayne would have had his own fusion band where he was the dominate force. Outside of Native Dancer, which is OK, we never got that. Anyway, A Night in Tunisia on Blue Note is a must have in every serious jazz collection.
2 comments:
I used to play this at Manchester Jazz Society (probably too often) but the title track was always an end of evening treat when we used to get to play any old favourite. The title track always ended up with us trying to bet how many endings Blakey and Morgan could rustle up ...I lost count.
It was this, probably one of the most important recordings as from this I went in every direction with my music. I picked all the artists and tracked down their LPs/CDs and then the same again. All from this treat.
@Andy Bleaden: A funny story, my late father was a big swing fan always hated that bebop, I'd tell him about hard bop, Blakey and Silver in particular. He liked Blues and R&B sounds, but for some reason would never try anything outside of swing.
He was a big Buddy Rich Fan, but didn't care much for the best stuff from Rich in my opinion, the Pacific Years and Beyond. He loved Basie, Harry James, anything swing. But he was a drums nut, and one day I put on the A Night in Tunisia Blakey Blue Note and he listened to the whole thing... He said, yeah that's pretty good. 2 weeks later I visited again, and I noticed 20 Blakey CD's on his shelf! I don't know what it was about modern jazz that rubbed him the wrong way.
Sometimes you never know until you try, on an unrelated note: A big TV show here in the U.S. during the 90's was Seinfeld, I am still surprised how many times I hear people say they never watched that show because all it was, was a 30 minute stand up comedy routine.
Of course that show wasn't that at all, but many people never watched the show because they had a preconceived notion based simply on the fact the show usually started with a brief 30 second or less cut from a stand-up routine, that took the place of the typical TV show opening credits.
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