CRYSTAL JACQUELINE & FRIENDS - SMOKE ROAD / ALL THIS JAZZ!

CRYSTAL JACQUELINE & FRIENDS - SMOKE ROAD

A collaboration between Crystal Jacqueline, other members of The Honey Pot Collective and writer David Greygoose. It also features some strong contributions from Mark McDowell, Leo O'Kelly, Rob Gould, Mordecai Smyth and Jay Tausig and is one of the best albums I've heard this year.
Jacqueline's 'A Prayer For The Birds' was an inkling that something like this would surface eventually and the teaming up with David Greygoose was an inspired decision for taking that next step on from 'Prayer'. This is an album rich in folky storytelling and all wrapped up in some of the most exquisite musical arrangements I've heard in quite a while. Icarus, were these by you? Whoever's behind them, please take a bow!
I wasn't aware of David Greygoose before hearing the album, but a quick search revealed previous recommendations from Donovan, Phil May and Mike Stax and that was all I needed to want to know more. David's an interesting character, whether writing stories, poems or about our spiritual connection with the natural world. It's all steeped in folklore and easily captures the imagination. It reawakens that wider world, now largely neglected, the feeling of being a part of something more than what we just see around us, so, welcome to the songs of 'Smoke Road'.
Follow the tales of 'Barbara Ann', 'Dreamwalkers', 'Jenny Many Names', 'Molly Mawkaby' and 'Elven Boy', those of love and longing in 'The Burning' and 'Kiss Me With Silence', adventure in 'Tie Me To The Wind' and 'The Tides That Turn', even a warning from nature in 'Green Man'. I can lose myself in songs like these and picture them all in my mind. It's quite a journey, with some outstanding musical performances to hear along the way too.
Jacqueline's versatility as a vocalist here is in no doubt, singing lead, in duet, back up or in the 'choir of her own' on the chant-like 'In The Sky And All Around'. She's at home with these kinds of songs and it's the best I've heard her sing. Kudos also to Leo O'Kelly for violin on 'The Tides That Turn' and Jay Tausig's flute playing on 'Molly Mawkaby', I could never hear these songs now without them!
The album's closer is the instrumental 'Lament', but I can't feel sad. It's a beautiful piece and a fitting end to a beautiful album, both musically and lyrically.

ALL THIS JAZZ!

I wanted to avoid jazz when I got into music. Its scope seemed overwhelming and some of the first I heard sounded like the band playing was tumbling down a flight of stairs! It became increasingly impossible to ignore it though, being referenced in most of the music I was listening to, so perhaps... well...just maybe...I would like at least some of it? I tried reading about it to gather more on names to look out for, key releases etc. but mostly found the writing 'highbrow'. I felt it was trying to push me further away, not welcome me into the fold. I wasn't going to give up though, I was already listening to music I considered 'challenging', well, a long way on from the Top 40 anyway, so I decided to just take chances to find a little jazz I could enjoy, jazz that moved me.
Discovering Billy Bragg's 'Roots, Radicals & Rockers – How Skiffle Changed The World' book was a promising start, also reading Philip Larkin, whose love of trad jazz prompted me to buy the 'Larkin's Jazz' CD set. I may be digressing a little here, but Billy Bragg's book is an absorbing read and thoroughly researched. He writes well and his enthusiasm is contagious. I originally chose it to read about the roots of the early 60s British music, something I'm interested in, after all The Beatles and The Stones et al didn't just appear out of nowhere. All I needed was here with more besides - I found myself learning more about British and American history than I expected. Oh...New Orleans Jazz too! Bunk Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Kid Ory and more, all names I'd have shied away from hearing, thinking them all 'old hat', but Billy Bragg's writing brought them to life, made them sound exciting and now I wanted to hear them. Maybe this could be what I was looking for? Britain's very own Ken Colyer and his heroic adventures are obviously well documented too. His sailing to the States with the Merchant Navy, visiting nightclubs of various repute to hear the jazz sounds that excited him, learning how it was played from the masters, spending time in stir for upsetting the U.S. Musicians Union, writing home to the UK music press from inside of all these tales for the faithful - all here...phew! The book's a real page-turner! Finally released and back in Blighty, Colyer's ambition is to play good 'n' honest New Orleans trad jazz to British audiences and Chris Barber has a band all ready for him. Lonnie Donegan and Alexis Korner are both a part of this scene too. There are a few bumps in the road to come, but the beginning of British popular music has begun!
The 'Larkin's Jazz' set was the opportunity to hear the best of the American musicians, a selection I could trust, being drawn from Larkin's own collection and articles on jazz. He was quite an authority. He once remarked that the music made him happy, and it is indeed, joyous music. There's no pretence from it to be anything else, it's essentially music to tap your feet to. My next step was to check out the British musicians that trad influenced, beginning quite rightly, with the aforementioned Ken Colyer and Chris Barber. Ken Colyer, well, he's 'The Guv'nor', it's understood. Perhaps a prickly character and very much the purist, he was the one that set everything in motion over here, commands respect - but blimey, Chris Barber's Jazz Band (post-Ken Colyer), what a revelation! They were willing to play it all, jazz, blues, folk, gospel and, of course, skiffle. Hearing this band was the first time I'd heard solos from a trumpet (Pat Halcox), and clarinet (Monty Sunshine) that sent me reeling, yup, this was jazz I quite enjoyed. Finger-clicking, toe-tapping, happy sounds and well, maybe I wasn't such a misery after all! This music hit me on an emotional level, much like the other music I enjoyed, so to hell with all the intellectualizing.
I delved deeper, BBC sessions and other live recordings by the British jazzers and lapped up what previously seemed like 'ten a penny' New Orleans jazz collections that I would come across second hand. I found Charlie Parker's 'Jazz At The Philharmonic 1946' CD for pennies and reeled once more at some of the solos I was hearing. Ah, so this was 'bebop' was it? A slight move away from trad, more improvised, maybe a little wilder, but still controlled. Noted. Spreading the net further, I discovered that I also quite liked the melodic modern jazz stylings of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, also the piano-based bebop/mod jazz of Thelonious Monk, even the big band swing of Duke Ellington. There were also recordings where some of these musicians would collaborate. Heady listening. Sometimes what I was hearing was as 'psychedelic' as anything 'psychedelic' that followed!!

The albums below are some other favourites, so picture if you will, me sitting in my room, hi-fi cranked up and like the character Louis Balfour, host of 'Jazz Club' (on TV's 'The Fast Show)...
...emerging from a cloud of smoke...
...turning slowly to face an imaginary camera...
...'OK' hand gesture at the ready...
...shooting a cool look...
'NICE!'

Lee Morgan / The Sidewinder CD About a year ago I found a John McLaughlin broadcast CD with some tracks featuring him playing with the Mike Carr Quartet on a 1967 BBC session. One of these tracks was 'The Sidewinder', an enjoyable piece right from the first hearing. Not long afterwards I saw the CD of Lee Morgan's 'The Sidewinder' in a local charity shop. Serendipity, don't ya just love it! This late 1963 session is my kind of jazz, no surprise really with all those blues changes! The trumpet, saxophone and piano solos are melodic, easy to follow with the changes between them smooth. This album helped to make the sound of brass more appealing to me - it blends well together here, with the interplay between Lee Morgan on trumpet and Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone sounding at times intuitive. The rhythm section isn't bad either. A dream of a listen to kick back with!


Thelonious Monk / Underground CD Monk's style is intriguing. There's always a note or two in his pieces that don't seem to fit, but somehow still sound right! Reminds me a little of Erik Satie's work. It makes the melodies unpredictable. A good example on 'Underground' is 'Raise Four' which includes some unusual passages that continue to bring a smile to my face. For pure smoothness though, check out 'Ugly Beauty'. What a title, and what about the cover of the album too?


Duke Ellington / Money Jungle CD 1962 album that has Duke alongside Charles Mingus (bass) and Max Roach (drums) leaving no doubt in the mind of the listener that these two guys are intent on working him really hard. The playing is fast and Duke is out of his comfort zone, so what does he do? He holds his own with some pretty very nimble finger work and more in response. It's not a battle though, just three guys trying to get the best out of each other. I was tipped off about this album while reading Philip Norman's biography of Jimi Hendrix. Being informed of a piano based album while reading about a guitarist appealed to my sense of the bizarre, but the reason is quite simple, 'Money Jungle' is produced by Alan Douglas, hence the link. The album is mentioned as being one of the best piano based jazz albums, which sold it to me. Another happy discovery!