Toots Thielemans - The Soul of Toots Thielemans

Toots Thielemans - The Soul of Toots Thielemans - 1959 (2010)
Жанр: Swing
Страна исполнителя: Belgium
Дата записи: New York City, October 1959
Год издания: © ® 2010
Страна - производитель диска: SPAIN
Издатель (лейбл): Fresh Sound Records
Номер по каталогу: FSR 1651
Тип: compilation
Аудио кодек: (MP3 + FLAC) (*.flac)
Тип рипа: (tracks + .cue)
Корректность рипа: EAC ripped, correct read offset, test and copy
Битрейт аудио: (lossy + lossless)
: full scans, png, 300 dpi
Продолжительность:41:24
: коллекция Л Рендера, мой рип
Трэклист:
1. You Are My Sunshine (J.Davis-C.Mitchell) 5:14
2. Nuages (D.Reinhardt-S.Williams) 5:18
3. Five O'clock Whistle (J.Myrow-I.K. Gannon) 4:32
4. Soul (Toots Thielemans) 4:55
5. Lonesome Road (Traditional) 4:17
6. Misty (E.Garner-J.Burke) 2:54
7. Confirmation (Charlie Parker) 6:28
8. Les Enfants S'ennuient le Dimanche (Charles Trenet) 4:48
9. Brother John (Toots Thielemans) 2:12
Original recordings produced by Bob Thiele Joe Guercio
This CD release produced by Jordi Pujol
Состав:
Toots Thielemans, harmonica guitar
Ray Bryant, piano
Tommy Bryant, bass
Oliver Jackson, drums

Несколько слов на английском

Not many European-born musicians have been admitted to the select inner circle of jazz innovators. One of them, of course is the Belgian Jean Toots Thielemans. The amazing capacity to coax real music from his harmonica made of him a true virtuoso. His harmonica was made especially for him, but a similar model would sell for about $15. Despite this rather insignificant sum, in the hands of Thielemans the harmonica becomes a true jazz horn.
Not surprisingly, Larry Adler was one of the first harmonica players Toots heard. I wouldn't call him an influence, but he did make me aware of the possibilities of the instrument, Jean said. This was in 1939. A few years later I began listening to jazz records, Benny Goodman in particular. He was a definite influence and I began striving for a clarinet sound on harmonica.
As a guitarist Toots also proved to be more than proficient at playing simple and eloquent. I learned to play guitar while recuperating from an illness. It was in 1942 and I had been studying mathematics at the university in Brussels. By then, along with the big war, I was going through a tug of war between the music and the math. I think hearing Django Reinhardt solved the problem. I decided to become a musician, he stressed.
In this album Toots is heard on both instruments in a charming program of nice music carried forth with taste, creativity and restrain. A cohesive rhythm section joined him for the date, with pianist Ray Bryant, bassist Tommy Bryant, and Oliver Jackson on drums. A superb trio, with Bryant delivering some bright piano solos in addition to his background duties. By and large, the feel of this set is pleasant, relaxed and swinging. Let's all rejoice in the fact that they went to the studio and did it. —Jordi Pujol
This is by far the best album Jean Toots Thielemans has ever made and is besides one of the most thoroughly enjoyable jazz sessions in months. This categorical statement is based on long acquaintance with Toots and his music, beginning in Europe in 1950 and extending through his career in this country during which time he became best known for his long period as harmonica player and guitarist with George Shearing.
Jean regards this album as a sort of graduate degree as the result of my assimilation of American life and the American jazz scene. Especially, my assimilation of the people who play, live and sing the blues. That's why I wanted 'soul' in the title of the album.
This album also presents Jean in context with three of the most sympathetic musicians—sympathetic to what he feels jazz to be—he's ever played with. Ray Bryant is the unique Philadelphia pianist who is entirely at home with older players like Roy Eldridge and Coleman Hawkins and is also at ease with the hard boppers or more lyrical moderns. He is a young modernist who so thoroughly knows the background of the jazz language—especially the blues—that he plays with the unselfconscious authority of the man who swings without worrying about whether he does or not, and who plays the right notes because he feels they are.
Ray, adds Toots Thielemans, is a pianistic player, who uses the instrument beautifully. Each note he hits is a big one. I think he plays about the biggest and fattest single notes of any pianist in jazz today. Of Ray's elder brother, bassist Tom Bryant, Toots says, he too has that big sound, and although the word has been overused, his playing can best be described as 'soulful'.
Oliver Jackson, notes Toots, has a very healthy beat and a hip soul. He fits perfectly with Ray and Tom. The Bryant brothers are Philadelphia-born. Jackson comes from Detroit. Jo Jones is his main influence, and he's worked with Yusef Lateef, Teddy Wilson, Dorothy Donegan, Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge, and Charlie Shavers. When he appeared with Coleman and Roy at the 1959 Newport Festival, he impressed several American and European writers who had not heard of him before with his firm yet resilient time, and the infectious quality of his swinging.
The variety and range of tunes Toots picked is unusual for a jazz album. You Are My Sunshine was a typical hillbilly request that was handed to Toots when he and Ray Bryant were working together one night. Manfully, they started to play it, and it turned out to be—to their surprise—very conducive to swinging. Actually, says Toots, it's a 16-bar tune, very similar in structure to The Preacher. As the engineer on the date said after this heated version, this tune may never go back west.
Nuages by Django Reinhardt, the late gypsy guitarist, is described by Toots as my humble tribute to my all-time idol. He's my idol on the instrument, and my other in jazz is Charlie Parker. I don't know which to choose. It's true that Django's rhythmic concept was not jazz, but his harmonic and melodic constructions were close to the American approach, and in both, he was ahead of his time. I especially have a great love for the kind of lyrical experience he was able to create on his instrument.
Five O'Clock Whistle, a jaunty tune, hasn't been used by jazzmen often although Duke Ellington recorded it in the forties with a vocal by Ivie Anderson. Toots, who's always looking for fresh tunes, chose it, and was eyed skeptically by Ray Bryant. But when we started rehearsing it, Ray took more choruses than anybody. It's another of those songs that doesn't seem apt for jazz at first, but really is.
Toots wrote Soul and he terms it just a blues. The main thing I learned in this country was the meaning of the blues. That was one experience I couldn't know from listening to records in Europe. I learned how important a single, simple phrase can be. It can be a phrase that looks like nothing technically, but is an expression of the life of an American Negro. It can just be a long, simple note played on the beat, but it's more than a note. This song is to underline what I learned in America.
Although Toots has perhaps been best known as a harmonica player—and on that instrument, no one can come close to him in playing modern jazz—he is also a first-rate guitarist. And Toots has never played guitar as well and in as relaxed a groove as in this album. Nor with as strong a beat. Toots arranged Lonesome Road, which has a characteristic Thielemans guitar solo, and Ray Bryant's comment on the take was It's romping time.
Erroll Garner's Misty, like Nuages, demonstrates the other strong impetus in Thielemans' work besides the love for good, full-bodied swinging. He is also a romanticist, as is Ray Bryant in his more tender moments, and he has an affinity for softly lyrical statements. The tune itself has had unusual commercial success in 1959, particularly due to Johnny Mathis' vocal version.
Charlie Parker's Confirmation is taken here at a somewhat slower tempo than usual. We sort of treat it, says Toots, as a walking ballad rather than a fast, hard tune. We sort of sat down and played it rather than ran up and down and played it. After all, the tune is very melodic and that melody is shown off better at this te