Ten Albums: A subjective list

Last week someone asked to name my ten favorite albums and write a line or two about each. The hard part was I had less than an afternoon to do it.

Like all such lists the one I came up with is wholly subjective, and subject to change as life and listening go on. My one bit of disobedience was that I refused to rank them. (Regrets: having to bump Wang Chung's long-forgotten Points on the Curve and They Might Be Giants Flood.)

Bleg: What kind of a list would you come up with in a hurry?

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Top Albums (alphabetical by artist)

Common: Finding Forever - Despite all the guest stars and contributors, Common and Kanye West create something that is integrated and whole, at once forceful and majestic.

Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks - There are many peaks and valleys in the mountain range that is Dylan's career, but this really reaches the heights. He's at the top of his form here, no longer the former folkie and not yet the impressionistic pattern weaver he'd become.

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue - Ornette Coleman released "The Shape of Jazz to Come" the same year, but in many ways that title applies more accurately to this collection. This is one of the best-selling jazz records of all time and with good reason: superlative musicians working at the top of their form. (Also see/hear this NPR Jazz Profile on the making of KOB.)

Duke Ellington: Jazz Party - Most of Ellington's brilliant early-career work came before the advent of the long-playing disc and I don't think he ever came to fully exploit the format. Jazz Party is an exception. The several suites and longer compositions seem to work together. Guest stars like Dizzy Gillespie and Jimmy Rushing don't hurt either.

Glenn Gould: The Goldberg Variations - Specifically the original recording from 1955. A true blast from the past, the young Gould picks up Bach's work and blows away the dust and cobwebs of decades of polite deference. It's still a refreshingly brisk experience. (Also see/hear this remarkable film of Gould revisiting the same material in 1964.)

k.d. lang: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Soundtrack - I remember watching this godawful movie in the theater and thinking, "I've got to get the soundtrack!" An impressive demonstration of the broad range of styles that lang and her collaborator Ben Mink are capable of mastering, everything from mid-70s groove to thrashy polka. What's happened to them in recent years is hard to say.

Yo-Yo Ma: The Bach Cello Suites - Dip in anywhere you like, the water is deep and satisfying. And I think this Yo-Yo Ma kid really as a future.

Willie Nelson: Stardust - Never a patient one in the studio, Nelson reportedly found the process of recording this album with Booker T. Jones a little grueling. The results are well worth it. It's also worth picking up the 30th Anniversary reissue for the versions of "Scarlet Ribbons" and "I Can See Clearly Now."

Prince: Purple Rain Soundtrack - The Artist Formerly Etc. has kept up an amazing productivity over the years, but I'm still stunned by just how tightly conceived and executed the music on this album is. Particularly the last four songs (formerly known as Side B). Once "When Doves Cry" starts, I'm there through "Purple Rain."

Cal Tjader & Eddie Palmieri: El Sonido Nuevo (The New Sound) - So maybe the title is a little grandiose, but the combination of Tjader and Palmieri is still at once hot and ultra cool.

Review: Willie and Wynton and the boys

The gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt made only one tour of the United States. He spent three weeks in November 1946 on the road with Duke Ellington's band, performing for the first time in Cleveland before making stops in Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh before returning to New York for two shows at Carnegie Hall (or almost two - the famously erratic Reinhardt ran into an acquaintance on his way to the concert hall and instead spent two hours at a cafe instead).

The tour was at best a moderate success. (Check out Paul Vernon Chester's account in which he reports that Reinhardt was shocked to discover that Ellington and the members of his band wore underpants of a floral design - although he made sure to picked some up for himself before returning to Europe). Only one obscure recording of the show in Chicago documents their performance chemistry. Still, the event remains on the short list of shows that most jazz fans would have given their right arms to have seen.

I thought of Duke and Django's American adventure last year when I happened on a review of a concert featuring Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. Jazz purists will rattle their dentures at the comparison, but the echoes are there: Nelson, while no gyspy virtuoso, shares Reinhardt's instinctual approach to music and love of swing and the standards that populate much of the jazz songbook. Marsalis, for his part, has made no secret of his desire to inherit Duke the mantle of as both a composer (and snazzy dresser). And I'd have given my right arm to have seen this show.

When the shaggy country star joined the elegantly tailored jazz czar on stage in New York in January 2007, they came together on a program of music from the genre where both styles meet: the blues. The evening apparently got off to a rough start, but five songs in Marsalis's band (drummer Ali Jackson, bassist Carlos Enriquez, pianist Dan Nimmer and saxman Walter Blanding) and Nelson finally found their groove.

That groove is what's on display in the new Blue Note release "Two Men with the Blues," which drops officially on July 8. Nelson is clearly the visiting team here (he gets moral support from his longtime harmonica player, the awesome Mickey Raphael) but he's almost like Jackie Chan's character in the Drunken Master movies in that it's precisely his idiosyncratic (and at times just plain off-kilter) approach that becomes his strength. Marsalis and his men are clearly enjoying the challenge of adapting to the bearded outlaw's at times Zen-like disregard for the beat. On "Stardust" in particular, he's at times so far and so comfortably off the beat that you can feel the rest of the band trying to adjust. The result is kind of a group moonwalk with Willie in the lead.

All this disorder leads to some really fresh and engaging solo work form Marsalis, who I often find a little too calculating in his approach. His vocals on "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It" and "Ain't Nobody's Business" are also a treat. The setting also allows the jazz roots of Nelson's guitar solo technique, always laying there latent, to come to the fore. (As a footnote, the recording also makes clear how integral Mickey Raphael's harmonica is to the Willie Nelson sound. His presence on the band stand is as understated as ever but just as tightly wound into the larger context.)

The essential pleasure of "Two Men with the Blues" is listening to this meeting of city and country styles as the players work it out. It's actually less of a concert than an especially productive jam session. I'll dare to hope that they both Wynton and Willie carve some time out of their rampant touring schedules to see what else they might be able to come up with. And if not, we'll always have this one night in New York to remember.

Free download
Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis - Bright Lights, Big City (mp3)

Linkage
www.willieandwynton.com