I agreed to do a review of Amos Lee's newest CD, largely because the description given to me began with the word "jazz". I like jazz. Good jazz has all the mystery and passion of classical music, except it's created on the spot. Improvisation is a wonderful thing. It's the olympics of music.
When the CD arrived, I was encouraged to see the label was Blue Note. I recently bought War's "Platinum Jazz" on vinyl at a yard sale. That was on Blue Note, and it was good. I've never been disappointed by that label before.
Back when I was at KVNF radio, I helped audition records and make recommendations to the volunteer deejays. I like records because you can lower the needle in for three 10-second sections of the cut. If it doesn't grab me by then, I move on. If it does I go back to the beginning and listen to the entire thing. CDs are annoying that way. My player doesn't fast-forward into a song or allow me to skim, so I was stuck with listening to the entire CD, beginning to end.
I have now listened to the CD twice (just to be fair). It's soothing, and he a very pleasant voice. He might be handsome, but I've never been able to figure out what makes a guy attractive to women (or other guys for that matter). That is the extent of my positive comments about this release.
It is not jazz and I detect little in the way of jazz influence. Nor is it folk or gospel or any of the other influences I was told were at play here. I pick up on some soul vibe here and there, but it sounds more like, say, Nora Jones - someone else who doesn't perform a lick of jazz, or to my ear, music. I read the credits, and sure enough he cites Nora Jones, though it's unclear whether he means as a collaborator or an influence.
It's not just the absence of jazz influence, but I found it very frustrating that instruments - guitars, drums, saxophone, piano - are so blended into the background they might as well not be on the record at all. It's all about his voice and his songs.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with pieces that are all about the song. I love Joanie Mitchell, and Dylan and Neil Young and John Fogerty. If you have a good song, by all means get it out there.
This however is some sort of background music. The songs I hear on this record sound like they were all written in the course of a single week. It's as though all the effort has been put into creating a sort of R&B version of new age music.
As another reviewer of the same CD said, it's something you could listen to while doing the laundry, though I don't need to concentrate or relax when I'm doing laundry, so I'd prefer something more in-your-face, like Zeppelin, or Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers, or Bob Wills, or Jack Teagarden or Perez Prado.
Perhaps I'm just out of it, and jazz has evolved into something more "accessible". If so, I'll stick to hunting through old vinyl at yard sales.
The best song on the record is without a doubt the soul/gospel piece "Careless". I don't have an i-pod, but I'm assuming you can go download just that one song. If you like it, try another, though I'm out of recommendations after that one.
I could be totally off base here. We may be looking at another Springsteen or Rabbit or Rogers or Carpenter. Who knows?
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Comments: 13
I heard one of his cuts on the new "The Current Live II" CD from 89.3 The Current in the Twin Cities. Not bad, but not what i'd call jazz either. I laughed at your "Lawrence Welk" quote above. I've dissed Larry W. on occation too. That said, when you dig around on his life and times you realize his orch. really was a group of good musicians that did in fact have "jazz" as part of the repetoire. They played a fair amount of the big band jazz, form the 30's 40's, and not just Dorsey/Miller. They also did some of the old Fletcher Henderson stuff from whence came much of the white big band genre. While I don't like much of the LW stuff personally, the nod i have to give to him is that he took his German roots, and played polka, and waltz and schottische, and brought in the "jazz" stuff to some pretty stodgy white audiences...making them aware of it. (do you remember his band doing Hank Williams "Jambalaya" ? not jazz either...but exposure to another genre).
Anyway, I completely agree that the "smooth jazz" folks to whom you alluded...have nearly killed "jazz" for radio. Somehow we should have known that when Yanni, and Enya, and Dave Koz began to represent "jazz" we should have run screaming for the hills. The term "jazz" has been stolen from us, and rendered meaningless. Why not Zamfir, and Slim Whitman?
1) Proud Mary (as close to the Ike and Tina version as they could muster). They were going through great music of the 20th Century, and Lawrence's stand in conductor apparently chose the Creedence tune without running it by the boss. I thought LK was going to die from apologizing.
2) Guy and Ralna doing "Sweet Caroline", except when they got to the part about "touching hands, touching me, touching you" that was just too racey. So they changed it to "holding hands".
Yes, I have heard some early Lawrence Welk and it was indeed actually good. I guess they lost some of their spark when they hit the 'big time."
Oh, one more thing. I was flipping through the channels and hit an LK rerun, and they were playing the "Chicken Song"(!) Oh, my god what a hoot. We watched till the end of that and then went back to bull riding.
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Al for jazz, give me Bob Wills or Asleep at the Wheel any day (not that there's anything wrong with Bird).
Ah, I forgot to say earlier, the Hotsy Totsy Boys was the name of Lawrence's original band, and I think the pieces played by that little ensemble by the same name on his show probably resembled what he played back when he toured the plains.