The Big Noise From Winnetka - Bob Haggart & Ray Bauduc

The Big Noise From Winnetka is barest of bones jazz rhythm stretched to its breathless breaking point. Bassist (and damn fine whistler) Bob Haggart and drummer Ray Bauduc made up the rhythm section of Bob Crosby's Bobcats, a swing band mainly active during the 30s/40s but have reunited endlessly over the years. During a 1938 performance at Blackhawks Restaurant in Chicago (the Chicago Loop area, to be precise), Crosby and the rest of the Bobcats were late returning from a break so Haggart and Bauduc began jamming. And what a big noise they made.

The song is thriller music incarnate. It's cool and classy while wired and paranoid. A bit like straddling a caffeine rush between the high and the jitters. Haggart's fine lines stride and shake, jumping up and down the neck like doped up fleas. Bauduc concocts a triptrapping rhythm that seems to utilize each section of his drumkit in a series of consecutive solos before turning into an EVEN BIGGER solo around the halfway mark. Then! The really cool part happens. Right around the 1:40 mark, Bauduc starts playing his sticks on Haggart's bass strings. Haggart in turn keeps fingering the neck, creating a fabulously percussive bass solo which becomes the ultimate stripped down expression of the rhythm section in a band.

The pair kept playing the song (Crosby loved it) over the years. It's been used in countless films, has been reworked with a full band and vocals (nowhere near as powerful as the genuine article), and has firmly entrenched itself in history as one of those songs where it just sounds so natural- so intuitive -that you can't help but think, "DAMN IT. I know this song from somewhere. But WHERE?"

Bath - Harry Nilsson

We've spoken about the illustrious Harry Nilsson before. His refusal to perform live. How he almost became a member of The Beatles. How his voice is one of the Greatest Gifts to Pop Music Ever.

Bath, the final track on Nilsson's third album Aerial Ballet is one of the greatest album closers of all time. It clocks in at just under two minutes, and is filled with jazzy rag piano, storming brass sections, and some of the best high notes Harry has ever hit. There are few better ways to end an album than a rag belter about having your faith in mankind restored after a late night visit to a brothel. Hell, it's a great ending soundtrack to pretty much anything. If ever I feel the need to pull down the shutters on That Song Blog forever (which I promise is not something in any way forthcoming), I'm going to embed some code so that every page you go to plays this song on an infinite loop. So it shall be.

Happy Birthday Clifton Chenier!

A very Happy Birthday to the King of Zydeco Clifton Chenier! The first Creole to be given a Grammy on national television, Clifton was known for his howling fusion of zydeco rhythms with big band, jazz and blues. 

He is the true Accordion Hero. 

Chiptune Chuesday: So What - Ast0r

We're getting classy this Chiptune Chuesday. We have So What by Ast0r from the 8-bit demake of the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue: Kind of Bloop.

The whole album is available here for the super cheap quantity of five dollars.

Can You Feel It - Ken Ishii presents Metropolitan Harmonic Formulas

Music For Daydreams takes the pulse of an urban landscape and blends it with house beats and jazz licks. It's music which exists in multiple decades at once. You'll be gliding along to smooth jazz piano as it begins to modulate quicker and quicker before bursting through the ceiling of the club to the sound of digital angels who begin a shuffling snare line through the skyscrapers. 

Ken Ishii is a Japanese techno DJ who's been crafting house gems since the early nineties. This release comes under the umbrella of his latest musical endeavour: Metropolitan Harmonic Formulas, a crossover of electronica with a wider array of genres and styles. The beats have gotten softer, but they're carried along by a subway like urgency.

The album is fantastic, comprised of original compositions and reworked house classics, such as the track we've pulled out for today: 'Can You Feel It.'

With its gently blended sounds of a city waking up rolling across pingponging choirs partying with smooth saxophones, 'Can You Feel It' is in many ways the ultimate expression of the albums intent: Daytime techno that exudes sunrises while pushing you out the door into the bustle of your own metropolis, even when you're just listening at home.

From the Corner to the Block - Galactic ft. Juvenile and The Soul Rebels Brass Band

New Orleans jazz/rock/funk (or, as I am now officially calling it, jonk) fusion meets hip-hop meets brass band. It will blow your mind while blowing it's horns.

From the Corner to the Block is the title track from New Orleans based fusion group Galalctic's (originally named Galactic Prophylactic) fifth album. The track features fellow New Orleans natives Juvenile and The Soul Rebels Brass Band- though it's the latter presence that really elevates it to such heights. It's a funked up car crash of time lines, genres, and a sousaphone.

More of this please.

Blackbird - Bobby McFerrin

When most people think of Bobby Mcferrin, they think of Don't Worry Be Happy. I'm not knocking that song, but this is the sort of thing Bobby should be remembered for:

Recorded live on a tour of Germany in 1984, the album was the first of it's kind to feature a jazz vocalist completely unaccompanied.

The opening track, his reworking of The Beatles Blackbird, is the perfect showcase for McFerrin's rapid pitch shifts, dropping and rocketing through registers at the speed of light.

Thermopylae - Robert Graettinger and Stan Kenton

Note for the video above: Thermopylae is the first track performed. It ends around three minutes in. The rest is easily worth a listen if it catches your interest.

The work of Robert Graettinger is the 1940s/50s equivalent of industrial music. Only imagine a world where nobody had ever heard anything like industrial music before and would actively ostracize musicians who explored atonal territories.

Graettinger was a notorious loner, reed thin and deathly pale. When composing - which was always - he would lock himself away in his one room apartment for weeks on end. Sadly this fanatic devotion to his music (and sucking down more tobacco than a humidor) lead to his early death at 33.

Today's song is called Thermopylae, the first piece Graettinger composed for Stan Kenton, his employer and fellow musical maverick. The recording is of Kenton's band performing the piece in 1947.

This is big band jazz hyped up on amphetamines. Cyclonic and explosively violent crescendos of brass. Piano keys tinkle by on the very tips of their toes. Drums thud with a wooden intensity like fists slamming upon doors. Sleazy saxophones slime and shimmy before ripping apart the heart stopping tapestry of sounds, only to then drag the song off by it's hair in a whole other direction.

There's an undeniable urban edge to the entire composition, something which Graettinger explored further in his famous four part City of Glass suite. It's the sound of a late night city pulse.

Linus and Lucy - Vince Guaraldi Trio

Vince Guaraldi was a jazz trio band leader active from the late 50s to the early 70s. He is chiefly remembered for composing the music to the Peanuts television specials and movies; and for Linus and Lucy in particular.

It's an achingly simple piece of jazzy blues. Driving bass piano notes samba with brushes and maracas, bursts of drums thunder with chiming piano licks, all backed by that hear-it-once-and-you-never-forget-it melody.

The reason Linus and Lucy so perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Peanuts is because it hits just the right pitch of naivety and world weariness. Peanuts has remained perennially popular because of the universal chord struck by taking children and giving their concerns an adult perspective.

With this in mind, Guaraldi has composed a piece of music that wouldn't feel out of place soundtracking a bustling metropolis or a kid scraping their knee. It's the drudge of dragging a sledge up hill and the wide-eyed-ye-Gods-I'm-Alive heart pounding affirmation of the world as you thunder back down the ice.