Miles Davis: Kind of Blue

Columbia CS8163, Classic Recordings reissue , 200g. virgin vinyl edition

What can I say about Kind of Blue which hasn't already been told ad nauseam? What can I say about a recording Jimmy Cobb (a guy you can trust…) said it was "recorded in Paradise"? I don't know, I just know this short writing is going to a be difficult task. How can you tell how much you love your wife, your son? It's really difficult. There are some things, some few things, which our language is at odd describing. To me, one of these is Kind of Blue. I can tell you who played on it, and it would be enough to many, as a review: James "Cannonball" Adderley on alto saxophone, John "His Holiness" Coltrane on tenor sax, Bill Evans on piano (replaced, just for a moment, by a "poor" player, Wyn Kelly, on Freddie Freeloader), Paul Chambers on bass and James Cobb on drums. I'd like someone to tell me a better line-up. I don't think you could, even if you were able to recall from the dead the best of the best ever. I can tell you KOB is the most sold record in jazz history; I could go further. But I want to tell you something first: some years ago (more than some…) I was a promising young Art History teacher in a Art High School in Rome, and I had been lucky enough to be granted that position because of "clear fame" and, further than that, to be able to work with my Art teacher who also was my most estimated and beloved teacher in most things about life. This man was, and still is, God bless him, may he live forever, Aurelio Frazzetti, I like to talk about him every time I can, pointing out his total honesty and his shyness, as he is so honest and so shy that, while being a great (and I mean Great) painter, he willingly chose to hide his art from the world (I have had the honour of being able to take a look every time I could) and to accept a normal teacher wage instead of taking part in the horrific, immoral art market. Ok, what does this matter, what's this got to do with Miles? A lot, actually. You know, there is a term, a concept our times have forgotten, a term and a concept I love, and that's integrity. To be an artist, you must be disciplined (that's one of the reasons why I'll never be an artist, by the way…), extremely disciplined. And disciplined Miles was, and KOB, in its wonder, in its magic ability to fascinate, in the love it contains and it brings, is as rigorous as only the best of Bach's sacred works are. There's discipline in love - either there's discipline, or there's no love, there might be passion, there might be enchantment, heartbeat, but there is no love. Back to Professor Fruzzetti. A day, during one of our never ending conversations about universe, love, mind, soul, water, fire, and whatever, we ended talking about our beloved Impressionists, and about the most beloved one in particular, Cezanne. Some months before I had been in Paris and I had sent a postcard to the Professor. It was one of the many Montagne St. Victoire Cezanne had painted, in his desperate attempt to understand the essence of that mountain in front of his Aix house (he died, old and almost out of himself, absorbed by one last fight with his mountain, brought away by the tempest with his easel and canvas - they found him agonising, a hundred meter away from his favourite spot). On the back of the postcard, thrilled by my first visit to the Musee d'Orsay, I wrote "I know, I know, it's not allowed to say that, but the Impressionists, and Cezanne above all of them, are the greatest artists in history". That day, talking about Cezanne, the Professor (how I would be happy if you all knew him!) stared at me and, leaving his severity aside for a moment, that severity that wouldn't have allowed, obviously, an improbable ranking of art and artists, told me: "it is allowed, it is: they were the greatest artists in history, and Cezanne above all of them". After this long digression, I can say it: KOB is the absolute greatest record in jazz history. But I can't describe it, I can only tell our younger readers: "listen to it, you will not want to be without it" and to the other ones "never let this record too long on the shelf, always keep it in mind". This wonderful Classic Records reissue, a label specialised in vinyl reissues, so accurate and precious that Peter Gabriel chose their team for the vinyl version of his recent "Up", is a wonderful chance for the younger to have this record in their collection and for the other guys to have it in its absolute best version, to be able to listen to it at its best. Really strict in its adherence to the original issue - the Classic logo is nowhere to be found, no difference is to be found, other than the purity of the 200g vinyl and the fact that each record is issued from the original master and is a first-generation matrix. The sound is simply wonderful. There's no alternative, believe me. After this reissue, the 24 bit gold Japanese version, which cost me an arm and a leg, sounds like a cassette recorded from the radio. I'm not exaggerating. Please listen to the silvery voice of the trumpet, to the sax blows, to the solidity and harmonic development of the bass, to the light within the piano. If anyone needed a proof of the superiority of vinyl, well, here it is. This disc is not cheap, but vinyl itself is expensive, pressing vinyl today is expensive, and pressing it this way is even more expensive. The price is just about the same in all countries, and it's the price of a couple of CDs of mass market music or of a DVD. You don't have to sell your Mercedes or your wife's fur (as reads the first sentence of the review of a famous two-chassis preamp). You can live without a pair of CDs, you can live without that DVD or one dinner out with friends, but you can't stay without this record, absolutely. What, you don't own a turntable? This is time to get one.

Sound & Music- Lucca
www.soundandmusic.com
Cost € 41

Nina Simone :Sings the Blues;

RCA Victor LSP-3789; Speakers Corner reissue, 180g. virgin vinyl

I am afraid I am going to be a little bit boring in this issue (or am I always?), but I have to talk about feelings, not descriptions, again.
Until that moment I thought I could never be so emotionally involved - in live music, I mean - as I was when I heard the first notes of Thick as a Brick in the 1974 Jethro Tull tour. Well, maybe there was a kind of contest between that and the John Barleycorn which Traffic had sneaked halfway through the Glad suite, by surprise, in a 1975 concert. Some years later, I was queuing in front of the Olympia, in Paris, for a Nina Simone concert. A no brainer: Nina Simone at the Olympia - you can't go wrong with things like these. Well, when the curtain opened and that great, little woman walked to the piano, when she put her hands on the keyboard and started Real, Real I jumped on my chair, almost out of my chair (I had this last thing happen to me, literally, two times, but it was out of laughs, the first time I saw "What's new Pussycat" and during an incredibly funny duet at an Incredible String Band concert at the unforgettable Teatro Goldoni - "quod non fecerunt barbari…" - in Rome). Nina, great Nina, unforgettable (this is not a qualifier, it's an imperative) Nina.

Nina Simone Sings the Blues is a peak (yet not the only one) of this Artist (the capital letter isn't a mismatch). Eleven blues songs, five written by Nina, six by other songwriters, eleven standard-setters, because even those who weren't (those by Simone) immediately became ones.
Now (but this always happens, peculiarly, after those who could enjoy such a success have departed) we are handed, down here, I Want a Little Sugar In My Bowl in an idiotic ad since the early morning hours, an ad which shows perfect families, happy and relaxed (and showing a perfect make-up and hairdo) who wake up and have biscuits to become even happier and more perfect (of course they live in a world where there are no bills to pay, no diseases, no idiotic co-workers, no despotic bosses, no incompetent politicians, no such things: I am forced to think that in their perfectly tidy, incorruptible houses there's no WC). But Nina Simone's life couldn't have been more different than the biscuit-eater family one, and that song is a kind of testament to that life, an there's no way they can convince us that it is a light pop song.

I'd like to paraphrase, here, one of the cover notes by her record producer, Sid McCoy: My Man's Gone Now was the last recorded song at this session. Mrs Simone was physically and psychologically exhausted, but she sat down at the piano and started to play and sing this famous Porgy and Bess number all the same. She pulled out of some corner the energy to deliver a perfect, inspired performance, even more intense than what she had done until that moment. The first take was the good one, impossible to do better than that. These are the words of one of the few men who didn't abuse Nina, and, better than any other possible word, portray that great Artist.

The record was and still is a wonderful one, the RCA recording was really good (a New York Studio B session), but it was disgraced by bad pressings, almost unrecognisable in the European editions. The reissue, as perfect a replica as KOB, finally gives this record what it deserves, and gives the Artist what she deserved (and which she only had late in her life, with a song she disliked, "My Baby Just Cares For Me"). Full, delineated voice, credible and dimensionally correct piano, physical, alive acoustic bass, clean, clear drums, perfect pitch. A wonderful job, on a perfectly noiseless vinyl. As in KOB's case, the record is expensive (a bit cheaper than KOB), but it's worth its price, and even more than that. Listen to it, you won't be able to go on without it. Good vinyl is a mighty drug. You can get addicted, but it's for your own good.

Sound & Music- Lucca
www.soundandmusic.com

Cost EU 39