Billy Eckstine and His Orchestra - The Chronological Classics: Billy Eckstine and His Orchestra 1944-1945 (1945)

"A Cottage for Sale" by Billy Eckstine and His Orchestra


When Miles Davis got his first chance to play with Diz and Bird in St. Louis in 1944, he had the fortune of playing third trumpet in Billy Eckstine's Orchestra.

A win in a talent contest prompted Eckstine's drop from Howard University and early career as a jazz singer.  His first big break came in 1939 when he joined Earl Hines's big band as vocalist and occasional trumpeter.  He sang for Hines and his name grew in popularity with the band's radio performances.  Eckstine (or Mr. B) would leave Hines to form his own big band in 1943 taking many of Hines's young musicians with him including Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey, and Charlie Parker.  With Gillespie's early arrangements, Billy Eckstine and His Orchestra became the first bop big band, a risk for all involved due to bebop's critical and commercial unpopularity at the time.  Despite the prejudice against this groundbreaking new jazz, Eckstine's voice carried the Orchestra's singles (like "A Cottage for Sale" and "Prisoner of Love") to be Top Ten hits and helped set the stage for bebop dominance in jazz for the next decade.

Here is the discography surrounding Billy Eckstine's first two years of recording:

A Cottage for Sale (1945 single with His Orchestra)
I'm in the Mood for Love (1945 single with His Orchestra)
Prisoner of Love (1945 single with His Orchestra)
The Chronological Classics: Billy Eckstine and His Orchestra 1944-1945

"I Love the Rhythm in a Riff" by Billy Eckstine and His Orchestra


"Prisoner of Love" by Billy Eckstine and His Orchestra


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Miles Davis - The New Sounds (1951)

Aside for being famous for being John Coltrane, John Coltrane was first famous for his remarkable collaboration with Miles Davis.  Miles Davis picked up the trumpet at 13 and trained classically.  Three years later, he was playing professionally as a freelance jazz trumpeter.  Two years after that (in 1944), he got the chance to play with two of his greatest influences when Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker came to town and a third chair trumpeter got sick.

Miles would graduate high school and attend Juilliard to soon drop out after learning a thing or two.  He jammed regularly with the upcoming crowd of New York jazz artists and sought to reconnect with Charlie Parker.  He worked as a sideman and eventually joined both Dizzy's and Charlie's bands for a time.  Although Miles was a comfortably slower and more reflective soloist, he naturally adapted to what was most popular at the time: bebop.  His unique style, however, would eventually give birth to Cool (but more on that in a later update).

Besides revering Charlie Parker, he also took after Bird's heroin abuse.  He was not as reliable as he would be after he kicked the drug, but he did begin recording under his own name and band (usually a sextet) starting in 1947.  This led the release of his first 10" The New Sounds in 1951.  (It is very important to note that this was not his first major recording session.  A nonet he and composer Gil Evans formed recorded a different kind of jazz in the late forties.  They played live shows to gauge audience interest but were met with an outspoken negativity that made sure the recordings would not be released until years later.)

Here is the discography surrounding Miles Davis's debut album:

Milestones (1946 single)
Half Nelson (1947 single)
Little Willie Leaps (1948 single)
Jeru (1949 single)
Move (1949 single)
Boplicity (1949 single)
Venus de Milo (1950 single)
Modern Jazz Trumpets (1951 compilation album)
Morpheus (1951 single)
Down (1951 single)
Dig (1951 single)
Conception (1951 single)
The New Sounds

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John Coltrane - Coltrane (1957)

"Violets for Your Furs" by John Coltrane


John Coltrane enlisted in the Navy in 1945 at the age of eighteen.  It was then, stationed in Hawaii, where he played with the Navy jazz band as alto saxophonist.  After moving back to Philadelphia in '46, he took up jazz theory studies with guitarist Dennis Sandole and got one of his earliest gigs with the Eddie Vinson band where he switched to playing the tenor saxophone.  Coltrane went without much popular notice for a while but did get to record with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic, and Johnny Hodges.  He continued to study and freelance until the mid-fifties.

"Trane" then hit two big breaks.  First, he got a call to be in Miles Davis's "First Great Quintet" with which he played from 1955 to 1957.  And second, he received a similar prominent role with Thelonious Monk, playing in his quartet.  Coltrane also picked up his first recording contract with Prestige Records in 1956.  He worked as a sideman on most of his Prestige recordings but gradually took more of a leading position as he recorded with Prestige "All Star" groups and then co-lead his first recording session with Paul Quinichette.  As John Coltrane's name grew in recognition thanks to his early work with Davis and especially his broadcast playing with Monk, he lead his first recording session that resulted in his 1957 debut album Coltrane.

(Forgot to mention the connection is Coltrane introduced Babatunde to John Hammond, Jr. who signed him to his recording contract.)

Here is the discography surrounding John Coltrane's debut album:

Tenor Conclave (1956 album with Hank Mobley, Al Cohn & Zoot Sims)
The Cats (1957 album with Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Burrell & Idrees Sulieman)
Cattin' with Coltrane and Quinichette (1957 album with Paul Quinichette)
John Coltrane
Dakar (1957 album)
Interplay for 2 Trumpets and 2 Tenors (1957 album Idrees Sulieman, Webster Young & Bobby Jaspar)

"Bakai" by John Coltrane


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Babatunde Olatunji - Drums of Passion (1959)

"Jin-Go-Lo-Ba (Drums of Passion)" by Babatunde Olatunji


When Sophie B. Hawkins started studying African percussion, she had quite the teacher, Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji.  Baba came to the United States to study in 1950 under the Rotary International Foundation scholarship.  He attended Morehouse then NYU.  In order to support himself and keep from feeling homesick, he formed an African drumming group.  He won a following amongst New York's jazz circles and eventually won himself a recording contract with Columbia Records, signed by John Hammond.

Here is the discography surrounding Babatunde Olatunji's debut album:

Drums of Passion

"Akiwowo (Chant to the Trainman)" by Babatunde Olatunji


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Sophie B. Hawkins - Tongues and Tails (1992)

"We Are One Body" by Sophie B. Hawkins


Sophie B. Hawkins's musical education started at a young age in her study of African percussion.  She'd branch out to jazz percussion and her own songwriting while attending the Manhattan School of Music.  Still, she made her rounds as a drummer before her first big break when her demo got her a touring job with Bryan Ferry.  She'd move on to writing jingles for commercials before she caught the attention of Columbia Records.  Her first album Tongues and Tails came out in 1992 and became a surprising worldwide hit thanks to the effort of her hit single (#5 on the charts) "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover".  Critics dubbed her the spiritual heir of the likes of Patti Smith and heralded her emotionally naked lyrics and inventive pop compositions.  Her amazing rise to stardom would culminate with her Grammy nomination for Best New Artist.

(She worked with Gary Lucas who was an early collaborator of Jeff Buckley's.)

Here is the discography surrounding Sophie B. Hawkins's debut album:

Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover (1992 single)
Tongues and Tails
California Here I Come (1992 single)
I Want You (1992 single)

"Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" by Sophie B. Hawkins


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Jeff Buckley - Grace (1994)

"Mojo Pin" by Jeff Buckley


As I discover music in the non-linear and non-contemporary fashion of this blog, I feel that I'm going from room to room in which each one there used to be parties.  Parties that I'm not late to but of which I've missed completely and only by sifting through a mess of clues littered across the floor can I find solace in the fact that it must've been some happening party.  I was eight years old when Jeff Buckley died and ten years after that I learned who he was and what he did.  Like most people from my generation, this discovery came through his tallest standing legacy: his rendition of "Hallelujah".  (In my excitement in trying to spread the voice of this lost artist to my friends, I falsely claimed he wrote the song.  What a fool that boy, it was written by Leonard Cohen.)

A natural fascination with this lustful prayer inevitably lead to a thorough listening of his only album, 1994's Grace.  Quickly claimed as a masterpiece which sales slowly caught up with, Jeff Buckley's music combined beauty and a stinging angst with deft guitar playing, ephemeral songwriting, and vocals either gritty or heavenly.  As he was building his highly anticipated follow-up, Jeff sadly drowned in a slackwater channel of the Mississippi River at the age of 30.  All that was left was a body washed up by Beale Street, an unfinished album, and the question of why Jeff had to leave so soon.  The answer was supplied with a mythos that would surround Jeff and his music just as it had his father, Tim Buckley, who died at an even younger age of a heroin overdose.

I'm not going to say much more about Jeff Buckley because it has been covered a hundred times before and better.  All I can originally provide is my own impression of Jeff and his impression on me, but I will save these for a later project for which this blog is partially a vehicle.  In the meantime, ...

Here is the complete discography for Jeff Buckley:

Babylon Dungeon Sessions (1990 demo)
Live at St. Anne's Church (1991 live bootleg)
Songs to No One 1991-1992 (compilation with Gary Lucas)
Live on WFMU (1992 live bootleg)
Trash Can Demo Tape (1993 live bootleg)
Live at Sin-é (1993 live EP)
Live at Sin-é (1993 live double-album)
Live at CBGB's (1993 live bootleg)
Live on Man in the Moon (1994 live bootleg)
Live at the Mountain Stage (1994 live bootleg)
Live on Morning Becomes Eclectic (1994 live bootleg)
Peyote Radio Theatre (1994 live EP)
Grace (1994 single)
Grace
Live at the Pacific Club (1994 live bootleg)
Last Goodbye (1994 single)
Live in Fukuoka (1995 live bootleg)
The Rain Was Falling On That Day (1995 bootleg compilation)
Live at Berkeley's Sproul Plaza (1995 live bootleg)
So Real (1995 single)
Live at Meltdown Festival (1995 live bootleg)
Live à L'Olympia (1995 live bootleg)
Grace Around the World (1995 live compilation)
Eternal Life (1995 single)
Live from the Bataclan (1995 live EP)
Live at the Mercury Lounge (1995 live bootleg)
The Grace EP (1996 EP)
Mystery White Boy (1996 live compilation)

"Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley


"Corpus Christi Carol" by Jeff Buckley


Interview with Jeff Buckley


"Back in N.Y.C." by Jeff Buckley


On the Death of Jeff Buckley


"Satisfied Mind" by Jeff Buckley


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