format:    16-bit CD performance:    8 sound:    8 released:    2007 label:    Telarc reviewer:    Scott Yanow Even at the age of 86, Dave Brubeck is a powerful musician who continually stretches himself. He utilized polytonality (playing in two or more keys at once) and unusual time signatures as early as the late 1940s, predating nearly everyone in jazz. He was also very early in using polyrhythms (two or more simultaneous rhythms). His chord voicings differed from his contemporaries and, although often grouped with West Coast cool jazz, he did not sound like any of the other pianists. Despite his innovations and uniqueness, Brubeck has also been one of the most popular jazz musicians ever since his quartet caught on big in the mid-1950s. He is one of the very few (along with George Shearing, Oscar Peterson and the late Erroll Garner) who has managed to retain his fame for ...

format:    16-bit CD performance:    8 sound:    7 released:    2007 label:    Concord reviewer:    Scott Yanow Let’s see. This is a set of piano-banjo duets and there is a gramophone drawn on the cover of the album. Therefore, this must be a program of New Orleans jazz warhorses plus perhaps a few ragtime pieces. Needless to say, that guess is off the mark. Bela Fleck has been defying standards and stereotypes since the beginning of his career. The banjo, although used in many jazz groups in the 1920s due to its superior volume, was replaced by the guitar by the early 1930s when recording techniques improved and microphones became standard. Relegated in jazz to Dixieland groups and considered one of the key instruments in bluegrass and country music, the banjo is virtually extinct in modern jazz. It would be impossible to come up with three bebop banjoists. But Bela Fleck ...

format:    16-bit CD performance:    9 sound:    7 released:    2007 label:    Blue Note reviewer:    K L Poore When I was oh-so-young I inherited a stereo console that was as long as my bed, and just as high, which made it perfect. I crammed that sucker against the wall, pushed my bed up against it and voilà, I was sleeping on a fully functional Motorola stereo system every night. I tell you this because it was there, laying in the dark, with ears tuned to a stereo the size of a small car, that I first discovered the thrill, the joy, the confused bliss that is the music of Charles Mingus. It was music that was much too beautiful, much too complex, and sometimes too angry for my naive and developing mind, but I was captivated and have remained so to this day. Cornell 1964 is a recently discovered treasure ...

format:    16-bit CD performance:    6 sound:    6 released:    2007 label:    Interscope reviewer:    Matt Fink Given that so much of an artist’s greatness is proportional to his or her ability to reinvent and re-imagine their art for new eras and listeners, the White Stripes are a puzzling proposition. Designed specifically with limitations that ensure they can’t evolve too far past the guitar and drum set-up that Jack White relies on to keep his music free of entanglements, they are in a particularly unenviable position where they have consistently to invent new ways to rearrange rudiments and reassert the primacy of a guitar riff. Thus far, they’ve gone farther than anyone could have expected when 2001’s White Blood Cells made them the leading lights of a new guitar-rock revival, but recent years have shown signs of wear. From the marimba experiments of 2005’s Get Behind Me Satan to ...

format:    16-bit CD performance:    4 sound:    3 released:    2007 label:    Show Dog Records reviewer:    K L Poore For those of you who missed my previous lecture, and were unable to obtain notes from a classmate, here’s an overview. While discussing the previous Toby Keith cringe inducer, White Trash with Money, I put forth this proposition: if I bought this newest release of his on a lark because I was feeling a little guilty about hating Keith’s music so much, how bad could it be? It’s not like it would make me want to poke my eyes out or something … Forty minutes later: I’m glad they put those little raised bumps on the F and J keys, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to continue to write music reviews. I revisit this all too recent past because in the interest of fairness and accuracy in reporting, I must ...