Charlie Haden Rambles, In a Good Way

Charlie Haden's new "Rambling Boy" will probably come as a surprise to those who know him purely from his famous work in the free jazz idiom or from his more recent (somewhat smooth) collaborative work with the likes of Pat Metheny or Gonzalo Rubacalba. Metheny shows up on "Rambling Boy-" the record is actually not credited to Charlie Haden but to Charlie Haden Family and Friends- as does everyone from Elvis Costello (A friend of Haden's) to Jack Black (Haden's son-in-law). Oh yeah, and it's an old-school country blue-grass album in the vein of The Carter Family or, on faster tracks, Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys.

In a career full of random shifts and curveballs (Haden's first and most famous recording features a free jazz orchestra playing Spanish folk music), "Rambling Boy" may well be the single most out-of-left-field recording in Haden's entire discography. It is not, however, a departure- quite the opposite. As a child, Haden sang with his family on their syndicated radio show, "Korn's-a-Krackin," and on here he sings the final tune, "Shenandoah," in the poignant, gravelly voice you would expect from an 81-year-old bass player raised on this music. His bass is brilliant, as always, even though he sits in the rhythm section, untrumpeted, for most of the recording.

Oddly, for an album with a cast so huge, each member of Haden's large band gets ample time to show off. The Haden Triplets (Petra, Tanya and Rachel) are featured in a few tracks, and daughter Petra gets a sings beautifully on the slow-building ballad "The Fields of Athenry." Guitarists Pat Metheny and Russ Barenberg duel throughout the record, and Roseanne Cash even pops by for a number ("Wildwood Flower"). The most rousing performance on the album, however, is by Haden's son, Josh, who sings his own "Spiritual." Unlike versions sung by Johnny Cash or played by Charlie and Metheny, either world-weary or melodramatic, this version builds to a rousing climax, with Josh Haden's voice finding just the right spot between gruff seriousness and wide-eyed curiosity.

Is "Rambling Boy" Jazz? No, although Metheny, pianist Buck White and banjo player Bela Fleck all play their fair shair of harmonically complex lines. The real question is: does it matter? Music is music, and Haden's new album showcases an exciting, different direction for him.

ECM Madness, Part 1

So ECM has just begun what I can only describe as a massive archival series. This month alone, ECM is re-releasing 15 classic (or so the copy says) CDs in nice little 11 dollar cardboard slip cases, probably in some kind of misguided attempt at getting in on Blue Note's RVG-series action. Of course, ECM's new slip discs could never compete with the RVG series; there aren't enough ECM records that are considered "classics" by the jazz intelligentsia (plus the jazz intelligentsia has a habit of making fun of the as-far-as-I-can-tell non-existant "ECM sound"), although their back-catalogue is probably just as varied and fruitful as a whole. Either way, here's your guide to the first batch of those archival discs.

As should be expected, some CDs considered "classics" by ECM are pretty terrible. I'm surprised that there hasn't been more of a critical reappraisal of John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner's "Sargasso Sea," which is probably the most typically "ECM" album I've ever heard, and the sort of album that critics point to when they talk about the "ECM Sound." Towner plays a bunch of sus chords, and Abercrombie plays some predictable guitar over it. It isn't very good. Of course, other albums that are also very typically ECM are great; "Dreams So Real," arguably Gary Burton's best album in print (I have yet to hear the out-of-print RCA stuff he did with Larry Coryell), is also full of sus chords and clean guitars, but happens to be brilliant. The tunes, written by Carla Bley, form a suite for Burton and some incredible sidemen (the record introduced the world to Pat Metheny) to improvise over. The best parts of the album are sublime, showing what made the "ECM Sound" popular to begin with.

Of course, as I said earlier, 'The ECM Sound" is a myth, as some of the best reissues show: Dave Holland's "Extensions" is extremely funky, and altoist Steve Coleman is so sharp and energetic on it that he sounds like he'd cut through "ECM Sound"ing wide open spaces like a knife. The tunes themselves are also too complex to fit with the aforementioned albums. Granted, "Extensions" came out more than a decade after the other two, but people still talk about "The ECM Sound" almost twenty years after "Extensions." Plus, "Gnu High," probably Kenny Wheeler's best record, is just as good and it came out before "Dreams So Real." Although there are only three tracks (the shortest clocks in at about 8 minutes), Wheeler packs a huge amount of punch into the album; his sidemen Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, and Holland (all ECM stalwarts and Miles Davis alums) each sound great, whether during individual solos or group improvisations.

Of course, there are other notable records being reissued; "American Garage," an absolutely awful Pat Metheny Group record (how many Pat Metheny Group records couldn't be described that way?) that happens to be popular and has received critical praise from everybody (it has 4 1/2 stars out of 5 on Allmusic.com; perhaps the allmusic system of scoring is like the golf system). I think "bad album from the Pat Metheny Group" is enough of a description, but unless you like that stuff, stay far away. I have a friend who heard "Bright Size Life," Metheny's brilliant debut, and bought "American Garage" afterwards, thinking, "Man, it can't be that bad." Let his tragic (but true) story be a cautionary tale for you. You don't want to be the guy who wasted his 11 dollars on an album of the Kenny-G-of-the-Guitar playing odd-meter Ray Charles rip-offs. And then there's Jack DeJohnette's "Special Edition," which some think of as having the best, err, edition, of that band. I don't think it holds a candle to later albums with Gary Thomas and Greg Osby, but with David Murray and Arthur Blythe you can't really go wrong.

So there you go, ECM's first series of reissues. There are more coming out on September 30th, so you can expect another lengthy appraisal then. For now, though, that's ECM Madness! Next time I'll review something or other, and it will probably even be new!

Tokyo Daytripper

On a whole, Pat Metheny's discography is pretty spotty. Terrible missteps like "American Garage" or, well, just about anything else by the Pat Metheny Group coexist alongside masterpieces of quiet fusion like "80/81" or "Trio 99/00;" everybody already knows that Metheny's recent "Day Trip," his trio album with Antonio Sanchez and Christian McBride, is one of the good ones. For that reason, it should come as no surprise that "Tokyo Day Trip," a sort of live B-sides spin-off record (if those kinds of records even really exist in the jazz world) is stellar. As opposed to sounding like odds and ends from the "Day Trip" trio (which, essentially, it is), "Tokyo Day Trip" stands on it's own.

In spite of "Tokyo Day Trip" being very Pat Metheny, to the point where every track with the exception of the brilliant eastern dirge "Tromso" that opens the disc falls into one of Metheny's archetypes, it is also very good. Even "Inori," the Metheny Group-esque pentatonic ballad, manages to showcase a huge amount of emotion from Metheny and the band. In fact, emotion is one of the things that really sets this particular EP apart from much else in Metheny's discography; he manages to sound neither like a robotic technician nor a contrived melodramatic actor, his two most prevalent modes. Everything on "Tokyo Day Trip," like many of Metheny's great records (Read: "Bright Size Life") sounds as if it came from somewhere meaningful.

Taking every track into account, my personal favorite is "Back Arm and Back Charge," possibly the loudest thing to come out of the jazz world since the Nels Cline Singers unleashed "Confection" on their most recent album; Metheny tries to beat Cline at his own game, and almost succeeds. That said though, every performance on this EP is a highlight; "Traveling Fast" is an up-tempo tune highlighting Metheny's technique, and "The Night Becomes You" is beautiful. Highly Recommended if you can find it.

Next time I'm going to have my TOP FIVE(ish) JAZZ TUNES OF THE SPRING! So check back here in a couple days. Who will make the Jazz Monster's Top Ten? Esperanza Spalding? Ambrose Akinmusire? Someone you've actually heard of? Check back and find out...