The Tracks of My Tears: The great alto saxophonist Sonny Red and the Tragedy of Record Store Day; CRITICS: HEAL THY SELVES and start to LISTEN instead of echo.

My Jazz Origins Part 2 will appear later this week, I PROMISE

Zev Feldman is a great guy and has, with Resonance, a great label. He does wonderful reissue work. I have no problem with that. It’s the critics, who seem to think that writing about what has already been written about 76 times is a good idea, who I really cannot stand much. It’s like they are working for tips, free downloads, payment for panels and travel. Who knows? We will never get a full financial disclosure. Much like our current president with the corporate and Russian world, their financial arrangements with the profession of jazz remain hidden. Maybe it’s totally innocent, that this is what they WANT to write about. Well in that case it’s worse, showing how little they know about jazz and its history of even the last 40 years. They reflexively see a name and, like Pavlov’s four-legged followers, they begin to circle and bark at the objects of their calloused affections.

So – it’s Record Store Day. Like my last birthday I tend to ignore such things. But unlike my birthday, which just tells me I am old and another mile from success, Record Store Day is actually an annoying marketing term to steer you all toward what to critics is a consensus on who you should listen to and what you should buy; it’s less work for them, they don’t have to spend any time actually listening to music. Instead that can just look at the title of the album and let a publicist do the rest. They might be better off educating people about music which they, themselves, know little about. But that represents too steep a learning curve. Instead they just find someone who is already famous and write about him/her with the same old journalist cliches and then shoot off to appear on another panel about why jazz is such a minor music in terms of audience numbers. The problem, as the old-days radicals might have said, is that these critics are part of the problem, not the solution. What’s wrong with the jazz audience? Look in the mirror.

What has set me off today is ANOTHER Freddie Hubbard article about the release of something he did in the 1960s, recorded “live.” The article was written by a critic I have tangled with before. I am sure it’s a fine recording; I just do not need the one-thousandth jazz critic regurgitating common jazz lore to tell me about Freddie. I think he is good but he is just not that great, especially compared to other trumpeters of that post-Clifford Brown/Lee Morgan school. His sound is mechanical and cold, to me. But the critics tend to search out the path of least resistance; why do research and learn something new? Because we have on Resonance, appearing at the same time, a Mingus concert and a Kenny Dorham concert, recorded years ago and now finally seeing the light of day. So, while the easy money is on Freddie Hubbard, the best music newly released is in other places, largely ignored by the “experts.”

The Mingus release has the great pianist Bob Neloms on it. Yes, Bob was a friend of mine, but I get nothing by mentioning his name, no perks, no promotional pats on the back. Bob, little known any more, was simply one of the great pianists of his generation, harmonically deep, adaptable in an almost Jaki-Byard way. He got sick years ago and never fully recovered, and died a few years back. But listen to him if you can find him in those dark musical corners where the sun shines rarely and where those critics who bug me so much never look, for fear that they will write about something that will not bring publicist and panelist joy.

And even more important – ANOTHER of the new releases is by the trumpeter Kenny Dorham. Now Kenny was wonderful but lots of his is work available. This new release, however, has the late and great alto saxophonist Sonny Red Kyner on it. Sonny Red made studio recordings, but nothing shows his greatness like a few of the “live” things that have been put out over the years. He is in the same league as Jackie McLean, a lean and tough, aggressive player with an individual outlook on rhythm, tone, and harmony. But has ANYONE mentioned him in the context of this flurry of new releases? Not that I have seen. He died on the younger side, and he was not, even in his prime, particularly well known. But his playing is the shit, as they say. He was intense with feeling. Seek him out, particularly, as I say, for the live stuff, and particularly after around 1966.

So the moral of the story? Critics heal thy self. Think for yourself. Run from the slickification of jazz’s critical/promotional community. Freddie Hubbard is great, but a bit cold and clinical to my ears. Maybe not to yours but that’s fine. Just give ANOTHER musician, who needs the spotlight, a chance.

To wit, I give you Sonny Red in performance:

There are a few solos here, but for a good taste of what Sonny could do go to 15:20. He has an original conception, almost Monk-ish at times, and he works with a lot of fragmentary melodic motifs. But listen to the whole session which will explain how Red was just developing into his own man, post-Barry Harris, I would say. I loved Barry but his sway over a lot of players, with his insistence on bebop orthodoxy, had some troubling side effects.

Sonny Red died in 1981 at age 49. Note that his work, always excellent, changes significantly after about 1966, in that post-Trane era. That’s why I suggest you hear the Dorham album, above; and there is another for which I can’t find any clips, an amazing live recording with Sonny Red and Blue Mitchell – buy it if you can:

https://www.discogs.com/release/11432310-Blue-Mitchell-Sonny-Red-Baltimore-1966

next week: The Origins of Jazz