Neil Diamond - Hot August Night (1973), MCA 2-8000, Gloversville pressing

 

I love early Neil Diamond, particularly his material from the years recording for Bang Records, but I am not a fan of his later schlocky material, which, sadly, makes up the bulk of his career. This double LP live album originally released in 1972 is situated right at the point when he was sliding from great songwriter to purveyor of pap, and the set list reflects this. (My copy is the 1973 reissue Gloversville pressing distinguished by labels showing Diamond amidst a sea of stage lights instead of the standard MCA corporate labels.) Alongside great compositions like "Solitary Man," "Cherry Cherry," and "Red Red Wine" we get "Play Me," "I Am---I Said," and the sing-songy "Song Sung Blue," which, of course, he tries to get the audience to sing along. There are also his attempts at being a comedian and bombing horribly on "Porcupine Pie" and "Soggy Pretzels" (for this facet of his persona, I would have preferred "Knackeflerg" or "The Pot Song" from his LP Velvet Gloves and Spit). The album was a huge hit, going double platinum in the U.S. while reaching #5 on the Billboard charts, and was extremely popular in Australia, of all places, topping the album charts for months. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, reviewer for allmusic.com, calls it "the ultimate Neil Diamond record" precisely because it captures all the various facets of Diamond--the "glitz," the "kitsch," and his genius and madness as a songwriter.

But I have to say that it just doesn't work for me. The performances on the better songs are overwrought, punctuated by grunts and vocal-cord-shredding oversinging, making them far inferior to the more restrained studio versions. The 1983 compilation Classics: The Early Years probably has all the Diamond I need, with one exception--"Sweet Caroline," which is included on Hot August Night but given a somewhat tame arrangement, odd given how Diamond milks songs like "Cherry Cherry" for maximum effect. I had never owned this record before snatching this remarkably clean copy from Half Price Books for the modest price of $8, and I have to admit that the audio fidelity is better than I expected, particularly for a live recording. Also hearing it in this budget-priced version has saved me from pursuing a ridiculously priced audiophile version, such as the 1980 Mobile Fidelity vinyl release, so the purchase of this version hasn't been a total waste. But when I find myself in the mood for a little Neil, this won't be my first choice.

Do I Really Need This record?  I have to admit this is not an essential addition to the collection, and I was able to squeeze this onto the shelves only by removing a couple of snoozy Bert Kaempfert LPs that I probably also would rarely if ever play again considering that I have several more perky albums of his. At some point, Hot August Night may join the Kaempfert subtractions on the sale pile if I run across something else that I want more but don't have room for.

 

Roberta Flack - Chapter Two (1970) Atlantic, Specialty Records Corporation pressing

 

I've already sung the praises of Roberta Flack when I reviewed her next album after this one, Quiet Fire. Chapter Two was her second album after the breakout success of First Take, and it follows essentially the same formula that continued on with Quiet Fire: she opens with a righteously funky track with spiritual overtones, in this case "Reverend Lee" about the sexual temptations of the flesh, before settling into quieter but delicately beautiful ballads for the rest of the album, many of them thoughtful reworkings of well-known standards. Here she tackles Dylan's "Just Like a Woman," Buffy St. Marie's "Until It's Time for You to Go," and two of the corniest standards of the 1960s--"Let It Be Me" and "The Impossible Dream." Perhaps this is why allmusic.com gave this LP just 4 stars, whereas First Take got 5 and Quiet Fire received 4½. But it's a testament to Flack's gifts as a performer and Donnie Hathaway's and Eumir Deodato's as arrangers that these two schlocky bromides are turned from ugly ducklings into swans. I wouldn't go so far as to say they are my favorite tracks on the album, but just making them not embarrassing is a monumental achievement, and they actually fit in well with the other selections here in terms of tone and style. The album closes with a somber and cynical anti-war dirge "Business Goes On as Usual" that is just as fitting today as it was 50 years ago. In short, though this record may be the lowest rated of her first four albums, it is just as essential.

Like my copy of Quiet Fire, this is another Specialty Records Corporation pressing, designated by an "SP" at the end of the label code on both the Side 1 and Side 2 labels. I thought the audio fidelity of this record was actually better than on my copy of Quiet Fire, and I did not notice any wow and flutter issues as with the other record. Generally, I have not found Atlantic releases from this era to be OK but not exceptional, though I don't own any Monarch pressings and perhaps that would change things. Still, this is a nice-sounding record I can see myself enjoying on repeated listens.

Do I Really Need This record?  Now that Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of the Earth has left the 1970s vinyl record section, I have room for this one to squeeze in, and since it completes my run of Flack's first four solo LPs, clearly the high point of her career, this is an essential addition.

 

 

Alexa Tarantino - Clarity (2020), CD, Posi-Tone PR8211

 

As a sign of how far jazz has fallen in popularity since the 1960s, the top 10 jazz albums in sales for 2020 as compiled by Billboard magazine were all by Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Norah Jones, and Michael Buble. Robert Glasper managed to sneak in at #11, but the rest of the top 20 is more Buble, Sinatra, Norah Jones, as well as Kenny G and Harry Connick, Jr., Vince Guaraldi's Peanuts Christmas Album, and Dave Brubeck's Time Out. In other words, contemporary instrumentalists don't sell. Even landmark labels like Blue Note and Verve release very little contemporary instrumental jazz, and a 2016 CNN article by John Blake, "When Jazz Stopped Being Cool," argues that jazz musicians themselves in the later 1960s and beyond made music for themselves, too esoteric for the general populace, while record company accountants found that rock albums could sell multiples of the most popular jazz titles and began to drop jazz artists as a result. Blake concludes that jazz has gone the way of classical music--still practiced in the conservatory but virtually ignored elsewhere. Yet there are still smaller jazz-focused record labels that continue to churn out albums by contemporary performers on a regular basis, and there is a consistent audience for jazz, though much smaller than in its heyday. One of those current labels is Posi-Tone, based in Los Angeles and run by producer Marc Free and engineer Nick O'Toole. Posi-Tone cranks out an impressive torrent of newly recorded, largely traditionally focused jazz by mostly up-and-coming performers, all of them issued on standard CDs. If you're a fan of 1960s era post-bop, most of the Posi-Tone repertoire fits in that space, and they are to be commended for the number of female performers they feature. Alexa Tarantino is one of those female performers--she plays alto sax, soprano sax, and flute, and Clarity is the second of three albums she has released for the label thus far. Her work has been lauded by Jazziz magazine, The New York Times, and she was nominated as a Rising Star on alto by Downbeat in both 2020 and 2021. The kudos are well-deserved: this album and her 2021 follow-up, Firefly, both display her gifts as a composer and performer on all three instruments.

She opens and closes this album on flute, beginning with her brooding minor-key composition "Through" and closing with Kurt Weill's standard "My Ship" delivered as a slower ballad in which each of her accompanists get to solo after she opens the tune accompanied only by bass. The lone track performed on soprano is a cover of Horace Silver's "Gregory Is Here," given a slightly funky rhythm. She delivers some late-night romance on alto on the Latin-tinged "La Puerta" with drummer Rudy Royston switching to bongos for a lighter touch. And there  are several stand-out faster-paced numbers, particularly her compositions "A Race Against Yourself," "A Unified Front," and "Thank You for Your Silence." Tarantino can execute flashy runs or more pensively spaced solos with the best saxophonists past or present. While her style of jazz and that of every album I've heard from Posi-Tone may not break new ground, there's nothing wrong with continuing a tradition that stimulates and satisfies in equal measure.

Do I Really Need This record?  Supporting current musicians, and particularly female musicians, is always a good move, and because Posi-Tone CDs come housed in a razor-thin cardboard sleeve, storage space is never an issue (a real concern I face regularly). But of course, most important is that the music and playing here are top notch--something I know I will pull out again and again in the years to come. So naturally this CD is another must-have.

 

Jimmy Smith - Back at the Chicken Shack (1963), Blue Note 3579051, Blue Note Classic Series pressing

 

Had you not already seen the cover, you would be forgiven for thinking this was a Stanley Turrentine LP rather than Jimmy Smith, because the young tenor saxiphonist totally dominates the soloing on this classic soul jazz album. Recorded in 1960, the same year Turrentine made his debut as a leader for Blue Note, but not released until 1963, this record is considered by the reviewers at allmusic.com to be the best in Smith's long and extremely prolific career. And yet, he is not really the star here--Turrentine is. Smith, who started recording for Blue Note in 1956 and is considered to be the man who practically defined Hammond B3 soul jazz (Jack McDuff and Jimmy McGriff might disagree with that assessment), doesn't go on many mind-blowing, virtuosic solos as he does on many of his other albums, at least not until the closing cut here, "Messy Bessie." Kenny Burrell is also featured here on guitar, but except for a short solo on the opening title track, he is practically absent until he gets a longer solo to show his skills also on the final track. That means the rest of the solo space is taken up by Turrentine, and that's actually a good thing because he is brilliant, particularly on the Hammerstein & Romburg standard "When I Grow Too Old to Dream," which ends Side 1. So despite its reputation, this is not a quintessential example of organ-based soul jazz, but it is an excellent standard for soul jazz in general.

As with the Sonny Clark LP reviewed earlier on this blog, all the selections in the Blue Note Classic Series are remastered wonderfully by Kevin Gray--Turrentine's horn really jumps out of the speakers here. The Classic Series LPs are pressed at Optimal rather than RTI as on the Tone Poet Series, but I have not had a problem with any of the former--all of them have great audio fidelity and no surface noise. The jackets for the Classic Series are also a notch downward from the Tone Poets, being a standard single-slot cardboard sleeve instead of the heavyweight Stoughton-printed gatefolds used on the Tone Poets. But the price is also lower--$25.98 for the latest releases in the series compared with $35.98 for the Tone Poets. In other words, the Blue Note Classic Series LPs are a bargain that give buyers a chance to own audiophile versions of the most desirable titles in the storied Blue Note catalog at a fraction of what you would have to pay for even a 1970s reissue.

Do I Really Need This record?  Since I didn't already own this album in any other format, it's considered the best in Smith's legendary career, and, as with the Clark LP, I snagged it on sale for 20% off, it would have been negligent not to add this to the collection.