Wednesday, February 16, 2005  

Dizzy Reece, Part Deux

After overwhelming everyone with Dizzy Reece data on Monday---"Hey, here's a 2,000-word article on a jazz musician you've never heard of, which is followed by a two-hour radio program on him!"---I realized I should break it all down for easier consumption.

Cliff Notes for the SparkNotez:

Dizzy Reece is a trumpeter who was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1931. He attended the Alpha Boys School for a short period---the same institution that trained many a Skatalite, as well as Joe Harriott and numerous other now-legendary Jamaican musicians. But Diz is strictly pre-ska, a pure jazzman: He left for England in 1948, when he was 16, and started making records there in 1955 with some of the leading lights of the British jazz scene. Reece moved to NYC in 1959 to be a Blue Note recording artist, cutting four LPs for the legendary label. While Dizzy continued to perform live from the 1960s to the early 1990s, he made only a handful of commercial/studio recordings during this period (though he has an extensive log of private/live tapes from that time).

Reece is one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic trumpeters in the history of jazz---his tone is as fat as his melodies are rich, and his solos are wicked chromatic exercises. Plus, he's a damn smart composer and arranger to boot. Diz still lives in NYC, but he hasn't played there in more than a decade; a few of us are trying to correct that by getting the word out on this great artist.

You can read an extensive feature on Dizzy from the October 2004 issue of JazzTimes by going to his Web site, DizzyReece.com.

There you'll also find a downloadable radio interview with Diz by Ed Berger on WBGO. It's a little under two hours, and I've posted the show in 14 segments (128kbs MP3s).

Below is a rundown of the radio-interview tracks that also feature music; that way you can try out a few files and hear Dizzy play to see if you want to download the whole program. (The tracks not listed below feature the interview only, and you can get them from here.)

To download each segment, do the the standard right click on the linked track number. (Mac folks, you know what to do.)

Track 1 - The standard "Melancholy Baby" is a 1966 (or 1963) live private recording from Club Embers West in NYC, featuring Diz with pianist Mike Longo, bassist Eddie DeHass, and an uncredited drummer.

Track 2 - Features two original tunes by Reece: "Bang" from 1955 (Dizzy's first recording as a leader) and "Now" from 1956. Both numbers are on A New Star (Tempo/Jasmine).

Track 4 - "Maenya" is an original work by Reece that's based on a Moroccan folk song. It's his first big-band composition, and the recording can found on Victor Feldman's Suite Sixteen (Contemporary/OJC). Dizzy's arrangement here is stunning.

Track 5 - "Colorblind" is a Diz original from Blues in Trinity, his first record for Blue Note. It was cut in England in 1958 with drummer Art Taylor, trumpeter Donald Byrd, tenor saxophonist Tubby Hayes, pianist Terry Shannon and bassist Lloyd Thompson. It wasn't released until the following year.

Track 6 - "I'll Close My Eyes" is a standard from 1959's Star Bright, the first album Reece made in U.S.

Track 7 - "A Variation on Monk," a Reece original based on "I Got Rhythm Changes," is also from Star Bright, which features the formidable lineup of pianist Wynton Kelly (who was born to Jamaican parents, though he was raised in NYC), bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Art Taylor, and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. All of Dizzy's Blue Note albums are available in a 4-CD box set on Mosaic Select.

Track 9 - Diz says that "Yamask," from 1962's Asia Minor (New Jazz/OJC), was inspired by the masks worn by Arabic women. The album features baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne, reedist Joe Farrell, pianist Hank Jones, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Charlie Persip.

Track 11 - "You Stepped Out of a Dream" is from Capo Jazz, an ultrarare Czech LP on Supraphone from 1969 featuring Reece's way-cool arrangements with the Vaclav Zahradnik Big Band, featuring tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, baritone saxophonist Ronnie Ross, trombonist Slide Hampton, and trombonist Erich Kleinschuster.

Track 12 - "Valzu" is a live recording made with the same Czech big band in 1969.

Track 14 - "Krisis" is off From In to Out (Futura), a rare, long out-of-print 1970 (or 1974) live LP made in Paris. The band includes the Sun Ra Arkestra's John Gilmore on tenor sax as well as drummer Art Taylor, pianist Siegfried Kessler, and bassist Patrice Caratini.

Posted by CP | Link |

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