Radio: September 21 Jazz Update - notes and links

Here are the tracks and links from last Friday's jazz update on Up to Date. I'll update this post with notes over the next few days.

If your eyes are tired, you can listen to the segment instead (runs 11:30).




Louis Armstrong and the All-Stars
CD - Live at the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival (Monterey Jazz Festival Records)
Track - Now You Has Jazz

The Monterey Jazz festival turns 50 this year (with this year's fest kicking off this weekend). To mark its golden anniversary, the festival has teamed with Concord to release a series of live performances recorded over the last half century. The first batch includes performances by Sarah Vaughn, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis and the aforementioned Satchmo. There's also a festival sampler disc with additional cuts by Jimmie Witherspoon, Pat Metheney, Dave Brubeck and Dianna Krall et alia.

Re-issues bring with them an quandary for the ethical jazz fan: is it better to shell out your hard-earned jazz dollar for music by a past (i.e., dead) master, or to spend it in support of a corporeal artist trying to make a living in the here and now. Concord and MJF Records bridge the gap by donating all the profits from the series to the MJF's jazz education programs. The ethics of jazz education are also a subject of much debate. Ben Franklin has this take; the IAJE would undoubtedly beg to differ.

But I digress... The rest of the selections all have a Kansas City connection, with the first two living and working here, and the second pair spending some of their formative years on the scene (and passing through on a somewhat regular basis).

Charles Gatschet
CD - Step Lightly
Track - Caracas

Alaadeen
CD - And The Beauty of It All - Ballads (ASR)
Track - And The Beauty of It All

The Harold O'Neal Project
CD - Charlie's Suite: Cries and Whispers From My Great-Great-Great Grandfather (PME Records)
Track - Felix Bebop

The Harold O'Neal Project is Harold O'Neal on piano with Rick Gibbins on guitar. Harold will be making three appearances in KC in October.

• October 9: w/ The Dan Thomas Quintet at Epperson Auditorium, Kansas City Art Institute
• October 13: w/ Alaadeen and Group 21 at The Blue Room
• October 26: The Harold O'Neal Quintet at Rush Hour at Mutual Musician's Foundation
• October 31: w/ The Dan Thomas Quintet at Crazy Olives

Eldar
CD - Re-Imagination (Sony)
Track - Prairie Village

• Eldar appears next Friday and Saturday with the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra at Unity on the Plaza.