"C" CD Roundup

I began my "C" CD listening yesterday with John Coltrane's Stellar Regions, a hodgepodge collection of some of his final recordings. The Penguin Jazz Guide guys don't think too much of it, but I like it. Many of the songs have the spiritual feeel of Coltrane and Rashied Ali's Interstellar Space (mentioned in the previous entry). Was Coltrane intuitively preparing for death at this point or was he pondering his next earthly musical move? One thing about this collection and the other day's Live at The Village Vanguard Again session, I've sure grown to appreciate the freer feel of the late 'Trane group--especially the fluid piano of Alice Coltrane.

Continuing on the spiritual tip with the CD "C's" we moved to Heart of the Congos, by The Congos. Outside of his work with The Wailers, perhaps the finest production work of Lee "Scratch" Perry? On this recording he takes a pretty good vocal group (I believe it was originally a duo, but expanded to a trio by "Scratch") and turns them into biblical prophets. Straight outta his Black Ark studio, The Upsetter (he had a lot of nicknames) takes you on a deep sonic journey of riveting vocal harmonies, thunderous dubbed out echo, driving percussion, and what sounds like shofar blasts. If you're interested in delving into the reggae avant-garde, by all means investigate this recording. And get it on the Blood and Fire label for the great sound, extra disc of remixes, artistic packaging, and always informative notes.

Seguewaying from praise of Jah to Jelaluddin Rumi, I chilled out at work to A Meeting by the River, by Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt. A mingling of North Indian classical music and the Delta blues. With all due respect to the Buena Vista Social Club projects, I think A Meeting by the River and Talking Timbuktu, Ry's collaboration with Ali Farka Toure (we'll get to that when we hit the CD "T's") are very worthy Cooder recordings from the 1990's. Anyway, the songs on A Meeting are inspired by some Rumi verses. Ry on bottleneck guitar, V.M. Bhatt on a bottleneck guitar-like instrument--modified to play Indian scales--of his own invention called a mohan vindi. A little percussion, too. Seek it out.

It's all been soul music of one sort of another so far, so why stop now? Also at work last night I played Sam Cooke's transcendent compilation, The Rhythm and The Blues. Primarily drawing from three of Sam's studio albums, this is the adult and bluesy side of Mr. Cooke. Listening to this stuff makes me simultaneously exhilarated and depressed. Exhilarated because of "Get Yourself Another Fool"; "Driftin' Blues"; "Please Don't Drive Me Away"; "Little Red Rooster" and so on. Depressed because he died so young, could have accomplished so much more. I don't know if this collection is still in print, but Night Beat, the main source of this great material is.

Finally, we finish off with Elvis Costello's King of America. Probably his last solid record of the eighties (or would some of you say Blood and Chocolate?). A pretty successful attempt to mingle country and Elvis (C, that is--although he uses some of the King's collaborators on half of the songs). Why do critics always forget to mention this one when they mention seminal "alt.country" records? The CD version I have (dunno if this one's in print, either) features some extra tracks by The Coward Brothers, E.C.'s collaboration with T-Bone Burnett. Good stuff, man, but 20 tracks of clever wordplay and passionate E.C. vocals do wear a fella down...

Tomorrow: more Ella vinyl , and a special visit from Eddie Fisher.