Search - Various Artists :: Paris All Stars Tribute to Parker

The band that played the blues reborn

Tony Thomas | SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA | 05/18/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Jay McShann led the band that played the blues, the last of the great Black Swing bands to come out of Kansas City and Swing so heavy that they rocked the country. This is a celebration in 1989 with Jay only in his 70s--he is still going strong now in ninety's--in Paris in a great hall, with some of the all stars of Jazz playing with him. They are playing the charts jazz used for his own band and related music, they are singing like Jay, and swinging like Jay. The album information above is a bit wrong. It credits songs to other musicians when they are the ones taking the main solos on those numbers. Almost all of these tunes are McShann's creation, and all the arrangements are the ones taken from his band or new arrangements McShann put together since the 1940s. . This is an an awesome record. Jay is really a great band leader, that means an arranger and melder together of players, and probably better since he took time off from touring in the 1950s to get a degree in a music conservatory! Most of the records he has made since he started to come back after his stellar appearance in the film now available on DVD The Last of the Blue Devils, have been small group or trio or solo sessions. Here, he leads a first class big band with better players than any orchestra he or most others led in the 1940s. If you listen to the tunes, you will understand that Jay was much more important than the fact that he had Charlie Parker in his band for a few years. Jay was a great band leader. His charts have a powerful swing. His ability to blow up the battle of the sections in a bluesy way is more explosive than even Basie.
Of course, the rap is that because Walter Brown's blues songs were so popular the management of the band focused their recordings on repeat after repeat of blues. Thus, the band was cut down to a combo who task was to back Brown. It's a shame. Brown wasn't much of a singer. McShann has said he seemed to know one melody. It is wild to learn that at the same time McShann also had the great Al Hibbler with him outsinging Brown every night! Duke Ellington quickly hired Hibbler. Later, the same blues and more were vastly improved after WII when Brown was replaced by Jimmy Witherspoon! However, as he went Solo in the 1950s, Hootie--McShann--began to sing, and he too outsings Brown, and quite a few others.All through these years, particularly after his own revival in the 1970s, McShann continued to put together big bands and continued writing arrangements for big bands. Here, he is given a group of the greatest stars in contemporary jazz to play his charts! This a powerful record. It is one for a nice evening after a good meal, with a good friend, a good wine, or a better bourbon. It is an album to listen to, and just think about how good the music is, how strong is jazz, how the blues will never ever die!"

Just a "small" mistake, gentlemen!

Michel Vassilieff | Le Gosier, Guadeloupe, French West Indies | 06/12/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD has been recorded in Paris in June 13, 1989 (and not 1979, as you wrote!). That's all, folks!"