Great music, sloppy Spanish transfer
Schubert aficionado | CA United States | 08/07/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Mr. Marsh died in 1987 in Hollywood, on stage, playing his music. As far as the current CD, unfortunately the transfer of "Music for Prancing" is atrocious. You will need to purchase the VSOP for quality. Konitz believed Marsh was the greatest of all tenors, admiring his "sound" above all overs. So true, and truly rich fans might seek out Marsh on Japanese labels. They are expensive, but these gray market issues out of Spain often have awful trasfers that often skip, like the Konitz Very Cool by Gambit--that thing skips terribly in a hard drive, and even a car CD player. Peace."
A good compilation...
that opinionated guy | 06/25/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"i don't own this and am only familiar with half the material on it. i decided to post the "review" for a simple reason: it's yet another cd that amazon has allowed someone to list WITHOUT any track information. i went to the fresh sounds website (not the issuer of this cd by the way. that would be lone hill jazz) and was able to find what i was looking for.
the cd consists of 2 sessions led by the tenor saxophonist warne marsh, each featuring 6 songs. the first one on the disc was recorded in dec '57 and jan '58 and was originally released as simply "warne marsh" by atlantic records. it features ronnie ball on piano on 2 tracks, paul chambers on bass and philly joe jones and paul motian splitting the drums slot. jones plays on 2 tracks while motian covers the other 4. i've never heard this session and can't say anything much about it, though i'm curious to hear an extroverted drummer like philly joe jones playing with someone like marsh, even if it is on only 2 tracks. the songs from this session are:
1. too close for comfort
2. yardbird suite
3. it's all right with me
4. my melancholy baby
5. just squeeze me
6. excerpt
the other session on this cd was originally released as "music for prancing" and is pretty well known to warne marsh fans. this session was recorded in sept '57 and features the same personnel on all 6 tracks: ronnie ball on piano, red mitchell on bass and stan levey on drums. it's a good session, mostly remarkable for how restrained and gentle it is. it's certainly worth a listen if you like jazz from that period.
the tracks are as follows:
7. you are too beautiful
8. autumn in new york
9. playa del rey
10. ad libido
11. everything happens to me
12. it's all right with me.
warne marsh is probably best known as the OTHER saxophonist who played with lennie tristano, which is a polite way of saying that he isn't lee konitz, i guess. he's been dead for over 20 years now and never recorded all that prolifically, so his reputation hasn't exactly been enhanced with multiple re-issues of his work. other than the tristano connection and the fairly well-known "jazz of 2 cities" album, he's far from a household name. but for a small number of jazz afficionados, marsh is an important figure, as anyone who worked extensively with tristano would be. and an overview of marsh's career shows an exceptionally adaptable player who, by the 60s, was taking a lot of chances and producing really stimulating material (at least when he had opportunities to record: see the 1969 session on hathut, "ne plus ultra").
the folks at lone hill jazz deserve considerable credit for putting these sessions together, though it would have made more sense from a jazz lover's perspective for the 2 sessions to be placed on the cd in chronological order. since most musicians get better and learn as they go along, hearing things out of order is going backwards in more ways than one.
i have quite a few lone hill titles in my jazz cd collection and have no complaints about any of them sonically, so my guess is that the sound quality on this marsh disc is probably fine. lone hill is one of many foreign imprints that go out of their way to make jazz available the way labels in america ought to: putting related sessions together on one cd to give consumers their money's worth. i'm glad they're around."
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1