Back to Towson State College Jazz with the 1979 series

The series which included the so far reviewed 75, 77, 78 and 80 proved surprisingly popular for readers of this blog.  So when I saw a copy of 79 for sale I bought it pronto.  For me the last one, 1980's mostly fusion outpouring, was the best instalment of this franchise.  (Although my favourite single composition / track to listen to is still the Canadian college band's Jacobs Tailor.)  Here you can see that there are still 82, 85, 86, and in the CD era, 1991, 1996, and a CD from 2001.  Note that Hank Levy himself passed away at the relatively young age of 73 in that last year.

It's a mixed bag again, with some standards that really nauseate me (I Remember You), but some original compositions that are quite delightful, with the energetic closer (Hank Levy's Whiplash) a particular highlight:

Towson State U. Again: Jazz 78

Back for another of the yearly outings from this college outfit...  I hope I'm not the only one to dig this groove, and dig it deep.  Great compositions again by Hank and performances all top-notch, as top caliber as Putin's custom-made bespoke assault rifles.  (Did we ever think we'd see the day where Russia and the US would have leaders who were best friends forever?)  

In particular you'll note the influence of fusion well to the fore here.  As well, notice the lone black man again on the rear.  Check out the extra-galactic adventures of the mothership traveling at Warp Factor V:

If you thought that was good, wait till you hear the next track, the 3 Phases of V, which is really quite progressive.

Towson State University and Hank Levy in Jazz '77

I decided to get another by these guys on the strength of the last post, while the first record was interesting due to the unusual rhythms in the compositions by mostly Hank Levy.  Such prime number rhythms have carried on throughout the series.  What I liked about this release is that there seemed to be few standards or cover versions, which I usually detest.  To me those standards are, along with overlong improvisations, plagues of the jazz style, though I'm told improvisation is the essence of jazz, it's not an essence I would encourage.  I remember seeing a jazz record long ago in university in which an entire side was devoted to one song, Body and Soul, and it was longer than 25 minutes--  I thought, are you serious???  Somebody would buy this?  Why not lie in bed and shove your face into your pillow instead?  As for standards, songs like Take the A Train, and 'Round About Midnight, though maybe pleasant once-- can anybody really stand to hear them millions of times in their lifetime?  Personally, when I see that last one on a record I know to put it down or instantly hit delete, as I know I can expect rote performance with little creativity.  Jazz improv is a hard style to master, as I tried to do in my youth, but it almost seems like an automatic or mechanical thing when you listen to it-- perhaps here is an opportunity (again) for those brilliant robotics and AI software engineers to remove another human career as they have threatened to do already with nurses, teachers, doctors, grandmaster chess and GO players, servers, cooks and chefs, beauty contest judges, matchmakers, and AI software engineers?

Anyways, back to the music.  It turned out I wasn't looking carefully or rather the compositional credits were not available on the database because, obviously, Time for Love, which is a beautiful composition by Johnny Mandel and Webster (I wouldn't include it in the stupid standards collection with I Got Rhythm), and the godawful (literally) Exodus soundtrack theme appear here on side b.  Some of us who are older in their genealogy might recall that movie and the earlier novel (by Leon Uris) which was de rigueur for any serious reader, especially the more pretentious, of the age.  Some 60 years later, the problem of peace in Palestine has become so intractable it's almost laughable.  And we really have too many of those intractables to deal with now, like growing income inequality, water scarcity and climate change, the terrorist problem, etc.

We can look back today at the seventies as a golden age when there was still true wilderness out there teeming with wild animals, fish and butterflies, but most importantly, there was hope for the future, optimism for a beautiful world, and music as inventive and brilliant as what I've tried to post here.  Maybe it was just a kind of ignorance, but it sure was a beautiful kind.

I like the track misspelled (purposefully?) Quintescence:

Back with the Towson State College Jazz Ensemble with Hank Levy in Jazz '80 [lossless]

I couldn't quite resist purchasing another from these guys (see their 1975 set) from the beautiful melting pot of Baltimore, MD, when I saw the hilarious but highly attractive DIY cover of this 1980 instalment in the yearly franchise they apparently got going throughout this period (it actually lasted all the way to the late eighties-- well past the due date of this highly structured and unique style of big band jazz).  It cost nothing to take the photo of the knocked over schoolchild's desk with the unrealistically non-swear-worded graffiti that got you to the principal's office but boy those hard wooden pieces of furniture bring back memories, especially for your ass, don't they?  And imagine all the stuck-on wads of dried gum on the other surface!

With a great deal of joy one can now see from the back photograph that there is a black face in the band (and this was in Baltimore, a city that is about three-quarters to four-fifths African-American!) though of course only one, among the fresh white college kids playing the jazz music that, let us recall, was invented and in fact perfected by African-Americans more than a half-century prior:

It really is amazing that so many years after the origin of jazz, after the end of segregation in the 60s, a black man was permitted to play with the all-white big band here in the year 1980, as I said before, progress was sometimes so blazingly fast in the United States.  And we wonder how much talent he had to display to get the right to join these guys, probably twenty-five times more at a minimum.  Or was it perhaps the influence of Mrs. H. Levy that got him hand-picked?  I sure hope he didn't have to demonstrate the size of his schlong to the bearded artsy bespectacled type in the front row-- the trauma would probably have led him to choke on his Orange Tang and subsequently suffer a diagnosis of chronic medically intractable impotence.  I remember in this regard the time my college friend's brother had the name of his girlfriend, before they broke up, stupidly and drunkenly tattooed on his unit: her name was Wendy-- though at rest or after swimming only visible were the letters W, e, and y.  After the breakup when he went with a group of friends to Jamaica he observed the same inked letters on a black man at the urinals by the pool and intemperately yelled out, "Your girl was called Wendy too!" in his inebriated condition.  The man laughed loud and hard, for many minutes in fact, and when finally caught his breath to finish, said: "No mon, it say, 'Welcome to Jamaica Mon--- and have a great day!"  Imagine the mortification of the poor kid upon hearing this piece of, quite unwelcome I'd say, news, compounded by the embarrassment of this permanent record of a dead and gone relationship on his midline external genitalia.  It's certain, this particular vignette, exactly as told here, should be taught in schools-- university perhaps most appropriately-- as a cautionary lesson to avoid such a costly error.

Anyways, back to this record.  This bunch was to me the best-sounding of the college bands I posted earlier, and they were prolific too.  As time went on it seems the quality of Hank Levy's music improved so I'm happy to say there are some quite progressive compositions to be found here.  A track called Interchange clearly demonstrates the composing skills of Mr. Levy and reminds me a lot of Eyermann's best work:





If there are more tracks like that one in this oeuvre I will have to collect more!

Towson State College Jazz Ensemble's 2 + 2 = 5, from 1975 [lossless again]

The idea behind music minus one was to give budding performers a chance to play along with a record, performing the soloist role.  So for example the same music and release would be minus piano, minus trumpet, minus drummer, etc., depending on which you were practicing.  Here we have the complete record though for listening purposes (except maybe the didgeridoo).  This particular ensemble, hailing from the amazing police state of Baltimore, Maryland, made many records in these glory seventy-days and this is their first.  Note that the numbers of the title suggest odd time signatures, done so subtly that to my ears I cannot admit I even noticed though the blurbs for each piece explain them: 7/4 or 11/4, etc.  The leader was Hank Levy, who navigated this outfit throughout.  He had connections with the great Stan Kenton who pioneered the odd times trend in jazz, so far as I know.

On the back notice they don't display the faces of the performers-- too bad, I was certainly curious to know how many African-American faces were present, was their a handful, or as we love to say in my family, as many as my foot fingers? or perhaps as many as my amputated hand, as was the case with the Northern Illinois Group?  Or, probably, they skipped the group photo session in case they were accidentally shot by the police while sitting and saying cheese, or because cops mistook their piccolo for a firearm, or they were worried they'd be accidentally strangulated while sitting in the back of police cruiser...

The track called Pete is a Four-Letter Word (written for Peter Erskine of the Stan Kenton Orch.) is a good example of the style:





As always with these big band opuses the album ends in a slow-motion song which disappointed slightly as it never jumped off its safe platform of D minor.  And went well over eleven minutes...  soporific, at any rate.

Altogether, certain tracks are phenomenal here.  Well worth the money this time.  Not that the money was much.