Autumn Leaving

Oestrogen, I mean Easter again

Autumn

Easter is a great time of year since it occurs in the Autumn, at least here in the southern hemisphere. Happy Easter to everybody.

In the 1970s although I had heard and was reasonably familiar with such jazz greats as Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, etc, even a few lesser entities such as Jeremy Stieg and the amazing Albert Ayler (I had a really nice Jeremy Stieg album back in those days), I was undeniably a rock fan although not died in the wool, fickle creature I am. More on jazz in the '70s in a later post(s), I pwomise.

Jarrett Consciousness

Back in them days (to paraphrase myself) most of my musical gluttony was appeased by the sound of the electric strings of such names as Hendrix, Bloomfield, Blackmore, Page, Santana, West, Harrison, Winter, to name a few, so the brilliance of Miles Davis was OK but not something I though about very much (our subject played piano for Miles), although once I became aware of the cool sound of the Fender Rhodes I tended to drift away from guitar music for longer and longer sojourns.

NB: the Fender Rhodes, possibly best described as an electric piano as distinct from an electronic piano, one could write a whole blog on the Fender Rhodes.

So it's little wonder that I didn't actually become clearly conscious of Keith Jarrett till 1978 when I had a flat mate who had one of those amazing hi-fi stereo systems; you know the sort, they cost many thousands of dollars and had speakers big as coffins, separate pre-amp, blackbox amplifier with totally minimlistic markings that only affectionados could recognise for what it is, state of the art turntable, et-bloody-cetera. Green is the colour of envy.

Perhaps Jim wasn't as Young as Neil

Although Jim didn't particularly like us playing rock on his system, more to do with his stylus than anything, you shoulda heard Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane" on Jim's system. Unforgettable.

Well, Jim loved Keith Jarrett, and played quite a lot of his solo piano, but it wasn't actually until 1995 when I listened to a borrowed copy of Jarrett's Koln Concert that I actually became hooked on Jarrett. I very soon had my own copy of the Koln Concert and utilised it as an evening wind down, calm down, take 100 deep breaths and relax, focus back on reality ... device.

Nowadays, my experience of Keith Jarrett has extended to a plethora of hours listening to multiple Jarrett albums. I love this guy's playing although I couldn't tell you which tune is which most of the time.

Milk and Two Sugars Please, Standard

Yep, that's a standard, but that's not the kind of standard I mean here. The song itself (Autumn Leaves) , originally written in the 1940's by some French guys (one a poet, the other a musician) and initially entitled "The Dead Leaves" has become a jazz standard of considerable note (pun intentionally unintentional as usual), and was featured as the title song of the the movie, you guessed it, Autumn Leaves, sung by the late, great Nat King Cole.

Before Keith "rips into it" as Keith tends to do with tunes playable on the piano, and quite a few that aren't playable on the piano, just have a listen to the tune itself. Such an elegant, almost simplistic, display of emotion.




Joy to all beings
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