Music Monday: Some Blue Notes and Traveling Music

By the time you read this, I’ll be somewhere over the Pacific. It’ll be a long day, but I’ll have some music with me! 

First, I’ve gotten back to listening to some Jackie McLean particularly his mid-period Blue Note recordings that culminate (in some ways) in Let Freedom Ring (1963). I’ve been particularly charmed by his 1961 release, A Fickle Sonance (1961) which features Tommy Turrentine on trumpet, Sonny Clark on piano, Butch Warren on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. It’s the last of McLean’s bluesy, boppy albums before he embraced his more adventurous and progressive sound.

The bluesy sound of A Fickle Sonance drew me to more purely bluesy recordings by Jimmy Smith. Friday evening was sunny and we were cooking on the grill and it felt like the perfect time for one of Smith’s early 1960s Blue Note albums recorded to fulfill his contract with that label. I really like Midnight Special which features Stanley Turrentine on tenor saxophone, the birthday boy Kenny Burrell on guitar, and Donald Baily on drums. It’s a great summertime listen.

Finally, I have continued to listen to Korean jazz music. This week, I’ve enjoyed  Hayoung Lyou’s The Myth of Katabasis (2024) which I’ll listen to more carefully on my flight when I sample some Korean short stories (from Bruce Fulton and Youngmin Kwon’s The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories [2023]) and some Korean poetry (from David McCann’s The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry [2024]).