Music Monday: Sonny Criss, Woody Shaw, and Meshell Ndegeocello

The last two weekends have been occupied with book making work. Not only is this a rewarding way to spend long winter weekends, but also a great chance to listen to music.

This weekend, I started with The Sonny Criss Orchestra’s Sonny’s Dream (Birth of the New Cool) from 1968. I was mostly drawn to this album because Horace Tapscott arranged the pieces. As readers of this blog know, I have a soft spot for the Los Angeles pianist and bandleader Horace Tapscott. While this album was certainly a Sonny Criss outing featuring plenty of him on alto and soprano saxophone, the driving arrangement are all Tapscott. This combination makes Sonny’s Dream the ultimate Monday morning, get out the door music: 

Another favorite especially during book making season (and when isn’t it book making season) is trumpeter Woody Shaw. I missed the (relatively) recent release of a live recording with Roy Brooks which came out in 2021, but made up for it this weekend. The album is a Roy Brooks date from 1968 at the Famous Ballroom in Baltimore and Shaw is jointed by Harold Mabern on piano and Cecil McBee on bass. Carlos Garnett, who is apparently a Panamanian sax player, also performs (and I guess he performed with Miles, Pharoah and others in the early 1970s which I totally missed!). He and Shaw complement each other well and draw from the same tradition of late-1960s, post-Coltrane, avant garde music. It’s a good album and shows just how good fantastic Shaw was.  

Finally, I’ve really gotten into Meshell Ndegeocello’s The Omnichord Real Book, which came out last year. While I don’t put much stock in such things, it won the Grammy for Best Alternative Jazz album (whatever that means). Despite the accolades, the album is really good and I say that as someone who doesn’t always love when my jazz and improvised music becomes too inflected by contemporary R&B. It’s not that I don’t recognize the creativity of this kind of music, but it’s just not my cup of tea.

But this album is really good and worth a listen: