Be Bop [Import]

Jay Graydon | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 8, 2004)
• Format: Import
• Label: Sony/Columbia
• ASIN: B0001WPSB8
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,745,547 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Joe Graydon Tv Show 1951

2. Oh Yes, There Will

3. Blow Man

4. 4.2

5. Go 'Way Moon

6. Tubs

7. C Bop

8. My Hot Girth

9. G Wizz

10. Star Spangled Banner

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Number one album in my car cd player, January 26, 2005

By 

Jazzcat "stef" (Genoa, Italy Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: BEBOP (Audio CD)

I did buy this album for 5 dollars six months ago more or less. It was in a pawnshop ... a hell of a business! The best spent five dollars of all my life!! The story is that I can't pull out this cd from my car cd player. I can't do it because every time I try I miss this album!! In a so short space, some months, it has become one of the albums I love the most. It has grown inside me. It is flawless. Really deep and entertaining Jazz at the same time, of the highest caliber. Exceptional performances by all the musicians involved. Truly one of the best listenings I had recently. I own almost every bebop album ever recorded, and this is really one of those that actually I love the most and one that really always leaves me begging for more. Jay Graydon plays really well in the Jazz idiom. He's technical but melodical. This album is very well recorded and it's a Joy to listen. Absolutly five stars! No less!!

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tight, but not too heady, November 3, 2001

By 

Jamie Tatro (Columbia, SC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: BEBOP (Audio CD)

Everyone on this CD plays bebop...except for Jay Graydon (guitar). The band is tight, the arrangements are well done, and the songs are "alternative melodies" to jazz standards (i.e., "(There Will Never Be) Another You" is re-titled "Oh Yes, There Will." Miles' "Four" is "4.2"). You'd probably have to be a bebop player yourself to understand my comment on Jay's playing: he "makes the changes," but he doesn't "play into and through" the chord changes. That is, he plays the "right notes" over the chord changes, but his phrasing doesn't anticipate the chords, nor do his lines always connect when key centers change. There are "quotes," and a few interesting melodic ideas in his playing, but he doesn't display the maturity and bebop vocabulary one would find in, say, Joe Cohn, Bruce Forman, or Tony Purrone. Then again, one suspects that Jay would readily admit he's not really a bebopper - the CD is a tribute to his late father, and a respectable tribute it is. And with Brandon Fields (sax) and Dave Weckl (drums), who could go wrong? Well worth repeated listenings, and well worth the (price).

5.0 out of 5 stars Soooooo gooood !!!, October 14, 2004

By 

Jazzcat "stef" (Genoa, Italy Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Be Bop (Audio CD)

A bebop album from a studio cat rooted in many different music styles may sound like an amateur effort from the player recorded just for the sake of having a Jazz album in his discography, 'cause Jazz is so popular nowadays. This is not the case because "bebop" from Jay Graydon is a very very good Jazz album in his own right. I don't know if I'd pay the stellar import price for it, but it is surely a very good bebop-modern mainstream jazz album. Bebop today has become synonymous for Jazz but it's not always be. And probably it's not correct to identify Jazz with bebop. The right title for this album probably would be "Modern mainstram Jazz" or something like this because it's not that strictly bebop in the forties meaning of the word. There are some things that wouldn't make it in a strictly bebop album. I mean that Jay is not a pure bebop player even if he "plays over the changes" and "plays the changes" with nice intention. He doesn't displays here the full articulation a bebop player should command, but his technique is really good anyway and listening to him playing is a pure pleasure. Guitar is a strange instrument when bebop time comes .. when you adapt the language to the guitar idiosyncrasis bebop could sound a little different from the music played by a saxophone. But anyway Jay flies gently over changes with nice melodic taste and very good sound and perfect time but he's not bebop enough to be a bebop cat. If you are a jazz player I know you know what I mean. The music contained here is Jazz in the modern terminology, mainstream jazz very well played as is said before. Some are standard progressions contrafacted. "There will never be another you" and "Four" are a couple of them, "My hot girth" it's an anatoll, a rhythmn changes progression, "G wiz" is a bebop blues. "Star spangled banner" is played by Jay alone with a technique made famous by Lenny Breau. It is so beautiful!! "Tubs" instead is the only "fusion" tune even if Jazz it is still the dominant ingredient of the recipe. It is a kind of Steps tune, very rooted in Jazz but with the ultimate modernity to it, still in the mainstream tradition. I don't know if I would call it fusion, anyway it is a very very nice jazzin' tune. Jay in this tune uses a very warm distorted sound that purist surely would hate but I like it very much instead! You definitly CAN play jazz with distorted sound if you are tasteful enough. And Jay is tasteful for sure. The program is highly entertaining. You can listen this album many times and never get tired of because it is very pleasing, very balanced, very well played. In the end I'm very happy I did purchase it. Consider that I payed 6 dollars for it in a shop so it has been really a good deal !!! 6 are not 38. Ask your wallet if it want to pay 38 dollars for a very good import Jazz album.