Customer Reviews

Best of Word Jazz 1

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To those just finding Nordine's 50s recordings, his incredible voice will be surprisingly familiar. His work as a voice-over announcer over the past several decades has made his resonant baritone a fixture on TV and radio. What's really amazing is that the quirky presentation he uses in his commercials - the inflections and pacing - is equally, if not more, effective in this poetry/spoken word context.

Backed by the Fred Katz group, Nordine tells spellbinding stories and recites beat-era oddities in a style that is unduplicatable. Whether it's the outsider tale of "Flibberty-Jib" (which was reused years later as the soundtrack to a groundbreaking animated commercial for Levi's), the social commentary of "The Vidiot," the Twilight Zone tale of "What Time is it?," or just the 'wonder wanderings' of "Adult Kindergarten" or "The Sound Museum," Nordine always has something interesting to offer.

Katz recorded a few very hard-to-find LPs of his own, as well as appearing in the film "Sweet Smell of Success" as a member of Chico Hamilton's band. His group backs Nordine here with light jazz that supplements the 50s beatnik/downtown atmosphere. This collection cherry-picks tracks from several volumes of Word Jazz recordings, all of which are tough finds on the collector's market. These are truly one-of-a-kind recordings that capture an artist's singular vision of spoken-word art.

Listening to Ken Nordine is an experience similar to that sleep stage when you can't really tell if you're dreaming, or actually visiting a mysterious fantasy land. Ken takes words where you don't expect them to travel -and you wonder if you're hearing music, a short story, an angel lamenting, or colors you can actually see. All via a CD. I first heard Word Jazz years ago, and yet it sounds like a new born baby every time I give it another listen. I shut off the lights, put on some head-phones, sit back, and listen. It's a jazz concert though a mind's eye I never knew I had . . . all through the literally hypnotic voice of our ol' pal, Ken Nordine.

I first discovered the eccentric "Wonder Wanderings" of Ken Nordine when I came across my dad's LP "Word Jazz" burried in the hall closet. I carried it to my room, blew off the dust, placed it on my stero and sat entranced. . . I was lost in the world of Ken's museings. Many years later I accidently found this gem, "The Best Of Word Jazz, Vol. 1". I stood there, amazed... Nordine was still in print! I grabbed the CD (the only one on the shelf) and purchased it. They were all there: The Mysterious Stranger of "Flibberty Jib"; the Be-Bopping Baby of "My Baby"; the TV addict of "The Vidiot"; and MORE. Some I had never heard "Down The Drain" (sitting showers that take you to the Caribbean); "Reaching Into In" (how DO you GET INTO In? ). I was, and still am, in heaven, If Black Gold could talk it would have a Voice such as Ken Nordine's. I Wonder Wandered with him and haven't returned...

It's much, much more than just The Voice -- Ken Nordine turns the moments of our lives on their heads in a manner as close to Ray Bradbury or Harlan Ellison as it is to the beatniks (with whom he is forever lumped), and much, much funnier than either. Sesame Street as produced by Rod Serling, perhaps. Cheerily subversive art which somehow maintains no umbilicus to any specific counterculture -- try pulling that off today, kids! At least as relevant in the year 2000 as when it came out in the 1950s. Hope the "Volume 1" up there indicates a Volume 2 someday soon.

Well not really. But Ken Nordine has opened a portal to a whole new and different musical space. This is Jazz-Rap. There are some great reviews on this page for this extraordinary album and I'm just another voice to endorse this work. Whatever you might expect - DON'T. There is humour here, pathos, and total dis-orientation. This album is way out in left-field, like the little schitzophrenic voice that torments all our souls from time to time. Give in to it! Take time-out from whatever you are into to get a whole new perspective of what music is capable of. This is Jazz not because of the sax stabs but because there is an improvisational logic to Nordines crazy stories. It is surrealism for the same reason. There is a stream-of-consciousnees feel to these tales. The net effect is slightly unnerving but great fun nevertheless. Highly recommended!

The "counter-culture" kids of the fifties were hard pressed to do much more than wear tight jeans and roll a cigarette pack into the sleeve of a t shirt or to wear tight jeans, a black turtle neck sweater and maybe a beret. Most had "heard" about "beatnicks" and a lot had seen the really awful SUBTERRANEANS film. Most got to see movies like THE HUSTLER, I WANT TO LIVE, or surprisingly: THE BLOB??!!( it had a rather good quasi rock and jazz score that really surprised the average Saturday night film-going kid that was expecting something to while away the time between popcorn fights). However, WORD JAZZ by Ken Nordine, allowed the "true believer" that had somehow picked up those (oh horrors) black covered paperbacks of Kerouac or maybe Ferlengetti,(they were USUALLY kept below the shelf with (shhh, PLAYBOY). Any teacher that saw you reading "that" stuff just knew you were also carrying a bomb in your gym bag(who carries a gym bag nowadays?). However, Ken Nordine let us actually HEAR jazz the way we, at least, THOUGHT it was spoken. For the first time to actually HEAR someone speak sentences that had words of DOUBLE MEANING, to slide along on the surprising riffs of phraseology, the feeling of positively being dropped on your head when, at the end of (I won't tell you which cut), he orders MILK!! Get this recording and HEAR the words you READ in books reprinted from the bygone, and rather innocent, era of beatnicks and cool jazz. If I had my druthers I would "druther" hear a beat, cool, poem any day rather than a rap belittling women.

Mind-expanding without drugs. Relax and listen. A definite CD to own and share with those you love!

Late at night, toss this into your cd player, press pause.

Turn off the lights.

Turn on the TV. Turn off the sound. Flip to channel 3...

Static...

Hit play attention...

Ken Nordine is the comforting yet oddly disturbing voice in your head that you try to ignore, but can't; he's the Twilight Zone for your ears.

This album is an adventure from boyhood to regulardom. A wonderful piece of work that makes you laugh and think. Ken Nordine is a master of expression with his voice, and I highly recommend this album.

Haunting me since I was a preschooler in the late `50's, from the sound of Ken Nordine's booming, string bass voice to his funny and frightening stories, right down to its paper collage cover, the original LP WORD JAZZ has lodged permanently in my psyche. I was delighted when the recording resurfaced in 1990, even if only in parts, on this compilation CD. At first I only revisited my old favorites, "Hunger Is From," a description of a sleepless, midnight raid on the refrigerator, complete with munching sound effects, "The Vidiot," a forecast, unfortunately, of the television addict I would become, "The Sound Museum," a dreamlike, wonderfully evocative "tour" of a series of aural exhibits and the artists who have created them, "Flibberty Jib," an immensely creepy portrait of religious zeal that reminds me of every facilitator of mass hysteria from Adolf Hitler to Jim Jones, and "Looks Like It's Going to Rain," in which the narrator invites the listener in to visit the noisy chambers of his brain. All of this is accompanied by the strains of cool jazz, with a tinkling piano here, noodling woodwinds there, and in several key places, some experimental electronic sounds and tape loops. Then I began to explore the other tracks on this CD, most of them new to my ears. My favorite of these previously unknown gems is "Faces In The Jazzmatazz," which I have listened to dozens of times now. Somehow it is so nostalgic that I have developed a false memory of having heard it before, somewhere in my distant past -- maybe I did, but I don't think so. Although the material on THE BEST OF WORD JAZZ, VOL. 1 is spoken, there is something so musical about Nordine's voice that, for me at least, I hear these pieces as songs, and can revisit them from time to time just as I can other favored music. The pleasure I derive from this album is so personal, and so connected to my childhood, that I don't know if I can recommend it to the uninitiated. One thing that anyone over the age of say, 30, might latch on to is Nordine's mellifluous baritone: it has been heard on more than just novelty recordings, as he has had a long career in voiceovers and narration on radio and television. So Ken Nordine will sound familiar even to those who have never heard his name.

I hope there's a Vol. 2 (may not happen, given the time that has elapsed since this CD was first released), and that it will include "Roger," a funny little nightmare scenario about a piano teacher that still gives me shivers when I hear it on my scratched up vinyl copy of WORD JAZZ.