Customer Reviews

Haunted Heart

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When it comes to Charlie Haden & Quartet West, this is the one album to get. It seemlessly integrates the achingly beautiful vocal cuts from Jo Stafford, Jeri Southern, & Billie Holiday with the Quartet's own lyrical contributions. If you're looking for a jazz recording that's "smooth" without being boring, evocative, & melodically marvelous, get this one. And then track down vocal recordings by Jo Stafford, who sings "Haunted Heart" on this CD and was probably the greatest female American "pop" singer ever.

this album consists mostly of ballads that feature the tenor of ernie watts, whose playing is particularly terrific, and charlie haden's bass.dubbed into the album are vocals by singers like jo stafford that work beautifully with the quartet's ensemble playing. i really recommend this album.

During the 80s and 90s, Charlie Haden and former colleague Keith Jarrett devoted much of their output to creating new versions of old tunes. While Jarrett's trio delved into the back-catalogue to shed new light on old standards, Haden led a quartet which re-worked rarer but no less beautiful tracks. And Haden used a gimmick: tacking on the original (usually transcribed from an LP in Haden's own cherished collection) after Quartet West's version.

For me, 'Haunted Heart' is a dry run for its successor, 'Always Say Goodbye'. The critics at the time said that, great though the latter album was, Haden couldn't use the gimmick too often. I have no idea whether he read those reviews, but sadly we haven't heard those old recordings in any subsequent Quartet West CD.

As usual, there are many beautiful pieces here. Two of them are the compositions by pianist Alan Broadbent. (Don't worry -- he changed his specs by the time the band needed a new photograph for 'Now is the Hour'!) I wish Haden himself had contributed more tunes to this album -- when he sets his mind to it, he can write just as well as say, Pat Metheny.

You cannot go wrong by acquiring this album. Nearly all the Quartet West albums are outstanding. The only one to be slightly wary of is the most recent, 'The Art of the Song'.

Charlie Haden's Quartet West is a great group : Alan Broadbent on piano,Ernie Watts on tenor,and Larance Marable on drums.This recording is a tribute to the musicazl scene and the movies of the fourties, and surely the quartet's best effort.Larance Marable,a descendant of Fats Marable,shines again behind his drums,after a long period of drug addiction;Ernie Watts shows that he is a prodigious saxophonist,always underrated;Alan Broadbent is one of today's greatest pianists,as good in solo than backing someone (I had the opportunity of seeing him with singer Mark Murphy some two years ago).This session pays tributes to great musicians of the history of jazz.Now about the tunes: the introduction is the 1937 Warner Bros.fanfare,and the intro of the "maltese falcon" soundtrack."hello my lovely" is a beautiful Haden's tune."haunted heart" is a Dietz/Schwartz tune,followed by Jo Stafford's 1947 interpretation with Paul Weston's orchestra;"dance of the infidels" is a Bud Powell tune;"the long goodbye" is by Broadbent;"moonlight serenade",of course, is Glenn Miller's absolute masterpiece,one of the greatest tunes of the century,and you must agree with this,even if you don't like Miller."Lennie's pennies' is one of the most celebrated tunes by Lennie Tristano;"every time we say goodbye" is the marvelous Cole Porter song,one of Coltrane's favorites,followed here by Jeri Southern's great singing."segment" is Bird's,"the bad and the beautiful" is a David Raskin's tune (you know,the guy who wrote "Laura" for the unforgettable movie with Gene Tierney),and finally,the haunting "deep song",followed by Billie Holiday's 1947 version,which is one of the saddest and most beautiful recordings she's ever made.The great idea Charlie Haden had,doing this session, is to couple his quartet versions with the original versions of the Stafford,Southern and Holiday tunes.For those who don't know Billie's "deep song" (it figures in her Decca sides), it will surely be a shock.This song is as important in his carreer than "god bless the child" or "good morning heartache",even if she only recorded it once.Far from the Liberation Music Orchestra,Charlie Haden's Quartet West did a marvelous album in October 1991.This was recorded in the South of France,in Sète,Georges Brassens' hometown.

Is this a CD or a movie? Put it on and close your eyes, and you'll wonder, because you can see a whole story in your mind, perhaps by Dashiell Hammett: smoky, bluesy, achingly regretful, with a few sweet sad vocals -- fabulous rainy-afternoon-by-the-fire stuff. Or perhaps New Years Eve for two.

I heard Bob Belden's "Black Dahlia" earlier and only heard this recently. Maybe this is where Belden got his idea for a soundtrack of the mind, using late 40's early 50's themes. And a Raymond Chandler gumshoe, chantueses and smoky LA nightclubs.

This one is quite different than Belden's, Black Dahlia is edgier and more orchestrated, and more like a film track. Haunted Heart contains mostly quartet arrangements: swing songs, bebop, ballads, a little latin jazz. And also original period ballad recordings by Jo Stafford, Billie Holliday, Jeri Southern. The recordings from the period, some of the better known songs, are dark with great depth. Like Hayden's "Moonlight Serenade". I was deep in the song before I recognized the melody. Haden and group maintain the mood, the noir darkness and a sense of romantic nostalgia, while making new music in a late 40's mold. It's like a memory of a failed love affair.

As is said elsewhere, there are also dark, little played moody songs by famous vocalists of the period. This help the mood.

Recommended. The more you hear, the more you like it. Someone once said they "liked radio, because the pictures are better"!

And it may well be for you too. Beautifully conceived, marvelously played. A gem.

This is a very beautiful album. It has a little bit of everything and is the kind of record you can listen to all the way through in one sitting. It is also the kind of album you can pull out time after time for years and still love it.

"Haunted Heart" starts with a blast of recorded film music that my kids recognize from Bugs Bunny. Then, it goes into "Hello My Lovely", a Charlie Haden original. Charlie Haden does a similar thing on three songs. His Quartet West plays an instrumental version of the song, then it segues into a clip of a 40's-era vocal version. Jo Stafford sings at the end of "Haunted Heart", Jeri Southern at the end of "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye", and Billie Holiday at the end of "Deep Song". The Quartet West plays its jazz in a very mainstream fashion. Ernie Watts is a very lush saxophone player -- his generation's Ben Webster. Mix it all together, and it's all quite romantic, though in the melodramatic sense of the word. I'm not a big fan of attaching the old songs onto the end. It doesn't work out as creatively as it should be. Still, it's a good disc, and is about in the middle range of 4-star discs.

This is among my favorite of all CDs I've listened to. The instrumentals are beautiful and run the spectrum of many different moods but all evocative of 1940s movies and Hollywood itself. Rather than being distracting , the vocal pieces are at first jarring but then you sense how they fit into the bigger piece and add a reality and history to the one being recreated by this great group of musicians.