Customer Reviews

Jazz at the Cellar 1958

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

 

 

This CD, like several others that have appeared recently are wonderful historical documents of rare performances by some of my all-time favorite jazz artists. However,like the recent ones featuring Clifford Brown at the Cotton Club and the one-of-a-kind home recording of Clifford Brown with Eric Dolphy, it is are marred by that fact that the music plays back at least 1/2 step above proper pitch and sometimes more, ruining the quality of the sound (it becomes 'tinny' and pinched-sounding when playback speed is faster than the original recording speed). Columbia Records made this mistake with the classic Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" album but had the good sense to correct their error re-issuing it with the tracks at the proper playback speed. One can only hope these companies will do the same or at least in the future take the time to ensure that rare and invaluable old tapes like these are carefully edited for correct pitch when transferred to CD. This music is too valuable to be distorted like this!

Fans of Harold Land may want to pick this up as this live set recorded in Vancouver in 1958 is previously unissued and the quartet delivers a fine, hard-swinging performance. Unfortunately, the recording itself leaves a lot to be desired. Lonehill Jazz generally does a good job with vintage jazz reissues, but in this case the source material sounds thin and tinny. In fact, you can barely hear the bass player at all, which is a real shame, as what you CAN hear sounds great. If someone has bothered to remaster this and fix the acoustic balance by bringing up the lower frequencies, this would be a 4 to 5 star CD. But as it is, I can only give it 3 stars for excellent playing by the great Harold Land.

This recording is reminiscent of some of the Bird live dates on which practically the only musician who's audible is Bird. The more's the pity, because some of the studio dates on Contemporary that include Scott LaFaro on bass (present on the pictured recording) reveal that, even before his meeting up with Bill Evans, he was one of the music's strongest "walkers." Moreover, the engineering of Roy DuNann captures the sound of the acoustic bass with more warmth, body, and definition than is the case with even present-day digital recordings. And to my ears, Scottie benefits more from DuNann's skills than any other bassist.

To a trained listener, or hard-core jazz fan, the audio on this session (also being marketed as "Harold Land Quartet Live in Canada") is not as unlistenable as claimed. Much of the time--but not all--Scottie's bass drops out altogether, and the drummer's ride cymbal is non-existent. But most importantly Harold Land demonstrates why he was unsurpassed at the time, pushing two tunes to 20 minutes and a 3rd to almost 30, with relentless streams of cleanly articulated, unrepetitive melodic brilliance. It was no accident that the soloist in the frontline with Clifford Brown on 80% of the great trumpeter's recordings was the one player who could match him, practically serving as his double during ensembles as well as solos.

This is excellent music, performed by a top-notch quartet...but you can barely hear Elmo Hope, and you can't hear Scott LaFaro at all. Oh, well...