Covers for Sunday - Jazz Edition

As an addition to the regular Covers for Sunday, which you can find here, here are six jazz covers. They vary in what jazz sub-genre they are but they have in common how excellent they are. As I said in Covers for Sunday I hope this makes up for my lack of posting during the last week.

Lithium by The Bad Plus feat Wendy Lewis (originally by Nirvana). I guess, if you're a regular reader of this blog, as soon as you saw there would be a jazz edition of Covers for Sunday you knew The Bad Plus would be here. The amount of times The Bad Plus, with and without Wendy Lewis, should give you a pretty good idea of how highly I rate them. I could wax on and on for ages, or pages if you prefer, about how great they are. But I won't, I'll let the music speak for itself. I do wish I could drum like Dave King though.

Everytime We Say Goodbye - John Coltrane (originally by Ella Fitzgerald). Or at least Ella Fitzgerald is the first person to record it as far as I know. It was written by Cole Porter and was used in Seven Lively Arts on Broadway in 1944, but I've no idea who sang it or if there was ever a recording of this version or any other that predate Ella Fitzgerald's. It seems likely that it was recorded sometime betweeen 1944 and 1956 though. Anyway this is from Coltrane's excellent 'My Favorite Things' album. My Favorite Things was featured a few months back if you fancy listening to it. Both tracks feature Coltrane in masterful form as he plays an exceptionally hypnotic soprano saxophone. If you don't have the album in your collection, jazz fan or not, it is a serious hole.

Buddy Bolden's Blues by Air (originally by Jelly Roll Morton). This is a jazz cover of a jazz song. Air were a 70's and 80's free jazz trio, this comes from their album Air Lore. Jelly Roll Morton is one of the founding figures of jazz. A self publicist prone to exaggeration he claimed to have invented jazz in 1902. Although that claim is untrue it is true that he composed the first jazz song ever published, Jelly Roll Blues. His version of Buddy Bolden's Blues is a solo piece, recorded without his Red Hot Peppers. Buddy Bolden, or King Bolden, was also a jazz musician. He may in fact be the inventor of jazz, the musician (or band leader) that moved from ragtime to jazz. None of his recordings survive, if he even made any, so all we can do is speculate. Anyway, one of his compositions (or maybe his trombonist Willy Cornish's) Funky Butt later became known as Buddy Bolden's Blues and it's this that Jelly Roll Morton uses as the first (and possibly second) verse of his song. So is this the cover of a cover? Sort off.

One last thing. Buddy Bolden was institusionalised in 1907 with schizophrenia. He remained institusionalised until his death in 1930. Frankie Duson, another of Buddy Bolden's trombonists, became the band leader of Buddy Bolden's group and after several personal changes renamed the band as the Eagle Band. In 1917 Frankie Duson went to play with none other than Jelly Roll Morton in Los Angeles. They had a falling out during which Jelly Roll Morton mocked their clothes and manners. As a result of this feud Jelly Roll Morton wrote a verse in, you guessed it, Buddy Bolden's Blues describing Frankie Duson as a pimp. This is something Morton was well qualified to write about, he had been a pimp when he was younger. I've spoken about it so much that I can't not include Jelly Roll Morton's version of Buddy Bolden's Blues, so here it is:



You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go - Madeleine Peyroux (originally by Bob Dylan). This is just gorgeous. The vocals are pure smooth brilliance. Not the sort of smoothness that renders the lyrics meaningless, more a smoothness that just states the meaning plainly. The drumming, with brushes, is a great sound, it fits the arrangement of this cover perfectly.

Blue In Green - World Saxophone Quartet (originally by Miles Davis). This isn't an arrangement with just saxophones. There are drums, there is a piano. Now, I guess if you've heard the original you'll be a bit suspicious about this. First of all, how can you take a classic Miles Davis song and cover it without a trumpet? Secondly, how can you cover a song that has two of the greatest saxophonists of all time (John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley) playing on the original.

Paranoid Android - The Brad Mehldau Trio (originally by Radiohead). It wouldn't be jazz covers with a Brad Mehldau cover of Radiohead. Compared to the other two of his Radiohead covers I've featured, Knives Out and Exit Music (for a film), this is pretty straight forward and not very avant garde. Of course it is still quite avant garde and just as great as the other two covers.