OUT THIS WEEK: Miles Davis, Iggy Pop

Two recommended releases for you this week, beginning with Legacy's reissue of 'Sketches Of Spain' - the 1959 Miles Davis/Gil Evans classic, with bonus tracks:

Legacy continues its Miles campaign with Sketches of Spain (Legacy Edition) celebrating the 50th anniversary of the trumpeter’s extraordinary collaboration with Gil Evans. When it was released in 1960, it was so different that many critics simply didn’t know what to make of it. When confronted with the question is it jazz? Miles answered, “It’s music, and I like it.” The finished results were ultimately hailed as a masterpiece, creating a hypnotic ‘possessed’ effect, and brought to a fitting climax the period of intense creativity that had begun in 1954.

Each of the four orchestral album collaborations with self-taught arranger-composer Gil Evans – Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy And Bess (1958), Sketches of Spain (1959), and Quiet Nights (1962) – is a masterwork in its own right. Sketches was Miles’s first post-Kind Of Blue project, and retains that LP’s modal feel on the 16-minute version of Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,’ the inspiration for Davis and Evans. Miles Davis – the great improvising soloist. Gil Evans – the great orchestrator. Sketches was the album with which Davis closed the old decade and opened up the new one.

Sketches of Spain (Legacy Edition) includes on 2 CDs what is unanimously regarded as powerful and lasting music, music that represents a compelling blend of the “deep song” of flamenco and the cry of the blues.

This set includes:

* Over two hours of music. The original album along with rehearsal and alternate takes previously heard only on the 1996 set Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, plus the only piece ever performed live by Miles with Gil – “Concierto de Aranjuez” performed at Carnegie Hall on May 19, 1961.

* Bonus digital booklet with Rare photos, session records with Teo Macero’s producer notes and clippings including the 1960 Hi Fi/Stereo Review article by Nat Hentoff describing the Nov. 15, 1959 recording session.

* New liner notes for this 2009 edition are written by composer/academician Gunther Schuller, whose hundreds of accomplishments in jazz include playing french horn for Miles on the 1949-50 Birth Of The Cool sessions, and recording with Miles and Gil on the 1958 masterpiece, Porgy and Bess.

DISC 1
CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO) 16:20
WILL O’ THE WISP 3:48
THE PAN PIPER 3:55
SAETA 4:59
SOLEA (12:17)
SONG OF OUR COUNTRY (3:20)

DISC 2
1 MAIDS OF CADIZ (3:47)
2 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[REHEARSAL TAKE, INCOMPLETE, W/O MILES DAVIS] (7:23)
3 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[ALTERNATE TAKE, PART ONE] (12:06)
4 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[ALTERNATE TAKE, PART TWO] (3:34)
5 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[ALTERNATE ENDING] (1:04)
6 THE PAN PIPER [TAKE 1] (3:12)
7 SONG OF OUR COUNTRY [TAKE 9, W/O INTRO] (3:00)
8 SONG OF OUR COUNTRY
[TAKE 14, SLOWER TEMPO, W/O INTRO] (3:11)
9 SAETA [FULL VERSION OF MASTER] (6:03)
10 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO) [LIVE] (17:07)
11 TEO (9:34)

Also this week, the Ig-uana returns with something more than a little different:





Preliminaires is out this week (UK/Europe) and next Tuesday (US).

Nanci Griffith readies first album of new material since 2005

Nanci Griffith’s classic sound – folk/country melodies built around stories that aren’t afraid to tackle big subjects all delivered with the artist’s signature vocal style – returns in full bloom on THE LOVING KIND, her new album scheduled for release on June 9th from Rounder Records. Featuring thirteen new songs, THE LOVING KIND is Nanci’s most politically outspoken release in years, and underscores her stature as one of the music world’s most esteemed singer-songwriters.
The release of THE LOVING KIND will be accompanied by a U.S. tour.

With a recording and touring history that stretches back more than two decades, Griffith has established, what Madison Avenue would call, a “brand.” But her signature music is much more about art than commerce, which is why her fan base has remained incredibly loyal - fans include contemporaries such as Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Emmylou Harris, all of whom have either recorded her songs or insisted she record theirs.

With her last CD (the critically-acclaimed Ruby’s Torch), a torch song tribute, THE LOVING KIND is her first studio album of original and contemporary cover material since 2005’s Hearts In Mind. The title track, emblematic of the album’s story songs, refers to Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 landmark civil rights case that once and for all ended the ban on interracial marriages in the U.S. Richard and Mildred Loving were a married white man and black woman who were forced to leave their native state of Virginia under threat of arrest because of the state’s Jim Crow law prohibiting marriages between different races.

“I read Mildred Loving’s obituary in The New York Times last year and it just floored me,” recalls Griffith. Tragically, Richard died in a tragic car accident just months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the couple’s favor. “She never remarried and in her last interview, just before she passed away, she expressed hope that their case would eventually be the open door to the legalization of same sex marriage.”

Another track on the album, “Not Innocent Enough,” is also built around a political and legal controversy, namely the celebrated death row case of Philip Workman, who was convicted in 1981 of killing a Memphis police officer. Despite new evidence that proved his innocence, which he always maintained through his five scheduled execution dates, Workman was put to death by the State of Tennessee on May 9, 2007. Fellow singer-songwriter John Prine joins Griffith on this track, backed by a chorus that also includes tunesmiths Elizabeth Cook and Todd Snider.

“I started writing this song long before Philip was executed, but just couldn’t finish it until that final injustice took place,” says Griffith.

On a more personal note, “Up Against The Rain,” co-written with her longtime collaborator Charley Stefl, is Griffith’s tribute to her mentor, country-folk singer and poet Townes Van Zandt. But on a broader level, the song “could be for anyone’s hero and with me, I also lost my dear, beautiful stepfather just before Christmas of last year, and we recorded the song the day I retuned from his funeral in Austin. So, it’s very close to my heart.”

THE LOVING KIND was produced by Pat McInerney and Thomm Jutz and features McInerney on drums and percussion, Jutz on guitar, Matt McKenzie on bass, Barry Walsh on keyboards, Shad Cobb on fiddle and Fats Kaplin on pedal steel guitar, mandolin and fiddle. A complete track listing for THE LOVING KIND is as follows:

1 The Loving Kind
2 Money Changes Everything
3 One Of These Days
4 Up Against The Rain
5 Cotton
6 Not Innocent Enough
7 Across America
8 Party Girl
9 Sing
10 Things I Don’t Need
11 Still Life
12 Tequila After Midnight
13 Pour Me A Drink