{"id":708,"date":"2012-02-08T04:59:41","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T09:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=708"},"modified":"2016-02-02T21:35:24","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T21:35:24","slug":"album-review-jazz-noire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/02\/08\/album-review-jazz-noire\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Jazz Noire, Darktown Sleaze from the Mean Streets of L.A."},"content":{"rendered":"

The folks at Fantastic Voyage (and sister label Future Noise) can be counted on to put together thought-provoking compilations. In the past they’ve collected obscurities from the Ember label<\/a>, and brought together a clutch of songs that \u2013 in an effective bit of revisionist history \u2013 redefine what the word “punk” means<\/a>. The label’s latest fray into compilations territory is Jazz Noire: Darktown Sleaze from the Mean Streets of L.A.<\/em> This 2cd set collects fifty tracks from the 1940, and the result is a potted crash-course in the style.<\/p>\n

Each of the two discs kicks off with a motion picture theme to set the mood: on the first disc it’s \u201cTheme from The Killers<\/em>,\u201d and disc two starts with \u201cTheme from High Sierra<\/em>.\u201d Both are successful at setting listeners up for what’s to come. The musical travelogue features Johnny Otis<\/strong>, Amos Milburn<\/strong>, Billie Holiday<\/strong>, T-Bone Walker<\/strong>, Wynonie Harris<\/strong> and other revered acts of the era.<\/p>\n

The music on Jazz Noire<\/em> isn’t merely of one style: there’s jump blues, swing, big-band, blues. What most of the tracks have in common is the evocation (to modern-day listeners) of juke joints where dancing, drinking and fighting occurred. \u201cSkid Row Blues\u201d by Jimmy Witherspoon with Jay McShann & His Orchestra<\/strong> is just the sort of why-haven’t-I-heard-this-before track listeners will discover on this set. There’s a nice balance between marquee names (Lionel Hampton<\/strong>, Cab Calloway<\/strong>) and lesser-known (but equally worth hearing) artists like Crown Prince Waterford<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Listening to the swaying instrumental \u201cThis Subdues My Passion,\u201d the 21st<\/sup> century listener might not immediately realize they’re hearing Charles Mingus<\/strong> (billed here as Baron Mingus & His Octet<\/strong>). And Louis Jordan<\/strong>‘s original 1947 Decca recording of \u201cWhy’d You Do It, Babe?\u201d makes one of its relatively rare appearances on CD. The same is true of a very early Nat King Cole<\/strong> side, \u201cGee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You?\u201d from 1944 (credited to the King Cole Trio<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Owing \u2013 one imagines \u2013 to licensing rules for the UK that are less stringent than what a US-based label would encounter, Jazz Noire<\/em> cherry-picks the tunes to suit the project, rather than the other way ’round. Expertly programmed, the set feels like what you might have gotten by listening to a super-hip radio station in the late 40s (albeit without commercials, and in impressively high fidelity).<\/p>\n

Special mention must be made of the liner notes. Written in that pulp-novel Mickey Spillane<\/strong> style, with subheading like \u201cDark Shadows Hauntin’ Me,\u201d Dave Penny<\/strong>‘s noir-ish essay is spot-on and note-perfect, even if it has fuck-all to do with the music on the CDs. The vintage artwork and photos are ace, too. (Though it is a bit odd that while most of the comic book-style artwork portray white people, nearly all of the artists on the set are African-American.) And Fantastic Voyage easily one-ups its competitors’ shoddy packaging by (a) including track info that notes year of release and (b) packing the whole affair in a nice gatefold digpack.<\/p>\n

Chances are — unless you\u2019re a serious aficionado of 1940s pop-jazz \u2013 that you won’t have more than a handful of these sides in your collection. Allow Jazz Noire: Darktown Sleaze from the Mean Streets of L.A.<\/em> to serve as a tidy entree into that world.<\/p>\n

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The folks at Fantastic Voyage (and sister label Future Noise) can be counted on to put together thought-provoking compilations. In the past they’ve collected obscurities from the Ember label, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[810],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-fantastic-voyage","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10241,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/10241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}