Spinning Vinyl

I haven't done a Spinning Vinyl episode in quite a while. This is the Easter Sunday edition. My wife and I spent Easter at home with our best friends. My lovely bride made a great meal, and our guests brought a carrot cake that completely and unequivocally redefined carrot cake in the most amazing way possible. I like carrot cake generally, but this item was really something else. The cake was totally incredible, and unique, and the cream cheese icing was replaced by a blend of whipped cream and mascarpone that was the bomb.

Oh wait, this is about the music. Since it was the holiday, I mostly stuck to jazz while we had appetizers and drinks in the afternoon. I got things started with Joe Jackson's Summer In The City Live In New York 2000. The recording was released only on CD when it was new, and made it to vinyl as a reissue in 2017. Intervention Records did a really nice job with the pressing and it's a fine recording of Jackson in a trio setting doing a nice mix of material.

I played Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson 1959. I love Webster's mellow blowing as much as any sax player I can think of. The late 1950s seem to have produced much of my most-loved jazz.

So right after that I went to one of my all-time favorite piano trio records, Ahmad Jamal At The Pershing / If Not For Me 1958. Jamal, here with Israel Crosby on bass and Vernell Fournier at the kit, makes some of the most comfortably swinging piano jazz, well, ever. The version of Poinciana here is delightful.

I wanted to push things up a bit, so I went to Buena Vista Social Club, Ry Cooder's 1997 foray into Cuban music with the original cast of players, as it were. This kind of cross-cultural outing rarely works as well as it works here. But then Cooder pretty much stays out of the way.

Earlier in the week I had T. Rex's Electric Warrior 1971 on, and I brought it back out to have some party music in the mix. Bang A Gong, Planet Queen, Life's A Gas, Rip Off. One great glam song after another.

Getting closer to dinner time I pulled out Cassandra Wilson's Blue Skies 1988. After two boundary-testing outings, Wilson made her traditional standards record. With a trio of Mulgrew Miller piano, Lonnie Plaxico bass and Terri Lynn Carrington drums, Wilson raised the bar on what could be expected from a set of great American songbook standards. It is a very special record for me, and one I never tire of hearing.

And finally Allen Toussaint's The Bright Mississippi 2009. This is a  record every music lover should own. New Orleans music as expressed by some of today's finest instrumental talent and the smooth piano and arranging of Toussaint. Subtle, breathtaking beauty.

As dinner was up next, I switched to shuffling the French playlist on the iPod. A playlist consisting of the Midnight In Paris 2011 soundtrack, added to with similar jazz and vocal tracks from Madeleine Peyroux, Bill Evans, Stacy Kent and others. Great dinner music, and my wife's favorite. That played at least until the carrot cake...

Reggie Young Forever Young 2017

 Reggie Young was one of the most recorded guitar players of all time. Backing country and pop stars as a go-to session pro, he was in demand in both Memphis and Nashville recording studios from the early sixties through the seventies and beyond. His guitar fills and leads can be heard on many a chart hit of the day, including songs by Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Jackie De Shannon, J.J. Cale, the Box Tops and B.J. Thomas. He toured and/or recorded with Jimmy Buffet, The Highwaymen, and Waylon Jennings. If you needed the guy that could walk in and play the perfect guitar part, you called Reggie Young.

In 2017, at age eighty, Reggie Young made his first and only solo record. It is seven songs written by Young himself, each a lovely slice of pop/rock/soul/country. It is mostly mellow, and all instrumental. The songs are often riffs and practice melodies Young had played for years turned into complete songs. A raft of top session men accompany Reggie ably, but the beauty of the record lies in the lovely guitar parts, the perfect feel on the fret board, the understated, tasteful magic of Reggie Young.

It is near perfect, and easy as Sunday morning. It will soothe your soul.