Robert Baird

Revinylized!

Revinylization #35: John Coltrane's Blue Train Remastered (Twice) for Tone Poet

Robert Baird Nov 03, 2022

With its indelible Francis Wolff cover image of a pensive John Coltrane bathed in blue, freshly fired by Miles Davis but four months free of heroin, and its confident, accessible music that hints at the genius to come, Coltrane's Blue Train is a timeless jazz masterpiece. The saxophonist's only album as a leader for Blue Note, recorded before his triumphs at Atlantic RecordsMy Favorite Things and Coltrane Jazzthe boppy Blue Train, which, including the original mono and stereo pressings, had been issued 272 times, remains important for many reasons.

Music and Recording Reviews

October 2022 Jazz Record Reviews

Robert Baird, Thomas Conrad Oct 07, 2022

Enrico Rava, Fred Hersch: The Song Is You, Reinier Baas/Jonas Burgwinkel/Kit Downes: Deadeye, Kirk Knuffke Trio: Gravity Without Airs and Anteloper: Pink Dolphins.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

Steve Albini: Serve The Servants

Robert Baird May 29, 2018

Notoriously opinionated and obstinate Steve Albini, a guy ever vigilant and vocal about the wicked ways of the music business, showing up in Austin, Texas, at the annual South by Southwest festival? This I had to see. After a near-miss at his Austin hotel, we spoke the next morning on the phone.

"It was unspeakable on all levels, as bad as I imagined, and in some ways worse."

Any notion that he'd somehow softened, somehow accepted the music biz as it

Wait. What the hell am I thinking?

Recording of the Month

Recording of June 2018: After Bach

Robert Baird May 18, 2018

Brad Mehldau: After Bach
Brad Mehldau, piano
Nonesuch 7559-79318-0 (CD). 2018. Robert Hurwitz, exec. prod.; Tom Korkidis, prod. coord.; Tom Lazarus, eng., mix, mastering; Brad Montgomery, mix. ADD? TT: 69:24
Performance *****
Sonics *****

That American jazz pianist Brad Mehldau has made a recording of J.S. Bach's music should come as no great surprise to anyone who's followed his extraordinarily varied career. In many ways, it seems a natural progression.

Having become one of the most important jazz pianists of this century, and dabbled in classical-flavored music, film scores, and even performances of popular music (by Oasis Soundgarden and Nick Drake, to name just a few of the artists he's covered), Mehldau has finally gotten around to recording this album of five pieces by one of the greatest keyboard improvisers in history. Mehldau's method here is to play a more or less straight version of a Bach prelude or fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846893, followed by his own "After Bach" reimagining of the same piece.

Music and Recording Features

National Sawdust: An Artistic Incubator

Robert Baird May 08, 2018

Saturday night in hipster Brooklyn . . . yet there could have been actual sawdust on the floor. Inside National Sawdust, a youngish crowd, many clearly ready to party, were shuffling, some were full-blown jitterbugging, while onstage the Lost Bayou Ramblers, a progressive young Cajun band who'd at first seemed a bit awed by their futuristic surroundings, were slugging beers, sawing a fiddle, squeezing an accordion, and generally finding their groove.

Robert Baird

Todd Rundgren's 1972 Classic

Robert Baird Mar 29, 2018

Something/Anything? reissued on SACD.

Music and Recording Features

Moby: Sound of Mind

Robert Baird Mar 27, 2018

The loudness wars are over. The valiant but hopelessly outnumbered forces that stood against squashing the dynamics and life out of recordings, all in the name of almighty loudness, have been vanquished. Scattered across the smoking battlefield are the lifeless bodies of thousands of disappointed listeners, many so young they will never now know what it's like to hear a natural, uncompressed recording.

Robert Baird

Wes Montgomery Redux

Robert Baird Mar 16, 2018

Paris '65 in stunning sound, the Resonance Reissue...

Robert Baird

A Nasty Gal!

Robert Baird Mar 10, 2018

A controversial funk collectible gets a heavyweight LP reissue.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

Bettye LaVette: Things Will Change

Robert Baird Mar 06, 2018

In her wild ride of a memoir, A Woman Like Me (2012), eclectic soul and R&B singer Bettye LaVette spoke of being hung over a 20th-floor balcony of a Manhattan skyscraper by her pimp boyfriend. She revealed that she'd slept with Ben E. King and Otis Redding, and had even spent a minute dabbling in prostitution. She had dropped acid with George Clinton. Finally, she had her moment of satisfaction when she delivered a knockout performance of the Who's "Love, Reign O'er Me" at the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors. In the audience, all agog, were Beyoncé, Barbra Streisand, and Aretha Franklin, all more successful than she.