St. Louis Shoes

St. Louis Shoes

St. Louis Shoes

ASIN: B00009L52P

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
With St. Louis Shoes, the restlessly inventive Greg Osby takes a familiar format--the standards/favorite tunes collection--and brings it to full creative boil. As always with the alto saxophonist, there's a concept unifying the material--in this case his development from a St. Louis phenom into an east coast pro. The album opens with a richly harmonized, progressively modern reading of Duke Ellington's classic "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" and closes with a melodically compelling overhaul of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues." In between, basking in some of trumpeter Nicholas Payton's best playing on record, Osby reflects his roots in the bebop of Bird and Diz and Monk and his emergence as a proponent of Brooklyn's funk-informed M-Base sound, deconstructing "Summertime" to audacious effect. His quintet includes young pianist Harold O'Neal, who in replacing the flagrantly gifted Jason Moran reveals terrific potential of his own. --Lloyd Sachs

St. Louis Shoes,Greg Osby,Blue Note Records,Jazz,Jazz Music,Mainstream Jazz,Pop,Swing
Franz Waxman: Old Aquaintances
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • reacquaintance with waxman
  • Old Acquaintances
 Franz Waxman: Old Aquaintances

Manufacturer: Koch Int'l Classics
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00004GOX9
Release Date: 2000-03-28

Tracks:

  1. Old Acquaintances: The Young in Heart: Suite - Allegro
  2. Old Acquaintances: Old Acquaintance: Elegy - Moderato
  3. Old Acquaintances: Huckleberry Finn: Overture - Allegro con brio
  4. Old Acquaintances: Come Back, Little Sheba: Reminiscences - Nostalgically
  5. Auld Lang Syne: Auld Lang Syne: Variations: Eine Kleine Nichtmusik - Rondo
  6. Auld Lang Syne: Auld Lang Syne: Variations - Moonlight Concerto - Adagio
  7. Auld Lang Syne: Auld Lang Syne: Variations - Chaconne a Son Gout - Stately
  8. Auld Lang Syne: Auld Lang Syne: Variation - Hommage to Shostakofiev - Allegro
  9. Old Acquaintances: Allegro
  10. Old Acquaintances: Allegro Moderato
  11. Old Acquaintances: Allegro
  12. Old Acquaintances: Good Morning - Lengo
  13. Old Acquaintances: Promenade - Gracioso
  14. Old Acquaintances: Playtime - Allegro
  15. Old Acquaintances: Bedtime Story: The Fairy Princess - Andante
  16. Old Acquaintances: The Song of Terezin: The Little Mouse - Scherzando
  17. Old Acquaintances: The Spirit of St. Louis: Barnstorming - Allegro con spirito
  18. Old Acquaintances: The Little Shoes - Allegro
  19. Old Acquaintances: Four Leaf Clover - Andante
  20. Old Acquaintances: The Little Soldier - March
  21. Old Acquaintances: The Golden Heart - Lento
  22. Old Acquaintances: The Pony - Allegro

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars reacquaintance with waxman.......2007-04-22

i honestly don't know why i bought this cd. but there is a great deal to love about it. the main thing i love is the first suite, which is highlighted by an arrangement of his 'elegy for strings' for piano trio.

the second surprise is the witty set of variations on 'auld lang syne'.

the third is the price--very affordable and not a disappointment.

5 out of 5 stars Old Acquaintances.......2000-04-29

The violinist on this recording really is supurb. You have entered the world of a pro that feels his music, commits to the era it was written for,and understands the composers emotions. The Four Scenes of Childhood express a special sentiment. What a treat to hear the first of its recording.
St. Louis Shoes
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • Outstanding
  • Blending tradition with innovation.
  • Junkmedia.org Review - Blending tradition with innovation
  • An Osby deconstruction!
  • Back to the Future
 St. Louis Shoes
Greg Osby
Manufacturer: Blue Note Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Similar Items:
  1. Public
  2. Channel Three
  3. Invisible Hand
  4. Inner Circle
  5. The Bandwagon

ASIN: B00009L52P
Release Date: 2003-06-10

Tracks:

  1. East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
  2. Shaw Nuff
  3. Light Blue
  4. Whirlwind Soldier
  5. Summertime
  6. Milton On Ebony
  7. The Single Petal Of A Rose
  8. Bernie's Tune
  9. St. Louis Blues

Amazon.com

With St. Louis Shoes, the restlessly inventive Greg Osby takes a familiar format--the standards/favorite tunes collection--and brings it to full creative boil. As always with the alto saxophonist, there's a concept unifying the material--in this case his development from a St. Louis phenom into an east coast pro. The album opens with a richly harmonized, progressively modern reading of Duke Ellington's classic "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" and closes with a melodically compelling overhaul of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues." In between, basking in some of trumpeter Nicholas Payton's best playing on record, Osby reflects his roots in the bebop of Bird and Diz and Monk and his emergence as a proponent of Brooklyn's funk-informed M-Base sound, deconstructing "Summertime" to audacious effect. His quintet includes young pianist Harold O'Neal, who in replacing the flagrantly gifted Jason Moran reveals terrific potential of his own. --Lloyd Sachs

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Outstanding.......2005-07-02

This is a terrific CD. Greg Osby has a unique persepctive and method...a somewhat knotty and off-center approach to his melodic lines over some very rich harmonies. But it's accessible and very moving...the Ellington ballad ('Petals')is simply beautiful. This CD mostly features reharmonized standards--since these songs are already familiar to most jazz fans, St. Louis Shoes might be the perfect starting point for someone who's not yet acquainted with Osby's art.

4 out of 5 stars Blending tradition with innovation........2004-08-19

Here saxophonist Greg Osby explores his musical past all the while blazing a new path. Sounds like a cliché? No, this is Osby exploring his past through the multi-faceted lens of his current abilities. Blending tradition and innovation, Greg Osby turns standards on their ends and makes them sound new again.

Refraining from original material and favoring standards is an unusual choice for Osby, who is best known for his early association with the M-Base collective, a sort of pre-acid jazz funk group. Since then Osby has developed a style as dependent on abstracted funk and hip-hop rhythms as it is on non-linear phrasing. Osby's most difficult music sounds almost academic in its execution, but with St. Louis Shoes he seems to have tempered his abstract inclinations with a more melodic sensibility.

Osby and his group take time honored chestnuts, rearrange and reharmonize them, add metric rhythm shifts and then solo through them as though they were newly written tunes, all while keeping the original spirit of the pieces. Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, W.C. Handy and even Jack Dejohnette all get composer credit on this session.

Though the music ranges from esoteric to overexposed, all of the pieces feel fresh again. The album opener, Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" gets progressively more complex as the band goes through the changes, sounding more modernistic with each repetition of the theme. Although still recognizable as an Ellington piece by it finale, Osby puts his own personal stamp on it, reminding you just who's playing who here.

While not as obviously challenging as his previous release, Inner Circle, this disc has the added bonus of showcasing former young lion trumpet prodigy Nicholas Payton in a much more interesting role, that of creative improvisor (as opposed to his previous role as Wynton Marsalis' tool). St Louis Shoes is Greg Osby sneaking through the mainstream -- catch him if you can.

(This review was originally written for the online webzine: junkmedia.org, and was published there June 27, 2003)

4 out of 5 stars Junkmedia.org Review - Blending tradition with innovation.......2003-06-27

Here saxophonist Greg Osby explores his musical past all the while blazing a new path. Sounds like a cliché? No, this is Osby exploring his past through the multi-faceted lens of his current abilities. Blending tradition and innovation, Greg Osby turns standards on their ends and makes them sound new again.

Refraining from original material and favoring standards is an unusual choice for Osby, who is best known for his early association with the M-Base collective, a sort of pre-acid jazz funk group. Since then Osby has developed a style as dependent on abstracted funk and hip-hop rhythms as it is on non-linear phrasing. Osby's most difficult music sounds almost academic in its execution, but with St. Louis Shoes he seems to have tempered his abstract inclinations with a more melodic sensibility.

Osby and his group take time honored chestnuts, rearrange and reharmonize them, add metric rhythm shifts and then solo through them as though they were newly written tunes, all while keeping the original spirit of the pieces. Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, W.C. Handy and even Jack Dejohnette all get composer credit on this session.

Though the music ranges from esoteric to overexposed, all of the pieces feel fresh again. The album opener, Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" gets progressively more complex as the band goes through the changes, sounding more modernistic with each repetition of the theme. Although still recognizable as an Ellington piece by it finale, Osby puts his own personal stamp on it, reminding you just who's playing who here.

While not as obviously challenging as his previous release, Inner Circle, this disc has the added bonus of showcasing former young lion trumpet prodigy Nicholas Payton in a much more interesting role, that of creative improvisor (as opposed to his previous role as Wynton Marsalis' tool). St Louis Shoes is Greg Osby sneaking through the mainstream -- catch him if you can.

Troy Collins

Junkmedia.org Review

5 out of 5 stars An Osby deconstruction!.......2003-06-26

It was a brave decision by Osby to take so many well known tunes and make them his own. The success of the project owes as much to the band, as it does to Osby. Nicholas Peyton proves to be an excellent foil for Osby's eclectic style, and Harold O'Neil on piano is given acres of space to develop his own take on the programme. The rhythm section is tight, with Green on drums proving he can be both propulsive and supportive. Some of the tunes are barely recognisable as compositions that you may have heard before, whilst others are given the lightest of makeovers. My favourite tracks are two Ellington tracks, one early period "East St Louis Toodle-oo" and the much later "The Single petal of a rose". Both have wonderful contributions from both the frontmen who spur each other on to deliver greater depths of sound. However, perhaps bettering both of these is a magnificent version of Cassandra Wilson's "Whirlwind Soldier" transformed into something completely different from her version.There's not a track on this album that isn't transformed by the ensemble collected here, and it would be interesting to know what Thelonious Monk might have made of the version of "Light Blue". This album might not be what you might have expected given the track listing.It's an album that will certainly deliver more layers with repeated listening, and is highly recommended.

5 out of 5 stars Back to the Future.......2003-06-25

It takes a special kind of player to even attempt something like this. What we've got here is a very unusual meeting of tradition and modernism--just the kind of thing that yields the most spectacular results. To bring in an analogy from far afield--New Testament studies, of all things--it strikes me that Osby is doing for jazz what N. T. Wright is doing for Jesus studies--delving deep into the roots to come up with a genuinely new approach that is completely consonant with the tradition.

Osby has done something both audacious and obvious--he's deconstructed a bunch of hoary old standards to come up with something entirely new. And it's just not any old standards: We're talking about the absolute giants of jazz--Ellington, Parker, Gillespie, Monk, Gershwin, plus a couple cultural icons, namely Lieber and Stoller. Why would anyone want to take on such exalted personages? You'd be crazy to--unless you had complete access to what made them geniuses and could unravel that genius and put it together in some kind of new form(at).

And that's just what Osby does. He takes what we're intimately familiar with, turns it on its head, and shows us, anew, what's going on with its brilliance. Quite a feat.

I'm going to go out on a limb here (something I do quite regularly . . .) and say that this is the release of the year. Yes, there has been a bumper crop of amazing releases in the first half of 2003, not least Wayne Shorter's first studio acoustic album in years, Alegria, John Scofield's great jazz/funk outing, Up All Night, Jacky Terrasson's Smile, Dave Douglas' Freak In. But this tops them all.

Why? First off, he limits himself to the classic jazz format: two horn front, piano, bass, drums--no electronics, not strings, no fancy percussion. Second, he limits himself to jazz and pop culture classics--no impossibly catchy new funk, house, or hip-hop stuff. Third, he imbues this material--using such limited resources--with a genuinely new sensibility, revealing its profundities and classic forms even as he uncovers strikingly new aspects of it.

What about the players? Osby himself is in great form, as is his frontline partner, Nicholas Payton. These two constantly conjure up magical melodic/harmonic statements. Robert Hurst on bass sounds better than ever. The other two, Harold O'Neal on piano and Rodney Green on drums, I've never heard before, but they acquit themselves with aplomb and near-magical deftness in this difficult setting. O'Neal, especially, has the feel about him of a monster player.

This is essential jazz of the highest order. Not to be missed.
Double Feature: Saturday Night Fever/Grease
Average customer rating: Not rated
    		Double Feature: Saturday Night Fever/Grease

    Manufacturer: Madacy Records
    ProductGroup: Music
    Binding: Audio CD

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    ASIN: B0009NCQK0
    Release Date: 2005-01-04

    Tracks:

    1. Night Fever
    2. Stayin' Alive
    3. Disco Inferno
    4. How Deep Is You Love
    5. You Should Be Dancing
    6. More Than a Woman
    7. Jive Talkin'
    8. Boogie Shoes
    9. If I Can't Have You
    10. Boogie Child
    11. Fifth of Beethoven
    12. K-Jee
    13. Salsation

    Tracks:

    1. You're the One That I Want
    2. Grease
    3. Summer Nights
    4. Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee
    5. Hopelessly Devoted to You
    6. Greased Lightning
    7. Beauty School Dropout
    8. Blue Moon
    9. Love Is Many-Splendored Thing [Instrumental]
    10. Sandy
    11. Tears on My Pillow
    12. We Go Together

    Jazz Music:

    1. Structure
    2. Talk Less Listen More [Import]
    3. The Best of the Complete RCA Victor Mid-Forties Recordings
    4. The Calvin Owens Show: Keeping Big Band Blues Alive
    5. The Hang
    6. The Heart Is a Lotus
    7. The Issued Recordings: 1947-1949
    8. The Lonely Surfer
    9. The Move
    10. The Other World

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