From the Hot Afternoon

Artist: Paul Desmond
Label: Polygram Records
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 731454348720
EAN: 0731454348720
ASIN: B00004S95Q

Release Date: 2000-04-04

Related Categories:

Cool Jazz

| Jazz | Styles | Music

General

| Jazz | Styles | Music

General

| Pop | Styles | Music

Listmania:

Best of Paul Faulise
Music to sit by the fire with

Tracks:

October
Round 'N' Round
Faithful Brother
To Say Goodbye
From The Hot Afternoon
Circles
Martha & Romao
Catavento
Latin Chant
Crystal Illusions
Round 'N' Round (Alternative Take)
Faithful Brother (Alternative Take)
From The Hot Afternoon (Alternative Take)
Catavento (Alternative Take)
Latin Chant (Alternative Take)
From The Hot Afternoon (Alternative Take)

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Pure Desmond
Desmond Blue
Glad to Be Unhappy
The Paul Desmond Quartet Live
Like Someone in Love

Customer Reviews:

Sublime!.......2005-03-14

Robertllr reviewer from the united states, you are obviously a heavy metal fan, or a fan of big band crappy (no rhythm) jazz, so don't waste fusion lovers time by rating an album that is obviously not your taste in music. This album by Paul Desmond can be sumed up in one word! SUPERB!!!!

An easy listening classic.......2005-02-05

Many of the comments in the review below (robertllr)are accurate, and perhaps those looking for examples of Paul Desmond's purer jazz style should look elsewhere. The orchestration is very '70s strings, but it was after all recorded in 1969(?), so I believe the review is overly subjective.
All the featured performances are excellent, Paul Desmond's playing is superb, taking a little more of a back seat, but with some beautiful, memorable phrasing. Not mentioned in other reviews are three vocal tracks featuring Wanda de Sa, "To Say Goodbye", "Circles" and "Crystal Illusions". In "To Say Goodbye", she was forced by the recording schedule and low register of the instrumental part to sing well below her normal register, producing a striking and sultry version of this song, a must-have for her fans. Edu Lobo may not be Jobim, but "Crystal Illusions" is perhaps his best known work. He performs on the track and Wanda (his wife) sings it beautifully. The swirling '70s orchestation suits the song very well, the edgy chord shifts provide Paul with a challenging backdrop for his solos; this is probably my favourite version.
I have the original LP, so I haven't heard the alternative takes, these are a bonus for Desmond fans.
This is an easy listening classic which is head and shoulders above others in the genre and has the power to move you with some exceptional performances by several icons of jazz and the '60s "Bossa" sound.

Desmond, yes; Sebesky, no.......2003-01-13

Ostensibly, From the Hot Afternoon is a showcase for a couple of post-Jobim/Gilberto Brazilian song writers and for some new Brazilian instrumental and vocal talent. This sounds like an interesting idea for an album. To be sure, Desmond had a remarkable flair for the bossa nova style. He even recorded an album with Jim Hall in 1962 called Bossa Antigua which contains several of Desmond`s own lovely bossa-style compositions. (This, despite the ruefully punning title, was only two years after Getz and Byrd recorded the ground-breaking Jazz Samba, which introduced American jazz fans to the "new thing" and started a craze in jazz and popular music of the time.)

Anyway, it must have seemed like a good idea to everyone, even as late as 1969, to return for another take on the Brazilian jazz-samba style. Unfortunately, the two featured composers--Milton Nascimento and Edu Lobo--are not remotely in the same league with someone like Antonio Carlos Jobim; nor is the rhythm section (with the exception of Ron Carter on bass) up to the caliber of Jim Hall's guitar and Connie Kay's drums on Bossa Antigua.

But these problems would not alone be enough to completely sink an album featuring the incomparable Paul Desmond.

What does succeed in ruining it, though, is Don Sebesky. For some reason, Sebesky was hired to add light orchestral arrangements ("sweetening" it was called) to many jazz albums that were produced by Creed Taylor in the late 70's-including several other Desmond/CTI releases as well as sessions by other jazz greats. Whether the incorporation of these dreadful over-dubbed orchestrations was a symptom of blatant commercialization, or whether Taylor genuinely thought it constituted some kind of revolutionary pop/jazz/classical fusion, I don't pretend to know.

But I do know the results are, to say the least, un-jazzy. Sebesky's arrangements are so insipid that they make elevator music seem exciting--so pop and goofy that they make new-age music seem hot. Moreover, they are so poorly realized that they even submerge the principal musicians! You have to constantly switch channels just to hear Desmond over all the strings, flutes, French horns, clarinet, oboe, harp, and electric piano. Can it be that some engineer really thought Desmond's alto merited no more prominence that the first violin or the oboe?

The final result, then, is a miasma of muzak, with the ghost of a jazz giant floating around in it.

Still, there is a reason for a diehard Desmond fan (like myself) to own this re-release; and that is for the extra takes that are laid down without the overdubbed orchestra parts, thus giving us a chance to hear Desmond in his natural, small-group setting.

Sad to say, however, these takes seem uninspired at best-especially when compared with the same sort of music and the same sort of instrumentation that resulted in the effort captured on Bossa Antigua. On the Hot Afternoon tracks Desmond sounds like he's spinning his wheels, rather than giving out with the remarkable lyrical invention that graces all of his work prior to and after this lamentable Sebesky period. On most of these cuts, he takes a modal and undirected approach to his improvisations. He seems to be playing almost as if he knew that his voice would be lost in the mixing anyway--playing like an accompanist, rather than like the featured soloist. Moreover, the cuts are all traditional pop-song length (two and a half to four minutes), which is not a format Desmond ever used, or sounds good on, either with the Brubeck quartet or with his own groups.

Desmond once remarked that he was not the type of musician to dominate a session-that his work very much depended on a rapport with his fellow band members. This album seems to prove the point: without a seasoned rhythm section, good material, and room to stretch, even the greatest of alto players found himself far too constrained to produce his best work.

Cool jazz from the master........2002-01-13

Desmond manages to simmer, sizzle, and be sultry all at once with these cuts. He said, I hear, that he wanted to sound like a dry martini. Well..he suceeded on all of his albums. This one is one of the best.

Close but no cigar.......2000-11-14

WAY to many lush violins. A few cuts are ok. Not the best of desmonds albums.

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