The Cecil Payne-Ron Carter Quintet: Flying Fish

Cecil Payne [source]

Cecil Payne Dossier#5 - An ongoing series on one of the giants of baritone sax 

"One of the greatest needs of an artist is unified effort with himself to swing. Conceptions of rhythm patterns vary widely... individually. Therefore, it is very important to fill yourself with the spiritual causes of images so that you may paint a more colorful picture which will increase your natural musical development. Lester Young was one of the greatest of picture painters until Charlie Parker came with wide screen Vistavision painting. Now I love both of thefts." -- Cecil Payne

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The Cecil Payne-Ron Carter Quintet

Jazzfestival Bern, Switzerland, May 8, 1998
Eric Alexander(ts), Cecil Payne (bars), Stephen Scott (p), Ron Carter (b), Lewis Nash (d).

Flying Fish (Cecil Payne)

Cecil Payne was pretty much his own man which means most of the recordings in his not too extensive catalogue are done with him as the session leader. That leaves us with a big regret, as the combination of baritone sax in sessions with different musical approaches has always proved to be intriguing. (For that matter, check on Pepper Adams' illustrious career and recording as a session man, as well as a leader.) The tune played here, Flying Fish, was first recorded during a 1968 session, later released on Zodiac LP.

Best Docs Ever: The Jazz Picks

The Sound of Jazz

The leading English film journal Sight & Sound, known for its historical polls and decennial best-of lists selected by critics and filmmakers, recently conducted a new, slightly different poll: best documentaries of all time. The editor Nick James has explained the genesis of this poll here. The final result, searchable based on those who have voted and the films that have been voted for, can be accessed on this interactive page, but in case you're just curious about the final ten, these the are the films which have made it to the top:

1. Man with a Movie Camera
2. Shoah
3. Sans soleil
4. Night and Fog
5. The Thin Blue Line
6. Chronicle of a Summer
7. Nanook of the North
8. The Gleaners and I
=9. Dont Look Back
=9. Grey Gardens

I was one of the three hundred and something critics/filmmakers who participated in the poll. My top 10 and notes on my selection can be read here, but again, to make things easier for readers of this blog, these are the films which I saw, at that particular point, as the best documentaries ever made:

1 The Sound of Jazz (Jack Smight, 1957)
2 Quince Tree of the Sun (Victor Erice, 1992)
3 Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
4 Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988)
5 The House Is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad, 1962)
6 Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (Marcel Ophüls, 1988)
7 Robinson in Space (Patrick Keiller, 1997)
8 Lektionen in Finsternis (Werner Herzog, 1992)
9 P for Pelican (Parviz Kimiavi, 1972)
10 The Battle of Chile (Patricio Guzmán, 1976)

As you can see my first pick is a jazz film, made in 1957 for CBS as a live TV programme. (For further information on the film see the end of this post.) That made me curious to examine how many jazz docs have made it to the long list of the selected films. Among Top Ten, there are of course music documentaries such as Dont Look Back, but as far as jazz in concerned, these are the only jazz documentaries on the Sight & Sound poll, occasionally accompanied by short notes from voters:

Stan Getz + Oscar Peterson Trio

Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson Trio (Verve 8251)

Stan Getz (ts), Oscar Peterson (p), Herb Ellis (g), Ray Brown (b)
Capitol Studios, Los Angeles, CA, October 10, 1957

The Complete Atomic Basie

Found the full album on the Internet Archive Org.