Joh Yamada [Bluestone]
Jazz has appeared in my Blog only once a month on average, this seems crazy, i know that a great Jazz disc is hard to come by, there's so much dross and average stuff in the Jazz world, and you have to be quite dedicated to search out the real gems amongst the ordinary stones, but 48 Blog entries for Jazz, and i'm in my fourth year?, there were a few years where i purposely concentrated on Jazz, and a number of recordings would feature each month [before this Blog], but things have died down on the Jazz front, i find it hard to buy a new album, and of course harder to find such albums worth keeping, it's an agonisingly slow progress on this front, this disc is a good example, not something i truly liked to begin with, a fairly average to good disc, but over the years [i bought this in 2003] i've warmed to it, it's not earth shattering pioneer Jazz, just straight ahead BeBop, but there's a lovely innocence to the album, and the beauty isn't in the virtuosity, but in it's simpleness at times, it's a shame that he doesn't record a lot more, this album featured early on in my Blog [21st January 2010].
Joh Yamada is Japanese, he's now 44, and he recorded this disc in 1997, the photography throughout is excellent [by John Abbott], and one of the reasons it stood out from the disc racks in the shop, a lovely blue background, and showing the saxophone and its keys, nice close up head shot on the front, great use of sideways lettering for the name / title of the album, and the back inlay is of a high visual presentation also.
The track i liked the most was track 5 'Never Let Me Go', a famous standard, Yamada of course plays it as a beautiful ballad, the sound coming out of his saxophone is nice and breathy and atmospheric, the introduction as such is a duet by Yamada and the Pianist Cyrus Chestnut [0:00-1:32], and it's a nice moment when the other two come in, i like the way Yamada uses the higher registers of the sax on the main tune, it suits the main tune perfectly, Chestnut takes a solo [2:23-], simple at first, but gets more complex, nice bell ringing of the keys, Yamada comes back in, and with a slightly more upbeat and complex solo [4:25-5:39], which brings us full circle to a return of the main tune [5:38+], a lovely moment, i can't help feeling he actually sounds like a sort of Chet Baker of the saxophone, or maybe Jackie McLean, a subtle album.
Here's Joh Yamada's album Bluestone on the AllMusic website, you can listen to 30 seconds of each track.
Joh Yamada is Japanese, he's now 44, and he recorded this disc in 1997, the photography throughout is excellent [by John Abbott], and one of the reasons it stood out from the disc racks in the shop, a lovely blue background, and showing the saxophone and its keys, nice close up head shot on the front, great use of sideways lettering for the name / title of the album, and the back inlay is of a high visual presentation also.
The track i liked the most was track 5 'Never Let Me Go', a famous standard, Yamada of course plays it as a beautiful ballad, the sound coming out of his saxophone is nice and breathy and atmospheric, the introduction as such is a duet by Yamada and the Pianist Cyrus Chestnut [0:00-1:32], and it's a nice moment when the other two come in, i like the way Yamada uses the higher registers of the sax on the main tune, it suits the main tune perfectly, Chestnut takes a solo [2:23-], simple at first, but gets more complex, nice bell ringing of the keys, Yamada comes back in, and with a slightly more upbeat and complex solo [4:25-5:39], which brings us full circle to a return of the main tune [5:38+], a lovely moment, i can't help feeling he actually sounds like a sort of Chet Baker of the saxophone, or maybe Jackie McLean, a subtle album.
Here's Joh Yamada's album Bluestone on the AllMusic website, you can listen to 30 seconds of each track.
