Jazz

Customer Reviews:

• Excellent Music and Superb Sound: This is a Ry classic, I owned a 1/2 speed master on LP and it was great; the USA CD release never did this recording justice. UNTIL now. Re-mastering is great and now I can really enjoy this recording again.
  
  I also ordered Bop Till You Drop and I am hoping for Borderline, and Crossroads to be re-mastered.
  
  Great music, great sound! You cannot go wrong buying this import. Look for a great Rhino 2-CD set to be released shortly. This will be a great over view of this man's vast career.
  
  Phil
  
• Jazz? No. But not bad nevertheless: This is definitely not jazz and the title is thus misleading but, to be fair, at the 20s, the era from which Cooder takes inspiration for this album, the word "jazz" had quite a different (not only wider) meaning.
  
  Bix Beiderbecke, for instance, had a "dayjob" in the slick orchestra of Paul Whiteman; that orchestra is nowdays not considered as a jazz orchestra, but Whiteman was at the time known as "The King of Jazz", which nowdays sounds downright ridiculous...
  
  However, although this is a nice ecclectic piece of popular music, I think that "Nobody" and some other songs are a bit overblown; neither pastiche nor independent musical construct...
• Great album, but dull and lifeless remastering job kills it: Okay, this is either sheer perversity or the people who remastered this Cooder series had burned out the treble circuitry on the board by the time they got to Jazz. Instead of the usual extreme treble increase, Jazz has had a major cut, leaving it dull and lifeless and with no high end to speak of. The gold standard here is the Mobile Fidelity LP, which IS a little warmer and smoother than the domestic CD, but the vinyl is still very clear and detailed. The old CD isn't bad, but it sounds brittle compared to the MFSL album. It's still much better than this Japanese mini-LP-sleeve version, though.
• Jazz - Hah!: Saw Ry Cooder on the PBS station with Buena Vista Social Club, bought this album expecting something I didn't get. I set it aside for months and listened again, still didn't like it. I guess I just don't get Ry Cooder, I read he was eclectic, I guess I'm not in to eclectic. I wanted something I could get into and this ain't it.
• Joseph Byrd and Ry Cooder make magic!: Yes, Ry is a wonderful guitar player. And, yes, the material is well chosen. Yes. Yes. Yes to all the other reviews. But let's give a hand to the arranger, as well. Within the first few notes after placing the 12" LP of Jazz on my turntable many years ago, I was scrambling to find who did the arranging!
  
  Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be Joseph Byrd who was the leader of the 60s rock groups, The United States of America and Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies (The American Metaphysical Circus). (He was also put out a great synthsizer album on John Fahey's Takoma label.) Joe Byrd and Ry Cooder make magic together out of their deep love for the mongrel musical cultural that has taken the world by storm over that last 100 years! It is a high point of our popular music.
  
  One note of caution, if are looking for a historically accurate recreation of classic Jazz, look elsewhere! That sort of thing has nothing to do with the real spirit of Jazz that you will find here! Enjoy!