More swingin' sides from the Bad Note Millstones Of Jazz!

Bad Note Presents:

The Millstones Of Jazz

What?! We thought you were a Completist! You can't stop buying now!! Your collection is worthless without every single release! See the earlier albums in the series here and here.

BD0013 Bird’s Turds: Charlie Parker Meets Hank Williams—1948

Bebop meets cow-plop: Parker’s vivid harmonic imagination could transmogrify even slowpoke hillbilly weepers, and when Bird assayed these Country & Western classics at blistering “Donna Lee” tempos, he left Williams choking in the dust—bringing a particularly bewildered poignancy to “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” But Williams got his revenge with “A Night in Tupelo,” his yelping bluegrass rewrite of a bop classic.

BD0014 Powell’s Bowels: The Party Tapes of Bud Powell—1954

Late at night after a hard day of recording, Bud Powell would sometimes amuse his colleagues with some of his more...sophomoric talents. After a takeout dinner of spicy Mexican chili and generous servings of malt liquor, Bud returned to the piano for this amazing display of flatulent syncopation. Powell is credited with piano, horn, bass and percussion on these ribald treasures.

BD0015 Funny Sonny: Sid Caesar Scats with Sonny Rollins—1958

The 1950s were baffling times for fast-living jazz musicians. You’re hanging with the cats after a show at the Village Vanguard...a famous TV funnyman invites you to join his party for a few cocktails...and next thing you know, you wake up in Imogene Coca’s bed with a skull-crushing hangover and no memory of the late-night recording session documented here. Caesar scats in a bewildering Babel of ethnic accents as the tenor-man provides meandering accompaniment. Von Gilder’s threatened release of this album prompted Rollins’ first “retirement” from the music business. Hope you’ve closed on that property in Arizona, Sonny!

BD0016 Yogi’s Arkestra: Sun Ra’s Themes for Hanna-Barbera—1979

Yogi Bear and his cartoon pals were looking for that “special place” every Saturday morning—and on this album, Sun Ra assures them that “Space Is The Place.” At last, a compilation of the music Sun Ra’s Arkestra created for mediocre limited-animation cartoon series—including extended versions of “The Jetsons Theme” and “We Are The Wayouts (Wayouts).”

BD0017 Tatum For Tots: The Nursery School Classics, Vol. I—1952

The greatest jazz pianist of all time considered no composition too humble for his overwhelming harmonic and technical firepower. When you hear Tatum’s versions of “I’m A Little Teapot,” “Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf,” “Patty Cake Patty Cake (Baker’s Man)” and “Little Red Caboose (Chug-Chug-Chug),” you’ll swear there are two toddlers playing at once.

More new releases from the Bad Note Millstones Of Jazz!

Bad Note Presents:

The Millstones Of Jazz

The cavalcade of rare treasures continues! Max out your credit card on these newly unearthed gems! See the earlier releases in the series here.

BD0007 A Nightmare On Ella Street: Ella Fitzgerald, The Baroness Nica De Konigswarter And Chan Parker—1955

The longtime companion of Thelonius Monk and the widow of Charlie “Bird” Parker are best known as the most famous groupies in jazz history—but what they really wanted was to be the Andrews Sisters. After much pleading, they finally persuaded Ella to let them sing backup for her, with...interesting results. This release is the only Fitzgerald recording that breaks glass from the very first note.

BD0008 Diz’n’Dez: The Failed Cubop Experiments Of Dizzy Gillespie and Desi Arnaz—1953

Perhaps the bottles of tequila consumed by Arnaz at the Palladium before this session can “splain” the baffling lack of chemistry between these Afro-Latin Jazz pioneers. All we know is, shorn of his crack mambo sidemen, Arnaz could barely produce even a polka 2-step on his tourist-grade congas. And when Lucille Ball joined them to warble on “Desilu,” (a remake of the Arnaz hit “Bobalu”), stray dogs all over Manhattan turned themselves in at the Anti-Cruelty Society.

BD0009 The Dearth Of Bebop: Unrecorded Classics By Bird And Diz From The Early-Forties Recording Ban

Originally released on vinyl, this album of non-existent proto-bop gems from the recording ban was a favorite of legendary Chicago Public Radio jazz deejay Dick Buckley. For the CD release, it has been digitally remastered: all the hiss has been removed so that you can imagine in complete silence what Parker and Gillespie might have sounded like as they experimented with the complex calculations and advanced harmonies of bebop—the musical “doomsday weapon” that killed off jazz’s popularity until the discovery of cold fusion in the early seventies. Bobby “Doc” Oppenheimer would have been on piano, Edward “Fats” Teller on bass and “Rico” Fermi on drums. Arrangements by Al “Fatha” Einstein.

BD0010 I’d Rather Be Blue Than Red: Billie Holiday Live At The Army-McCarthy Hearings—1954

When Senator Joseph McCarthy’s committee began investigating communist influence in the music business, few observers suspected that McCarthy was a big fan of Billie Holiday. “There are communists under every bed” and “that colored gal sure can sing the blues” were apparently the Senator’s twin credos. While appearing before the committee, Holiday was subjected to an embarrassing series of requests that she perform McCarthy’s favorite standards—which she did, in a discomfited a capella. Bad Note is releasing this performance by special arrangement with CBS News; the outraged commentary is by newsman Edward R. Murrow.

BD0011 Mingus Shmingus: The Charles Mingus Quintet Performs Yiddish Folk Songs With Special Guest Sammy Davis Jr.—1970

This ill-advised project (with liner notes by Amiri Baraka) eroded the original 1960s civil rights coalition and nearly turned Manhattan into “the other West Bank” during the long, hot summer of 1970. Bad Note is pleased to fan the flames once more.

BD0012  Monk Drunk: Thelonius Monk Plays Wagner’s Ring Cycle (5-CD boxed set)—1967

Monk’s lovable eccentricities and puckish humor informed all of his recorded work—but get a few drinks in him, and he was a wild man. This incredible marathon project was recorded during a “lost weekend” in the late sixties, and finds Monk transforming Wagner’s sturm und drang  into a Marx Brothers costume epic. Particularly wacky is Monk’s all-out stride attack on “Flight Of The Valkyries”—but overall, the joke wears thin about six hours before the fat lady would have sung. With Jim Beam on alto, Jose Cuervo on trumpet, and the Christian Brothers on bass and drums. 

Introducing the Bad Note Millstones Of Jazz!

New! Available for the first time! No jazz collection is complete without

The Millstones Of Jazz

from Bad Note

In June of 2011, renowned jazz producer/engineer/label owner Ahmet Von Gilder died after a long and distinguished career in the recording industry.

While poking around in the basement of his estate, executor Chet Kincaid discovered a treasure-trove of rare master tapes—tapes whose existence had heretofore only been rumored or vehemently denied.

Contained in this stunning archive are the most ill conceived, badly executed, wrong-headed and embarrassing projects ever agreed to by the legends of jazz. 


And though many critics would rather see these tapes destroyed than unleashed upon an unsuspecting public, Kincaid believes they are of such historic significance that it would be a shame if nobody made a bundle off them. 

Introducing a new jazz record label—Bad Note—and an impotent—er, important new series of cockeyed classics: The Bad Note Millstones Of Jazz.

 

Initial Releases

BD0001 Snap, Crackle, Satchmo! The Kellogg’s Sessions Of Louis Armstrong—1964

By the early sixties, gravelly-voiced Louis Armstrong had become a lovable American treasure. And like most American treasures, he had decided to cash in on his appeal with commercial endorsements. These audio tracks from TV spots in which Satchmo appeared include “Tony The Tiger Rag,” “My Horn Wants Kellogg’s Corn Flakes,” and the title tune, “Snap, Crackle, Satchmo!” Also included is “Sugar Crisp Swing,” Armstrong’s duet with Sugar Bear—who, it turns out, really was  Bing Crosby. 

BD0002 Bad’Trane: The Incomprehensible Recordings Of John Coltrane—1957

Upon hearing these tapes, Kincaid believed he had stumbled upon unreleased late-sixties tracks by the indefatigable tenor master: the screeching, honking, atonal noise recalled the painful avant-garde experiments of Om and Ascension. But the date on the recording log reveals the stunning truth: the ideas behind Coltrane’s harrowing mid-sixties experiments were first conceived during his heroin withdrawal in 1957.

BD0003 Alto Madness! Ornette Coleman And Eric Dolphy Play The Looney Tunes Of Carl Stalling—1961

It has long been rumored that the Warner Brothers cartoon scores of Carl Stalling were a pivotal influence on the avant-garde jazz musicians of the sixties. With this release, the rumors are confirmed.

BDOOO4 Miles’ Bile: The Really Blue Sessions Of Miles Davis—1965-1984

This collection of asides, instructions and commentaries from “The Man With The Horn” shows how he coaxed groundbreaking results from his musicians, producers, engineers, agents and wives during his recording sessions. Included are the tracks, “Lay Off The Reverb, Teo, Or I’ll Kick Your M*th*r-f*ck*n’ Ass,” “I Don’t Care If Jesus Wrote It, My Name Goes On The G*dd*mn*d Credits,” “Wynton Couldn’t Hold My Jockstrap,” “Cicely? Tell The B*tch I Ain’t Here,” and “I Want To Die With My Hands Around A White Man’s Throat.”

BD0005  Duke’s Flukes: Duke Ellington’s Duets With Jerry Lee Lewis—1958

By 1958, the devil-worship rhythms of rock’n’roll had conquered the music industry, rendering the big band sound a quaint anachronism. In a desperate attempt to get hep, “The Duke” met “The Killer” for this clandestine 1958 Memphis recording session. The elegance of Ellington and the brimstone of Jerry Lee were combustible—so why didn’t Von Gilder build a bonfire with the master tapes and spare us such barnburners as “Great Balls Of Ellington” and “The Duke Of Earl?”

BD0006  Impressions Of A Sex Machine: The Bill Evans Trio Plays The Music Of James Brown—1976

God knows whose brilliant idea it was to combine the introspective pianism of Bill Evans with the polyrhythmic priapism of “The Godfather”—but thank heavens they did! Rarely has a woman’s beauty been celebrated as devotionally as on Evans’ version of “Hot Pants (She Got To Use What She Got To Get What She Wants),” and we’re sure Evans is breaking into a “Cold Sweat” in his grave over the take of that tune released here. Special guest Maceo Parker was to have taken these tracks to the bridge and dropped them off, but luckily, Von Gilder volunteered to dispose of them himself.