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.
