Author: seabreeze
Date: 2017-09-24 10:13
It's a blues. But not a gut bucket blues or a blues off the street. More of a chamber music-- even a church music--transcendental blues. A blues hymn, a blue prayer. A blues offering sewn of silk and lace. The most delicate, diaphanous blues you ever heard. A blues that has gone indoors, away from the noisy parade outside. An ageless, elegant, eloquent blues. An abstract of the blues.
The transcription captures much of this feeling and texture. Great job. But no transcription could ever convey exactly how this sounds unless you first hear the performance. I think Jimmy Giuffre was trying for this sort of mood and sound in some of his very slow and quiet moments. Not sure he ever equaled this performance though. Hall can capture the stillness of the low register even in the higher registers where Giuffre seldom ventured.
Critics often praise Artie Shaw for playing a subtle kind of "whisper clarinet" in some of his Grammercy Five recordings, but I don't think he's got anything on Hall the way Hall plays in his Celeste Quartet.
Compare Hall's Profoundly Blue with Bechet's Blue Heaven. Both masterpieces, but how different the blues can be! Bechet's vibrant asservation versus Hall's quiet sublimation. As Miles Davis observed, there's many "Kinds of Blue."
Post Edited (2017-09-24 11:10)
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