In 1959 a bunch of really important albums came out.
These are albums sax players should know – and in this video I’m going to explain why.
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4 albums from 1959 that sax players should know
With the help of Joel from the Sax School tutor team, we’re going look at four of these albums and discuss our favourite tracks. You might love some of these tracks, and you might hate some of them. But give them a listen, because these are all important albums sax players should know.
Album #1 Kind of Blue
Miles Davis : Kind of Blue is probably the most successful jazz album of all time. It sold 5 million copies!
And for us saxophone players, this album features both John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley.
My favourite track from this album is the classic “So What”. It’s got a stonking Cannonball Adderley solo in there. And if you’re quite new to jazz, exploring Miles Davis, this is a good place to start.
Joel’s favourite track
Joel’s favourite track on this album is “Flamenco Sketches” on this album. “It’s a really interesting, atmospheric track”, says Joel. “And it has a really interesting backstory. They just scribbled out five chords and a few scales on a scrap of paper. There’s a great picture that shows this, with a packet of cigarettes and a mouthpiece cover on the music stand.”
“And they just used these scales to create an atmosphere. And it turned into an absolutely beautiful atmospheric track. The studio engineers didn’t have a name for it. But there’s one chord that sounds a bit Spanish. So the engineer just wrote down Flamenco Sketches – and it stuck.”
Joel is a real fan of this music. He’s made some great lessons and courses for Sax School using songs from this period. But Joel also played a concert this week which focused on this music too. I asked Joel to tell us a bit about that.
“I’m in a great band run by a bass player called Adrian Knowles, called The Sound of ’59” explains Joel.
“And all we play in the band are tracks from that pivotal year. We go through all the different players – some Coltrane, some Miles, some Ornette Coleman and Mingus. And we tell the back story. Because all these albums were recorded within about three blocks of each other in New York, in the same year – which is amazing”.
“This week we played a gig at a place called Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham in the UK. It went well. We’ve been running the project for about four years.”
Creating the sound on your sax
So I like the Cannonball Adderley track “So What” from this album. But how you could capture that Cannonball sounds in your playing? What about his mouthpiece setup? I asked Joel for his tips.
“Cannonball Adderley used a very soft setup,” says Joel. “He used a Meyer 5M on his alto and he used just strength 2 Rico reeds and sometimes La Voz medium. And that gives him that punchy kind of soulful sound… it’s realy bring but with energy behind it”.
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There’s a lesson for all of us sax players here when we are choosing the best reed. “There’s a lot of talk about always playing super-hard reeds, but it’s just not the case,” says Joel. “A lot of [legendary players] played quite soft setups as well.”
It’s amazing that Cannonball Adderley gets such energy and such a big sound out of such a soft setup. I think a lot of us would struggle to do that.
As well as his sound, I love the blues influences in Cannonball’s lines. I think that’s a great contrast to Coltrane’s playing on this album.
“Cannonball Adderley is very blues-influenced,” agrees Joel. “He’s always thought of as a heavy Bop player, but there’s a lot of blues in there. That’s what gives him that really soulful edge that some of the other players maybe don’t have quite as much.”
Album #2 Giant Steps
The second of our albums sax players should know is Giant Steps by one of the real titans of jazz saxophone, John Coltrane.
And in fact, the track that we’re talking about is “Giant Steps“. And by the way, if you want to check out more about Giant Steps, check out this video that we did about Giant Steps a little while back.
Giant Steps is one of those tracks that drive most saxophone players crazy. I asked Joel what he loves about it.
“I remember when I first heard this track, and apart from the kind of relentless pace and Coltrane’s playing on it, there was just something different about it,” says Joel. “There was a kind of symmetry in the harmony that I liked.”
Surprisingly, this tune is not as complicated as it sounds. “When I came to study it, it’s quite simple, and that’s the genius of this tune,” says Joel. “There’s not that much going on. Three keys are rotating around and Coltrane’s solo, if you slow it down, is fairly simple. But it leaves so much scope for investigation. There are so many different things you can do it. It was just totally different to anything I’d heard before. It’s a great track.”
Playing Giant Steps
If you want to learn to play Giant Steps yourself, there’s a course in Sax School to show you how. ” We look at the melody and how to approach the changes,” says Joel. “And actually, it’s not as bad as you think. I think like all music, it’s the tempo that gets you. Anything is difficult if you have to play it at 280 beats per minute!”
I remember when I first heard Giant Steps, by John Coltrane, it blew my mind and I do love his playing. But if you are getting started with understanding his style and his sound, you could look at one of his earlier albums, Blue Train.
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It’s from a couple of years earlier and there are some wonderful tracks on that album that give you more opportunity to listen to the sound. The melody lines are a bit simpler, so you’ve got more time to understand what’s going on.
“There’s so much Coltrane to listen to, and if you go right back to the beginning, he’s boppy and it’s pretty easy listening. His Ballads album are beautiful …There’s just such a range, so don’t listen to Coltrane once and think that’s it. Really explore his discography and you’ll find some stuff I’m sure you’ll love. He’s a pivotal player.”
Album #3 The Shape of Jazz to Come
The third on our list of albums sax players should know is today is more challenging. When I first heard this album, I’ll be honest – I did not know what to make of it. This is Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come.
This album was controversial, and interesting, and it certainly mixed up the saxophone world.
Ornette Coleman was an experimentalist, so he had a completely different approach to composition,” explains Joel. “It was very free. So it had a theme that could be played or not played, and the improvisers could play the harmony or not play the harmony. It was completely open and the beginning of Free Jazz.”
Learning from this style
This is challenging to listen to if you’ve never listened to music like this before. And I imagine some saxophone players who are relatively new to jazz might be thinking they just don’t understand what’s going on here. But there are some cool takeaways from Ornette’s style.
So I asked Joel what we can identify in the way Ornette’s playing that we could absorb into our style, or take away to influence our approach to improvising.
“I think it’s just about attitude,” says Joel.”Ultimately, Ornette was just being experimental, he was trying things. And that’s a lesson for us all. We’ve just got to try stuff out. Whether it works out or it doesn’t, at least we’ve had a go. And sometimes you can find some wonderful things just by doing something you’ve never done before.”
Album #4 Time Out
So the fourth of our albums sax players should know is probably but going to be a surprise. Because just about every one of us saxophone players have come across this album at some point. But it is important to put it on this list because it’s so significant. So I’m talking about Dave Brubeck’s Time Out album.
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I’m talking about Paul Desmond‘s playing, and the track “Take Five.”
This is absolutely iconic. And I remember when I was first starting out exploring jazz as a youngster, this was one of those albums that and tracks that just blew my mind. It was not only for the melody and the fact that it was in five-four time, but for Paul Desmond’s incredible sound. I love the quality of it, the breathiness, the airiness. And how accurate it was as well.
Joel remembers when he discovered this album too. “It was just so different. I was just listening to lots of Bop at the time, which is all in four-four time. And suddenly I listened to this album. It was like, what is going on here?”
There’s an interesting story behind this album too. “Brubeck had done a tour, backed by the American government, of the countries that satellite around the Soviet Union at that point. It was a bit of a propaganda tour to some degree,” explains Joel. “And Dave Brubeck just fell in love with these odd time signatures from countries like Afghanistan and India. And when he came back, as part of his deal with the recording studio, he could do an experimental album.
“So he wrote all these tunes with these odd-time signatures. Take Five turned out to be the best-selling jazz single of all time. So it did a lot better than either the record company or he expected, and it’s become absolutely iconic.”
Creating this sound
So if you love the sound of Paul Desmond’s playing, and how you could get that sound on your saxophone?
There’s lots to explore by looking at transcriptions. And we’ve got lessons and resources inside Sax School on this.
But a good starting point is to also look at the sort of setup that he was using. Paul Desmond is quite a hard setup, with a hard reed. He’s using an ebonite mouthpiece, which has a very open chamber. It’s almost a classical setup.
“There’s lot of resistance in there,” says Joel. “And that was a style of that particular clique of musicians-Lee Konitz was amongst them. You get this really sweet, pure sound that is very reminiscent of classical saxophone. But it’s still got that edge of jazz in there….it’s a great sound and unique to those players.”
More albums to discover
So there’s loads of other great music to discover around this time. Moanin’ was released that year.
There were King Curtis albums. There are loads of great Mingus tunes. There’s loads to find, so really explore. Have a look on YouTube, do some Googling, and find some other great stuff in this period.
Tips for Listening
The last thing I’d just like to leave you with is how important it is to spend time listening. That’s the way that we start to get a picture in our mind of how we’re going to sound on saxophone.
So it’s so important for all of us, at whatever part of your saxophone journey that you’re at right now, to have time every week where you are listening to new music.
Make your playlists, try to discover new artists, and even explore other albums to find new people that you’ve not heard before. Over time you’ll build up a list of the things that you love. And those are the sounds that are going to become part of YOUR saxophone sound.
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