Persian Carpet Jazz

That’s Christian Capiozzo on drums, Mecco Guidi on Hammond organ, and Daniele Santimone on Guitar. You just know you’re going to get quality stuff when three Irishmen get together like that. 

Nothing But Blue Skies

That’s a cover of Johnny Nash’s big hit from 1972. It’s in the running for the sunniest song I ever heard.

The bass player/singer, Nicki Parrott, is from the Antipodes, but has long since moved to New York. She’s performed with all sorts of interesting people over the years. Olli Soikkeli from Finland is playing the gypsy jazz guitar on the left. Vinny Raniolo is playing what looks like some version of a Gibson L-5.

Hank Mobley Straight On In

That’s Hank Mobley on tenor sax, with Tootie Heath on drums, Kenneth Drew on the horse teeth, and a very young Niels House of Pancakes on the upright bass.

Mobley charted a middle course in the 50s and 60s. John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman and similar players were doing the caustic stuff. There was a crop of sorta cool jazz guys like Stan Getz who played it very straight. Mobley wasn’t square, and he wasn’t weird. Eminently listenable, but not wallpaper, either.

The internet and the bookstores are full of lists of the habits of “great” men, most of who are just lucky, shameless, and greedy businessmen, with the occasional scientist or author who holds the correct opinions about things outside of their areas of expertise. I gather you’re supposed to get up a half hour before you go to bed, gobble Vitamin C, use a Cross pen, ride a recumbent bicycle thrice daily, eat only tofu or twizzlers, meditate over your bank accounts, or whatever fad hit some midwit when they were young and it stuck. It’s cargo cult thinking that if you eat what Einstein ate, at the same hour he did, that you’ll get smart.

Most of the famous jazz players were the musical descendants of Charlie Parker’s groundbreaking career. Unfortunately, they figured that Charlie Parker did heroin, so lots of them tried it, figuring that’s where the originality came from. That sort of thing never ends well. The drugs ate Hank up. He died young and homeless, of pneumonia, which is easy to get and hard to get rid of when you have lung cancer from smoking, and a habit.

Listen to the records. Ignore the examples, except as a cautionary tale.