Jazz in the Top 100 2018/2019

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

John Coltrane
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

There's jazz in the Top 100 2018/2019. Perhaps not quite as many as is usual but it's better than how the blues fared; there are none belonging to the latter category. (It's a first, that there's no blues. I like blues a lot, especially prewar blues, but perhaps it becomes harder to discover new old gems. There were only so many recordings made, I may have heard a good portion of it. Nevertheless I'm going to make sure blues will be back next year.) There's the same Don Cherry/Krzysztof Penderecki piece featured the previous year, there's a Sun Ra All Starts recording, and also a place for the two regulars in the Top 100: John Coltrane and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The Coltrane recording is the same as it has been the last two decades: that recording of My Favorite Things that is my favorite track throughout the history of the Top 100. To read about this tune more you can follow this link. The Kirk recording, however, is one that was not previously featured: Theme for the Eulipians. I first heard the tune as an instrumental through a performance together with Gil Evans. A marvelous performance late in Kirk's life. He had already suffered a stroke and could only play with one hand. Still a virtuoso. The song, as it is a song, appears on The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man and is written by Kirk together with Betty Neals, who wrote the lyrics. Neals is also heard on the recording reciting these lyrics and Maeretha Stewart sings. The musicians, besides Kirk: Howard Johnson, Romeo Penque, Hilton Ruiz, Buster Williams, Charlie Persip, and Joe Habao Texidor, The album was recorded in 1976 (the same year as the Gil Evans concert) and released by Warner Brothers.