Sounds for Loungin' Around

It was the song Nancy Wilson from the Jazz is Dead 001 project that made me think of a warm summer evening lounging around with a cocktail. I knew I wanted to put that song on a playlist but hadn’t heard another complimentary song to jumpstart the list, that is until my ears came across the recently released Simon Jefferis project Vibrations and the song Atlantic Road. I knew the two songs had to follow each other, thus these are the first two songs of the “Loungin’ Around” playlist.

Now the mood was taking shape. I just have to find some other songs to complement these two, I thought to myself, but songs that also keep the loungin’ vibe. Well, wouldn’t you know it? Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammed did just that with their Jazz is Dead 002 project featuring Mr. Roy Ayers whose song Synchronize Vibration is our 3rd selection on the playlist.

So now with Roy Ayers’ music in my mind, two other jazz/funk veterans who provided ethereal sounds in the 70’s, Pharaoh Sanders’ and Lonnie Liston Smith, came to mind. But before heading back to the 70’s, the 4th and 5th spots were given to two of London’s artists, p-rallel and Vels Trio, that provide modern songs, Tomorrow and Yellow Ochre – Part I respectively, that keep the vibe and set up the three tracks from the 70’s perfectly.

Sanders’ Astral Traveling and Smith’s Shadows are the 6th and 7th songs in the playlist followed up with Soledad de Murcia, the 8th song by another jazz/funk artist from the 70’s, The Michael Naura Quartet.

Coming back from the 70’s, I wanted to change the tempo but, yet, keep the loungin’ vibe so that’s how Sunflowers from the Jazz is Dead 002 became the 9th song and begins the head knock portion of the playlist. The 10th song and the last song to feature any vocals is an ode to Roy Ayers in the form of a remake of Everybody Loves the Sunshine by Tokyo’s trumpeter Takuya Kuroda featuring my man on vocals, the forever cool Jose James (who comfortably used the four-letter + language when talking to the audience in between songs in concert at The Cube @ Max Fisher Theater in ’18. It made you feel as if you were in his living room just chatting it up. Huh!).

The trumpet play continues in the 11th and 12th songs, The Awakening by Joseph Leimberg and The Eraser by Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. But then on songs 13 and 14, the groove picks up and you find yourself not only knocking your head but also tapping your feet. The 13th song, The Deuce by Terrance Martin (who also, by the way, was featured on song number 11), has an organ, drum and keyboard thing going then the last quarter of the song, he comes in with the sax and really picks the groove up. The sax groove is carried to the14th song, Tidal Wave, a Ronnie Laws rearrangement by an awesome band I discovered when they were the opening act for Moonchild last Oct (’19) at the El Club, Butcher Brown.

The 15th song, High Grade, by our new fav, Simon Jefferis, brings the muted version of the trumpet play back, and the 16th song, Reminisce by Jake Milliner, yet another Londoner, has a horn section lacing the somewhat hip-hop beat. Pariah by saxophonist Braxton Cook and remixed by Kiefer has you back head knocking with a boom boom clap measured throughout the song with Cook’s sax seductively playing on top.

After all the head knocking to make sure you didn’t fall asleep, we end this the same way an hour long intensive cardio workout does, with a cool down period. And so we begin the cool down period with our 17th song, a song from 1974, Cool Out by Leroy Hutson, a cut soul artist Coultrain covered with vocals on his ’08 Lilac Tree song (from The Adventures of Seymour Liberty album). Then we come back to Christian Scott, a favorite of mine the moment I came across his live performance of Litany Against Fear on YouTube nine years ago. The 18th song is his Who They Wish I Was, which I concluded is a response to critics and or fans who thought Scott’s playing of the muted trumpet sounded like Miles Davis. But as a follower of Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, you are fully aware that he has gone through phases which have helped him to define a new “genre” of music, stretch music. Robert Glasper is credited with being one of the other originators and perpetrators of this music. And I would add Terrance Martin to the mix for sure. And last, our 19th song comes from a descendant of the UK, drummer Yussef Dayes, who we first heard when playing along with Kamaal Williams in their duo Yussef Kamaal. How he hit the drums in their video for the song Calligraphy is something to see. He slows it down on his For My Ladies and is a lovely way to complete the cool down portion and end this loungin’ around.