Aural Robert

Robert Baird | Nov 20, 2024 |

Photo by Jim Shea

The least surprising story in music today is the inevitable passing of irreplaceable talent. Tenor saxophonist Benny Golson died at age 95 the day I finished this salute to another fallen star, Southern California singer/songwriter John David "JD" Souther.

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Jenny Scheinman and her All Species Parade

Robert Baird | Nov 05, 2024 |

Most of the provocative and charismatic popular music made today is an unclassifiable mixture—a hybrid of whatever styles, sounds, and instruments happen to move its creators. Violinist Jenny Scheinman not only composes multi-hued music that is singularly her own, but she lives in two very different musical worlds: the progressive world of jazz, and the more song- and tradition-based environs of Americana.

Scheinman's latest solo album, All Species Parade, released in October 2024 on the Royal Potato Family label, is a classic example of her unique vision and chameleon-like ability to blend seamlessly into disparate musical contexts, with nods to both jazz and Americana.

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ORG's Dave Gardner Rescues a Bad Brains Album

Robert Baird | Sep 11, 2024 |

Playing an astonishingly original mix of reggae and thrashy punk rock, Bad Brains released their self-titled, cassette-only 1982 debut on ROIR records. Punk rock is notorious for eschewing well-recorded music in favor of lo-fi murk, and that original tape fit the pattern. But the next year, the turbulent foursome—guitarist Dr. Know, bassist Darryl Jenifer, drummer Earl Hudson, and vocalist H.R.—went into Synchro Sound in Boston with Ric Ocasek of The Cars and tracked Rock for Light, a huge step up in the quality of Bad Brains' recorded sound.

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New Music from Johnny Cash & Paul McCartney

Robert Baird | Aug 27, 2024 |

At this late date, it seems impossible that there could still be "lost" albums lingering in the vaults by musicians as important and successful as Johnny Cash and Paul McCartney. And yet Universal Music has just released "new" albums by both artists that significantly add to their already hallowed recording catalogs.

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Music Loses Two Legendary Producers: Steve Albini and Michael Cuscuna

Robert Baird | Jul 24, 2024 |

Steve Albini; photo by Edd Westmacott/Alamy Stock.

Recording music is complicated, and without the crucial assistance of producers and engineers, a lot of great records—not to mention successful musical careers—would not happen. Producers Steve Albini and Michael Cuscuna, two key figures from the music world who departed in recent months, richly deserve to be celebrated.

Though they worked in widely disparate genres—Cuscuna primarily in jazz, Albini in punk and noise rock—they are connected by their extraordinary efforts and unfailing taste. Both were exacting, dedicated, and supremely talented. Without the passion and obsessive nature of this one-of-a-kind pair, such records as Nirvana's In Utero and Mosaic Records' boxed sets, including The Blue Note Hank Mobley Fifties Sessions, to name just two examples, would not exist. Cuscuna and Albini were guides and molders, shaping music and our perceptions of it.

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Cosimo Matassa, laissez les bon temps rouler in New Orleans

Robert Baird | Jul 03, 2024 |

It's no secret that the musical history of New Orleans is rich and varied. From Buddy Bolden to a young Louis Armstrong being consigned to the Colored Waif 's Home for shooting off his stepfather's pistol on New Year's Eve, to the many pianists who accompanied the irresistible allure of Storyville, musicians and their music have forever been a key ingredient in NOLA's flamboyant DNA. Most elemental of all—did he facilitate the birth of rock'n'roll?—are those honeyed days at Cosimo Matassa's humble but groundbreaking studio J&M Recording on Rampart Street (1947–1956). There, his infallible ears and uncanny skill placing microphones somehow imparted a raw and very real sound to early recordings of Roy Brown, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Dave Bartholomew, Ray Charles, and my personal favorite, Smiley Lewis. Such labels as Atlantic, Mercury, Aladdin, Specialty, Chess, Savoy, and Modern sent artists to The Crescent City, hoping to glean some of Matassa's elusive magic.

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Hilary Gardner's Pandemic Record of Cowhand Tunes

Robert Baird | Jun 04, 2024 |

For all its insidious ferocity, the COVID ordeal also spawned a new musical genre: pandemic records. Stuck indoors like everyone else, some musicians found ways to express their creativity at home, often exploring new repertoire. While some of the resulting albums were myopic and indulgent, others—McCartney III for example—confirmed that artists who need to create will find ways. Trapped indoors, New York singer/actor Hilary Gardner found her musical muse wandering toward an unexpected place. "The songs I was initially drawn to—because I'm in this one-bedroom apartment in downtown Brooklyn—were about life on the trail, out in the natural world, generally being alone," she told me in a recent Zoom call, recalling the claustrophobia of that time. "They were songs that either embraced that feeling or were kind of rolling around in the melancholy of solitude. I wanted that thematic thread of being on the trail to connect all the tunes."

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A Verve–Third Man collaboration

Robert Baird | May 02, 2024 |

So, former White Stripe and Third Man label founder Jack White has now moved into jazz? It was a question that intrigued me when I first heard about the partnership between Universal Music and White's Third Man Records, a vinyl reissue series called Verve By Request. Was Universal just a client for Third Man's relatively new LP pressing plant in Detroit, or was this a genuine collaboration? And what the hell does Jack White know about jazz?

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Vinyl Me Please Reissues Guy Clark's Old No. 1

Robert Baird | Apr 02, 2024 |

Recently, a letter to the editor from Len Eggert arrived in Stereophile's digital mailbox that closed with a question: "How about coverage of other notable 'outlaw' singer-songwriters who shunned Nashville and put Austin on the musical map: Guy Clark? Kris Kristofferson? Jerry Jeff Walker? Waylon Jennings? Billie Joe Shaver? David Allan Coe? Are you listening, Robert Baird?"

Timely if nothing else, that email came just after I had serendipitously acquired a new-to-my-collection, first-pressing LP copy of the first Guy Clark album, Old No. 1.

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Jazz Pianist Sullivan Fortner

Robert Baird | Feb 26, 2024 |

Photo by Sabrina Santiago

There's a fear out there, even among jazz cognoscenti, that the music's best years and true geniuses are all part of the past. Even in New York City, the richest magnet for live jazz on earth, it sometimes seems that experiencing generational talent, the kind that once drove the music forward, is now confined to gazing at the famous photos on the walls of the music's most revered shrine, the Village Vanguard. Yet, seeing pianist Sullivan Fortner at the Vanguard, as part of Cécile McLorin Salvant's band, convinced me that there's still jazz magic in the world. By turns playful, blindingly brilliant, and at times puppy dog goofy, Fortner was spectacular. He is clearly a star in the music's future.

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Gram Parsons: The Last Roundup

Robert Baird | Jan 29, 2024 |

"When I first listened to the tape I thought, this is so good that if I do anything else in my life, I have to make sure the world hears this," David Prinz says with obvious intensity. "That's how I really feel. It makes me happy that all these Gram fans are finally going to get to hear what he was really like live."

The love of music can drive human beings to astonishing lengths. For Prinz, cofounder/owner of California's Amoeba Music chain, that fervor revolves around the work of country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons. Despite the often-outlandish mythology that's grown up around this shooting star since his tragic 1973 overdose at age 26, Prinz has made it his quixotic mission to find, restore, and release unreleased Gram Parsons live shows.

Aural Robert

The Replacements' Tim: Let It Bleed Edition

Robert Baird | Dec 26, 2023 |

Having just finished this review of The Replacements' Tim: Let It Bleed Edition, I thought I'd glance at a couple of online forums to see what the collective verdict was on the sound quality of the set's main attraction: a remix of the album by Ramones engineer Ed Stasium. At Steve Hoffman's forums, I saw this in one of the first posts: "It sounded like I expected Tim to sound when it came out in the fall of 1985. I've also listened to the newly remastered original album that comes with the set, and while it sounds good and I'm glad to have it, it pales compared to the 2023 Stasium mix." Ticking down a post or two, exuberance gushed forth: "Well, IMO the [Stasium] version of Tim may be the greatest rock record of all time."

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Nanci Griffith

Robert Baird | Nov 30, 2023 |

A vital member of the second wave of Texas singer-songwriters that emerged in the 1970s and included Lucinda Williams, Butch Hancock, and Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith was a product of a time when, to paraphrase a once-ubiquitous bumper sticker, Austin was still weird. Gifted with a delicate, sweet voice and fierce determination, she started playing out at the age of 12 and getting paid at 14. While never having the ability to project Joan Baez–like volume, she could certainly fill a room. And while her voice could at times take on a flat, almost-nasal resonance, her tight vibrato was strong and evocatory the more you listened.

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Frampton at 50

Robert Baird | Oct 31, 2023 |

A cultural steamroller that's sold more than 20 million copies so far, Frampton Comes Alive! is also the most celebrated example of an artist who broke through to worldwide fame thanks to a live record. In the wake of this monster success, fans went back and listened to Peter Frampton's four solo studio records that predated the live behemoth. Sales and respect grew.

Three of those four releases, Wind of Change (1972), Frampton's Camel (1973), and Frampton (1975), have been remastered and reissued in a limited edition, 180gm vinyl-LP box set, Frampton@50, In the Studio 1972–1975, by Intervention Records.

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Records for the New Land

Robert Baird | Sep 13, 2023 |

Resurrecting musical treasures is a tough business. The explosion of vinyl-reissue labels, ranging from superlative to second-rate, has made it increasingly difficult for newcomers to stand out—to make the kind of splash that serious LP buyers will notice. Even more elusive is endurance and turning a profit. The affable, musically savvy James Batsford, owner of a pair of vinyl-only UK labels, New Land Records and Omerta Records, can't help but laugh over our New York–to–London Zoom connection when I ask why an obviously intelligent person with taste, like himself, would jump into the vinyl-reissue tarpit?

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