Fred Kaplan

It was no surprise that Charlie Haden and Kenny Barron struck such rich chords Tuesday night at the Blue Note, the first in a series of duet concerts that Haden, one of the great bass players in jazz, is headlining—six nights, four different pianists—at the club in Greenwich Village. Haden is best known as the bassist in Ornette Coleman’s original quartet, but it’s a mistake to tag him as a “free jazz” musician, in the usual sense. Above all, Haden is a romantic—he loves ballads and waltzes, he plucks a thick, juicy tone—and Barron is a lush balladeer. A few moments in the opening set didn’t quite click (maybe because Haden, now 70 but still youthful, recently had a hernia operation), but most of it did, Barron cruising triplets on the keyboard, Haden responding with undisguised but tightly harnessed emotion. The duet recording he and Barron made several years ago, Night and the City, seems a simple pleasantry if you play it in the background, but listen closely, there’s so much intricacy between the two—and yet, at every level, the music above all delights and charms.

The Jazz Journalists' Association held its annual bash at the Blue Note jazz club in New York City Wednesday afternoon: crowded, boisterous, and, thankfully, air conditioned (it was 97 degrees out on the sidewalk).

The big winner—no surprise—was Sonny Rollins, who nabbed Best Musician of the Year, Best Tenor Saxophonist of the Year, and (for Road Shows, Vol. 2) Best Album of the Year. I voted for Rollins in all three categories as well—a rare instance when I've been at one with the consensus on the top prizes.

Sony/Legacy’s 40th anniversary, deluxe reissue of Bitches Brew, Miles Davis’ landmark fusion double-album, is everything that the company’s 50th anniversary reissue of Kind of Blue tried to be but wasn’t: a fitting commemoration, handsomely packaged, with liner notes by a scribe (Greg Tate) who fully grasps the music and its cultural significance, and—a remarkable achievement—a boxed set that warrants tossing the original out.

OK, this isn't jazz, but it's such a crazy bargain, I couldn't resist shouting it from my rooftop: Decca Sound, The Analogue Years 54 albums (and bits of several more) from the Decca label's heyday of classical recording (the mid-'50s to late-'70s), pressed in a boxed set of 50 CDs, selling for $129.

In case you're too stunned to do the math, that's $2.58 per disc!