Some Jazz Records: Joachim Kühn Clippings
Comments on recordings from musicians and other actors of the jazz scene. Random and not-so-random listening cues from the archives.
Bill Evans, New Jazz Conceptions, Riverside 12-223, 1956, LP; Bill Evans Trio, Sunday at the Village Vanguard, Riverside RLP 376 (9376), 1961, LP; and Bill Evans Trio, Waltz for Debby, Riverside RLP 399 (9399), 1962, LP.
German pianist Joachim Kühn discussed records that had been important to him with the Paris-based Jazz Magazine in 1990. Among the first albums brought up was Bill Evans’s leader debut, New Jazz Conceptions. For Kühn, this 1956 album did deliver on the new conceptions its title promised, changing the way the young pianist envisioned jazz. Kühn copied Evans’s choruses for a while before being impacted again by the American musician’s 1961 Village Vanguard sessions, music first made available on a couple of Riverside LPs. According to Kühn, those classic Evans recordings marked the birth of the true piano trio, an ensemble featuring only musicians actually playing together, not simply a soloist and his backing group.
Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch!, Blue Note BLP 4163 (BST 84163), 1964, LP.
In 1964, a few months after Joachim Kühn turned 20 and a few weeks after Eric Dolphy’s passing at 36, Blue Note released the saxophonist’s Out to Lunch. By then still living in East Germany, Kühn was sent a copy of the album by his older brother, expatriate clarinetist Rolf Kühn. During a 1969 interview with Jazz Magazine, the pianist said he first heard "free jazz" on the Dolphy album. Kühn immediately adhered, he said, and he also credited the album for showing him the direction he would follow (for awhile) in his own music.
The Rolf & Joachim Kühn Quartet, Impressions of New York, Impulse A(S)-9158, 1967, LP.
Joachim Kühn accompanied his brother Rolf on a trip to the US during the summer of 1967. During this short visit, they played the Newport Festival and recorded an album for Impulse which they titled Impressions of New York. In a 1970 Jazz Forum interview, Kühn was asked to give his impressions of the city not in music but in words. "My stay there was fantastically inspiring. New York has been and will be the city of my dreams," he said. "It’s difficult for a European musician to find work there, but I was lucky. I worked for a week at [Club] La Boheme on [69th and] Broadway with Miroslav Vitous, Aldo Romano, and vibist [Karl Berger]. Robin Kenyatta dropped by almost every day and often sat in with us. […] I had been wanting to meet Coltrane for a long time. We phoned him, but his wife said he wasn’t feeling well, so would we call a few days later. And then suddenly we learned about the tragedy; it was a great shock. We went to his funeral. That was my saddest day in New York and that is what I called one of the tracks on the Impulse record: 'The Saddest Day.'"
Miles Davis, At Fillmore, Columbia G 30038, 1970, 2 LPs; and Miles Davis, Black Beauty: Miles Davis at Fillmore West, CBS/Sony SOPJ-39-40, 1973, 2 LPs.
In a 1971 Melody Maker profile of Joachim Kühn, Valerie Wilmer reported that the pianist’s copy of Miles Davis’s At Fillmore was in constant demand among the musicians present at the December 1970 Baden-Baden Free Jazz Meeting. "He is the most important musician today—he’s sounding so wrong it’s incredible!," Kühn said of Davis. "I don’t listen to free jazz on records, I like listening to Paul McCartney because he is so beautiful, and Miles—I could listen to Miles all day because he is like crazy! He uses so many parts of the music where most musicians only use one small part of it. But 'free' means so many things. There is no shame to playing time—Miles does it and so many things, too." Speaking to Jazz Hot three years later, Kühn said that Davis was the only jazz musician he listened to on record anymore. He mentioned finding a Japan-only Davis release during a recent Asian tour: Black Beauty. This live double album captured an electric band that was nearly identical to the one heard on At Fillmore. Taped just a couple of months prior, it also featured Chick Corea’s keyboard work prominently.
Interesting.
So I'm focused on minutiae here, but if he loves listening to Paul McCartney in 1971, he’s talking about McCartney’s 1st self titled album or Wild Life – damn, that is pretty thin beer. 😬
McCartney’s RAM came out in May ’71, but I think the interview with Joachim is from Melody Maker Jan 1971 ? But even Ram is… err…… not mind-blowing, were it even out by then.
Not trying to say ‘he has bad taste’ or anything – because I myself love plenty of odd recordings, including very commercial ones, that would cause people to scratch their heads and perhaps throw up their hands.
But it’s quite interesting that in 1971, he’d abandoned listening to free jazz records, and was grooving only to the soupy churn of the Miles/Grossman/Corea/Jarrett/DeJohnette band – and Paul McCartney’s fairly vapid early 70’s offerings.
On the other hand, maybe he just meant The Beatles.