Sunday, March 9, 2008

Recipes for Randomized Playlists


Yes. It was inevitable. The first spinoff of the Well Executed Buffet. Recipes for Random Playlists will appear as a series of posts in the buffet and will result in a spinoff blog or splog. This branch dedicated to sharing and analysis of what has worked and not with the science art form known as random playlists. In other words, what makes a good earbud or party mix.

Lillian's Party Mix
Setting: Dinner with family with catered everything at a hip location
Mission: To create a complementary buffet of the ears to go with the one for the tastebuds
Strategy: Standards, Bossa, Bossa with Standards, Vibraphone Jazz, Creed Taylor when he was good.

Contents
Antonio Carlos Jobim and Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim
The classic Carlos Jobim bossa novas on this one with the chairman, but he isn't hanging out at Carnival with Black Orpheus. This one is swinging to Rio while mixing drinks at the Capitol Tower. And for this setting Claus Ogerman strings actually kind of work.

Antonio Carlos Jobim
Stone Flower
The album known as most unique to itself in the Tom Jobim catalog. Lots of artists had departure records in the early seventies. This one paid off. Creed Taylor enlisted Deodato, Joe Farrell and Ron Carter. It truly is a timeless record

Classical Jazz Quartet
Only selections from the Bach and Rachmaninov. There will be no Nutcracker at Lillian's party even if it is played by Kenny Barron, Stefon Harris, Louis Hayes and, who else, Ron Carter.

Marian McPartland and Henry Mancini
Mancini solo piano doing the hits. A duet on Days of Wine and Roses is especially impressive. Marian plays stride while Hank invents new Mancini licks right before our ears. No spoken segments where she reminisces about the Hickory House.

Julie London
Only spare arrangements and strings incidental. No gleeclub sounding Mitch Miller choirs here please.

Freddie Hubbard
No long winded First Light or Red Clay jams at Lillian's party. Instead covers of the Godfather and Betcha By Golly Wow. And a Here's That Rainy Day done at a CTI Jazz Festival tour date with Stanley Turrentine, Hubert Laws, Hank Crawford, George Benson, and others, including, of course, Ron Carter.

Sammy Davis with Laurindo Almedia
Sammy Sings and Laurindo Plays
Its just the two of them solo. This one was the surprise of the night. For some reason this sounded great in the acoustics of a teacher's lunchroom. Sammy's voice is undeniably great on this record. Its almost enough to forget about him hugging Nixon.

The Jack Wilson Quartet featuring Roy Ayers
Ramblin'
This is very cool record. Ayers' phrasing and solos are terrific. Their versions of Stolen Moments and The Sidewinder are swell. But what makes it an incredible mid-sixties milestone is the three part suite of the soundtrack to The Sandpiper including a great lead by Ayers on, what else, The Shadow of Your Smile.

I thought the mix turned out good. I had it Ipod and, but the IPod jack didn't work. Plan B. The CD five disc changer more or less worked after I checked it for Christmas music. CDs prevailed this time.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:32 PM
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