Jazz Shots From The East Coast Vol.1

A grainy black and white clip of "D Section" from alto saxophonist Art Pepper opens up the Jazz Shots from the West Coast, Vol. 1 DVD featuring the solid playing you expect from the six artists who supply the music, but the lack of information, liner notes or anything remotely interesting to go along with these performances keeps this package from being more special. Ken Stuart, who helped publish the book Straight Life The Story of Art Pepper gave AMG some insight after viewing this DVD: "This selection from Pepper shows his Coltrane influence more than some of his other work -- he absorbed that influence and then put it on the back burner so in his later work the influence is less obvious but is just as strong -- it functions as an aquifer rather than an audible stream." The almost-13 minutes of "D Section" fade into Chet Baker's "If I Should Lose You" which is a cleaner copy and in color -- these all separated nicely if you choose to go into the track selection phase of the DVD, the only "extra" that is included. Songwriter/jazz enthusiast Buzzy Linhart said of this track: "If I Should Lose You" is so beautiful and sounds so complete that it took me several minutes of listening to realize that part of the excitement or different sound is that there's no drums." The tenor sax of Zoot Sims' "On the Trail" blends easily in to Phineas Newborn Trio's wonderfully piano-heavy black and white "Lush Life," then quickly into his "Theme for Basie" with great shots of his hands on the ivories. The third track from Newborn's trio is Sonny Rollins' "Oleo," continuing the piano theme here with a nice running bass, also shot in black and white. The Shelly Manne Quintet featuring Conte Candoli of Doc Severinsen & the Tonight Show Band on trumpet contributes two songs, also shot in black and white. The first is an inspired version of "The Isolate Pawn" followed by Russ Freeman's "Fan Tan," the camera focused on the piano as well as on Manne's cymbals -- interesting shots that capture the musician's faces and instrumentation at different angles. Linhart notes that Candoli and his brother Pete were Henry Mancini's top choice for studio trumpet players for years (with Manne as the drummer) -- and the evidence of their greatness shines here. One of the more creative of the performances, it is visually pleasing with top-notch sound. The guitar of Wes Montgomery's composition "Jingles" adds yet another flavor to this totally instrumental package and if you take your eyes off the screen at any time during any of the performances on this DVD the audio keeps rolling as pleasant instrumental jazz, though Linhart wonders why the sound fluctuates from track to track when bringing the audio levels in line with each other would have been a relatively simple task in the authoring stage of this DVD. So despite the no-frills approach, Jazz Shots from the West Coast, Vol. 1 and its companion DVDs from the East (there are three volumes from the East, three from the West) provide some good solid listening though the powers that be should take the packaging more seriously and address the lack of text and historical information. [A "#2" version of the DVD was also released.] ~ Joe Viglione|