"Moanin'" by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers

Strong Songs

Kirk Hamilton

Music Commentary, Music, Musicreviews

4.9 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2019

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dust off your head charts and brush up your best licks, cause it's time to wade into the warm, welcoming waters of jazz. NOW ON PATREON Strong Songs now has a Patreon! If you liked this episode (or, you know, any of them), we hope you'll consider supporting the show. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/strongsongs MOANIN' This episode's Strong Song is Bobby Timmons' gospel-tinged "Moanin'," from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers' 1959 album of the same name. Kirk zooms out a bit more than usual to talk about jazz small-group arranging, how a great solo is constructed, how jazz song-form works, and how (hopefully) to have a better appreciation for what's going on on a given jazz recording, even if you don't play. He also talks about anime. Band/Artist: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers Album: Moanin', 1959 (recorded in 1958) Composed by: Bobby Timmons Personnel: Lee Morgan, trumpet; Benny Golson, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; Art Blakey, drums Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify ------ ALSO FEATURED: "Freddie Freeloader" by Miles Davis from Kind of Blue, 1959 Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify -- "Giant Steps" by John Coltrane from Giant Steps, 1960 Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify -- "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder from Songs in the Key of Life, 1976 Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify ("I Wish" was also featured on a 2018 episode of Strong Songs) -- "Jordu" by Duke Jordan from Clifford Brown and Max Roach, 1954 Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify -- "Cherokee" by Ray Noble as performed by Clifford Brown on Study in Brown, 1955 Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify -- "Tank!" by Yoko Kanno from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack -- The wonderful anime Kids on the Slope, streamable on Hulu and Crunchyroll. ———————————— NEWSLETTER/MAILING LIST Sign up for Kirk's mailing list to start getting monthly-ish newsletters with music recommendations, links, news, and extra thoughts on new Strong Songs episodes: https://kirkhamilton.substack.com/subscribe STRONG MERCH! Visit the Strong Songs merch store for some very cool t-shirts, mugs, totes, and more: store.strongsongspodcast.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to Strong Songs, Podcast About Music. I am your host Kirk Hamilton and as always
0:10.2	I'm so glad to join me to talk about that combination of downbeats and
0:13.8	upbeats and baselines and melodies known as music. It feels a little bit
0:19.2	like I've been on vacation I guess because I've been traveling and we did the
0:22.1	Q&A episode last time so I'm really
0:23.8	excited to get back into a specific recording with you all and break it down and really
0:28.6	go deep on what makes it work before we get started a few things.
0:32.4	First of all as always you can send me feedback or requests or questions for the next
0:37.8	Q&A episode to Strong Songs Podcast at gmail.com. You can also tweet at me at Kirk Hamilton. I really like
0:44.9	hearing from listeners. I've heard from a lot of people lately and I really try to
0:48.8	reply to everybody who emails me. So you know if you if you've got a story you want to tell, if you've got a
0:54.2	musical question, if you've got a song that you'd like me to talk about, I would
0:58.3	love to hear from you and really do like hearing from people. It's cool to know
1:02.2	there are actual
1:02.9	human beings out there listening and you know getting something out of the show.
1:06.6	It's sort of a big reason that I'm doing it so it's nice to hear from you so please
1:10.2	don't hesitate to reach out if you if you can think of a reason that you might want to.
1:14.7	I also have a newsletter. I've written one newsletter and will be sending my second one out this week
1:20.0	so you can still sign up to get it. It's pretty chill. I send one out, I'd say roughly on par with when I do an episode of Strong Song,
1:26.5	so every two weeks or so. It's just a quick little thing. It's got some recommendations, some musical thoughts, some music recommendations, some links, that kind of thing.
1:36.0	But the first one was fun, so if you want to sign up for that, you can do that at tinyletter.com slash Kirk Hamilton,
1:41.4	or you can find the link for that in the show notes.
	...

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