a new discovery

I'm consistently amazed by how much there is that I don't know.  Not only don't know but don't have even a glimmer of the width and breadth and depth of things I don't know even the least little thing about.  Like, for example, Ine Hoem.

One of my favorite-ever recordings is an early-60's collaboration between vocalist Nancy Wilson and alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley's band, titled (originally enough) Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley.  Cannonball (nee Julian) and his brother Nat left Tampa and headed north to front one of the best of the hard bop bands of the late-50's and early 60's and even beyond that.  I want to say that I remember current Adderley singles coming out of the Mac Grill's juke box in the basement of the old Student Union when I was manning the sandwich board down there and that was in the early-70's.  But I date myself.

Cannonball's most visible gig was probably as a member of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue sextet and he'll live on forever thanks to that session.  But he cut a slew of records under his own name that are still plenty deserving of repeated listenings, not the least of which is the Nancy Wilson date.  Nancy Wilson has also had a long career in music from all the way back to the early-50's.  She tended to stay more in the camp of mainstream pop but when she ventured into jazz territory, she tore it up.

Which takes me back to the NW/CA recording.  There are 12 cuts on the record and the last five are by the band alone without Ms Wilson.  It's solid music, particularly the last cut, Unit 7 from the pen of bassist Sam Jones (I did not know that until I started writing this), which went on to become one of the Adderleys' standards.

But the first seven selections lift this into the stratosphere.  They smolder, they shout, they belong right up there with the great vocal and instrumental partnerships in jazz.  There's only one snoozer in the seven and the other six are brilliant.  I'll  leave it to you to figure out which is the yawn but I'll say that even in the sanitized confines of South Pacific, it's fluff.

I'm enough of a geek (and willing to admit it) that I'll retreat to YouTube as a shortcut to favorite music, especially late at night when Miz Susan has fallen into troubled sleep, no doubt haunted by dreams of 30 10-year old scholars who led her to the brink of exhaustion in the first place.  YouTube doesn't have it all but it does have a helluvalot and it leads almost seamlessly down lots of unknown paths.  Like the one which led to Ine Hoem (pron: I have no idea).  I can't understand a word of her Norwegian (I was born closer to Owatonna than to Oslo) but her English lyrics on Nancy Wilson songs are enough to bridge any language gaps.  I'm considering taking up Norwegian for a better read on her.

I stumbled across Ine Hoem while checking out Nancy Wilson videos, including a bunch from NW/CA.  Not only did the paths lead off to lesser known Wilson stuff but one led to a series of Nancy Wilson tributes by Norwegian vocalist Hoem and a band of like-minded jazzers.  Which included a pianist who could have been an avatar of a high school aged Philip Seymour Hoffman and a smartly played tenor sax in the hands of Hanna Paulsberg (whom I need to learn more about).  But the star of this show was Ine Hoem who did a pretty fair job of approaching the musical and emotional heights established by Ms Wilson 50+ years ago.  She smoldered and she shouted and she knocked me off my feet.  I think she deserves credit(?) for a ragged night of sleep when I couldn't get her version and the lyrics of  Never Will I Marry out of my little pea brain.  I'm obsessed in a way that I haven't been since I went off on my hunts for Dale Barlow and Tubby Hayes records.  Don't ask.  Just check out Ine Hoem on YouTube.  I think it will be time well-spent.  I'll be back there for sure.

There are only two members of the recording cast of 1961 still alive: Nancy Wilson and drummer Louis Hayes.  Hayes has recorded until at least recently though I don't know if Wilson is still active on the music scene.  I owe her a continued allegiance but one of the great things about music is that there are always new sounds to absorb.  I'll still go back to Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley but I'll also be spending time tracking down more of Ine Hoem.  Anyone have a Norwegian-English dictionary I can borrow?