Playlist: Dave Douglas at Dusted

Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists determined by our favorite artists. This week: Trumpet master Dave Douglas.

1. Joni Mitchell – Mingus

I was a child of the 1970s who read the players’ names on the backs of albums. Wayne Shorter was the link for me between Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Weather Report, Milton Nascimento, Herbie Hancock, and um, what’s his name…. oh yeah, Miles Davis. This record is such a classic… Brings together Jaco Pastorius, Herbie, Peter Erskine, Wayne, and of course Joni Mitchell with deep words and music. Great horn charts to boot. Seminal. If you haven’t heard this, or haven’t listened in a while, it’s good medicine. Joni’s delivery of the songs is so pure and direct, and the subject matter personal.

2. Weather Report – Heavy Weather

I got turned on to Weather Report by friends in Spain during a high school year abroad and memorized every note of this one. This record may have been the band’s best seller and spawned countless high school marching band arrangements of “Birdland,” but nonetheless the whole album is crafted with brilliance. Each of the members, as composers, contribute their finest work, and I think more than the virtuosity, that is what stands out for me. Wayne’s pieces are so finely detailed and it’s amazing to think about how much they differ from his work of just a few years earlier and a few years later. Zawinul had a way of personalizing synthesizers–it still sounds like Joe and still sounds fresh all these years later.

3. Steely Dan – Aja

You could argue that this is not the best Steely Dan album–Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied, Can’t Buy A Thrill, and Countdown To Ecstasy were big for me. But the Wayne Shorter solo on the title track melted my face. For many years after this, pop groups didn’t seem allowed to have long instrumental digressions. I’m happy to hear that coming back now. Donald Fagan and Walter Becker put so much into this music, and still do.

4. Herbie Hancock – VSOP

This record came to me at a time when I was just about ready to encounter the incredibly broad vision Herbie presents. This was an unusual double LP in that there were three different bands on the different sides: the sextet, the electric group, and a classic quintet. Hearing all that different music presented side by side with such sincerity and profundity was a revelation and not at all normal at that time. I love all three bands and Herbie is playing great as ever (man, he’s STILL playing great as ever). When I heard him in an interview refer to “the way we used to play back in the ‘60s” I was like, huh? So I went back to find out.

5. Miles Davis – Miles Smiles

This album is a gateway. I couldn’t figure this out first. At all. It just seemed incomprehensible. Then one day it was the deepest thing I had ever heard. I practiced it and sang it and thought about it, and I am still learning from it. If you want to pick one ‘second acoustic quintet’ Miles Davis record to begin with, this (in my opinion) feels like the one where the band figured out how to play this vision. I’m only saying that as an outsider, but I can safely say that the influence of the playing on this record is as pervasive today as almost anything I can think of.

6. Wayne Shorter – Native Dancer

All of Wayne’s records are worth owning. Every single one is different and has its own story to tell. There is an absolute unity in all of his work and yet it changes and progresses and diverges with every release. Native Dancer brings us Wayne with Milton Nascimento and songs with words. The way Wayne mixes free-ish playing with tunes and forms is a special blend on this record and foreshadows a lot of Brazilian hybrids that have grown up through the years.

7. Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key of Life

Talking Book, Inner Visions, and this one bring together words, music, feeling, story and passion so fully. There’s a joy inside his tears. As well known as this record is, I don’t see it often remarked how many instrumentalists model parts of their style on Stevie Wonder’s phrasing. Not that that is what makes this record so great, but it’s hard not to give it up to Stevie for pure expression, for pure delivery of emotion and feeling through music.

8. Talking Heads – Remain in Light

I love David Byrne and Talking Heads and Brian Eno’s productions. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Speaking In Tongues all introduced this shimmering, spooky, groove-based thing that is as elusive as it is infectious. It is a sound world all its own and yet it remains essentially at the service of the song.

9. Charlie Haden – Liberation Music Orchestra

This first release is a church. Carla Bley is one of my favorite composers and arrangers, and the way she works with the incredible cast on this record is a monument to freedom within directed group expression. “We Shall Overcome” alone is worth the price of admission. So heartfelt and passionate and yet calm and stately. Charlie’s commitment to these ideals over the years is inspiring, and on this release he gets to the heart of it in a very organic and ‘felt’ way. This recording is an uncanny blend of players and writing.

10. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk – s/t

Johnny Griffin, Bill Hardman, Monk, Spanky DeBrest, Blakey. This is really a must have, because the playing is perfect and at the same time there are “mistakes” all over the place. It’s honest and it’s (in my opinion) one of the clearest examples of Monk playing his music in an unusual, for him, setting. A great place to go to learn these tunes. Blakey and Monk had a long term relationship as players, so there’s an understanding between them that sometimes threatens to throw the whole band off a cliff. In a good way.

11. Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um

Had to put this in because it is essential, but as I am over my 10 I will be brief. The meeting of arrangements and players on this record represents the pinnacle of the form, I think. There are lots of voices in the band, but the clarity of Mingus’s writing and of his vision make a unity out of what could have been chaos. Incidentally, the tenor sax solo by Booker Ervin on “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” was set to words by Joni Mitchell on her album Mingus.