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In A Mellow Tone
Wednesday April 17th, 2024 with Heavy Ben
David Axelrod: Jazz, Soundtracks, Fusion, Funk and Soul

This is the 1st part of the David Axelrod series, beginning on his birthday on April 17. (2) Chance Meeting - Coversions XI: The Building Blocks of Hip Hop - David Axelrod recordings https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/581/64938.html (3) Heavy Friends - David Axelrod: Soul, Psych, Funk, Pop, Jazz https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/410/65386.html (4) Chance Meeting - Coversions XII: The Building Blocks of Hip Hop - David Axelrod productions https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/581/65388.html Like Duke Ellington said, "What I do tomorrow will be the best thing I've ever done." Today we celebrate the birthday of David Axelrod, a producer, arranger and composer who in the 1960s and ’70s was one of the pre-eminent figures bridging and expanding the worlds of jazz and rhythm & blues — and whose career was given new life beginning in the ’90s thanks to hip-hop producers who sampled his ornate compositions. Axelrod was born today, April 17, 1933 in Los Angeles, California, and died in 2017, aged 85. Mr. Axelrod’s signature sound mixed the flexibility of jazz and the lusciousness of soul with the influence of composers like Wagner and Stravinsky and a penchant for psychedelic flights of fancy. His compositions were expansive and majestic, but also a little testy and tense, as if messy eruption were imminent but being held at bay by beauty. Axelrod began frequenting the jazz and R&B clubs on Central Avenue, Los Angeles’s vibrant musical hub, at a young age. “I was raised by blacks,” he told Big Daddy magazine in 2001, discussing his upbringing in a city with fast-changing racial dynamics. “For a while I thought I was black.” He told interviewers stories of teenage street brawls and heroin use. Into his later years he was typically seen in dark sunglasses, the better to mask an eye injury he received when he was a teenage boxer. Axe became enmeshed in LA’s nightlife and music industry, spending time with jazz pianist Gerald Wiggins, who taught him to read music, and before long he took on record promotion jobs and, eventually, production work. His first prominent calling card was the saxophonist Harold Land’s 1960 album “The Fox,” an outstanding example of hard bop from a city not known for it. Not long after that, Axelrod joined the staff of Capitol Records as an executive focused on developing talent, helping to create what he said was the first black music division at a major label. He shepherded Lou Rawls out of a mainstream pop-jazz sound and into forward-leaning soul, and worked with the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, who was familiar with Axelrod from “The Fox.” He produced Adderley’s biggest hit, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” in 1966, and continued to work with him for a decade. “I could do anything I wanted to do,” he recalled in 2001. “I was rich — making the equivalent of $700,000 a year!” He also produced instrumental albums conducted by David McCallum, the Scottish actor (“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”) who in the late 1960s took a pop music detour. Following his success producing for others, Axelrod put out albums of his own. The first two, his most essential — “Song of Innocence” (1968) and “Songs of Experience” (1969), both inspired by William Blake — helped set the table for the jazz fusion of the 1970s. Narrative and concept were crucial to Axelrod’s productions. His third album, “Earth Rot,” tackled environmental concerns, and a hit he recorded with Mr. McCallum, “The Edge,” was, Mr. Axelrod said, written in response to the extreme poverty he witnessed on a trip to Puerto Rico. For the psych-rock band the Electric Prunes, he produced an album influenced by Gregorian chant. In the mid-1970s, pop tastes began to shift toward disco, a sound Mr. Axelrod had little use for, and he fell out of favor, leading to a lean stretch that included financial struggles and near-homelessness. His wife was involved in a serious car accident in his 1980s, and he devoted himself to managing her care for some time. In the 1990s, crate-digging hip-hop producers began unearthing Mr. Axelrod’s productions and sampling them widely, enamored with their thickness and complexity. Axelrod sounds appear on albums by Lauryn Hill, DJ Shadow, Dr. Dre, De La Soul, Lil Wayne, Mos Def, Madlib, A Tribe Called Quest, and Canada's own Maestro Fresh Wes. We'll get to those sounds in future episodes of Chance Meeting. We'll also cover more of the rock, funk, and soul leanings on a future episode of Heavy Friends. Tonight, on In A Mellow Tone, let's explore Axelrod's 1950's and 60s credits as a producer of straight up jazz albums, get into 1970s jazz fusion and funk, touch on soul, pop, and key cuts from Axelrod's mesmerizing solo albums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Axelrod_(musician) https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/02/11/514590294/david-axelrod-musical-visionary-and-historical-propellant-remembered Intro text borrowed from this New York Times piece https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/arts/music/david-axelrod-dead-music-producer-composer.html (to embiggen the show icon, right-click and choose "Open image in new tab")
Hour one
Minor Bertha
Elmo Hope - With Frank Butler And Jimmy Bond - HiFi Jazz - 1959
West Wind
Letta Mbulu - Free Soul - Capitol - 1968
Holy Thursday
David Axelrod - Song Of Innocence - Capitol - 1968
I'm On My Way
Henry Cain - The Funky Organ-ization Of Henry Cain - Capitol - 1968
Circumference
Cannonball Adderley - The Black Messiah - Capitol - 1971
Sympathy
David Axelrod - The Auction - Decca, MCA - 1972
Cántaro (Cantaro)
Gene Ammons - Brasswind - Prestige - 1974
He's Good For Me
Mae West - 7" - Plaza - 1962
Mrs. Potts
The Buddy Collette Quintet - Everybody's Buddy - Challenge - 1958
The Warnings Part II
David Axelrod - Earth Rot - Capitol - 1970
Easy Evil
Merl Saunders (orig. Sarah Vaughan) - Merl Saunders - Fantasy - 1974
59 Go And Pass
Nat Adderley - Double Exposure - Prestige - 1975
Stormy Monday
Lou Rawls - Live! - Capitol - 1966
Cantaloupe Island
Howard Roberts (orig. Herbie Hancock) - Spinning Wheel - Capitol - 1969
Fantasy for Ralph
David Axelrod - David Axelrod - Mo Wax - 2001 (re. 1969)
Hour two
Three O'Clock In The Morning
The Gerald Wiggins Trio - Reminiscin' With Wig - Motif - 1957
This Frog
Kermit The Frog / Sesame Street - 7" - Children's Television Workshop - 1977
Wandering Star
David Axelrod - Marchin' - MCA - 1980
Samba
Miriam Makeba - A Promise - Disques Espérance, Black Music - 1974
Theme From "Hombre"
David Rose - 7" - Capitol - 1967
Obeah
Cannonball Adderley Presents The Nat Adderley Sextet Plus Rick Holmes - Soul Of The Bible - Capitol - 1972
The Edge
David McCallum - Music: A Bit More Of Me - Capitol - 1967
One Second, Please
The Harold Land Quintet - The Fox - HiFi Jazz - 1960
Sandy
David Axelrod - Strange Ladies - MCA - 1977
Priced To Sell
Funk Inc. - Priced To Sell - Prestige - 1974
Something Blue
The Paul Horn Quintet - Something Blue - HiFi Jazz - 1960
The Human Abstract
David Axelrod - Songs Of Experience - Capitol - 1969
Hour three - online only. Click "LISTEN NOW" at the top left of the page to hear the full program.
The Fox
Don Randi - Plays The Love Theme From "Romeo And Juliet" - Capitol - 1969
Heritage
Joe Williams (orig. Duke Ellington) - Joe Williams Live - Fantasy - 1973
Rumplestiltskin
Cannonball Adderley Quintet - The Price You Got To Pay To Be Free - Capitol - 1970
1000 Rads
David Axelrod - Seriously Deep - Polydor - 1975
Zola (Mra)
Letta Mbulu - Letta Mbulu Sings - Capitol - 1967
Quick Draw Kelly
Lalo Schifrin - Kelly's Heroes (Music From The Original Sound Track) - MGM - 1970
I'm Related To You
Willie Tee - I'm Only A Man - Capitol - 1970
Tensity
The Cannonball Adderley Quintet & Orchestra - The Cannonball Adderley Quintet & Orchestra - Capitol - 1970
My Family
David Axelrod - Heavy Axe - Fantasy - 1974
Interactive CKCU
DJR
It’s been an Axelrod Afternoon! Really cool show. I’m looking forward to part two.

4:34 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ben Armstrong (host)
Hey DJR, thanks for checking out the show. More Axelrod to follow, starting with Chance Meeting next week (April 26).

9:10 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ben Armstrong (host)
"the foundations of the world are being broken" prescient words from David Axelrod's Earth Rot in 1970

9:42 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ian M
Late to the show - this track is a bit edgy.

10:31 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ben Armstrong (host)
Hey Ian!

10:45 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ian M
That was a joke - it was The Edge, I recognized it! Not that familiar with him but I have listened to the compilation The Edge: David Axelrod at Capitol Records, 1966-1970

10:48 PM, April 17th, 2024
Chris I.
Thanks for the tunes Ben. Sounding good from Iqaluit!

10:52 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ben Armstrong (host)
Hehe Ian, yes got the "edgy" ref! McCallum's contributions are mysterious. A famous actor on the album cover? Maybe once, but 4x? Must have been something going on there...

10:55 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ian M.
Good tunes - look forward to the third hour later, after Rabble!

10:56 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ben Armstrong (host)
Wassup Chris!? Glad your innerwebs are connecting to us

10:56 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ben Armstrong (host)
This final tune may sound familiar to DJ Shadow listeners. Midnight...

10:57 PM, April 17th, 2024
Ben Armstrong (host)
Rabble On, Ian... look fwd to the Keith Tippett pieces

10:59 PM, April 17th, 2024