(Traditional Jazz, Swing) The Hanna-Fontana Band - Live At Concord - 1975, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

The creation and preservation of meaningful music relies for its success on an amalgam of factors. Along with the performance itself, there must be the setting, the ambiance it creates; the quality of sound reproduction; the compatibility not only among the musicians, but also between artists and listeners.
All these elements came together when the Seventh Annual Concord Summer Festival was held at the handsome, spanking brand new Concord Pavilion. An oasis in desert-like land beyond the city, an hour's drive from San Francisco, the Pavilion provides space not only for 3,500 roof-protected fans, but also, beyond this, for some 4,500 more who may picnic on the grassy slope beyond.
Carl Jefferson, the president of the Festival, which runs for three consecutive weekends, handles the event as if it were more a family reunion than a series of nine concerts. He has a rare gift of good taste combined with the determination to book only those musicians who strike him as worthy of a hearing, rather than those who happen to be in, for the moment, according to the evanescent standards of the popularity charts.
The track record of the Festival, and of the records it has produced on this label, attests to Jefferson's ability to pick both artistic and commercial winners. He wisely uses world-renowned names such as Benny Goodman, who appeared the night after Hanna-Fontana, to attract crowds who are thus exposed to a well-balanced weekend that provides a thoroughly satisfying cross-section of jazz, from very traditional to very contemporary.
Hanna-Fontana, which lies just about halfway across this stylistic spectrum, is not a firm of lawyers; nor is it a studio dedicated to the filming of animated cartoons. To make its meaning clearer, Jake is apt to refer to it as "Hanna-Fontana, with McKenna at the Pianna."
Jake has variously been known as the perfect small combo drummer (Marian McPartland, Bobby Hackett, Supersax) and the ideal big band drummer (Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Harry James, Duke Ellington, Herb Pomeroy and for a long stretch the Mort Lindsey orchestra on the Merv Griffin show). Ms. McPartland, who doubles on typewriter, once wrote that Jake "uses his technique logically—no unnecessary pyrotechnics - and he has the good judgment and the power necessary to hold and control the rhythm at all times."
When Jake left Supersax to go out on his own, he thought of the kindred soul who had similarly been looking for a chance to express himself under freer conditions than had usually been available to him. Carl Fontana, a Herman alumnus like Hanna, has spent too much of the past decade buried in the shake-rattle-and-roll anonymity of the Las Vegas casinos.
Dave McKenna is another estimable musician who has had too few opportunities to make himself known in big-league jazz circles. A native of Woonsocket, R.I., he works in New England and emerges occasionally for gigs such as Concord. Plas Johnson, whose first claim to glory was the featured role in Mancini's Pink Panther theme, is far too bright and versatile to be tied up as he is in studio work. (Jefferson, who knows it, recorded an LP by Plas a few weeks after the Concord convention.) Herb Ellis and Bill Berry are regulars on the Merv Griffin show; this enables Herb to play innumerable jazz jobs at Donte's and occasionally to take sabbaticals for tours with Barney Kessel, and it gives Bill Berry a chance every once in a while to lead a fine, all-star band of his own. Herb Mickman is a freelance studio bassist; I first heard him with Sarah Vaughan, who is very selective about her rhythm sections.
The program is presented on this Compact Disc in precisely the same sequence heard by those of us who were fortunate enough to be there on that cool but cooking evening. A Beautiful Friendship, the 1959 pop song that lends its attractive chord changes to the opening performance, immediately places Fontana's virtues squarely in the spotlight. He is a master improviser, a builder of solos that are created as effortlessly out of thin air as Duke Ellington wove them on an empty manuscript paper. After Herb Ellis and Dave McKenna have spoken, Carl returns again to show that he can swing no less forcefully without any accompaniment whatsoever.
The construction of a perfect solo may be observed again in Sweet and Lovely, a 1931 song (popularized by Bing Cosby and Russ Columbo, as I'm sure you all remember) that lays down a handsome harmonic carpet for Carl to tread on. Bill Berry and Plas are added to the company as the group digs into a blues riff. Herb Ellis, like all those Texas and Oklahoma guitarists from Charlie Christian on down, is totally at home with the blues.
Old Folks, Plas Johnson's ballad vehicle here, has been a musicians' favorite ever since Mildred Bailey introduced the Willard Robison song in 1938. McKenna lends a sympathetic pair of hands as Plas outlines the theme, with variations, in a warm style the like of which has been much too rarely heard since the giants who established this brand of tenor playing (Hawkins, Webster, Byas, Gonsalves) all left us in the past few years.
Take the A' Train was a journey back home for Bill Berry, who must have played it a thousand times on the road with Duke Ellington in 1962. I'm sure it was because of Berry's presence that the band's traditional out-chorus riff was used, though it may have been McKenna himself who decided to use Duke's famous "band call" as the basis for the final release. Everyone plays so beautifully, so easily and with such a powerful sense of control that this track, more than any other in the recording, reflects the true spirit of the jam session.
Jake introduced I Found a New Baby with a dedicatory tribute to a pioneer New Orleans drummer, Zutty Singleton, who had passed away just five days before the concert. The masterful Plas Johnson's control at this way-up tempo, Ellis' sensitive comping behind him, Berry's use of the mute and Jake's incomparable brushwork all are noteworthy. Once again Fontana demonstrates his ability to carry the burden alone, as does McKenna in a delightful stride interlude.
In spite of assurances of pleasures to come—"Tomorrow, Benny Goodman!"—the audience simply would not let this superlative group leave the stage. Accordingly, Jake swung the company into an Ellington standard of 1938; and as they all let this song go out of their hearts, Hanna, Fontana, McKenna & Co. offer yet another definitive example of how to blend the best traditions of yesteryear with the technical expertise of today. That, to many of us who listened and to all of those who played, would seem to be what jazz is all about.

01 - A Beautiful Friendship.flac
02 - Sweet and Lovely.flac
03 - Jumpin' The Blues.flac
04 - Old Folks.flac
05 - Take The 'A' Train.flac
06 - I've Found A New Baby.flac
07 - I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart.flac
Artwork
Live At Concord.log
Live At Concord_Noncompliant.CUE
Live At Concord_Single Wav.CUE
Share!.txt
tau.txt
The Hanna-Fontana Band - Live At Concord.m3u
Artwork\Back.png
Artwork\Booklet 1.png
Artwork\Booklet 2.png
Artwork\Booklet 3.png
Artwork\Booklet 4.png
Artwork\Disc.png

EAC extraction logfile from 15. May 2008, 19:16 for CD
The Hanna-Fontana Band / Live At Concord
Used drive : PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-112D Adapter: 0 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache
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Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
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320 kBit/s
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Other options :
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Installed external ASPI interface
Track 1
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Track 2
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Track 3
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Track 4
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Track 5
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Track 6
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Track 7
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End of status report

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3383176344 62770220 03 - Jumpin' The Blues.wav
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auCDtect: CD records authenticity detector, version 0.8.2
Copyright (c) 2004 Oleg Berngardt. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2004 Alexander Djourik. All rights reserved.
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Final Conclusion:
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