Best of Word Jazz 1 Review
Haunting me since I was a preschooler in the late `50's, from the sound of Ken Nordine's booming, string bass voice to his funny and frightening stories, right down to its paper collage cover, the original LP WORD JAZZ has lodged permanently in my psyche. I was delighted when the recording resurfaced in 1990, even if only in parts, on this compilation CD. At first I only revisited my old favorites, "Hunger Is From," a description of a sleepless, midnight raid on the refrigerator, complete with munching sound effects, "The Vidiot," a forecast, unfortunately, of the television addict I would become, "The Sound Museum," a dreamlike, wonderfully evocative "tour" of a series of aural exhibits and the artists who have created them, "Flibberty Jib," an immensely creepy portrait of religious zeal that reminds me of every facilitator of mass hysteria from Adolf Hitler to Jim Jones, and "Looks Like It's Going to Rain," in which the narrator invites the listener in to visit the noisy chambers of his brain. All of this is accompanied by the strains of cool jazz, with a tinkling piano here, noodling woodwinds there, and in several key places, some experimental electronic sounds and tape loops. Then I began to explore the other tracks on this CD, most of them new to my ears. My favorite of these previously unknown gems is "Faces In The Jazzmatazz," which I have listened to dozens of times now. Somehow it is so nostalgic that I have developed a false memory of having heard it before, somewhere in my distant past -- maybe I did, but I don't think so. Although the material on THE BEST OF WORD JAZZ, VOL. 1 is spoken, there is something so musical about Nordine's voice that, for me at least, I hear these pieces as songs, and can revisit them from time to time just as I can other favored music. The pleasure I derive from this album is so personal, and so connected to my childhood, that I don't know if I can recommend it to the uninitiated. One thing that anyone over the age of say, 30, might latch on to is Nordine's mellifluous baritone: it has been heard on more than just novelty recordings, as he has had a long career in voiceovers and narration on radio and television. So Ken Nordine will sound familiar even to those who have never heard his name.
I hope there's a Vol. 2 (may not happen, given the time that has elapsed since this CD was first released), and that it will include "Roger," a funny little nightmare scenario about a piano teacher that still gives me shivers when I hear it on my scratched up vinyl copy of WORD JAZZ.
Best of Word Jazz 1 Overview
You've heard Ken Nordine before, his immediate baritone resonating like the voice of God in countless radio and TV commercials, hawking everything from Taster's Choice to Murine. In the late 1950s, though, Nordine created "word jazz"--a combination of storytelling, sound painting, and pre-beat improvisation--as a less commercial, more personal outlet for his natural speaking talents.
Best gathers the brightest of his four initial albums--material that found him somewhere between the prosody of Jack Kerouac and the arch satire of Nichols & May. As the title suggests, there's a light jazz backing behind Nordine's incantations--ranging from the lighthearted "Hunger Is From" to the disturbing, absurd scenario "Flibberty Jib" to the harrowing memoir "Confessions of 349-18-5171." Good, curious stuff.
--Michael Ruby
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