[Still Hot Those House Flowers] -- December and the winter holidays put me in mind of jazz and classic rock, because those were the genres my late father most played on his stereo system while I was growing up. I mean, sure, he played some holiday fare, too. But if he was tooling around the house, he needed some old rock music. And if he was cooking or baking, then jazz was the soundtrack of choice.
This week's Flashback album would have qualified for that soundtrack.
Forty years ago this week, on December 18, 1984, Winton Marsalis released Hot House Flowers, his third studio album as a leader. And while Hot House Flowers garnered some mixed reviews (you can read this one from WaPo, if you can get past the paywall), it was a commercially successful album. Not only did this record peak at #90 on the Billboard 200 and #53 on the Billboard R&B Albums chart, it also reached the #1 spot on the Top Jazz Albums chart. Oh, and Hot House Flowers picked up another accolade the following year, in 1985: it snagged the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist.
What I find interesting about this album is that Marsalis opted for the jazz plus strings formula rather than augmenting the jazz arrangements with synths – and this was the 1980s! So, Marsalis has a who's who in jazz (including is brother, Branford Marsalis) riffing over understated string arrangements by Robert Freedman. And while some critics at the time weren't too keen on it, like that WaPo critic, I find the strings to be softly supporting, and I think it works. Maybe it's because I don't always hear the strings. Maybe it's that Winton Marsalis understood how to work with the various standards he was covering. But I think the approach also works on the title track, the only one he wrote on the whole album.
Anyway, if you like jazz and need a nice instrumental background while you're wrapping presents, give this one a spin.
Flashback: Hot House Flowers (December 18, 1984)
And that's all till next week. Dedicated 80s-philes can find more flashbacks in the Prophet or Madman archives or via Bookended's 80s Flashback tag. As always, your comments are welcome on today's, or any other, flashback post. And if you like what I'm doing here, please share the link with your friends. If, however, you don't like the flashback, feel free to share it with your enemies.
I'll see you in seven!
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