Apples in the snow

Wonderful 1968 on new reissues of the Apple label

Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records (Apple/EMI). This collection is not just another Beatles tribute, of which a pack comes out every week, but a more cunning thing. At the peak of their career, The Beatles, driven by hippie ideals, decided to help young talents and organized their own record company, Apple. Films began to arrive from all over the world. Paul McCartney, George Harrison and, to some extent, John Lennon somehow took the creative efforts of the young people very close to their hearts. On some albums, the Beatles themselves act as session musicians (the rich have their own quirks), and Eric Clapton to boot. The Beatles gave some of their masterpieces to their wards even before they released them themselves. For example, Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight was recorded by a certain group called Trash, and Harrison gave My Sweet Lord to keyboardist Billy Preston.

Judging by the current massive reissue of Apple label products, this label, associated mainly with The Beatles themselves, is a treasure trove of masterpieces and a cross-section of high-quality mass culture of the late 60s. The collection, the first in the history of the label, contains the most representative recordings. That is, say, the jazz group Modern Jazz Quartet was not included in the collection. But from Paul McCartney’s friend Mary Hopkin there are already two songs - Goodbye and the Russian-Gypsy hit “The Long Road” (that is, of course, the English version, Those Were The Days). Cult folk singer James Taylor coexists with the psychedelic Indian chants of The Radha Krsna Temple, Billy Preston with Jackie Lomax and so on. The band Badfinger, who composed the all-time megahit Without You. This song is not here, from Badfinger - Day After Day and Come And Get It.

The Modern Jazz Quartet. Under the Jasmine Tree/Space (Apple/EMI). To understand what the Apple label is not, it is enough to listen to two albums of then-contemporary progressive jazz, belonging to the most important group for this style, The Modern Jazz Quartet. Apple didn’t release anything like this at all; the Beatles themselves didn’t like jazz, especially such “smart” and intelligent jazz, and the appearance of two whole albums on this label was, in general, a chain of happy accidents. To begin with, the head of the label was the American Ron Cass, a professional talent scout who not only adored jazz, but was also on good terms with Monte Kay, manager of The Modern Jazz Quartet, to whom he simply offered to release an album. What’s strange is that no one objected at all: neither the musicians who had fresh material ready, nor the label managers, nor even the Beatles themselves. The Modern Jazz Quartet were one of the main sensations of modern jazz, they performed extensively for student and youth audiences. In terms of popularity, relevance and fame, the Dave Brubeck Quartet and The Modern Jazz Quartet were the equivalent of the Beatles and the Stones in jazz. The label also had a major task - to democratize modern jazz and make it attractive to a young rock audience. What turned out to be something else - two full-blooded, lively, melodic and excellently recorded, in general, simply pleasant albums of a modern-jazz group. That is, the result turned out to be excellent, albeit somewhat different from what was planned. No matter how we bring jazz and hippies together, no matter what analogies we look for, these two albums are exactly what is infinitely far from both the rock of the 60s and, in general, from any rock and mass culture: these ornate lines and improvisations, breathless pauses , transparent sound, icy vibraphone, crystal piano, unexpected changes of tempo when the listener is already “hooked” on the dashing improvisation. Only the arrangement of the famous adagio Aranjuez by the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo can be considered something more or less friendly towards the listener, relaxing and pacifying, but otherwise it is something for which both modern jazz and post-bop are considered intellectual and “from” music. mind." In the so-called roster, i.e. list of artists on the Apple label, the quartet is the black sheep. It is characteristic, by the way, that the first record, Under the Jasmine Tree (in the early 2000s, was already reissued on CD, in “glass”), still pretends to be a typical product of the era of psychedelic rock, but only pretends to be the cover. The second one doesn’t even pretend to be anything outwardly: the cover is clearly for its own, understanding fans. Now both albums have been released on one disc, in a digipak with a serial design. Bonus - one unreleased track by The Modern Jazz Quartet. The thing, however, is not the author’s, but a cover of the well-known Yesterday. Wonderful version. Strong ending. You can kill someone like this on the spot.

Alexander BELYAEV