Creed Taylor Produced

It’s been a real pleasure to spend the last 2-weeks catching up with the various shows and mixes that have appeared following the announcement of Creed Taylor’s passing. Many of them are obvious journeys through the most well-known of the releases on CTI.

As well as my favorites, I’ve listed one at the end which frankly Creed wouldn’t have listened to, and nor could I normally, but I went from confused to amused. You might as well. Got a favorite tribute mix? Leave a comment and a link, why you like it, even why you don’t they’ll be included below. I’ll be posting the second of my “CTI Only on CD“^[1]https://www.ctproduced.com/september-is-creed-taylor-month-2/ mixes over the weekend.

Kim Paris – Freeform Portland

The first mix comes from Kim Paris, it was broadcast from Freeform Portland on his show “Melting Pot”^[2]Program Details – Freeform Portland. Kim has been compiling an excellent resource of live performances on the Internet Archive, the 4th part of Kim’s show features tracks from those live performances, which is, in part, why this mix was included. More on the live performance recordings in a another post. First-up, Kim’s four-part Creed Taylor tribute mix, streamed from and downloadable at the Internet Archive^[3]FFP Melting Pot CTI Jazz Kim Paris Sept. 2022 : Kim Paris : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.

Allen “The Ambassador” Thayer

Allen is a music journalist, historian, author, radio host & DJ^[4]Allen Thayer. Allen has an article in Waxpoetics October 2022 print edition about Flora Purim. In these mixes he covers the Brazilian music that Creed produced, and also includes some great information. To be fair, at the time of writing I have not listened to the second show, but given the first show, it must be good.

One of the reasons I like Allen’s show is he goes back to cover music from both Verve and Impulse!

Simon West

Simon has a prodigious Mixcloud jazz channel^[5]simonwest369’s Stream | Mixcloud and either Simon or someone else tagged the #CTproduced Instagram account^[6]The work of Creed Taylor (@ctproduced) • Instagram photos and videos with a link to the mix. It’s probably just a coincidence, but Simon gives his location as London, UK in his Mixcloud profile.

While his show contains a few non-CTI tracks, it covers many of my favorite CTI dance music tracks from London around the mid9170’s. Most of the tracks Simon has won’t be included anywhere else, which is what merits inclusion here.

DJ Shaun Alexander

Another #ctproduced Instagram tag, I don’t know anything about DJ Shaun, except as he announces at the start of the show, he is another community radio jock, this time at FM99.3 in Sydney, Australia. I really liked the style of the first hour of his show, again a lot of tracks not included elsewhere.

Confused and Amused

I’m not sure how I came across the “Jazz Bastards”^[7]Jazz Bastard Podcast show, probably via mixcloud, but then I ended up on the allaboutjazz post^[8]CTI: A Guilty Pleasure Special article @ All About Jazz. Patrick Burnette, one of the self-proclaimed Jazz Bastard’s declared that his partner was “busy in Europe so Pat goes solo with a look at controversial jazz label CTI.” If you count getting things wrong, he certainly manages to do that. It’s more of a talk show with clips than a tribute show. To be fair, Pat doesn’t claim to be a CTI expert.

Creed Taylor famously once said

“Simply put, jazz critics are not my favorite people and I’m not their favorite producer.“

I’m sure he wasn’t talking about Pat, but if the hat fits. Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments. (p.s. I had to google paradigmatic).