Jazzjet

As a huge Miles fan it was sadly ironic that he passed away on the first day of my first ever visit to the States. It was a holiday and one that got off to a sad start.

Thanks for the suggestion. Still don't understand why the Amazon prices are so high though. Normally their prices are competitive in the UK.

Currently the prices of the new Parker and Gillespie releases on Amazon UK are £18.49 and £26.49 respectively. I know these albums are a labour of love and historic - not the usual industry rip off - but these prices seem steep to say the least. Anyone know of cheaper alternatives?

That's the one - terrible pressing. I brought one back and the one I stuck with was only a bit better. Thus the desire for a nicely sorted new version on CD. I wonder if Ronnie was influence by Henderson playing his club (not sure if he did). The one time I saw him he did 'Blue Bossa' and 'Recorda Me' and I've got earlier versions of 'Lazy Afternoon' (which is also on Serious Gold) and 'Invitation' on Henderson discs from that era. Yep - 'Blue Bossa' and 'Recorda Me'. Saw him play both of those. I'm sure he was a big Henderson fan and Joe played the club on quite a few occasions I think (but I never saw him there unfortunately). I think my pressing of the 'Serious Gold' LP is fine but those Pye LPs were never the greatest. I did hear Ronnie saying to the audience that Joe Henderson was playing at the club next week though. That's Joe 'Piano' Henderson. I've got a video of a Ronnie Scott gig where he used that line about Joe 'Piano' Henderson. He also said 'We're very fortunate to have one of the world's top bassists in the band. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it tonight so instead we've got Ron Matthewson.'

Don't know if its anything to do with it but the import preferences all refer to importing CDs. I'm guessing you don't import from Pro Tools on CD so might this be a reason? Have you tried exporting files from Pro Tools to CD first and then importing to iTunes? I'm sure this isn't ideal but it might help isolate the problem. Also, on the Apple Discussion forum there's mention of iTunes skipping wav files since the upgrade to v 8.0 so this might be an issue. If you haven't already done so it might be worth raising the problem on the Apple forum as you usually get a helpful answer.

Very sad. I saw a Pink Floyd documentary recently where Rick Wright was saying that his keyboard work on Breathe ( from Dark Side Of The Moon ) was influenced by Kind of Blue by Miles. Can't recall which track - I think it was All Blues.

Thanks John L and zanones for your help. The confusion on my part was between the iTunes Music folder and the iTunes Library file. I thought just setting the Music folder as the destination would be enough. Clearly not. The solution is to press the option key while opening iTunes ( on a Mac ). and choosing library, ie choosing the iTunes Library file. It's a bit annoying when it tries to load up all the artwork thumbnails but hopefully that's a one-off. Thanks again.

Thanks for the reply. The external drive shows up fine and I can select an individual music file and play it in iTunes OK. But I want to keep the files on my external drive (rather than add them onto my laptop) and play them from there. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm doing some more research so lets see what turns up. Any more help in the meantime much appreciated.

I'm hoping can answer this ( hopefully ) simple question. All my digital music collection is on my desktop computer ( an iMac G5 ) and now I want to listen to this music on my laptop. So I copied my whole iTunes library to an external drive and connected the drive to my laptop ( a Macbook ). On my laptop I reset the location of my iTunes music folder to the location on the external drive and ensured all the correct boxes were ticked. I would have expected to now see my iTunes library on iTunes on my laptop but I can see nothing! Am I missing something? I wouldn't have thought I would have to consolidate my library as I have no music on my laptop version of iTunes. I don't really want to copy the music to my laptops internal drive because of the size of the library ( 38Gb ). Any ideas?

No it doesn't, given the subject matter of the book. What part did he play?

I'm reading a book by Pete Frame ( of Rock Family Trees fame ) called The Restless Generation, about the growth of the British rock and pop scene in the 1950s ( well worth a read by the way ). Anyway, one piece of trivia that had escaped me until now was that bassist Major Holley, who featured on one of my all-time favourite jazz albums - Midnight Blue by Kenny Burrell - also played on 'Rock With The Cavemen' by Tommy Steele. Steele was possibly the first British rock star and, in his way, as influential as Lonnie Donegan. 'Rock With The Cavemen' was a piece of fluff really but probably qualifies as the first British rock n' roll record. I think I knew that Ronnie Scott played sax on the record but I had no idea about Major Holley. Funny old world innit?

Nice idea to call a building the 'merkin'. Unfortunately its called 'The Gherkin'.

No but I've got the DVD of that performance on Eagle Vision. I assume that's what they were broadcasting? That's the one. It was part of a themed night of programmes chosen by Mike Figgis.

Did anyone see the Mingus 1975 Montreux concert last night on Sky Arts? Great stuff.

Like you, I'm a life-long labour voter but its true that Gordon Brown has no connection with the British public. He might be a decent man with a 'moral compass' and all that but its not getting across at all. Possibly this is to do with boredom with Labour after 11 years and possibly voters buying the 'style over substance' of the Tories, being so enamoured of our celebrity-obsessed culture. But we shouldn't forget that there has been, not before time, decent investment in schools and hospitals, with crime also coming down significantly by most reliable measures. While I'm disillusioned too, I'm even more concerned about the damage the Tories will do. If this lot are out of touch, I suspect the Tories are more so. The question is - will Labour get rid of Brown or just sit back and accept defeat. This is pretty much what the Tories did under Major and look where it got them. A new leader might not turn things around but it might limit the damage.

Interesting how often Chicago's name crops up in these memories. I was a big fan too. I still have their widely panned 4 disc Carnegie Hall set.

A conversation the other day got me to thinking about how I got into jazz in the first place. So I wondered what other peoples 'jazz journeys' were. FWIW, my own journey was as follows: Up to the early 60s I followed the usual pop stuff - Cliff Richard, The Shadows, Elvis etc. Then came the beat boom and bands like the Stones and the Yardbirds led me to pioneers like Alexis Korner and Graham Bond. This prompted me to seek out the original blues, R&B and jazz performers covered by Korner, Bond etc. From there it was a small leap into the exploration of jazz in more depth - mainly modern jazz. The beat boom also stimulated a lifelong love of soul and ( real ) R&B by tracking down the originals of songs covered by the Beatles, Stones etc ( to this day I prefer Twist and Shout by The Isley Brothers to the Beatles version ). My increasing love of jazz led me to lose track of rock and pop over the next few years. I saw my first jazz concert - The MJQ - in 1964 or 1965. There was a brief diversion back to rock during the hippie years ( 1967-69 ) and this was when I got into jazz rock for the first time. From the early 70s onwards I was heavily into British jazz - Mike Westbrook, New Jazz Orchestra, Mike Gibbs, Keith Tippett etc. Thereafter it was marriage, career and respectability etc but also a time when I could gradually afford to expand my jazz collection and explore numerous avenues that either remain a love ( Miles Davis, jazz funk, soul jazz, spiritual jazz, nu jazz etc ) or have remained a mystery ( most free jazz, vocal jazz etc ). I still enjoy original soul, but not modern R&B or rap. I also still enjoy some rock although this tends to be old stuff ( Pink Floyd, Stones, Beatles etc ) and very little new stuff, particularly indie 'landfill'. Blues and increasingly 'world' music still get the juices flowing. It would be interesting to hear about others 'jazz journeys' and see if there are any common themes.

if i get you're problem correctly (which means many had it before): sounds like you entered organissimo via google which prefers to watch threads this way... click on options in the upper right corner of the first post in any thread. a menu opens and you have to pick "Switch to: Standard" under display modes... I didn't enter via Google but used the Options suggestion and it now works fine. Many thanks.

Until yesterday I could open View New Posts, click on a topic of interest and get all the posts fully displayed ( over several pages if necessary ). Now I get the first post in the topic and a list of links to subsequent posts at the bottom of the page. This is much less useful IMO. I haven't made any changes to settings and I've checked to see where I could reset things to the way it was - to no avail. Can someone help me out?

Who owns the rights to the Lansdowne material - assuming that the studio retains any rights? Is Dennis Preston's estate involved? There's some great stuff in the Lansdowne vault, such as 'Afro-Jazz' by Guy Warren, which has never seen the light of day since its vinyl issue.

I recall seeing a thread somewhere a while ago suggesting that the album 'Hum Dono' by Joe Harriott and Amancio D'Silva was about to be released on CD. I know that the track 'Jaipur' was included on one of Gilles Peterson's Impressed compilations but has the complete album ever made it to CD. And if not, why not?

Thanks Dave. I appreciate the trouble you've taken. Certainly pricey! I just wish I knew where this idea of The Long Window came from. Difficult to imagine a phrase like that. Oh well.

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been Peter Gunn but The Proper Time is certainly worth exploring. It is the right date, has the right sort of personnel and has a racy sleeve which would probably have appealed to me at the time as a callow youth! Still not sure where The Long Window memory comes from. A song title maybe? Thanks anyway for your help.

This is a bit of a long shot but I'm hoping that the wealth of knowledge on this forum can help me. I'm looking for the album that got me into jazz in the first place all those years ago. I'd moved on from beat boom stuff to blues and from there wanted to experiment with modern jazz. I belonged to a public record library and borrowed an LP, the title of which is fixed in my head as 'The Long Window'. This was cool West Coast stuff and could have been on something like the Contemporary label ( although research in the discographies has not been productive ). Again, Shelly Manne's name keeps coming back to me. The album dates from the 50s, or possibly early 60s. I'm pretty sure it featured vibes. My internet searches have not yet been fruitful although I have found a US crime novel titled 'The Long Window' by John Eshelman Morton which fits date-wise. Maybe the album I'm looking for was a soundtrack? Can anyone help me?

Wait till you try the Smart Playlist feature. This lets you set rules for iTunes to automatically place songs that meet those rules into a playlist. For example, you might want one that collects all the R&B songs between say 1955 and 1959. Or one that gathers together all songs that have the word 'moon' in the title. Best of all, if you take the trouble to put a code in the Comments field for the relevant songs you can gather all those songs together ( I use JF to signify Jazz Funk for appropriate songs and then iTunes groups all those together in a smart playlist for me ). Then, for more fun you can set shuffle within a Smart Playlist to avoid the songs being played in the order you uploaded them or in artist order etc. I can't understand why anyone would have a problem with iTunes. Its not particularly sexy to look at but it does what it does extremely well.