Stereojack

Although the original LP's were cheesily packaged, several of them contained marvelous music, especially the Dexter and Mingus dates. All of the records claim to have been recorded in 1977, which I have no reason to doubt, except for the Coleman Hawkins - Hawk died in 1969!

I have the LP - Fantasy 8019, stereo. According to the Jepsen discography, this was issued in mono on Fantasy 3221. Here's the kicker, however: Jepsen says this was recorded in August and September, 1954, yet it is a true stereo recording! Some of Fantasy's "stereo" releases are fake stereo, but not this one.

I heartily agree! I liked them best as a four-piece. When they added Cyril Neville they began to emphasise vocals more, and the music overall was less interesting. I bet they sold a lot more records though!

I saw Hardman twice - in the 1970's with Art Blakey, and around 1980 in a group with Junior Cook and Walter Bishop. He was a low key but thoughtful player. I like his mature playing a lot, especially the Muse albums.

Don't know whatever happened to Tatro, but I did meet Sleet's brother a few years ago, and of course the question arose. He informed me that his brother had been deceased for some years, but didn't go into details. Sleet was also a member of Lennie McBrowne & the Four Souls who recorded two LP's, one each for Pacific Jazz and Riverside. Don't know if these have been reissued. jack

As a long time Sonny fan, I just gotta throw my two cents worth in here. I love "The Bridge", "What's New" (an overlooked masterpiece, IMO. The long "If Ever I Would Leave You" is priceless), "Sonny Meets Hawk", "On Impulse", and "Alfie" (again, overlooked - Sonny plays his ass off). A lot of people point to "Our Man In Jazz", but I think it's just a little too rambling. "Now's the Time" & ""Standard" are OK, but seem too edited for airplay, and don't flow particularly. I loved his first "comeback" album on Milestone, but it's been downhill ever since. I finally gave up on his records by the mid 1980's, although they weren't as lame as a couple of out-and-out commercial titles he spewed out in the mid 70's.

In the very early days of stereo LP's, the size of the stereo grooves was larger than that of the grooves on a mono record, necessitating the dropping of a track or two from stereo versions of the records. By 1958 the variable cutting lathe was introduced, which made the engineer cutting the master able to vary the groove size sufficiently to include all of the music. A few Lp's which come to mind that had fewer tracks on the stereo versions are "Ellington Indigos" (Columbia), Count Basie "E=MC2" (aka "Atomic") (Roulette), Shorty Rogers "Martians Go Home" (Atlantic).

Bob Sunenblick (Uptown owner) played me a test CD of this a few months ago. I can only say that this is a major discovery. Of course Bob always takes forever to release these things.....

My original stereo copy of this LP, which I first bought back in the 1960's, contains "Loads of Love". I first discovered the variance some years ago when I was listening to this record at a friend's house, and noticed that "Loads of Love" was replaced by "My Kinda Love" on her copy. I recall (but am not certain) that her copy was an original, and the jacket & label did list "Loads of Love". It took us a little while to figure out what the tune was, and eventually I was able to locate a British mono copy that contained and listed "My Kinda Love". Eventually I found the Japanese release, which lists and contains "My Kinda Love" in stereo. Of course, I had to keep both for the sake of completeness! jack