Daniel A

Some estates obviously have an opinion, which might or might not be in line with what the artist would have wanted. I remember when a planned reissue of Stan Getz' "Sweet Rain", which was supposed to include unreleased material was allegedly blocked by the estate. But sometimes this kind of stories seem to be about money rather than "art". Some 30 years ago a friend wanted to rearrange a Leonard Bernstein composition for an orchestra we played in. He contacted the publisher, which said that the estate opposed of everything, adding that "Had Lennie lived, the answer would likely have been different, but..."

I sent an email to Hat Hut a couple of months ago, asking whether these recordings were licenced. There was no reply.

Povel is a really fine player. He has mostly appeared on recordings by other leaders, and partly buried in German big bands. But he had many nice features for instance in Peter Herbolzheimer's Rhythm Combination and Brass. He has always been a good contributor to every recording I've heard him on.

Astonishing performance!

A later post in that thread quotes an article written by the son of the founder of the firm Danelectro: Dad’s reverb used crystals and circuitry to turn mechanical vibrations in long springs into electrical signals that could be modulated to produce varying degrees of reverberation—depending on how far up you turned the dial. While Dad developed the reverb effect to mimic the rich sound heard in a concert hall or large room, Vinnie discovered that if you daisy-chained multiple reverb units together, you could produce an “underwater” sound—something you’d never hear in a concert hall. Together, Dad and Vinnie worked out how to produce this effect with a single device housed in a box topped with an array of pedals that enabled Vinnie to produce as much or as little of the “underwater” sound as he liked, controlling it with his feet while playing.

In the late 1990s I found a used Bacharach casette tape for around 50 cents. I became totally obsessed with this version of Wives and Lovers, to the point that I started a jazz group which (at least initially) performed only Bacharach tunes: Another tune we played was the under-recorded Promises, Promises: I definitely agree about the hidden complexity of his compositions. There's really nothing like them in the history of popular music.

Several musicians added, but not Liebman. Joe Farrell is on saxophone. Follow felser's first link above for discographical data.

Here is another recording of Lush Life, which is said to be from 1983: https://youtu.be/ILDqWHutba0 Hartman's appearance is similar, so these clips may be from around the same time. According to a comment from Hartman biographer Gregg Akkerman: "It was taped in April 1983 and he had not yet been diagnosed with cancer [...] This is probably his final performance anywhere."

"Sonny" seems to be in Db (if the speed is correct). FWIW, it starts on a DbMaj7.

Of course, that every second buyer does not own a turntable does not mean that every second LP does not get played. Probably, those who have a player buy more releases than the other group.

Haha! (BTW, the picture I posted was an actual picture of the Doctor - doesn't fully inspire confidence with me).

I couldn't resist to follow this up because of the Swedish connection. Mostly fake news. Some googling for the one named doctor in that article revealed that he is a doctor of... Theology. 🙄

Concerning what makes a pressing "defective", is there some sort of formal standard - like "Redbook" for compact discs - for vinyl LPs? I'm thinking that groove width and depth, frequency response, dynamic range and so on are all quantifiable. Or can you produce an unplayable record and still promote the product as an LP?

I now realize that this is exactly the point you made from the beginning, so sorry for somehow distorting it into something else. But it made me seek out a Johansson recording I hadn't heard in years, so it had a positive side effect. 🙂 What might be a point in another discussion, though, is that the influential Johansson recording (towards ECM) was not as representative of his overall output back then.

Has prices for Japanese pressings really come down? I haven't seen much evidence of that myself, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. And while the mastering of Tone Poets might (sometimes) be superior, my personal experience from (many) Japanese vinyl releases from the 70s up to the 2000s is that they win out from a production values perspective.

I think I own only one Tone Poet release, but this thought has occurred to me as well! 🙂

I think there's a lot more to Johansson than the somewhat sombre album of Swedish traditional songs that is the main reason he's still remembered in Sweden. He did work for orchestras and larger bands, wrote film music and so on. Whether that is ECM-ish or not I'll leave to others, but I didn't think so.

I discovered Rob Madna by coincidence a while back when searching for recordings of the saxophonist Ferdinand Povel. The 5CD box mentioned by Larry above is excellent. Madna's arrangements are intricate and have a lot beyond the surface, while they are also swinging and accessible. He is also a very fine pianist with splendid timing.

I agree with what has been said about the ever-present streak of melancholy, and I also think he had the potential to achieve much more. I watched the documentary many years ago and cannot recall details, but what does this mean; "tragic figure on a lot of levels"? What is it that was tragic besides his death and maybe to some extent unfulfilled promise?

BTW, are incandescent light bulbs still available in the US? They have been ruled out here, except for some very specific exceptions where LED lights would melt or otherwise be destroyed (ovens etc). However, before they disappeared, I built up a stock of hundreds of light bulbs in various shapes, sizes and wattages, so that I can always play back vinyl through my tube amp and read the liner notes in 100 percent incandescent light.

They don't. The liners don't explain the album title, though there is a nice picture of power plants.

As mentioned elsewhere by me and others, this is a solid effort from the Jazz Crusaders and a personal favorite of mine. Especially, there is some interesting material, such as two seldom-played Bacharach tunes - 'Promises, Promises' and 'Upstairs' - which I've never heard played any better than this. Now on to some serious questions: why does Buster Williams have two cigarettes on the cover photo? Different flavors, or maybe he had to hold Wilton Felder's cigarrette while he was tapping the dog?

Incidentally, that was your 27.000th post, brownie. Thanks for sharing your amazing stories from the most exciting years of European jazz!

For some of these releases SUISA is listed as the "Rights society" on Discogs. I suppose it says so on the actual CDs. If that is true, some mechanical rights seem to be honored at least. To me, this makes it unlikely that these are "true" bootlegs, but what do I know?

Better looking than the Blue Note watch...