felser

Infation factor between 1985 and now is 2.42, so that is like a $72 album today. It was enormous, but a great choice!

With you on Dexter, give me the best of the Steeplechase's for the decade. I also am glad for "Homecoming", with the Woody Shaw/Louis Hayes group doing the honors. They were one of my favorites of the era. I like Anthenagin/Buhaina also, dig Cedar's Rhodes and Mickey Bass's electric bass, as well as the Woody/Jefferson front like. I also really like this one for Watson's playing and Watson and Walter Davis's writing ("Time Will Tell" is one of my all-time favorites). I'm with you on Schnitter and Pomeranov. They were certainly competent, but not inspiring. Wynton actually brought some real fire to that group at first when he joined, for a while. The "Live at Bubba's" semi-bootlegs are my favorites. Things really blanded out with the recordings on Concord (as if that's a surprise). I wasn't finding a lot of great cutouts by the 80's (I did in the 70's), but was finding a lot of wonderful used records.

Tough era to start, lots of young guys in nice suits and hats doing polite albums on major labels. And cassettes at that. The CD revolution later in the decade into the 90's was a miracle.

PM sent with request for Three Sounds - Live at the Lighthouse.

I like those Joe Bonner albums, forgot about them. And "Essence" is the Kloss album I was thinking of. Fire with Hannibal on that one. 32jazz put out three extensive 2CD sets of Mark Murphy's Muse work, which seem to contain just about everything he did on the label, but in haphazard form. I would have much preferred them arranged chronologically by album. What a strange label 32jazz was, so very right and so very wrong at the same time!

Nice Dex set. Tough to pick just one from his 70s output. And I like the Byard.

Yep. Including gems by Eric Kloss and Charles Earland and the Visitors. Also some nice titles from the predecessor Cobblestone label.

Not a masterpiece, but an interesting listen:

I actually like the early WB albums ("Breezin" etc.) quite a bit, but they are a different bag.

Nice haul there. I consider "Beyond The Blue Horizon" to be the greatest jazz guitar album ever made, "White Rabbit" is a CTI gem, and "Body Talk" and "Bad Benson" are really strong. I also love the version of "The World is a Ghetto" on "In Flight", which you passed on.

Mathis was my mother's favorite. "Johnny's Greatest Hits", "More Johnny's Greatest Hits:, and "Merry Christmas" were the soundtrack of my youth, and I still have a nostalgic soft spot for them. I play that Christmas album while we decorate our Christmas tree each year.

Agreed. Getting from, say, "Afro Blue" to, say, "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" or "Every Step of the Way" (the climax to Santana's 'Caravanserai') is not a long journey. And of course Santana then blatantly recorded Coltrane in that album with John McLaughlin.

etc. Not that it's terrible stuff at all (it's not), just not enlightening.

The clip sounds great, would love to see that band! To me, the guy who really comes off great in the article is Azar Lawrence. Where was he for the 30 years between the mid-70's and the mid-2000's? Loved his work with Tyner in the 70's, and his albums since his return to the jazz recording scene have been strong.