Ken Dryden

PM sent: Thelonious Monk The Complete 1966 Geneva Concert.

As I recall the catcher was set up inside the box. I know that jerking the mitt from off the plate to the middle of the box frequently causes a missed call. The umpire just blew it. Fortunately, the Braves rallied and won in the late innings.

There seem to be a few umpires who attended the Eric Gregg School of Umpiring. I was very puzzled during the Braves game recently where Max Fried threw a two out two strike pitch well inside the strike frame and it was called ball three. He walked the next batter and didn't make it through the first inning. The announcers couldn't believe there eyes as well, it was not a borderline pitch.

I guess voters are wising up to this scam in some cities. These teams are worth a fortune and can easily afford to build their own stadiums, but if local taxpayers can be conned into it, or more likely, local politicians who get all kinds of access to games, then why not others pay for them, while insisting on retaining the income from concession sales, parking, etc.? Even dumber things happen. Local politicians here have approved a new baseball stadium for our AA minor league affiliate. They don't draw all that well but the current stadium, which isn't that old, doesn't meet major league standards and has awkward parking issues. To complicate matters, the building site is where a foundry stood for decades, so there's no telling what the hidden environmental costs will be when they uncover them. The push that the stadium will be multi-use and improve development around the somewhat blighted area is likely a con job as well, though the football stadium built downtown has seen a slew of apartment buildings spring up near it.

I agree that takes seem to have been rejected outright or incomplete after thumbing through Blue Note Discography. When a track has been bypassed when the rest of the session is reissued on CD, that's a sign it was either substandard, incomplete or lost.

I guess that including Meade Lux Lewis would be a stretch, though he was killed by a drunk driver after a gig. It was an enjoyable article, hanks for posting the link.

In case you haven't had enough foolishness, today, I submit this piece for your reading.. . The full article can be found at All About Jazz.

Track 10 is from this CD : Bengt Hallberg is better known for his work as a jazz pianist, yet he was the first one to make a recording on this newly built pipe organ. Given the organ/cornet duets that I have in my collection featuring Dick Hyman and Ruby Braff, I thought it would be fun to share Hallberg's recording with alto saxophonist Arne Domnerus. I'll have to admit that I've been getting on a Bengt Hallberg purchasing bing, this is one of several recent acquisitions, though the others are all piano recordings. I figured that most people would recognize "Just A-Sittin' and A-Rockin'" by Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn.

Although we have drifted away from discussing Zev Feldman, here's a recording on the Kharma label I'd like to hear:

Zev was telling me that I could edit a lot of his remarks, my reply was I usually pare down my questions and comments. He is an extremely gracious individual, he must be a great guy to work with.

There's a feature upcoming in the May issue of The New York City Jazz Record, I am not sure who got the assignment.

I did interviews with Marian McPartland, Milt Hinton, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Art Farmer and Benny Golson. I had less success being able to see many of them in concert. I saw Marian McPartland numerous times between 1988 and around 2005, I attended five or six jazz parties where Milt Hinton played, saw Sonny Rollins once and Count Basie once. It is the downside of living far from jazz-oriented cities. One of the treasures I have from Marian McPartland is two copies of this photo with a personal note from her. The first was sent as a postcard and the USPS mangled it, so she sent another, which I had framed with a glass backing in order to view her note.

Zev can't reveal future projects until all of the contracts are signed and they have a planned released date in mind. His public relations rep, Ann Braithwaite, tells journalists about upcoming releases but they are embargoed so we can't say anything about them publicly until the labels are ready for them to be announced. I did learn that he has a huge set of Jazz at the Penthouse raw tapes so I am sure he is checking out selected artists when he has time to see if there is a good fit for a potential release. Like with Mosaic, he and his partners have to estimate all the costs involved in producing a set, then decide whether they can sell sufficient units to make it happen. I wish that US stations and radio networks did a better job of archiving live jazz broadcasts, though I know he has uncovered a wealth of music in the archives of various European radio networks. The one time I wrote liner notes for a concert aired by NPR on Jazz Alive!, Mel Torme with George Shearing and Gerry Mulligan, I was disappointed that they omitted all three Mulligan big band instrumentals. I guess Concord Jazz couldn't justify a 2 CD set of the entire show, which I had recorded off the air back around 1979 before I got into my twin careers in public radio and jazz journalism.

I interviewed Zev Feldman via Zoom yesterday and it was a real blast talking to The Jazz Detective. I plan to air it on my show, which broadcasts April 14th, though I will gladly post an archive.org link, as few people have time to sit by a computer for two hours on a pretty Sunday afternoon. The RSD Art Tatum, Yusef Lateef and Chet Baker & Jack Sheldon RSD releases are incredible, still to be heard are the Sonny Rollins and Sun Ra. I may work in some of the previous RSD releases on Jazz Detective, Resonance and Elemental Music, depending on whether I do one show or two.

This arrived today and I've heard the first two discs. The sound is much better than what I heard on the preview track, although the label is still having issues proofreading songwriter credits.

Eric Alexander: Just One Of Those Things (GMLP) Eddie Higgins: When Your Lover Has Gone Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (GMLP) Christmas Songs II (GMLP) Richard Wyands: Lady Of The Lavender Mist (MLP) Please add: Barney Wilen: Inside Nitty Gritty (MLP) Passione (MLP) Be Aware that some titles were licensed and reissued under diferent titles by Sunnyside, while I think Venus Jazz also licensed a few from Sunnyside. David Hazeltine had a great quip about Tetsuo Hara's penchant for nude covers on his Venus Jazz CDs. He met Hara with his wife and asked him if he planned to use her as a model in the future? Charles McPherson brought it up in an interview I did years ago and he was disgusted with the cover of his only Venus Jazz CD. Hara defends it as part of his artistic concept.

I'll take this one for sure: The Three Tenors - Harry Allen, Ken Peplowski & Scott Hamilton Like The Brightest Star (GMLP)

They're both bad. A perfect example of a rotten remake, The Ladykillers, starring Tom Hanks. It was so over the top and vulgar that it just wasn't funny at all. The subtleness of the original British film with Alec Guinness, Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers was far superior. My wife walked out of the remake after 10-15 minutes due to the overflow of obscenities and by the time I had sat through the entire film I wished I had as well. Shaft didn't exactly have a diverse cast, but I remember enjoying the film when I saw it in college. It was as entertaining as a typical film starring a white guy as a detective. There was a terrible movie that I remember being released in the summer of 1977 when I was in grad school with nothing to do, a group of us made the mistake of going to see a supposed comedy, Between the Lines, labeled by one critic as "the American Graffiti of the 1970s." It was so lame that I started making remarks out loud from the audience and I was getting more laughs than the film. Finally, we all left after about 15, 20 minutes. We should have known it was going to be terrible, a group came out from the previous showing and everyone was scowling and one woman uttered, "God, what a waste!" The Blade Runner sequel was absolutely dreadful, far too long with a story line that made no sense, the villain's character seemed to be particularly badly written. Another example is the most recent CBS Star Trek series, I didn't even make it through the pilot, it was so bad. Glad that I missed the blowhard failure Stacy Abrams guesting as President of Earth in a later episode. Who is to blame, casting directors, producers, studios script writers?

At this time in my life, I feel that far too much of "culture" emphasizes politicalization more than creativity. Movies often seem to focus on diversity for diversity's sake, instead of telling a good story, what we get are boring, often insipid remakes of old films or endless half-assed sequels. The same can be said of various sitcoms, dramas and talk shows on television. I don't care what race or sex a character is, it's up to writers to come up with an entertaining plot and script that will develop the characters. Likewise in many genres of music, there have been a lot of highly promoted posers that have had little to offer. I felt rock was steadily going downhill back in the 1970s, which is why i narrowed my listening to groups already in my collection. Yet in jazz there are always young, up and coming musicians of either sex and various nationalities who produce compelling music worth investigating.

A Cannoball Adderley set could always be narrowed to a specific time period of so many years. For some reason, it seems like Mosaic was frequently offering sales on sets sourced from Capitol, other than the Nat King Cole.

My favorite was a musician asking Lester Young the last time they had played together, with Lester replying, "Tonight."