Milestones

Oblique is a great album, and the rendition of "Blow Up" is superb.

Ayler had that strange-sounding sentimental thing going on in his soft pieces. I can't say that I've ever grown fond of it. I'm also a big fan of Sonny on "G-Man."

I think I've overlooked Tootie a bit, but he was a fine drummer. It's sad to know that the last in a supremely gifted family is gone.

It is rather strange that there are just a few Horace Silver live recordings. I think he is best represented during the time he co-led the Messengers with Blakey; I think it was actually called the Art Blakey Quintet then. Maybe Horace hated live albums (as has been claimed on this board), but that's kind of odd given that Blakey seemed to love them. In his prime years, at least, Horace seemed to be on the road as much as Blakey.

I'm sure that the number of songs clearly "borrowing" melodies from Classical music (in or out of public domain) is well into the hundreds. Maybe the number has broken 1,000 by now.

I did not see any of the films and watched maybe three minutes of the Awards. That's pretty typical for me. I do go with the notion that there are still good films and filmmakers. But Kimmel had quite a funny line about the Scorsese film: "When I went to see ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ I had my mail sent to the theater. It’s so long, you could drive to Oklahoma and solve the murders yourself.” When I get around to seeing it, I'll be sure to schedule a dinner break and at least two bathroom breaks.

Rollins-Reece-Hancock-Carter-Chambers...pretty intriguing. Unfortunately, Rollins and Burrell are no longer playing.

A little tricky, but Joe Chambers released some Blue Notes quite recently--and he was quite active in the 60s, though only as a sideman.

I am sure Turre is well-compensated indeed from SNL, which I too have not watched for decades. Doing this kind of gig will give a musician comfort and more. That's not such a bad thing, especially when one can still regularly put out the kind of music that Turre does.

Some important names, for sure. Severinsen especially, given that he was the leader and amassed quite a discography. Not that I know anything about his records. Watts seems like a good parallel with Turre, though he spent only about 20 years with Tonight Show Band. You also had Kevin Eubanks from the Jay Leno era, but curiously Eubanks did not make any records of his own during the years he was the leader (following Branford Marsalis' fairly short stint).

I don't hear it remarked on much, but Steve Turre has been with the SNL band since 1985. If he puts in another year, that will make 40. It seems remarkable that he has done that job all these years and also amassed a large and diverse discography. I've really enjoyed a lot of his records, which for me peaked with Rhythm Within and Lotus Flower. The band has other jazz notables, principally Ron Blake and Alex Foster. They've had long stints as well, though their solo careers are several notches below Turre's. Question #1: How does Steve Turre manage it? Question #2: Is there any other high-profile jazz musician in history who has put in a stint even close to this length as a member of a TV band?

"Africa" (16:29) is an absolute classic.

It turns out that it works with Safari, which makes sense given that I now have an Apple. I have been using Chrome, which overall works fine on my Apple Mac.

I use to go to allmusic.com all the time. It was not so great for samples, but there were some nice reviews--and of course credits. It seems that I can't even go directly into it anymore. Sometimes I find a link in, and something will come up--but it's really just empty: no overview, no credits, no track list. What happened here? This is the only website that I regularly go to that is giving me trouble.

There's a bootleg that deserves an official release!