johnblitweiler

Howling Wolf Lonesome Sundown Sonny Fortune

And Joe Santos. He was so cool as Dr. Bob next to the intense James Garner in "My Name Is Bill W."

And my favorite Maigret novel was the source of a quite good Jean Renoir movie "La Nuit du Carefour," which lacked subtitles in English. Didn't need subtitles, either, Renoir didn't seem to change anything. Unusual to see a Renoir thriller.

Eugene Oregon Nancy France Elizabeth New Jersey

That's an excellent interview with Mr. Bradford.

Ali McGraw John McGraw Willie Mays

Anthony Ortega is surely the other San Diegan you heard. Yes, he and McPherson are both wonderful. Anthony is surely in his 80s now and I hope he's still playing.

If GA's experience is typical, it looks like we have to use Bing for 2 weeks to get a gift card. Too bad it isn't a better search engine.

Randy's Candy Cootie

Sorry, I keep forgetting "rock" isn't the same thing as "rock and roll."

Why did Concord buy Vee-Jay? Hard to imagine them reissuing the sacred music, and I believe Jimmy Reed was the only popular musician who stayed with them for any length of time. There were Sid McCoy's jazz productions, but would they interest the big-time operators who run Concord? How about a MJT+3 boxed set?

You guys almost got me started on another Muriel Spark binge. Read "The Comforters" and reread "A Far Cry from Kensington" recently, but now it looks like I'm up against a stone wall: "The Mandelbaum Gate." Almost all my books and records were lost in the fire last winter. But now I'm living a block from the first Powell's bookstore, which a WHPK friend manages. A few times a week they throw out books they reject -- slightly damaged covers, too trashy, too many, who knows why -- and the neighbors pick through the old boxes and sacks. Too easy to rebuild and add to your library.

Whit Dickey Dicky Betts Betty

Classic rock = Little Richard, Joe Turner, The Clovers, Fats Domino, other pre-Elvis, pre-white rockers, yes?

This is the very best description of what Charlie Haden did. Surely that's why Ornette loved him. A lot of Charlie's playing was pure Wilbur Ware, and he admitted it. Re Chuck's comment -- Charlie was some interesting guys but I don't believe he was evil, like Getz and some other junkies.

Blue Barron Barron Hilton Hilton Jefferson

Dunmall can be pretty overwhelming on just one CD.

Jamfs The Jive Bombers John McCain

Bunk Johnson was full of it -- that must have been why he was called "Bunk." It has been said that Franz Joseph Smith's first symphony was so unpopular that he went into haydn.

This octet album won me over to Lehman. It was issued not long after Jason Roebke's octet CD, which I also love. Both are distinctive composers. Lehman is more detailed and off-center and Roebke has errific interpreters (I may be biased).

A A (Alcoholics Anonymous) A A A (American Automobiles Association) 4-F (The younger generation won't know who this designates.)

Wilfred Mellers' book The Sonata Principle had a major effect on me. Did Rosen also write a book with that title?

Wow, that "Paper Moon"!

Ted Nash Joe Ford Joe Dodge

I've been having a lot of problems like this with sf in recent years. 100 or 150 pp. into the book, the writer's imagination is dazzling but somehow it all runs together, whatever is or was at stake got lost in the phantasmagoria. It seemed like the only reason for the story's momentum was that the author had a contract to write a 600-page book. This has happened to me with China Mieville, CJ Cherryh, Neil Gaimon, Connie Willis, a.o. writers, plus I preferred a William Gibson short stories book to the novel I read. Although Little Brother by Cory Doctorow is now a favorite. For a few years late in the sf Golden Era I loved to read Astounding every month, until a barrage of Robert Silverberg cured me. Nearly all of my favorites date from the 1940s and '50s. Delaney, Zelazny, and the other stuff that true sf fans considered high literature bored me. Interestingly, in the late 1960s when I tried to order a book by my hero JG Ballard from an sf specialist store, the owner, a big SF FAN, angrily refused to sell such stuff. Since the 2 novels I wrote are at heart science fiction, please don't tell my opinions to any of today's true sf fans.