JSngry

It's a concession to the Grumpy Old Farts jazz demographic. They tried to get Horace Silver, but Elvis insisted on writing his own lyrics to Horace's tunes. Horace said that that was NOT a total response and turned down the gig. Missed opportunity if you ask me. McCoy carpe diemed. Come early and stay late for this one! I used to get disgusted, but now I only get amused.

They alphabetize by first name on the website. Pet peeve! I've been if, not exactly burned, then heavily toasted a few times by their vinyl grading. At this point in the game, I feel no urgency to go there...or anywhere really...more than once a year. They also opened a store in Plano that is extremely underwhelming in quality of inventory, but their pricing seems to indicate that they think otherwise. It's just a few blocks away, but it might as well be in Waxahachie for all I care! But - I found a Mosaic on this tip here that I had been missing for years (vinyl only, dammit) at a fair price, with free Media Mail shipping, so even with Tx sales tax, it still beats the time and gas it would take to drive there and back. So, good lookin' out Al. Thanks!

That's the one. Willie Smith is unlikely to me. I swear it sounds like Dolphy! I'm a little skeptical of Lee Young as well, to be honest. But I'm not going to the mat on that one. Then there's the matter of the tenor players on the opener. I doesn't seem like they would be the apparent guest artists who hadn't been introduced yet. And from that...regardless of location, surely this was not the entire gig? What constitutes the further research, and were there other acts on the bill? The big band is HOT, what relatively little we get to hear of them. Ernie Royal, if that's who it is playing lead... that's how it goes!

I didn't listen to it on the radio, I was there in person. My daughter lives up there now, so we got to see the city, from all angles. Three stages, all in walking distance of each other. oh yeah, it's all free. Did I mention that?

If you want to travel, go to the Detroit festival. It's all free, and there's zero non-jazz/non jazz-adjacent music. I went last year and had a blast! Waiting to see who's being booked this year, and may very well go again!

Any idea who was in the band?

Pistol Nudde - Fire At Will!!!

He sings standards now and one of his songs was covered by Chet Baker. He's been married to Diana Krall since 2003 and in 2004 she did an album of songs they co-wrote. Plus, he used to be a rock star of sorts. So he can draw a crowd to a jazz festival, rightly or wrongly. And he's being backed by McCoy Tyner!!!!!!!

Oddly enough, there's a lot more jazz on this new bill than I thought. It's just 2024 jazz. And yeah, there's some non-jazz too. But even most (most, not all) of that is jazz-adjacent to one degree or another. I mean, if you market exclusivelyt o cranky old people...gotta build for the future. Louis Armstrong is dead. So is Mel Torm. For that matter, so are Marvin Gaye & B.B. King. Holographic shows, maybe?

Oh yeah?

Bob Wilber et al don't play "Dixieland" imo. That's why I enjoy them! They play jazz, period. But talking about them...what is there to say? It's fun, it's very musical, and...what else? It's also not surprising, it's not supposed to be. It's just supposed to satisfy. You want a surprise, here's a surprise

Well of course there was. Players stayed alive, needed gigs to live, and got them. And then other players get hired. As long as there are gigs, there will be players of whatever level of ability are available at whatever wage the gig pays. Bob Wilbur got gigs and they paid well enough to get good players. That's how long lives are most easily made!

Columbia Butler bankrolled the Marsalis bloat that fatally bankrupted the jazz department. Not for nothing do I still think of him as Dr. Death. Bruce Lundvall was quite good at finding that mix between the music and the sociology. George Butler was just clueless about music. Clueless and given a bigass checkbook.

Don't think it was that simple...the New Note Hitmakers got bigger deals at bigger labels. No help was forthcoming from the bullpen. Not unlike CTI. Bobby Hutcherson also made a series of not-very-well produced records during this time. Him and Horace were the last "pure jazz" artists left on Blue Note...and then there was Horace. Those were good music, but less than great records. They too were all in the cutout bins in quantity. Not only did George Butler not know how to make a good record, he did know how to run a business into the ground. Besides, given the marketplace dynamic of that time, if Horace's & Bobby would have made no-frills records for that Blue Note, they would still have gotten ignored. Case in point - Knucklebean. So much for the marketplace being an educated, reliable arbiter of music. The marketplace don't know shit about music, and when they get it right, it's usually because the music was in the same room with the sociology. And failing to recognize that as we age is not cultivating taste, it's just wallowing in nostalgia.

"No Ears" Winstonia - Is This Right?

The liner notes dither a bit about who the second alto is on the first "Hollywood Freeway". Based on tone and attack on a few bottom notes, I respectfully suggest that it might be Dolphy.

Actually, the only one that really bothers me is the 'n Voices album. The voices were done quite inartfully from start to finish, not sung well as a group, not mixed well at all, just a total slop-fest. Horace4's lyrics are always open for opinions, but I look at them like they are what they are, and I'm ok with that. But the tunes themselves, and the group playing (especially) are just fine, Some of the tunes are better than others, but that's how it always is with all but a very few Horace album of any era. Those voices are pretty ugly, but if it kills the rest of it for you...take a lesson from Cory Rhodes and don't give up so easy, The lesson here is that George Butler didn't know what the fuck he was doing trying to make this kind of a record. Did anybody try to stop him?

It IS in that "vein", it's the same freakin' tunes played the same freakin' way, just with "sweetening" on top. On top, not inside. No veins were harmed in the making of those records.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/08/europe/chechnya-music-ban-scli-intl/index.html

SO slavishly dedicated to the Bechet way for SO long. But he grew inside it anyway, slowly. That's really the best you can hope for with that type of thing, really. Find whatever unswept crumb remain and turn them into a meal. Wilber had the distinct advantage of learning at the feet of the master. I think that that certainly makes a difference. I think that Wilber and some others learned not just style, but also language. That should be the object of any music, but enough people will pay for style alone that it too seldom is.

Bob Wilber seems like an odd type of guy, but I tend to enjoy his work.

Is Lester really on these cuts?

And that's one from one of the OG albums that is none too shabby to begin with: