Guy Berger

Is the boldfaced statement definitely true? What about different segments of the market - new materials and reissues of relatively esoteric material vs. "mass" reissues (popular BN titles, Davis-Coltrane reissues)? If the audience for the former is younger than that for the latter..

HH’s albums for BN are probably the biggest duds for me relative to expectations, for any artist on the label.

The plot line of having decent young people hanging Even for seasoned horror movie viewers, the plot element of hanging out with earnest young Kenton acolytes might simply be too terrifying

So far have listened to Miniature, Fractured Fairy Tales, and Pace Yourself. PY probably my fave so far. But they are all really good.

I didn't articulate well. I meant to say that (at least prior to my post) the complaints in this thread were entirely about what was being reissued, nobody was complaining about the focus on reissues vs. new music. "Jazz's corpse - should we burn or bury?"

"Remember when you guys still made non-boring music? That was a really long time ago"

Just an observation: the main alternative to repetitive reissues presented in this thread is "stuff recorded a long time ago but still in the vaults", not new music.

Lloyd's best 1960s music: the stuff w/Cannonball & Chico, plus the 2 Columbia albums, plus Dream Weaver. There's some good stuff on the Atlantic albums but it's almost all at least a tier lower.

Yup. History is what it is and who knows why Bley never recorded for Blue Note even as a sideman, but Alfred Lion certainly had an affinity for unique piano players. Maybe he just didn’t like Paul Bley. @clifford_thornton‘s “non-salable” doesn’t ring true to me either. They recorded 2 Cecil Taylor LPs.

I think the slickness/smoothness of their sound is more of a problem for me than the repetitiveness.

I have heard only one of their albums - Holon - and tbh I don’t like their sound/style. Totally willing to acknowledge it’s a blind spot.

totally agreed.

I think I'd put Lee Morgan on there as someone whose average sideman work was superior to their average leader work. (Also, Blue Mitchell. I kind of feel he's a sideman even on his own records!) Also, though Wayne Shorter's Blue Note leader run is among the best on the label which maybe disqualifies him, his contributions as a Blue Note sideman are among the best by anyone.

Have any of the live recordings that have been released in this series NOT been either recorded by Columbia or already widely circulated? Guy

Savvy marketing. More jazz artists should probably do it.