medjuck

I think I have everything available by Gil Evan except some arrangements he did for a Pearl Bailey record. (Can't find it.) I even have his stuff for Johnny Mathis. That takes up less than one shelf. Virtually everything by Miles takes up two shelfs. On the other hand there's Ellington. I keep telling myself I can't get everything, but then I discover something I ignored is really good. But I swear I'm never getting the Mary Poppins album. Please don't tell me it's really good.

Well Duke Ellington wrote a piece called "The Road of the Phoebe Snow" and it had nothing to do with the singer.

What's this in reference to? Did they have a fight?

Wow Thanks. Where did you find the radio broadcast? In The Times?

Hey I've been to Dylan concerts where people in the audience didn't recognize Dylan. (He tends to hide behind the keyboard nowadays. ) And they couldn't recognize the songs either.

A couple of years ago I downloaded several Evans' live concerts from a website I believe no longer exists. One of them was labeled as "At the Village Gate" but there's no reference in either of the Gil Evans biographies of his playing there. Does anyone recall or know of an Evans band playing the Village Gate and when that might have been? ( The concert has several Hendrix compositions so it must be from after '76.)

Wow! I was just listening to a Dylan Theme Time Radio hour where he talked about Dickinson after playing a song by a group he lead (the Mud something or other). I fins it strange that the Times thinks he'll be best remembered because of his sons' group.

I hate to say anything bad about Mosaic but I don't like the "new" look of the catalogue and it's full of typos that make some sentences difficult to understand. They may be suffering from the credit crunch. Having orders you can't fulfill suggests their bank won't extent any credit.

Wow! Great website. Answers all my questions. Thanks!

The DVD release of A Great Day in Harlem has as an extra a short film called "The Spitball Story" about this incident. Has anyone ever seen it?

Donna Lee!! That 's it. What's "Fried Bananas"?

Saw Lyle Lovett and his large band last night. Before he came on stage the band played "(Way Back Home In) Indiana" and at one point did a chorus of a bop tune I recognized but I couldn't remember the name or composer. Can anyone help? (Similarly The Ellington band used to play How High the Moon and do a couple of choruses of Ornithology in the midst of it.)

Just ordered a copy--thanks for the tip. This disc got very positive reviews from Dave Gelly in the Observer and John Fordham in the Guardian, who added "this may be a set for the cognoscenti". I guess we pass the test! Excerpts I've heard online sound fine. Will be buying. Part of the fun with these is hearing these arrangements in well recorded stereo. The tuba parts become really distinct.

ttp://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/08/miles-davis-and-gil-evans-recreated-at-the-hollywood-bowl.html He makes me wish I'd seen the concert but his final paragraph suggests that he agrees with Chuck that this sort of thing will lead to the death of jazz. OK the link doesn't seem to work so here's the review: Here’s where I get in trouble. Jazz hasn’t figured out how to be a classical music, and I hope it never does. At the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday night, extensive selections of three famous albums from the late ‘50s by Miles Davis and arranger Gil Evans – “Miles Ahead,” “Porgy and Bess” and “Sketches of Spain” – were performed. This was in some ways the most sophisticated classical concert of the summer season. The program notes by Evans biographer Larry Hicock were longer, more detailed and more scholarly than those provided for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s classical series. Though created for the occasion, the 20-piece jazz orchestra had the kind of connection with history that made it the Vienna Philharmonic of jazz. Drummer Jimmy Cobb joined in; he played on the original recordings. Tuba player Howard Johnson is an Evans alumnus. The band’s musical director and one of Wednesday’s soloists was Miles Evans, Gil Evans' son. Vince Mendoza conducted expertly. (Unfortunately, the band was jazz’s Vienna Philharmonic in another way as well – the only women were the harpist and bassoonist.) The three Davis-Evans recordings have been celebrated for expanding jazz forms. Each is a concerto in suite form for Davis as soloist and jazz orchestra. The mixture of composed music and improvisation is fluid and the extraordinary dialogue between Davis and Evans is unlike anything that has occurred in classical music or jazz. But the albums are also “composed,” assembled from bits and pieces from many takes into a finished product. Davis and Evans were never in doubt about what kind of masterpieces they had created, music that lived and breathed but that were also the first great works produced in album form. As Hicock’s notes detail, they resisted performing this material live (and only did so on a couple of rare occasions). Meanwhile when Evans revisited any of the music later on without Davis, he changed it dramatically. Without Davis, the work became something else. In theory, there should be no reason why these albums cannot survive as live music. In the 17th and 18th centuries, concertos were written for specific performers and were fluid compositions that included improvisation. Sometimes the music only got written down after the concerto was played. Mozart, performing his violin and pianos concertos, may have been the Miles of his day. Now we are happy trying to re-create those performances best we can. Evans and Davis, on the other hand, gave us documentation for exactly how their music should be performed. But that documentation is more problem than solution. This is work of personality. Evans, an orchestrator, had a unique orchestral sound that is written down and can be re-created as readily as Ravel’s. But Davis, one of the most distinctive musicians in the history of music, was a different kind of personality. His sound can be imitated, but his trumpet playing, his improvisation and his amazing presence is not reproducible. Evans gave Davis a frame and subject matter, but Davis did the painting. You can put a mustache on the “Mona Lisa,” but Da Vinci was Da Vinci. To their credit, the two trumpet soloists at the Bowl, Terence Blanchard and Nicholas Payton, did a lot more than paint mustaches on “Porgy” or the “Concierto de Aranjuez.” Each soloist was an individual and each contributed some exciting and moving playing. Blanchard took on most of the “Porgy” suite and made it his soulful, driving own. His “Summertime,” for instance, turned on the heat, where Davis played in air conditioning. Payton was cooler and more Miles-ish. His low notes are things of wonder, and he was particularly impressive in Evans’ recomposition of the slow movement of Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Aranjuez,” which I think Evans' greatest achievement. Bass player Christian McBride, who completed his three-year term as the L.A. Philharmonic’s creative chair for jazz with this concert, served as its master of ceremonies Wednesday and told the audience that he credits the world music phenomenon beginning right here. Gunther Schuller, who played French horn on those sessions and who is now one of America’s most distinguished classical composers, credits “Sketches of Spain” with initiating third stream, the fusion of jazz and classical music that Schuller spear-headed in the ‘60s. But fine as much of the playing was – and McBride, on bass, happened to be one of the standouts – arrangements have a way of dating. Mahler’s re-orchestrations of Beethoven or Stokowski’s of Bach immediately announce their age in the way the original music does not. The same is true of Evans. He wrote for his time and his main man. Blanchard and Payton wore others’ old clothes proudly and well, but each is more valuable to us on his own. Indeed, the lasting legacy, besides the albums, is found in the work of great musicians who played with Evans and Davis and then went on to branch out -- pushing barriers in jazz and classical music. Schuller, it just so happens, has a new horn quintet that will be played at Summerfest chamber music festival in La Jolla on Aug. 16. Jazz has its classics, but it operates best when it moves on, including giving classical music a regular kick in the pants.

Anyone remember if the song Easy Living is played in the 1937 Preston Sturges written film of the same name? I haven't seen the film in many years but remember it as being very funny.

I just came across a cd entitled 'MOON DREAMS rediscovered music of Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan" by the Dutch Jazz Orchestra (the organization that's done four discs of rediscovered Billy Strayhorn charts.) Though many of the numbers were recorded by Thornhill or the Miles Davis Nontet the notes claim that these versions were never recorded. They're from 2 archives of Thornhill material and if you're a fan definitely worth the listen. Several of them seem to be for an augmented Thornhill band with 8 woodwinds, 2 french horns and a tuba.

see my first post - not sure about those +3 on "We Want Miles" and "Isle of Wight" (audio version) I had an edited version of the Isle of Wight performance on a 2cd set from the festival. Then there's the DVD with what I presume is the complete performance.

Am I right that there's nothing here that hasn't been available elsewhere? (And there's stuff that has been available elsewhere that's not here?)

Congratulations! What a great picture.

I was in Amoeba today looking for this but got confused because there were (I think) a couple of JSP Paramount blues boxes. Which one are you referring to?

That's the one reissued as a Masaic single. I just got it and it's really good.

54!! HAPPY B'DAY YOUNG MAN.

Hey they were playing your cd on the radio out here in the hinterlands yesterday. "Your Morning Cup of Jazz" on KCBX San Louis Obispo (though I get it in Santa Barbara).

I think there are a couple of other extra tracks on Indigoes as well as those from the mono release. Both cds are definitely worth getting. Sony should have put them out officially. I believe there are extant copies of ADIAW but that they are in black and white. You might be able to see it at one of the Museums of Broadcasting. (I remember seeing it when it was first broadcast but it was before we had colour tv in my area.

I agree with all this. A fairly new movie can be found on DVD for $9.99 but the soundtrack may cost $18. For too the only method record companies could think of to make more money was to raise their prices. Look at the rush here to buy things from the Concord/Oldies sale.