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I just checked the Barnes & Noble web site and it is stating the publication date in June, same as Amazon. After the book is printed there are the logistics of shipping stock to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers. Members in Europe most likely order and receive items from Amazon warehouses in France, Germany, England? Here in the U.S. many Amazon customers are on Amazon's Prime program where delivery charges are waived (FREE), and most items that I order are delivered the next day! Would appreciate knowing what members in Europe experience with their booksellers of choice? The French Amazon site lists the price as €52.43. Jim

Interesting. Even though I don't know 2/3rds of these groups, there are some folks I'd love to see (e.g. Charles Lloyd, The Bad Plus, etc.) What do you think? Anybody know any of these other names ,you'd recommend? https://newportjazz.org/lineup

Sad to hear. I also enjoy When Destiny Calls quite a bit. RIP

About that final quote you stated (rawness and grit to the sound of sax players): I'd sure like to know, then, what he thinks of latter-day Don Byas and his changes of tone in the 60s? Still Lester-Young-ish? (Which indeed was wrong from the start) Or, for that matter, all those 40s/50s honkers, starting with Illinois Jacquet and continuing to (name your faves here)? Agreed with Rabshakeh, all these statements are bad - and at least bizarre, to put it mildly. But he achieved one major goal that some scribes seem to be out for. Get talked about!! Maybe a goal they seem to be out for even more today than ever before?

Just about everything on the Woofy label

He passed this week: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/william-zarif-obituary?id=61289125

Certainly! Great one.

Now I've read it. Interesting narrative though too well known. But it's nice to have this new summary as a reminder. It covers all his history from his early bop days to his last efforts, although it says from Kind if Blue to Bitches Brew on the title. It's a nice reminder of his groundbreaking career. And this number of Mojo also reminds us of a reissue which "may be the jazz reissue of the year": Thelonious Monk, Bremen 1965, a radio broadcast. Though I'm unsure wether this is the same as what got reissued into a 2 CD package some time ago. This time its Sunnyside who's reissuing it. Last time, in 2020, it was also Sunnyside. Though I now see it was a 1964 Radio Bremen release, together with a 1975 Radio Bremen recording. I've got it. And I just looked it up

Does this count?

April 22 Barry Guy - 1947

Thank you for this information. Keeping fingers crossed now that things will work out as your publisher told you and Amazon will follow suit ASAP with their shipments ...

Okay. Those are pretty bad.

Im going to Rome next week. What vinyl/cd stores should I visit?

In the late ‘70s my phone rang and it was Andrew Hill – I was astonished because we’d never met. He said he was back in Chicago because his mother was failing and he wanted to be there for her. He said he needed a “night out” and wanted to find some musician friends performing and he figured I was the guy to do that. A couple nights later I picked him up at his mother’s house and took him to Roberts Show Lounge to catch Jodie Christian and later the Enterprise Lounge to hear Von Freeman and John Young. A great time was had by all. The next morning Andrew was on the phone to say his mother passed while we were out and to thank me for making it all so easy.

Armen can play, and years ago when I knew him he used to complain and complain about not getting gigs. So I hired him for a Sunday lunch thing I had at Sweet Basil, a good, high-visibility gig that paid well. And guess what? He never showed up. When I called him up the next day he was not apologetic or regretful but completely indifferent; not the first musician I've known whose lack of work was not difficult to understand.

if you can, find his comments on Charlie Parker, who he thinks was just a harmonic trickster, essentially, who was a virtuoso but, to Freeman, uninteresting. How can anyone who thinks that be taken seriously as a critic? Here is from my Substack column about Freeman: " 1) He says: "He (Byas) came up in the 1930s, when tenor players were supposed to be just one part of a big band, taking the occasional, short solo without disrupting the action on the dance floor." This is a pretty bizarre claim; horn soloists, as Lester Young said frequently, were early on inspired by and offered their own prompts to the dancers. Lester said specifically: "The rhythm of the dancers comes back to you when you are playing." And he was far from the only one; there was Dick Wilson with Jimmy Lunceford’s band, Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster with Duke Ellington’s band, all of whom were public soloists for dancers. And more. Phil, try listening to some records. 2) He compares Byas' tone to Lester Young, which is….well, strange. Byas’ tone was not anything like Lester Young's but related to that of Coleman Hawkins, who was his prime early influence. But strangest of all was Freeman’s comments about bebop, which he doesn’t like much, and Charlie Parker. What he said about Parker was really a disqualifier; how can someone who does not understand basic musical principles write about jazz ? Freeman tells us, in reference to a bebop recording: “Anyway, listening to this mostly makes me think about why Charlie Parker’s music has never had the impact on me that it has had on so many others. Like, I can hear that he’s a virtuoso player, and I acknowledge his influence — he changed the way players after him approached composition, improvisation, and even their tone on their instruments. But any time I read about Parker being called the greatest saxophonist ever, or whatever, I always think Sure, for one particular value of “great.” “His melodically and harmonically adventurous, chord-flipping style (which he famously described as “playing clean and looking for the pretty notes”) is one way to play jazz. But it’s not the only way, by any means. Personally, I have always been more drawn to players with more rawness and grit to to their sound. And I don’t just mean free jazz.” "