Michael Fitzgerald

Funny - I went with Dan M. to the WFMU fair last year. This year I didn't go, but spent a few hours with him later that same Friday when he got back to work. As I'm not a "collector" I don't find the fair to be that wonderful. I can get just about all I need at much better prices elsewhere. Dan seems to like it mostly for 78s. Mike

But who is the leader? Certainly not Charles, Farmer, or Evans. (And has Lonehill tried ripping off Sony before?) Mike

I'm puzzled by this: COMPLETE 1958 MODERN ART SESSION LONE HILL JAZZ 10155 ART FARMER AND BILL EVANS This CD presents in completion 2 rare 1958 dates by bandleaders Anthony Ortega and Teddy Charles featuring Art Farmer and Bill Evans! In September 1958, the budding jazz director Monte Kay decided to put together a recording session featuring the winners of Downbeat’s International Critics Poll Award for the “New Star” category of that year. The winners included trumpeter Art Farmer, tenor saxophonist Benny Golson and pianist Bill Evans. The three musicians were joined on the date by bassist Addison Farmer and drummer Dave Bailey. Although this session marks the only time that the band was to record together, the unit produced eight superb tracks and an album that is widely regarded as one of the trumpeter’s finest. In addition to the outstanding Modern Art date, this CD boasts two exciting sets with vibraphonist Teddy Charles and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Ortega. ============== OK, I know what Modern Art (United Artists) is, no problem. What are the others? Is it Teddy Charles with Art Farmer (Bethlehem: Salute To Hamp)? And Anthony Ortega with Art Farmer (Bethlehem: Jazz For Young Moderns)? Or is there some kind of Bill Evans hook-up in there? He's on neither of the Bethlehems. Mike

Is it? Are you proud to have an actual real - "Live DJ" at your social events? Why not? The result is the same, isn't it? Now, where was that lip-syncing thread? The result is the same, isn't it? Mike

Is this # SV-0145 or a different catalog number? Is the release year listed as 1991? Agree that the misspelling is from the original LP. The jewel box version has the same, and the facsimile of the back cover inside shows it too. Mike

Here's what didn't make the CD issue: Shuffle Boil - John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Wayne Horvitz In Walked Bud - Terry Adams and friends Criss Cross - Shockabilly Jackie-ing - Mark Bingham, John Scofield, Steve Swallow, Brenden Harkien, Joey Baron Friday the 13th - Bobby McFerrin Gallop's Gallop - Steve Lacy Bye-Ya - Steve Slagle, Dr. John, Steve Swallow Mike

I'll see your listing and raise you - all the above, plus composers for every tune, all issued track timings, CD issue numbers and release dates, the rejected Harold Vick date that is missing, correct take numbers for your fourth entry (both tunes can't be take 15), master numbers (in addition to take numbers where known) for material after 1963 (including the post 1967 material where no master or take numbers are shown here), and the details of unissued tracks from all sessions (for example, the rest of the Fred Jackson date that is missing), also personnel exceptions (noting when someone sits out on a track or plays a different instrument). You can see the tunes in recording sequence on the sessions and in track sequence on the issues. 23 sessions in all. Available free to anyone who uses the BRIAN discographical database software (also free). Man, all this typing is just reinventing the wheel with absolutely no improvements. There is a better way than plain text. Trust me, I've been there, done that. Mike

Well, it would have been nice NOT to have bought the stupid thing - especially since it has only four tracks of the Bill Hardman session that I've already got on Savoy Jazz LP. BTW, the 2000 CD is 63 minutes - goddamn Orrin 'the butcher of Berkeley' Keepnews could have added nearly 17 more minutes - grrrrrr. Mike

Did some more research on this one. Bought a copy of the Savoy Jazz/Atlantic CD of Reflections Of Buhaina (9879-2 from 2000). The old Savoy Jazz/Denon CD of Midnight Session (SV-0145 from 1991) actually has BOTH Reflections of Buhaina AND Study in Rhythm on it. They just didn't make a separate track so Reflections of Buhaina is 10:58 instead of 6:44, which is the correct length. The Savoy Jazz/Atlantic CD makes these separate tracks (6:44/4:12). So, I'm a little bummed not to hear anything that I hadn't already, but it does help clear up the Messengers mess. Still need to hear the Vogue CD which Bruyninckx claims has an alternative take of Reflections of Buhaina. I wonder if those with other issues of this material could check the timings on their copies to confirm what is or isn't there. BTW, this is why including track timings in discographies is a useful thing. Mike

Could this be recently recorded? I know that Cleveland had an occasional group that he was working with - I thought it was four horns because he said he was using the Gigi Gryce arrangements from his Rhythm Crazy album. What is the instrumentation - trombone, piano, bass, drums, vocals + what? trumpet, tenor, baritone maybe? Or is there one more horn to form the octet without the vocals? Sounds VERY interesting. There is no mention of this in the 1989 Cadence interview by Bob Rusch (pub. 1/91 & 2/91) other than a possible passing mention about the Mingus Town Hall concert: "And he [Mingus] had some other people writing, too. I believe Bob Hammer, who's going to be associated with our [Jimmy & Janet's] little band, he was writing I think some of that music." So perhaps this is "our little band"? Would love to know more on this. Nothing in Lord or Bruyninckx. Mike

This stuff didn't sound good at any of the earlier reunions I've seen on video. It will probably sound even worse now. All three are past it, by my reckoning. And I was a supporter of Clapton up to 1985, when people were saying he couldn't do it anymore. I've heard nothing since to prove that he's still got it. Someone must have got an expensive new ex-wife who needs paying. That seems to be the cause for these kind of reunions. Mike

Use the BRIAN discographical database program and I will be able to give you the data for Jimmy Smith's Blue Note sessions. I've already entered just about all of them. All the BN Willette, Patton, and Young as well, and most of the Freddie Roach, Lonnie Smith, etc. Mike

I don't understand the question about this issue. The CD was released on March 25, 2003. Is that what you want? Or do you want to know the recording dates for each of the tracks? Disc 1: 1. Cold Duck Time = 4/15-16/98 2. Blooze in G = 12/16-17/96 or 1/23/97 3. Pork Chops and Pasta = 12/11-12/95 [unless it's live, in which case 9/29/96] 4. Killer Joe = 6/3-4/93 5. Georgia = 3/6-8/2000 6. Theme from Mission: Impossible = 12/16-17/96 or 1/23/97 7. Sundown = 10/24-25/94 8. Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying = May 1991 or March 1992 9. Pettin' the Cat = 4/15-16/98 Disc 2: 1. Hot Barbeque = 3/6-8/2000 2. J and G Blues 3. Pump It Up = May 1991 or March 1992 4. From the Pulpit 6/3-4/93 5. Yesterdays = 12/11-12/95 6. Down Home Blues 7. Playoff = 10/24-25/94 8. Rock Candy 12/11-12/95 [unless it's live, in which case 9/29/96] The remaining two are both from the album with McDuff and Gene Harris. Recorded 1997 - don't have exact date. Mike

Wow - what a shock to see an article on Milford Graves on the Metro Section front page (B1) - big photo too! Yeah, so not so much about his jazz playing, but still! Mike Finding Healing Music in the Heart November 9, 2004 By COREY KILGANNON Around the South Jamaica housing projects in Queens, young men with pit bulls guard street corners and rap music blares from car stereos. But one house, on 110th Avenue, seems to openly defy its gritty surroundings. Its owner, Milford Graves, has covered it with an ornate mosaic of stones, reflective metal and hunks of discarded marble, arranged in cheery patterns. The yard is a lush garden, dense with citrus trees, herbs and exotic plants. Mr. Graves, 63, a jazz drummer who made his mark in the 1960's with avant-garde musicians like Albert Ayler, Paul Bley and Sonny Sharrock, performs only occasionally now. He spends about half his week teaching music healing and jazz improvisation classes at Bennington College in Vermont, where he has been a professor for 31 years. He spends much of the rest of his week in his basement researching the relationship between music and the human heart. After descending the psychedelic-painted stairway into his laboratory, visitors are faced with a collection of drums from around the world, surrounding a network of computers. Wooden African idols spiked with nails rub up against medical anatomical models. Amid a vast inventory of herbs, roots and plant extracts sits an old wooden recliner equipped with four electronic stethoscopes connected to computers displaying intricate electrocardiogram readouts. In 1967, Mr. Graves was honored in a Down Beat magazine critics poll as the year's bright new talent. He had offers of lucrative gigs from artists like Miles Davis and the South African singer Miriam Makeba. But after years of hard living as a jazzman, Mr. Graves began studying holistic healing, and then teaching it. He became fascinated with the effect of music on physiological functions. "People with ailments would attend my performances and tell me they felt better afterward," he said. Curious about the heartbeat as a primary source of rhythm, he bought an electronic stethoscope and began recording his and other musicians' heartbeats. "I wanted to see what kind of music my heart was making," he said. In his basement, he converted the heartbeats to a higher register and dissected them. Behind the basic binary thum-THUMP beat, he heard other rhythms - more spontaneous and complex patterns in less-regular time intervals - akin to a drummer using his four limbs independently. "A lot of it was like free jazz," Mr. Graves said one day last week in his basement. "There were rhythms I had only heard in Cuban and Nigerian music." He demonstrated by thumping a steady bum-BUM rhythm on a conga with his right hand, while delivering with his left a series of unconnected rhythms on an hourglass-shaped talking drum. Mr. Graves created computer programs to analyze the heart's rhythms and pitches, which are caused by muscle and valve movement. The pitches correspond to actual notes on the Western musical scale. Raised several octaves, the cardiac sounds became rather melodic. "When I hooked up to the four chambers of the heart, it sounded like four-part harmony," Mr. Graves said. He began composing with the sounds - both by transcribing heartbeat melodies and by using recorded fragments. He also realized he could help detect heart problems, maybe even cure them. "A healthy heart has strong, supple walls, so the sound usually has a nice flow," he said. "You hear it and say, 'Ah, now that's hip.' But an unhealthy heart has stiff and brittle muscles. There's less compliance, and sounds can come out up to three octaves higher than normal. "You can pinpoint things by the melody. You can hear something and say, 'Ah, sounds like a problem in the right atrium.' " In 2000, Mr. Graves received a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which he said gave him money to buy essential equipment. Dr. Baruch Krauss, who teaches pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and is an emergency physician at Boston Children's Hospital, said the medical establishment has only recently begun to appreciate the rhythmic and tonal complexities of the heartbeat and speak about it in terms of syncopation and polyrhythms. "This is what a Renaissance man looks like today," said Dr. Krauss, who studied acupuncture with Mr. Graves and follows his research. "To see this guy tinkering with stuff in a basement in Queens, you wonder how it could be legitimate. But Milford is right on the cutting edge of this stuff. He brings to it what doctors can't, because he approaches it as a musician." Dr. Ram Jadonath, director of electrophysiology at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., said Mr. Graves's theories sounded plausible but should not replace a standard medical assessment from a doctor. "The heartbeat is a form of musical rhythm, and if you have a musical ear, you can hear heart problems a lot easier," he said. "Many heart rhythm disturbances are stress-related, and you have cells misfiring. It is possible to redirect or retrain them with musical therapy. They do respond to suggestion. That's the area where his biofeedback could correct those type of problems." Mr. Graves said he brings unusual strengths to his medical work. "To hear if a melody sounds right or not, you've got to look at it as an artist, not a doctor," he said. "If you're trying to listen to a musical sound with no musical ability, you're not feeling it, man." Mr. Graves claims he can help a flawed heartbeat through biofeedback. He creates what he calls a "corrected heartbeat" using an algorhythmic formula, or by old-fashioned composing, and then feeds it back to the patient, whose heart is then trained to adopt the healthy beat. The patient can listen to a recording of the corrected heartbeat, or it can be imparted directly through a speaker that vibrates a needle stuck into acupuncture points. "If they don't want that," he added, "I can give them a CD." Last week, Dennis Thomas, 49, visited Mr. Graves in his basement complaining of severe chest congestion. Mr. Thomas said his doctor had diagnosed bronchial asthma and given him medication that had not been effective. Mr. Graves said the problem might be related to Mr. Thomas's heart and recorded his heartbeat. With the help of a computer program, Mr. Graves tinkered with the rhythm and amplitude and then attempted to stimulate Mr. Thomas's heart by playing the "corrected" beat both through a speaker and through a wire stuck into an acupuncture point in his wrist. "I gave him a double shot," Mr. Graves explained. After 10 minutes of treatment, Mr. Thomas's heart rate had risen about 10 beats per minute, according to a monitor. Mr. Thomas, a city bus driver from Jamaica who used to study martial arts with Mr. Graves, said that he felt improvement afterward. "I started breathing easier and felt more relaxed," he said. In addition to his medical work, Mr. Graves analyzes the heartbeats of his music students, hoping to help them play deeper and more personal music. The idea, he said, is to find their most prevalent rhythms and pitches and incorporate them into their playing. The composer and saxophonist John Zorn called Mr. Graves "basically a 20th-century shaman." "He's taken traditional drum technique so far that there's no further place to go, so he's going to the source, his heart," Mr. Zorn said. "This culture is not equipped to appreciate someone like Milford," he said. "In Korea, he'd be a national treasure. Here, he's just some weird guy who lives in Queens." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/nyregion...a5bfe2b6296bb6c

1 track on "Latin Shadows" (Impulse, 1965) 1 track on "Soul Song" (Atlantic, 1968) 1 track on "Mystical Lady" (Cadet, 1971) That's all that a quick skim through the Lord CD-ROM shows. Mike

Well, yeah, almost - he is currently working on the Basie Verve studio set, which is 1952-57. Mike

There's also the earlier Afternoon At Birdland with Kai Winding, originally issued on Vik. That we've been able to hear the Rollins outtakes we know is a freak accident. Judging from what Scott said, we should be thinking "Victor" rather than "RCA" for the near future. Older material. Mike

There's a ton of unissued RCA Rollins (as well as other live Rollins material from that period). Don't hold your breath on seeing a legit issue. Mike

Mosaic box notes that the tune was misspelled on all previous issues. Listed as Bachafillen in the BMI database. Of course, the Lord CD-ROM lists this as "Bachalillen" on the Jazz Crusaders record Stretchin' Out. Mike

Besides, the RCA box came out afterwards and included much of the same stuff. If you want it, you can find it. Mike

I saw Scott Wenzel from Mosaic today. He said the BMG/Sony merger is a VERY good thing for Mosaic. Look for RCA material as well as blends of RCA/Columbia and related labels to appear on Mosaics soon. Mike

It is rare, but not unheard of for the Monday slot to be a different group than the Vanguard band. I can document Monday performances by Loren Schoenberg, Frank Foster, Tom Harrell/Sam Jones, Charles Mingus, and Chuck Israels The NYT ran an article about Haden who had led a smaller group for the week prior to the Monday and mentioned the one-night gig. There was also a little blurb on another day's NYT. Wish I could have made it too. Mike

It sounds to me like the search is absolutely nothing new since the 4.4.1 update and I remain skeptical that anything will have been changed about the cut-and-paste. I don't much care as I don't use that feature much anyway. If the thing installs properly on my computer I'll be impressed. The last one (v.4.4) took about a month's worth of back and forth with the tech people. It seems that Lord applies the same "get it out quick" mentality about his software as he does about his data. Mike

All the Lord CD-ROMs cover the same time period (well, of course, you do get some more recent sessions in more recent versions but you also get older sessions that were previously not included). So any would serve your purpose. The big difference is in how the search functions work and how the indices are maintained. There are some corrections to information beginning with v.4 (through letter Bou) and it seems that v.5 has more (through Goo?). V.3.3 search is not nearly as good as later ones. Only leader, musician, song. The other problem with buying the older ones now is that you don't get the chance to purchase subsequent versions at a discount. I will be interested to see what has been changed in this new version. There are plenty of errors, even in the updated A & B letters - will things like that be fixed or will we have to wait until the entire alphabet goes around again to have them corrected? If I recall correctly, v. 3.3 is *supposed* to be identical to the printed books, but it's not because Lord screwed up a number of song titles in an attempt to streamline things. In those cases, the books are actually more accurate. Mike

1964 would have been Clapton but definitely not Page who joined on June 21, 1966 (and never played in the band alongside Clapton, who left March 5, 1965). Mike