Justin V

One of the two times I've been to the Village Vanguard was to see this Harrell quintet.

Yes!!! The Chu Berry is an amazing collection documenting the career of a tenor giant. It is a favorite of mine.

Disc 5

The best Concord cover ever?

Those shipping charges are a bit wacky on the surface. It gets bumped down to $5.99 per disc on additional CDs. $20 for the first CD and $16 per additional disc with shipping is not bad; it'd sound better priced at $15 per disc at $5 shipping for the first disc and $1 per additional disc, though. There are a few Fielder discs available on Amazon for $9.99 with Prime shipping. I ordered The Hipster (with Danny Grissett) yesterday, which was marked down to $3.74 (probably due to a damaged case, as it is back to $9.99 today). He released a recording from 1983 with a young Geri Allen a couple years ago that I'd like to hear.

I think that things enter public domain in the EU after a certain period of time has passed since the release date, not the recording date. What irritates me about this situation is that we've seen archival Monk releases in recent years that have been released without a hitch. The Carnegie Hall date with Monk came out on Blue Note after Concord had acquired Fantasy (and thus Riverside). The Olympia date came out on Hyena and Monk was under contract with Columbia at the time it was recorded, like the Palo Alto date.

Sammy Nestico - A Portrait of Sammy: I wanted to hear more Sammy Nestico and found a signed CD on eBay. Very cool. He turned 96 this year!

Bill Dixon - Odyssey: Solo Works: Wholly personal, uncompromising artistry.

I think this was Donald Bailey's only leader date (with Odean Pope, Charles Tolliver, Tyrone Brown and George Burton!). It was released on Talking House Records, which released two other fine albums in their Blueprints of Jazz series, by Billy Harper and Mike Clark. I recommend them all.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Simmons!

I asked my daughter what she wanted to listen to and she said Basie. With the special guests from the Old Testament Band, Jacquet and Eldridge, this one is hard to beat.

This reminds me a bit of the Ornette New Vocabulary fiasco from a few years ago. How could the album get shelved so close to the scheduled release date if an agreement was in place? Like with New Vocabulary, I ordered a copy just in case it wouldn't be available, although I am not hopeful that I'll receive it.

I don't know if I'd ever heard Childers as a soloist before receiving this album yesterday. I found a signed copy on eBay and was interested in hearing him with Russ Garcia's arrangements. I'm on my fourth back-to-back listen, which is rare. The combination of Childers' sunny, melodic flugelhorn and Garcia's lush arrangements is a fine way to close out a night or start the day.

94! I caught him a few years ago on a lark and he put on quite a show. He had a nice band with him, too (Mike Renzi, Gray Sargent, Marshall Wood and Harold Jones). Happy Birthday, Mr. Bennett!

Disc 3