AllenLowe

I know, FROM EXPERIENCE, that if you price niche things high, you lose money; put 'em cheap, and you make money. Plain and simple. I've done it more than once.

well, neither have I, but he's been dead a long time.

I'm with Chuck. Those Black Lions are amazing. Then I would go back to the solo recordings from the 1920s and 1930s; also if you can find the first things he did with Lois Deppe (I think these were before the Hot combos); the big band is good, but I don't find it essential, except for Bud Johnson.

pressed in Camarillo? By the inmates?

my feeling is that if you chalk it off to experience, well, then, as I said, everyone would sound like Bird. But beyond this I tend to agree with Robbe-Grillet, who complained that bad fiction put too many layers of metaphor between the writer and what he was writing about - same with the sociolohy of experience, Artists create their own, alternative histories which transcend their own times and lives. Does not mean that those lives and times don't effect them - just means that ultimately it's irrelevant, because what they produce is either worthy or it's not. It's not improved by our knowledge of their color or their lives. Just more layers for the academics, I think. and of course Dizzy Gillespie told me once that the ONLY alto player who, in his opinion, captured "the rhymic essence of Bird" was Dave Schildkraut, who was white and Jewish (and btw, in my opinion, an influence on Coltrane).

Dave Gitin - years ago I told Dick Katz about the episode in Kerouac where he follows Konitz and imagines being him - Katz told Konitz, who was quite weirded out.

didnt he write something like "Jazz and the White People?"

otherwise half the planet would play like Charlie Parker.

on that RCA box, as I recall, I was bugged because there were some "breathing" artifacts from the noise reduction; the best sound, as I now recall, for the Armstrong RCA is the old French black and white twofer, "Young Louis" I think it's called; and the CD reissue of that black and white, if you can find it, is very good. This is one of the sessions salvaged from the Camden studios before RCA tore them down.

I agree that there is a "black experience" - but I think that music is much more than experience.

well, I think Cecil is right and wrong about composition; it is a form of improvisation, but there are other levels.

though beyond that I think there is a great deal of after-the-fact rationalization in Cecil's arguments, which weakens them. Meaning:1) after having praised musicians like Tristano, he is smarting from feeling the boot of rejection, as those guys had absolutely no regard for his music. Of course his response to that rejection is dishonest if understandable; 2) that he feels doubly rejected when he has praised certain white musicians who then rejected him (as with Tristano); which leads him to cite the cliché that whites, vis a ve jazz, can only imitate the feeling, which is of course nonsense (Albert Murray said something very similar to me years ago); the bitter truth is that imagination is a reasonable and sufficient substitution for experience, which is one thing that has leveled out the jazz playing field. Like it or not.

Mark- I don't remember the Journal American as being particularly one way or the other - just a mainstream, boring/respectable newspaper; which may be Cecil's point. and re-reading that whole debate, I gotta say, in line with Chuck, that Cecil is so far ahead of them Whiteys as to really make them sound like Whiteys. Such Liberal self-delusion and naivete is a little embarassing to read after all these years.

do you really find Glover to be in the same league as the old timers? I always found him (and Gregory Hines) awkward and clunky.

and only $8500 plus shipping.

I actually posted that at least 5 years ago - it's the Bennington thing, I think - what I found fun was that, at one point, Bernard Malamud makes a comment from the audience.

I believe he was referring to changes of undergarments.

as long as it's not inappropriate, I will plug our new 4 cd release, out in January on Music and Arts; with Kalaparusha, Matt Shipp, Noah Preminger, JD Allen, me, Ursula Oppens, Lewis Porter, Ken Peplowski, Randy Sandke, Ras Moshe, Christopher Meeder, Lou Grassi, Rob Wallace, Ray Suhy, and two Catholic nuns who wandered in when I wasn't paying attention. Title: Field Recordings.

interesting guy, but I would say he has no real jazz chops.

would like the following: $15.50 Han Bennink, Michiel Borstlap, & Ernst Glerum, "3" (55 Records Japan/FNCJ-5502) obi [trio] $15.50 Han Bennink, Michiel Borstlap, & Ernst Glerum, "Monk" (Gramercy Park - Holland) [trio] $13.50 Ab Baars & Mariette Rouppe van der Voort, "Veer & Haul" (Wig) [duo] $12.50 Michiel Braam, ³Michiel vs. Braam² (BBB) [solo; incl. lead sheets]

I agree with you, J.A.W; actually, what I frequently see JSP do is take other transfers and mess them up; de-noise them to the point of distortion. They recently completely ruined a potentially important Riley Puckett box.

Chris - was any orignal metal used for those? I thought I remembered Doug Pomeroy saying he found some, but not a lot, in Bridgeport, though I may be wrong. And some of those LP transfers do sound like masters -

a classic, after Ernest Hogan: All Whites Look Alike to Me I live in dis great country From sea to shining sea And one thing that I gotta say: All whites look alike to me Dose blond and blue-eyed virgins Who stand on every street They daddys all are surgeons They dress so fine and neat But every time they drop their drawers To show me ‘fore and lee, I gotta say, you silly ofay. All whites look alike to me I was married to a yeller gal From the old, old count-a ree We lived in quiet bliss I loved dat gal, you see – One day she went to her ma’s For just two weeks or three But then she stayed for a buzzard’s age Near Washington and Lee Then one Spring I heard a knock, The turn of a old key – She didn’t know I changed the lock While she was dancin’ free. She yelled, she screamed, to let her in She cried like a baby I said, you look good mama, but – All whites look alike to me All whites look alike to me

actually, Joe would probably have liked that - he had that kind of sense of humor. you know, I do hope they get it right, historically speaking, I have a theory that I'm the only one who knows why he and Bird never worked together after the Finale gig.

well, to quote an old song, "God is an American."