AllenLowe

well, I've said this before, and it's not just because he sends me cash on occasion, but Chris is one of the major figures in the music business of the last 50 or so years - not just for his Bessie Smith bio, but for the musicians he produced and recorded and helped and promoted - and, as Larry Cohn told me recently, he was not well treated afterwards. To quote Larry (an important guy himself), "sure, there's ---- and ----- and -----, but for my money the guy who deserves the recognition for all that he did and accomplished is Chris Albertson." (I'm leaving out the examples Cohn gave because he was not diminishing these people, only making a comparison)

don't believe it - the first sign of his lies is the bio as given all over the net - that he served in the Army from December 1943 to March 1944 - interesting - how does someone, in the midst of a World War, get out of the service in 4 months? An injury? Bullshit, it is undocumented; the truth was that he used some political influence, had to enlist briefly as the wheels turned, and served out the war working for a newspaper - as I mentioned, there were well-documented articles on this coverup more than 30 years ago - this seems to be a Warmonger problem - like with Ted Nugent, famous Iraq warhawk, who got out of the Vietnam draft by the time-honored method of taking a weird drug concoction in order to make his body chemistry go beserk (Curley Russell told me how membrss of Benny Carter's band did this to get out of WW II) -

it was well documented in contemporary articles, but that goes back more than 30 years - will see what I can dig up -

since 1996 I have burned between 10,000-15,000 cdrs (used to do a lot of custom mastering and limited CDR runs); for my three reissue projects I have burned, maybe, 1000 - I use Tayo Yudens and have had, at most, 6 go bad -

best thing was during his rabid support of the Vietnam war, when it was disclosed that Harvey had dodged the draft during WW II - I kid you not -

well....my sad (and personal) experience is that no matter what they tell Downbeat ("I'm clean - it's a new me!") the truth is seldom so simple -

"I wouldn't know Giddins if I tripped over him in the street" well, wander down to 23rd street and 7th Avenue right after Happy Hour, and you probably will -

I don't know - even when he was good, he wasn't too good -

thanks Larry - I have discovered as I do my blues project that: 1) Jimmy Dorsey is a great jazz player, and a great bluesman (Praying the Blues, circa 1928) and 2) Miff Mole, who looks like a banker, is a greater blues player than Wynton Marsalis -

I love his playing and he was a nice and very gentle guy - used to complain that Ella Fitzgerald (whom he worked for for a long time) sang the same "improvisations" over and over again -

Giddins is a funny guy, and I was told that once you are on his shit list it is forever - when he reviewed American Pop in the Voice, he made a couple of annoying errors, and I immediately realized that he had read the liner notes and not the actual book (the liners were about 60 percent of the text). One of the mistakes he made was claiming I had not attributed something, which I HAD attributed in a footnote (but which was only in the book, which he had not read). I was annoyed and wrote a letter to the Voice correcting this, and some other things. His response? (I paraphrase but I'm pretty damn close): "this is typical of Lowe's writing, in which he appropriates the work of others and claims it as his own." to this day I regret not having sued the Voice, because he clearly libeled me as a plagiarist - when I have always bent over backwards to cite anybody and everybody to whom I've ever listened to or read. As a matter of fact, HE was in about 5 footnotes. Grrrrr. Still gets to me -

moonlight on the ganges -

I would give this idea a mixed review - some of the most boring stuff I've ever heard was done by great musicians, in person, who did know how to edit their stuff and who confused freedom with lack of direction - and it was always easier just to show up and blow - for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.............

jlhoots: 1) I know pretty much what he listens to but cannot, for personal reasons, disclose my source, and 2) we actually have a pretty good idea of what he was NOT listening too; it was something of a local scandal, when he was jazz critic for the Voice, that he had stopped going out and was completely out of touch with new music after the early 1980s - and did countless articles, instead, on Rosemary Clooney (a worthy subject, but one he went back to again and again), and Sarah Vaughan (ditto). He slept through the whole downtown thing in NYC of the 1980s and 1990s and the scene was all the worse for being so poorly represented in one of the major media outlets in the city - it was pretty pathetic and embarassing -

it's kind of like the old saw "nothing new under the sun," stupid and too convenient a way to hide the fact that one is getting old and jaded and has stopped listening - as Giddins has, quite some time ago. it ignores about 50 years of modernist thought, as well -

I've been to the Mill Run Theater (repeating myself a lot today) - she had a great voice - I like her Atlantic Album, though every pressing I've ever owned was noisy and almost defective

in the middle 1970s (yeah, I know, I've told this before) I was writing for some jazz mag and Neal Hefti was living near me in Brookline, Mass. He very kindly invited me over for an interview and introduced me to Francis Wayne, who was gorgeous and, sadly, just diagnosed with the cancer which killed her a few years later. He told me she had hated Hollywood and had finally talked him into leaving and coming back East, but just as they did this her health problems intervened. Very gracious lady, though she died in '78, Larry - maybe you were seeing another one of those damn Francis Wayne impersonators. Not as good as the Elvis clones, but better looking -

everybody, stay out of Philly - gotta keep the housing prices down -

walking on water wasn't built in a day

I love Anita O'day - almost met her, at the Blue Note in NYC, many years ago - Jean Roth, Joe Albany's girl friend, took me to see her - "I'll introduce you to Anita" she rasped (Jean, who died of lung cancer about 20 years ago, smoked about 5 packs a day) - during the intermission we went around to her dressing room - "Anita, it's Jean" she said, and pushed the door open a little. We peeked in and Anita was on her hands and knees, in a state of disrepair. She reached with her foot and slammed the door shut. Jean said, "that was Anita," and we left.

one more coherent thought - somewhere I have a DAT of me and Doc playing Chinatown, recorded in my living room -

thank you for the compliment, Skid (if I may call you that) - pardon my coherence on the last several posts - I promise to stop taking my meds -

all clear -

attention CHuck Nessa - trying to send you a message but your in-box is full -

DUBLIN DUBLIN UBER ALLES