AllenLowe

the Encyclopedia has some excellent sources - as do many of the LPs in the French Black and White series -

"Is it possible that the use of the program just interacted poorly with other equipment used at the time?" there are a lot of possibilities - but I tend to think that those early reissues (I remember the Bixx single-cd was awful as was the Morton single cd collection) were badly transferred, possibly from bad sources or using the wrong equipment (styli, turntables, etc) - I know people who witnessed engineers throw metal masters on the turntable and begin recording without regard to stylus or eq - another tricky area, as I mentioned, is A to D transfer, which we've learned is so essential - I am certain that many of the bad-sounding European reissues CDs of jazz were/are related to this aspect - and I can relate this from personal experience, as I did my share of so-so transfer work in the early days. The built-in A to D converters in early DAT machines were generally mediocre at best, and the conversion back to analog than back to digital than back to analog etc etc etc (because many engineers were not yet aware of how important it was to keep things in the digital domain once the first conversion had occured) was sonically destructive. The graininess you may hear on bad reissues is the result of this. Another issue is digital clock stability, jitter, and digitial clicking Of course, as any transfer engineer will tell you, if the original source sucks, the sound will suck no matter how well transferred and restored. I remember doing one transfer, for That Devilin Tune, at Rutgers, of a Fletcher Henderson 78 that was in absolutely mint condition (My Pretty Girl). I transferred it to DAT on their turntable using a generic stylus and it sounded great than and it sounds great on the CD. Remember, also, that during the beginning of the CD age record companies were either unaware of where their original sources were or did not give a shi#, and rushed things and just used whatver the hell they could find. They have learned better now - though the majors still don't know the full extent of their holdings and have specifically declined any suggestions that they do an inventory; personally, my mouth waters at the thought of the existence of master recordings of early country musicians and early jazz musicians and early pop singers; we know they are there, but we don't know to what extent. One thing I started doing about 15 years ago was to buy up old historical LPs that were clearly done by the majors from master recordings - I own some AMAZING reissues of 1920s Brunswicks, old Deccas, Victors from as early as 1925, things that would astound you, that are so clear you feel like you are in the same room. I will go to my grave holding these things, as they are the best real link we have between that old music and today's world -

"Sonic Solutions No-Noise program, which RCA used on all of their 78 rpm jazz transfers at that time. To me, the artifacts are audible as a kind of swishing out-of-phase sound. To me, the "air" is sucked ouf of the sound also. To others, this stuff may not even be audible. " actually, you are incorrect in terms of the processing done at that time - in its early stages Sonic Solutions' program did very little, good or bad - some basic de-clicking and de-crackling, absolutely no de-hiss (there was no de-hiss program yet) - the de-crackle and de-clicking they did had nothing to do with the sounds you heard - those were either the results of bad transfers, bad original sources, or poor A to D (analog to digital) conversions - I have listened to that set and what you are hearing as swooshing is actually sounds from old 78s that are masked by other noises like crackle - when the crackle is removed, that's what you often hear - but I know with absolute certainty that the deadness on a lot of the Morton had nothing to do with "No Noise" which, at that point, was a new program with little real application. I have taken some of those tracks from the RCA/BMG box and re-Eq'd them, and the differnece is nothing short of astonishing - I even convinced Larry Gushee of this, and Larry, as the world's foremost authority on Morton, has heard just about every release and transfer -

I have 5 boxes of volume 1 (1900-1927) and 5 boxes of volume 2 (1927-1934) that were opened as promos and than never sent out - they are in mint condition, booklets and CDs, nothing's ever been removed - 9 CDs in each box - in the US I will sell each for $35 shipped media mail - paypal only (alowe@maine.rr.com) - Western Europe, figure $43 shipped each - inter-galactic, call for rates - first come first served, please email me at alowe@maine.rr.com order as many as you like, as long as I don't run out -

they actually showed some of this in the Ken Burns documentary -

misjudged, as well, I think, because he recorded too much, good and bad - classic junkie situation, anything for a payday; also, there ARE times in the 1950s when he does sound like Miles on a particularly bad day, like the Riverside with Haig/Griffin/Philly Joe; probably everybody was strung out that day in one way or another. - however, I have a feeling that those who hate him have not heard the post 1970s recordings on which he completely renews himself, not just as good as the old Chet but better, newly aggressive and creative -

actually, given the way things are going, I may join Braxton in Valium-land -

"Wynton is a symptom, not the disease." well, so is George Bush, but I still hate him - and Wynton, like Bush, is a willing carrier.

what's Australia? Are you sure you don't mean Austria? or Astoria?

I remember Herb Geller recalling a late Chet Baker concert; Herb: "He could only play one octave but nobody else could play that octave like Chet." I've always thought that too little distinction has been made between Baker's pre-middle 1960s playing and afterward. When healthy he had a new fire in his playing that really made some of this period his best. There's the Italian sessions (1960s I think); I heard him at Strykers around 1975-1976, I think, and he was aggressive and brilliant. There are some French concert recordings with Bob Mover that show this side, and a bunch of stuff in various pklaces, particularly from the 1970s, that affirm his new musical personality, IMHO -

it is true that in the late 1970s in NYC things were in flux, but there was activity, the loft scene, a lot of new independent clubs. But I do remember Barry Harris, at the time, talking about the difficulties of what he called the "in between" generation - musicians who were born between Bird and the 1930s and 1940s jazz generation, beboppers like Barry, Jimmy Knepper, Al Haig, basically a lot of mainstreamer types who suffered from the middle 1960s and on, in the wake of rock and roll, and who were not progressives in the sense of people like Julius Hemphil or Arthur Blythe, etc etc. (not that those guys were making a million bucks either but they did seem to have some niche, small as it was). This was the time when Barry opened his own club, and I would say that guys of his style were probably ultimately pleased by the rise of Wynton and the so-called young lions, much as they might have been annoyed, particularly at first, by the out-of-proportion attention the youngsters were getting. It did, however, open up some ears to their playing. As to the ultimate economic impact, I would guess that it was positive, but that is based purely on outside observation, not real empirical analysys (ie looking at the tax returns of every bebopper).

hey, take it up with Stanley Dance - well, I guess my original post was God's way of telling me I need a more exciting day job -

I want to refer back to Larry's economic issue, about how the expense of the Lincoln Center band has managed to eat away the jazz budgets of local presenters everywhere - Marty Khan, who has been presenting and managing avant garde jazz acts for many years, actually mentioned this issue to me back in the 1990s, so it has been going on for some time. Marty told me that Marsalis et all had basically destroyed the economic middle of jazz presentation - everything was either super expensive or super cheap. Now you have to hold the presenters responsible for this as well, as, frankly, they are generally idiots who don't know better, and I tell you this from personal experience, having sat on too many rubber-stamping jazz panels (before I figured out what was really going on). And we have to be honest and admit the same thing goes on at the other end - presenters who put on more progressive music often get stuck in presenting and re-presenting the same people over and over again. I'm way out of the loop know, but was a time that all we saw on the "left" were David Murray, Geri Allen, Don Byron, over and over and over again. Something like Spahn and Sain and two days of rain, than Spahn and Sain again. the more things change...

actually, Betty Roche was a travelling saleswoman for that company, which she founded - that's how Duke met her, when he was suffering one of his frequent bouts of insomnia - see Chapter 6, Stanley Dance, the World of Duke Ellington -

you need one of those Hezbollah missles with the ball bearings - just be careful not to hit a daycare center -

"Ka Ka Poo Poo Wee Wee Pee Pee" Ko Ko (Bird version) Ko Ko (Duke version) Wahoo (Perdidio changes) actually, alta cocker is a transliteration of a Yiddish phrase (Means old fart) -

you gotta do the math - after all, how many times does 77 go into 43?

lenny Bruce Bruce Wayne John Wayne Wayne Newton Francis Newton Arlene Francis Francis Davis Dave Davies Davey Crockett Betty Crocker Alta Cocker (will have to change the name of this game)

well, this could also end up in the artist section here - if it was Squirrel Ashcraft -

Randy Sandke - can play anything, writes beautifully - can evoke Box without mimicry - a great thinking musician, with lots of feeling -

Bock was in the film industry prior to this, I think - he wasn't, by any chance, a film editor, was he?

I like Schuller but, interestingly enough, he himself has tended to be critical of Ellington's longer works, using "classical" criteria - which I've always felt were not entirely appropriate to this kind of music -

flat, 10-46 - Dadarrio, they stay in tune and they are easy to play - no sense working harder than I have to -

I would disagree on some specifics here - I think Ellington WAS as great (no, a greater) composer than Copeland, whose Americana I find a bit precious and distant (as in vernacular music by someone who never really listened to vernacular music) - Duke wasn't the kind of composer, in a formal sense, that Copeland or Beethoven were but he made his own rules and he was much closer to the Harry Partch ideal of the domestic composer whose work relates to American speech, and contains a deeper and more indigenous kind of expression than, say, Bach or Beethoven - here's a relevant Harry Partch quote: (from 1941): "The ancient Greek and Chinese conception...as old as history - that music is poetry, has deteriorated...even when words are used they are merely a vehicle for tones. The voice is just another violin or another cello...with this metamorphosis...the ancient conception...was obscured, left to folk peoples...sailors, soldiers, gypsies...troubadours, Meistersingers, the Japanese Noh and kabuki, the folk music of England and our own southern mountains, the pure Negro spiritual (not 'symphonized') - hearers are transported not by mass but subtlety...the true music of the individual." I find Ellington to be within this continuum - also, to take this a bit further, find Larry Kart's essay on Ornette Coleman and "pre-tonal" music; it's in Larry's book and I would argue that it explains a good deal of the appeal of American country/blues performance -

I bought that LP for 99 cents in 1970 at Mays department store in Massapequa -