AllenLowe

didn't mean to be too flip - it's just true that, as I recall, I frequently had trouble with their pressings - they're sort of the Paramount of LP labels -

or, if you call CSI, and they dust it for finger prints and they turn up as Chuck Nessa's, it's also likely an original pressing -

if it's real noisy, but one gets the impression that, somewhere behind the noise, there's some music, than it's an original Black Lion pressing-

I know I've said this before but it bears repeating - one of my favorite albums is the one Ellis did for Candid with Jaki Byard - I mentioned it to Byard once and he started going on about how great and important a musician Ellis was - but the kicker was when he said: "and do you know why he doesn't get any credit? Because he was white." good old Jaki - honest to fault -

that's what I would recommend -

too bad about the Mc Ghee - but Yazoo is a great label though, as I said, Nevins is a world-class a-hole -

I think Arhoolie has a Hackberry Ramblers CD -

what, no socks and underwear?

make it out to "cash"

I would suggest reading Larry's book, and I will add (and I'm not just saying this because Larry sends me monthly checks) that he is, to my way of thinking, simply one of the most insightfull jazz critics anywhere. I'm always a bit wary of testimony that one cannot understand the music without "living the life" or understanding the blood sweat and tears of it - I'm wary of the anti-intellectualism of this, and because the best jazz critics I've ever known were all non-musicians -

-some kind of Satanic worship -

it's a weird Scandanavian thing -

sorry, it does not matter a bit if you can play the stuff or not, especially when you're a critic of Larry Kart's caliber - and if especially if you've ever read Brookmeyer's assesments of fellow musicians, which are horribly harsh. The truth is the music, and if a critic can give us insight into that, it doesn't matter if he's a player, critic, or garbage man -

plenty left: Lee Morgan/Best of-Bue Note Years. Blue Note. $6 shipped. Cannonball Adderley. Know What I Mean. OJC. $6 shipped. MJQ. Fontessa. Atlantic. $6 shipped. Art Pepper. Live in Toronto. $6 shipped. Bud Powell. Time Was. Bluebird Recordings. $8 shipped. Bird, etc. Jazz at Massey Hall. Debut Japanese Issue. $8 shipped. Teddi King. In the Beginning. 1949-1954. Baldwin Steet. $8 shipped. Dizzy Gillespeie. Duets (Stitt, Rollins). Verve. $6 shipped. Stan Getz Plays. Compilation of Verve Recordings, w Raney/Jordan/Rowles/Roac. $6 shipped. Dizzy Gillespie Quintet. Copenhagen Convert. Steeplechase, w Le Wright, Junior Mance, Art Davis. $8 shipped. Bob Dorough. Devil May Care. Bethlehem. $8 shipped. Charlie Hunter. Copperopolis. Ropeadope. $8 shipped. Teddy Edwards Octet. Back to Avalon. Contemporary. $8 shipped. Stuff Smith. The 1943 Trio. Progressive. $10 shipped. Hank Mobley. Breakthrough. 32 Jazz. $8 shipped. John Coltrane. Live at the Village Vanguard. Impulse. $6 shipped. Bill Evans. Explorations. OJC $6 shipped. paypal, check or money order. email me at alowe@maine.rr.com

funny thing about Dominic Chianese (Uncle Junior) - in the late 1970s my brother and I played country/western music in various bars in NYC, where Dominic was a regular as a singer - very nice guy - terrific actor, too -

it's about time they got rid of Franki Valli, as he CANNOT act - that's cause enough to wack him -

I love that music ("old time music" is probably a good label, and I also like "hillbilly" and "country" as historically accurate) - that's about 90 percent of what I listen to these days. Yazoo is a superb label and they have the right idea about sound - they use enough restoration to make it listenable but they leave the ambience. The current proprietor is Rich Nevins who, I think, from some personal dealings, is the biggest asshole on the face of the earth; he does, however, have the records (primarily, I believe, from the collection of the late Nick Perls), he transfers them well, and Yazoo restores them correctly. Just don't read Nevins's occasional line notes, which are the equivalent of Yogi Berra writing about literary history -

beautiful album - and speaking of Mating Call, I have a theory that Coltrane got the idea for the melody of Giant Steps from the opening phrase of the melody "On a Misty Night" - check it out -

or Mary Wells -

I don't think I made my point clearly - I wasn't talking about smooth jazz, per se - I was only pointing out that if you complain about an entire form of music while only listening to one segment of it, you're being myopic and betraying an unwareness of the big picture - it's like people who complain about current-day rock - there's a guy on my local FM station who plays incredibly intersting indie-rock groups that I would never encounter outside of that show.So it's there for the finding, but part of the problem is that the mass media have become more and more conglomerated - on the other hand, things like the interenet (and this group) are great antidotes -

I do tend to think that people who complain about how bad a particular category of music is just aren't finding the good stuff - it's like listening to a smooth jazz station and than complaining that there's no more good jazz - you just have to know where to look for it, and it's not always easy to find, especially if you're an outsider to the kind of people who make that music -

well, if you're talking out of tune, try to play an old Busecher, tenor or alto - and if you can make the octaves match you're a better man than I - I heard Sonny Rollins talk about the Buescher he played on Alfie and he said,"I loved that horn but I could not get it to play in tune." speaking of out of tune, Bill Triglia once told me that Dave Schildkraut was pissed off for some reason at the session he did with Ralph Burns and played deliberately out of tune - and sure enough, listen to that session and there's Davey playing just enough off-pitch to make the whole thing sound a little bit out of wack - but interestingly enough in Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz poll Burns named Davey as one of his favorite saxophonists -

funny, this reminds me of the time I saw Duke Jordan in concert, sometime around 1977 or so - it was at Cami Recital Hall in NYC - he had Tommy Turrentine on trumpet, who played the ENTIRE concert a quarter-tone sharp - it was weird. Nobody said anything, nobody commented, they just went through the set like nothing was wrong. At that pitch Turrentine played well, I guess you could say he was in-tune in the Bizarro world -

well, I actually like a lot of it - his analysis, as I recall, of the problems of jazz historians' metholdogy is quite brilliant and original - it's just that, in the larger picture, using Hawk and McGhee as a focus is problematic -

well, I've been hesitant to get too deeply into this out of respect for his memory, but it is frustrating to hear, posthumously, stories of few gigs and poorly-attended gigs - the gist of it is that Jackie, when I was booking that festival - and I heard this confirmed by one of the largest bookers of jazz talent - was asking for much more money than he should have been asking (or, really, is manager was asking for too much) - it was unrealistic and as a result he worked a fraction of the gigs that he could have - as a matter of fact at one point he was picked up by Max Roach's agent, who dropped him a few months later in frustration - and Max was one of the highest paid jazz acts at the time, so this guy was not afraid to ask for real money -