AllenLowe

you gotta guess -

well, they live on in our hearts - and our CDs -

original band was clapton - Jeff beck was next I think - and than Beck and Page together for a little while, and than Page - I may be wrong on this - Clem - I love their Sun reissues, have many of the CDs (in excellent sound) - I think there was a time when Sun was in something of a limbo, and than things got tight and the lawyers got involved - however, I'm probabaly condensing a lot of history here -

"We had a three LP deal with Bob Shad of Mainstream. However we were signed to his son-in-law Maury Apatow as our manager" - from a 60s rock group web site - classic Shad -

he was a crook - that was his label -

someone once said (and I am paraphrasing): "the interesting thing about Oscar Peterson is NOT that he makes everything sound easy, but rather equally difficult"

I know that picture of Haig - much as I liked him he was an odd-duck and a world-class cynic, and you never knew what he was really thinking - as for Lewis - I've always thought his blues playing in particular was pretensious and self-referential, a kind of pseudo-sophisticate/down-home approach. All right - here is a quote from a famous jazz pianist I once interviewed - can anyone identify him: "John Lewis? Why don't you listen to somebody who knows how to play the fuckin' piano, like Hank Jones?"

snub mosely -

Earl Swope - Willie Dennis - Juan Tizol - Sam Nanton - Lawrence Brown - JC Higginbotham - Dickey Wells -

Bob Shad - 'nuff said -

well, he's dead, but that's OK -

1) I remember a story that Konitz told when he did the Birth of the Cool for a Smithsonian concert - he had called Miles a few times, who kept putting him off, so finally gave up and had the arrangements transcribed - after the concert Miles called Konitz and said: "Why didn't you just ask me? I have all those arrangements in my basement." 2) Interesting that Larry should point out what he did about Haig - Haig was the one who said to me he hadn't ever really listened to the sessions, but couldn't imagine they were any good because the conditions were so uncomfortable, and Max was away in a booth - I told him he should listen again, though I don't know if he ever did - at any rate, Larry is touching on something here which I've thought about a lot - (at least I think he is) - which is that there are real problems with John Lewis's piano playing, in a general sense (sorry Larry if I'm misrepresenting you) -

I had someone buy a CD from me - on paypal they paid me extra for delivery confirmation - well, this happened in the middle of winter, lots of snow this year, I work full time, and than I got the flu - so I sent a very nice email, explaining the situation, that I haven't been able to get to the post office and I'll just mail the CD -I even put 50 cents in the envelpe to cover the extra she paid for confirmation - well, she gives me a NEUTRAL for being slow to send - which I know isn't horrible, but boy, was I pissed off -

final bump -

last bump I promise -

personally, when it comes to clarinet, I like Jimmy O'Bryant -

the 1913-1914s are listed under James Reese Europe - a few years ago I did some re-mastering for a project that never came out; I found some of these cuts on an old French Black and White reissue that had acceptable sound - it's not really misleading in terms of "jazz history" because there is no actual jazz at this time - the pre-history of jazz is more than I can get into here, but the early recordings that we can come up with of ragtime song (Collins and Harlan, Al Bernard etc) are quite, in my opinion, vivid, and give a pretty good picture of what was happening (with the added early jazz recordings of the ODJB and the Original New Orleans Jazz band) - there's lots more, Gene Greene, Gus Haenschen, Lionel Bleasco - but as you see it's very difficult to get into this half-way - I have a ton of this in my own jazz history and, if things go well, there will be a boxed set appearing this May or June - as I said, it's more than I can get into here, but there's lots of recorded evidence from the time - also, Timeless Jazz had put out three ragtime volumes, and they have great stuff on it. If you like I can put together a quick discography.

actually, though I cannot comment on the legal aspects, the sound on Charly has been consistently very good - I have many Charly CDs -

best commentary and description of Wilson's work: Dick Katz in his notes to the old Smithsonian Teddy Wilson LP - absolutely essential - if anyone's interested I can photocopy them and mail 'em - also, an interesting fact - when Katz was studying with Wilson (probably early 1950s) who do you think Wilson told him to listen to? Monk, whom Wilson described as a rhythm master - so screw Oscar Peterson, who has described Monk as an important composer but an unaccomplished pianist -

let's not forget Eddie Bert -

well, the point is that we are trying to get a picture of the way people sounded, say, before 1920 - and that can only be done with recordings made before 1920 - an acquired taste, for sure, but essential to understanding early American popular music - anything else is second hand, even if fun - which is fine, but misleading in this context. Would you try to get an understanding of bebop by listening to a re-creation of the Charlie Parker Quintet from 2005? Not when there's plenty of the originals available -

Freddie Slack is a good pianist, though a lot of his recordings fall into the novelty category - T Bone did some of his earliest recording with this group, so that is definitely of interest -

one interesting (trivia) fact about the Birth of the Cool is that, though recorded in mono, there was a good deal of separation between the drums and the rest of the band - they put Max in a separate booth (on, as far as I know, at least one of the Capitol sessions) -

you're defintiely going to have to go to the net - but you may be surprised how much original recording material is out there -

NOW YOU TELL ME