AllenLowe

all seriousness aside...it's been about ten years since I read Rosenthal, but I remember returning it to the bookstore, annoyed because of his bad historical judgements. Unfortunately, since the accident, I don't remember much about the book - anyone else?

saw it. bought it. took it to dinner. bought it flowers. took it home. married it. had children with it. divorced it. now only visit it on weekends.

I hear Crouch is opening up for Sonny these days - in drag -

I think I came up with a new nickname for Clapton - nor Slow Hand but flatfoot -

well said, and I would repeat my point that there IS something wrong with reproducing a project song for song and/or artist for artist. This is unfair to the original label. And we really should not whine about ripoffs as long as some Mosaic sets are getting $900 on the used market - prices like these are begging for some sort of response -

strange that using 78s is considered ok when it's NOT ok to copy from LPs or CD issues - the truth is that a 78 was also mastered by someone else, and the transcriber of a 78 IS using someone else's work. To me the ethical issue is when you reproduce someone else's reissue program, ie, copy their project song for song. There's nothing wrong, IMHO, with taking things off of CDs and LPs to issue in different types of projects. I've had songs that I mastered or remastered used on other projects, and I don't have a problem with it - and I've borrowed the work of others. As long as the label is observing all local laws than I don't think it's wrong. The bigger problem with labels like Proper is that they fu*k up the remastering so much - their selections are cluttered with digital distortion of one kind or another -

Suite Thursday - the version recorded live in Paris has probably the longest Ray Nance solo on record -

I've made a few recordings under my name, self produced and with larger companies - interesting thing, however: on the one"major" label I was on (for jazz), Enja, I received the least payment, or, in other words, I was ripped off the most. Made more money doing my own things - Enja never paid me for the Euro publishing.

this is the best Getz there is, though I gotta admit I still have some problems with his occasional creeping narcissism - which, in my (admittedly minority ) opinion, eventually took over - but VIVA Haig, Raney, and Tiny Kahn!

as I recall I didn't like it, spent to much time correcting, in my head, his mistakes - but it's been quite a while since I read it -

is it just me, or does anyone else notice what a rhythmically stiff guitarist Eric Clapton is? Compared to Bloomfield, Peter Green, Jeff Beck, even Jimmy Page, he is a complete flat foot , even on those old Cream concert recordings -

by the way, right-on, Larry - last year I was watching some jazz documentary on television, and there was a brief but incredible clip of Sonny in the '60s playing Three Little Words with a trio, clearly, of course, related to that Impulse release - I never found out where that came from but, short as it was, it was a real symbol of what we've missed all thses years of Sonny wandering n the rhythm section desert -

hey, my first CD has sold about 14 copies, one for each year since it was issued - there's nothing like a long shelf life -

my mother always told me, never take candy from strangers unless they also offer you a ride -

I don't think Saxophone Colossus was a hit, in any sense, as great as it was. One of the most insightful things about Sonny was told to me by Jamil Nasser. Jamil said that Sonny, who had been the tenor saxopohone king, was really thrown by Coltrane's rising star, and that this really caused Sonny to drift and experiment in a lot of not-always constructive, but sometimes interesting, ways (funny haircuts, playing on the bridge...). Paul Bley has always felt that Sonny, in trying to be "contemporary," erred in not always sticking to what he did best, which was playing from the Standard jazz repertoire (and he did use more open forms with Don Cherry) - Sonny definitely had some artistic confusion; I saw him, in about 1969, do a Town Hall Concert with about 20 bassists and himself - it was a disaster from the git-go, and Sonny just kind of disappeared from the stage in the middle of it. Personally, much as I idolize him, I think his drifting has continued with his groups from the 1970s on - loud, cluttered rhythm sections, mistaken by Sonny for au courance, great playing buried in poor sideman choices - but that's just my opinion - whenever I've seen Sonny over those years, I've always had to try and filter out everything but him - and there's not a single recording of his, post-1970, that I EVER listen to - I can't stand the little microphone he uses, and it just all sounds so frustratingly close but no cigar -

the hardest part was finding a chicken named smith -

...and George Lewis was taking pictures -

hey, it wasn't a big thing - I met her in the yard, we had a few drinks... the next day we both woke up in the coop -

Berigan - your check is in the mail (and now you can destroy that picture of me and the chicken) -

I just assumed you were talking to me -

not to mention all the old Steve Allen broadcasts et al that the network discarded - with major performers on them -

wrong George -

thank you - it has gotten much better since I joined -

with notes by George Lewis...

Carl Smith lives around here (Portland, Maine) and actually wrote a good book on Bud Powell a few years back. Sonny is an interesting guy. I've met and interviewed him twice, and both times it was a bit like pulling teeth, though he was polite - he only got animated when I happened to land on a subject that really interested him - and these were, as I recall: 1) the time during his youth that he went to what people have, later, referred to as "socialist summer camps" - summer camps organized by left wing political groups to integrate white and black youth - 2) The subject of saxophpones, which brands he liked to play, and which were hard to play in tune -