BillF

Still dipping into the Pres/Bird marathon on WKCR.

Ian Hamilton Jonathan Aitken Geoffrey Archer

Don Rader Ralph Nader Douglas Bader

Big P Wee Dot Jimmy Riddle

Jessica's Day Lady Day Lady Q

I was born in 1939 and the background popular music of my childhood was jazzy - not to say boppish. I can remember the radio endlessly playing "Open the Door, Richard" (Dizzy calls this out on the celebrated "Slim's Jam" where composer Jack McVea was also present) and "The Woody Woodpecker's Song" (conservative jazz critic and poet Philip Larkin once claimed Bird's solos were endless variations on this tune!!!). Nellie Lutcher's "Hurry on Down to my Place" was another jivey hit I remember from the forties. So the background for a future jazz fan was there. The first records I bought were in 1956 in the first flush of the rock'n roll craze when I was 16. They were ten 78 rpm singles by Bill Haley and his Comets. A few months later an older boy who must have been all of 18 took me aside and said I should be listening to jazz. He lent me a Sidney Bechet EP made in France with Claude Luter's band. I still remember those tracks with French titles: "Les Oignons" and "Le Marchand de Poissons". Being a studious youth - I was to be at university within a year and not many went in those days - I sought a book on the subject. Unfortunately, I got hold of Jazz by the ultra-purist Rex Harris who dismissed everything other than New Orleans and New Orleans Revival. But this did send me to King Oliver, the Armstrong Hot Five and Seven and Jelly Roll Morton and those well-worn LPs are still in my collection. In those days in Britain everything in jazz was seen in terms of "trad" versus "modern" and I remember giving a joint presentation to the hitherto classically dominated school music society with Jack Shepherd (who has since become an actor of some note) called "From Morton to Mulligan" in which each of us made snide remarks about the other's taste in music! Another influence was a young piano-playing teacher with formidable boogie-woogie technique who had learnt Albert Ammons' solos off by heart from sheet music! Yancey, Ammons, Lux Lewis and Johnson remain favorites to this dayand I still can manage a little blues piano. But the big breakthrough in view of my future musical tastes came when I was 18 and heard Bird, Monk and Miles. The key records (and we had access to so few of them in those days) were an EP which included "Lover Man" and "Embraceable You", a 10" LP from the 1954 Miles session with a truly enigmatic Monk solo on "Bag's Groove" and an LP of Bird Savoy tracks. In the following years my tastes broadened to include big band jazz (Gillespie and Herman were the first to appeal), 1950s mainstream, hard bop and the Blue Note sound and Coltrane and Ornette. In recent years (I guess I mean about a quarter century!) I've been getting to know cool jazz: West Coast, the Tristano school and anything deriving from the Miles Davis nonet. Going to hear live jazz has always been important, particularly in the heyday of the music when a weekend meant hearing Tubby Hayes in a club or a concert by the Jazz Messengers or the Ellington orchestra. Most recently the internet has been very important: giving me access to wonderful jazz radio, enabling me to go on buying records as stores disappear and, of course, introducing me to Organissimo!

Margaret Dumont Groucho Marx Marks & Spencer

Louis Paulhan Louis Bleriot Louis Jordan

King Kong King Kolax George VI

sweet isnt it? Indeed! Sounds like we've now moved on to the Bird season. Large JATP ensemble now playing, including Bird, but not Pres.

Angela Merkel Avery Berkel David Serpell

Now on the second day of WKCR's Pres season. Thanks for the recommendation, aloc!

Alfred Lion Tiger Woods Cat Stevens

Just glad that someone, somewhere, is devoting that amount of time to musicians of that stature!

Mingus Magnus Magnusson Christiern

Charles Haughey Bertie Aherne Brian Cowen

Now listening to Lester playing "Peg o' my Heart". Sublime!

Why on earth did the management buy-out of Virgin Records choose the name zavvi? Half the time you can't make out in print whether it's supposed to be Z A V V I or Z A W I

Matthew Gee Bea Campbell Jay Leonhart

Thanks for telling me about that, aloc!

William Rootes Fitz Henry Lane Professor Harry Street

Wouldn't have picked you as the porn type. Gotta say it's it's the worst ever translation of a french movie title. From IMDB: The title of the film comes from the French idiom "faire les quatre cents coups", meaning "to raise hell". If 400 Blows is porn, then so are Howard's End and Hard Times

Fender Rhodes Cecil Rhodes Cecil B DeMille

Fred Quimby Tom and Jerry Ben and Jerry

Lonnie Donegan Ottilie Patterson Don Patterson