BillF

Alan Robertson, Joe Harriott: Fire in his Soul

My favourite Jaws is Trane Whistle - Eddie Lockjaw Davis Big Band, arrangements by Oliver Nelson and Ernie Wilkins (Prestige)

Tadd Dameron, Dameronia (Prestige LP) Tadd Dameron and his Band, A Study in Dameronia (Esquire 10" LP) Fats Navarro Quintet (with Don Lanphere, Al Haig and Max Roach) (Esquire EP)

Best wishes on your birthday, David.

Bob Brookmeyer Quartet, The Blues Hot and Cold (Verve/Polydor) Marty Paich Big Band, What's New (Discovery)

"Primitive Cats" by the Cy Touff Quintet (Pacific Jazz 1955)

I have been listening to jazz radio for fifty years and have been resident in the UK throughout that time. Of course, the BBC has been the mainstay of my listening, but the situation has never been ideal. The number of hours per week dedicated to jazz has always been very small, in comparison with the coverage of other sorts of music. This applied even during the "jazz boom" of my youth, when cultural elitism meant that only music in the European classical tradition was heard on the BBC's Third Programme, despite a pretty massive potential jazz audience by today's standards. Now jazz has been admitted to the Third's descendant, Radio 3, but has to share the few available "non-classical" hours with world and avant-garde musics. For me, the great breakthrough has been the discovery in the last year or so of jazz radio via the internet. Last year I emailed ghost of miles at WFIU to tell him that his show was more to my taste than any I could recall in a long career of jazz radio listening. I also listen regularly to jazz and blues on WGBH from Boston. So far, I haven't managed to hear Lazaro online. Perhaps I've been pressing the wrong buttons!

Of the fifty or so items I bought this year, the following are the most memorable or treasured: Mel Lewis, Definitive Thad Jones, Vol 1 (deleted CD, quite costly) Lanny Morgan, Suite for Yardbird (after seeing him blow brilliantly here in Manchester with a local band) Harry Edison/Buddy Rich, Complete Studio Recordings (What a swinging record!) Jackie McLean (with Lee Morgan), Consequence (As Larry Kart remarks in his liner note: "with performances that rank with anything McLean or Morgan produced on Blue Note. There is nothing here that is less than very good") Art Farmer Quartet Featuring Jim Hall, Live at the Half Note (another pricey CD, worth it for the sensational groove which the group attains on "Stompin' at the Savoy")

Charlie Parker on Dial, Vol 4 (Spotlite)

Super album - especially on vinyl!

Hope the recording quality is better on your vinyl than on my CD version (CDBOP 007). But probably not, it's bad enough for Bob Gordon to draw attention to it in his book Jazz West Coast!

Beautiful (and appropriate) silver and blue album cover on that one. Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (Blue Note 1518)

Charlie Parker "Relaxin' at Camarillo" Dizzy Gillespie "Woodyn You" Thelonious Monk "Brilliant Corners" John Coltrane "Moment's Notice" Gerry Mulligan "Elevation" Horace Silver "Ecaroh" Bill Evans "Turn Out the Stars" Bud Powell "Strictly Confidential" Tadd Dameron "If You Could See Me Now" Johnny Carisi "Israel" George Wallington "Godchild" Ornette Coleman "Blues Connotation" Miles Davis "Spring Swing" Gigi Gryce "Minority"

Wonderful album, which I first heard in about 1958. And how different it sounded from the classic quartet with Chet Baker, which was the only Mulligan I'd heard up till then.

Booker Ervin, That's It! (Candid)

Lee Konitz, Jazz Time Paris (Vogue)

Al takes some great solos on Elliot Lawrence Plays Gerry Mulligan Arrangements (OJC/Fantasy)

William D Clancy, Woody Herman: Chronicles of the Herds. Largely verbatim recollections by Hermanites and associates over the years, with the author providing only linking passages. Yet very readable. The account of Woody's final sufferings through ill health and pursuit by the IRS was very moving.

Richie Kamuca Quartet (VSOP)

Buddy Rich in London