Ted O'Reilly

An overlooked item in Freddie's recorded legacy is his beautifullly clear, beautifully recorded work on a SABA lp (don't know if it ever made it to CD) with Friedrich Gulda. I'll be digging out "Minuet", a duet with Gulda at the piano, from Music for 4 Soloists and Band No. 1 featuring Freddie, JJ Johnson and Sahib Shihab . It's from mid-September 1965, when the 27 year old was at the peak of his abilities. Stunning trumpet playing, showing off his studies with a 'legit' trumpet teacher...

I'm going to have to run out and buy a VHS machine, just to have as a backup transport...I have bunches of PCM digital recordings on VHS tapes that will become unplayable if I'm without a tape playback machine. And I'll admit I still use a VCR...it's hooked up to a Sharp Aquos HDTV, and records one or two shows a week, just as it did 20 years ago.

Thanks Lon. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the term "distributed." It implied to me that the audio work was done prior. I could be off on that, though. I'm listening to the set right now... The credits say "Produced by Doug Benson and David Sager for 'Off The Record'" and says that of the 37 disc transfers 30 were done by Doug Benson, 2 by Marty Alexander, 1 by Michael Kieffer and 4 by Steven Lasker. Presumably those 7 non-Benson transfers were from discs owned by Alexander, Kieffer and Lasker, who didn't wish to have them out of their own hands. Further down, "Distributed by Archeophone Records, LLC" is noted. Websites indicated are www.offtherecord.us and www.archeophone.com.

How very droll... (signed) Oscar Peterson Maynard Ferguson Georgie Auld Kenny Wheeler Rob McConnell Moe Koffman Ed Bickert etc., etc....

Thinking of these as "jazz tunes for Christmas", or seasonally appropriate: Claude Thornhill's "Snowfall" Johnny Smith's "Moonlight in Vermont" "A Child Is Born" by just about any instrumentalist who shows proper respect to the melody...

Peter Friedman mentioned Scott Robinson on C-melody sax, bringing to mind an LP (was it ever on CD) where he played everything...all the brass, all the reeds, all the rhythm. He seems to like odd instruments: helicon tuba, slide trumpet, double-bell euphonium, rotary-valved posthorn, ophicleide... Victor Feldman also did a '60s LP on which he played "Everything In Sight" as the cover picture showed, mostly various keyboards and every percussion instrument you can think of... James Morrison, the Australian phenom, did a big band record "Snappy Doo" where he plays everything but gtr/bass/dms 'cause he had Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Jeff Hamilton to do that. He also wrote all the charts...

TEN CATS AND A MOUSE Los Angeles, October 13, 1947 ...reminds me that Benny Carter recorded (at one time or another) on trumpet, trombone, clarinet, soprano, alto, tenor, piano and as vocalist. And of course as composer, arranger and conductor. Probably drove the band bus too.

I know Cadena well enough, just not a label named "Choice" that he had... Thanks. (In the Lord Jazz Discography, the only "Choice" referred to is the McDonald one).

The Choice label referred to here was started by Gerry McDonald. He was a saxophonist originally from Montreal, and a life-long friend of Oscar Peterson. He was a member of the Johnny Holmes band when the teenage Peterson was the pianist. McDonald is the man responsible for the November 1955 "Live at Zardi's" recordings of the OP trio with Herb Ellis and Ray Brown. I have the domestic Pablo release (2PACD-2620-118-2) which identifies the Granz-ubiquitous Val Valentine as the engineer, but it was McDonald. I used to have the original German release of it -- Oscar heard me playing in on the air before it came out on this side of the Atlantic, and phoned to ask "Where did you get that material -- it's not supposed to be released!" When I told him it was the German one, he simply said "Oh, okay." Since that version is not in my hand, I don't remember if McDonald is properly credited. The material is identified in Gene Lees' OP biography The Will To Swing, and Lees further identifies him as the man "who later became a recording engineer and founded the Choice record label". I don't recall any other label with that name...

Big deal -- switching from tenor-to-soprano, trumpet-to-flugel, piano-to-Rhodes or pedal-free organ.... Consider the talent of someone such as Don Thompson, the genius of Toronto (b. Powell River, BC): bass with John Handy and Jay McShann and Jim Hall -- piano with Jim, too; bass and piano and vibes with George Shearing; vibes on any number of sessions because I think he likes playing that most; drums on several recordings (and lots of percussion too); started on trumpet and flugelhorn; is a great composer and arranger; teaches everything at the University level, and is a recording engineer, too. He also (on too-rare occasions) writes about jazz with a clarity that few have achieved. Too bad y'all haven't paid attention to him. You're so provincial....

Well, Rob McConnell and The Boss Brass just played three sold-out nights last week, and sounded great, so... (If only Glenn Miller were a bigger influence on McConnell's writing....)

Sorry it took so long for me to get into this shit, like I think I was doing something else or thinking about it, but I think now's the time for you to get together again. The casinos are all like looking for bands to play on their nostalgia nights in the lounge, and I think like maybe I could talk to a guy who's been to one and talk about maybe getting you a real gig if only you'd be able to start to think about talking about getting together again. Or not. I've been thinking about considering getting into management or booking or like that stuff. If you want.

Hawkins, yes, a great improviser, but I never though Buster Bailey was anything more that a decorator. Nice embellishments, a hell of a clarinetist, but not creative at all.

Certainly a part of it is the customer, too: when CDs with 74 mins of space came along, many purchasers felt they were getting ripped off somehow when they got only 40 minutes of music. Into the void came Record Labels bumping up the time with unreleased tracks, some of which were good enough to release, but got bumped for time reasons, or had been issued on compilation albums and then returned to the original session. Alternative takes followed, perhaps enjoyed by real fans, but often blotted what had been a perfectly balanced original LP. False starts, incomplete takes and studio chatter were added to the sweepings, to be listened to once. I often take the bloated CDs, and recreate the original release on a CDR... I'd rather hear 40 minutes of GOOD music than what is often on offer.

Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass did a great Christmas CD for Concord. On the more traditional side, there's a fine LP for World Jazz (I don't think it's ever been on CD) by The World's Greatest Jazz Band of Yank Lawson and Bob Haggart; and the New Black Eagle Jazz Band did a great one for Daring Records that gets lots of play in my house.

Well, let's see what a Toronto equivalent would be... At a discount gas retailer, C$0.78.9/liter. At an exchange rate today of 1.255 that's 98.9 a liter. A liter is .9463 US quart, so let's say 4 liters is a US gallon, (close enough) making it 4 X $0.989 or about $3.96 a gallon. And Canada is your biggest supplier of petroleum, but you pay HALF what we do! (In Toronto, at least --probably cheaper elsewhere).

As Peter says.... (And I'd add, look outside the US artists... I've been spending lots of time lately listening to Putte Wickman of Sweden, Tubby Hayes of UK, Paolo Fresu from Italy, Henri Chaix from Switzerland, etc, etc.)

You're right...he's a maroon.

If it says Quincy Jones is the arranger, then it's probably Billy Byers who is actually the arranger...

I always thought that it was a marketing man who came up with Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Either it makes you buy twice as much shampoo, or the product isn't good enough to work the first time around.

k thnx bai ...and brought a strong strain of English music hall tradition.

Ah, yes: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Martin Beck series... But maybe we should be opening another site for topic, rather than poaching this one?

"Swedish Schnapps"! Good title for a tune. I'll suggest it to Bird next time I see him...

Back to hijacking the topic : Agreed! I suppose that they'll just reduce it all to 'solving the mystery', though Branagh is quoted on the website as saying "Wallander is a wonderfully complex and compelling character and, as a long time admirer of Mankell's novels, I am very excited to be playing this fascinatingly flawed but deeply human detective." Won't get much "complex and compelling character" in 90 minutes! Maybe we Wallander fans would be better served with an English-dubbed version of the original Swedish shows, as the Germans have done. (But maybe not: apparently all the Swedish TV shows are original screenplays, rather than adaptations). But this all makes me wonder "Why don't we English-speakers take much to dubbed foreign films and TV shows?"

For some reason, this brought to mind a radio station manager I once had who always said "You have two choices, yes or no", and would get pissed off when I claimed that was ONE choice. I chose to leave.