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bertrand

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  1. Michael Cuscuna has died at 75

    in Artists

    Posted · Edited by bertrand

    On 4/26/2024 at 10:33 AM, mjzee said:

    OK, I found it.  In the booklet to Blue Note's Nichols 3-CD complete set, Cuscuna wrote:

    PRODUCER'S NOTE

    During 1980 and '81, I systematically listened to every tape in the Blue Note vaults. Among my discoveries were 8 previously unissued compositions by Herbie Nichols, but no titles were provided for them. Circulating tapes among musicians brought only one title, "Riff Primitif," provided conclusively by Roswell Rudd. The search for the Blue Note recording files was still on and getting nowhere.

    When Hitoshi Namekata asked me to put together a 3-LP set of unissued tracks from the Blue Note 1500 series, I used "Riff Primitif" and another original that had similarities to a Herbie Nichols composition, "Argumentive". So I called it "Argumentative Variations" (it turned out to be called "Trio").

    Herbie's music is so startlingly original that making it available became something of an obsession. When there appeared to be no hope of finding Herbie's own titles for the new-found material, Charlie Lourie and I began researching a definitive set of Herbie's music. Roswell Rudd researched Nichols' life and edited the booklet for the eventual Mosaic collection, and I resigned myself to using "Untitled #1", et cetera, for the unissued material.

    Alfred Lion, Blue Note's founder and the producer of these sessions, was as disappointed as I was about the absence of titles, explaining that Herbie put a great deal of thought and meaning into his titles. But as luck would have it, while searching through the Francis Wolff photographs of Blue Note sessions that were in his possession, Alfred accidentally came upon the long-lost Blue Note session logs.

    Suddenly, we had titles. But more importantly, we had a road map to these five sessions of brilliant, complex music. With this priceless navigational chart through the session reels, it soon became evident that a wealth of worthy and different alternate takes existed. Added to the 2 tunes already issued and 6 more to come, we found 18 enlightening alternates.

    It is too bad I was not old enough to be in the loop back then. All of these tunes had lead sheets deposited for copyright. I had a bunch of copyright deposits pulled in the 90s for many composers and they are now collected in boxes, accessible to researchers in the Music Division at the Library of Congress. It is not advertised on their website, however.

    This is the same source used for many of the unrecorded pieces that the Herbie Nichols Project premiered.

    Now, the Nichols family found more music in a trunk, and Ben Allison just recorded 6 of them.

    Bertrand.

     

  3. Record Store Day - April 2024

    in New Releases

    Posted

    Whatever happened to Feldman's gig with Blue Note? What came out of that:

    1) Lee Morgan Lighthouse

    2) Blakey Just Coolin'

    3) Blakey in Tokyo

    Anything else? I could use some more Lee Morgan since that seemed to be his focus per the above list.

    It would be great if he could rescue the Grant Green/John Patton and the Duke Pearson Big Band Left Bank tapes from wherever Sunnenblick at Uptown was hiding them, but I have pretty much given up.

  11. West Coast Jazz with Herbie Nichols?

    in Live Shows & Festivals

    Posted · Edited by bertrand

    3 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

    It's kind of odd. I listed it on Discogs and my review copy was a CD-R. Allison himself changed it to CD and I changed it back, as it was blue and had the typical lack of matrix / runout that manufactured CDs have. He insisted it was a CD and I disagreed, not knowing that I was talking with him (or his representative).

    Here is the link to the Discogs page and the images I posted, view them and decide for yourself.

    https://www.discogs.com/release/29113399-Ben-Allison-Steve-Cardenas-Ted-Nash-Tell-The-Birds-I-Said-Hello-The-Music-Of-Herbie-Nichols

    One reason it makes it difference to me is that I have had some commercial CD-Rs fail completely, so I avoid them, especially buying them. Amazon is bad about sneaking in manufactured on demand CD-Rs of out of print CDs without listing them as such.

    That is exactly the problem. CDrs often fail after a short amount of time.

    I know Ben but I did not want to ask him directly. My hunch was right that it is a touchy subject with artists...

    Bertrand.

     

    PS: Afterbeat was written for Archie Shepp during the time they hung together with Roswell Rudd. I bet he would get a kick out of hearing it. Can we make this happen?

  14. West Coast Jazz with Herbie Nichols?

    in Live Shows & Festivals

    Posted · Edited by bertrand

    Their latest record consists of Herbie pieces he never got to record. 6 of them were in a stash the Nichols family recently uncovered. I believe it is the music that was purported to have been lost after a pipe burst per the Mosaic set. You can get the sheet music at jazzleadsheets.com

    Bertrand.

     

  21. Grant Green: Live At Keystone Korner August 1975 in San Francisco

    in Artists

    Posted

    On 2/22/2024 at 1:24 AM, monkboughtlunch said:

    Who recorded them?

    The writer isn't wrong.  😀 The whistle on the 1975 Oil Can Harry's date is cringeworthy.  

    In fact, it would be a perfect use case for modern de-mixing technology.  Digitally remove the whistle on two-track pre-FM mix-downs of live Grant Green recordings.  It would be kind of a public service -- like removing Yoko Ono screaming over John Lennon and Chuck Berry on the Dick Cavett Show.  😁

    Todd Barkan recorded a lot of Keystone shows and some have been released. It is a situation similar to Left Bank, no list as far as I know and perhaps no succession plan for tape ownership.

  22. Left Bank Jazz Society Concert Listings - 1964 to 1989

    in Discography

    Posted

    I started looking into the Jack session a few months ago. It may have been a Jazz Alive recording, which means there may be more.

    It is not clear when they stopped recording, but all the tapes they have been pitching to the Feldmans, Dorns and Sunnenblicks of the world are 60s and 70s. I would like to hear Old And New Dreams, Dewey Redman etc.

    It all goes back to getting a master list of what was recorded and what is still held. I am convinced there is more than one source.

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