bertrand

Bon anniversaire, Claude! Ton ami, Bertrand.

Allen, That might actually fit in with my idea, or complement it. I'll follow up on this. Too bad Freddie is not in D.C. anymore (he was in the 80s). We could probably have made something happen a long time ago. I'll talk to Rene about it when things settle down. Now enough hijacking of Jim's thread on my part - when I've made some progress, I'll start a new one. Bertrand.

Freddie Redd is still around, but living in a trailer park in LA with no bread and no phone. I have a PO Box for him. He has been occasionally playing around. There was a gig around Thanksgiving (search the live shows forum). I've been thinking about ways to get him more gigs. I am pursuing one idea, but it's a slow process. Anybody else have ideas? Bertrand.

Allen, Is Godfrey still living? He plays on Redd's last BN session. What is the name of the tune Freddie named for him? Where does it appear? Thanks, Bertrand.

I knew about this date, but never noticed before the presence of 'Chan', or didn't make the connection. Of course, Bird springs to mind. I have a line on some 'ornithologists' - I'll ask around. Jim, this personnel info come from the CD, correct? Bertrand.

The Washington Post obituary confirms that his last gigs were in the summer of 2004. Europe and the Middle East are mentioned, so I must be remembering Turkey correctly. Sobering to think that I attended his last NYC gig. Bertrand.

Kreilly, The rejected session was rejected at Jackie's request - he thought the drummer ruined the date. This was in an interview in Cadence or Coda which I can no longer find. Soul Stream, I do not know what illness Jackie had. I just know that people who used to talk to him on a regular basis suddenly stopped hearing any news from him. I was always holding out hope (and certainly didn't want to post anything here since it was hearsay), but I heard that Barry Harris actually announced a couple of weeks ago in Baltimore that Jackie was very ill, and after that I feared the worst. When and where did you see him play? I was just mentally running through my head what the last public appearances were. I saw two nights at the Iridium in late May (not early) 2004 with Grachan, Hutch and Rene. I met someone who saw him in Italy shortly threafter. I think he was also in Greece or Turkey that summer. He was also listed as part of the Dizzy alum band in Newport in August 2004, although I'm not sure he was there. I didn't hear of anything after that. If you saw him later than that, this would be very important info from a chronological standpoint. Bertrand.

I had a bad feeling this was coming, but it still hurts like hell. Thanks for all the beautiful music, Jackie. We will never forget you. By the way, he was 74, not 73. Bertrand.

Last time I checked (2 years ago?), the Marriott across the street from my house charged $100-115 a night on week-ends. It's in Bethesda MD, and they have a shuttle to metro (there's also several bus lines). It takes about 40 minutes to get to the museums. You can also part at Grosvenor metro for free, if you have a car with you (the hotel charges $8 a day for parking). Downtown Bethesda (just minutes away) has hundreds of restaurants. Crystal City might be a bit closer, but super-depressing. Just high-rises all over the place. If you want to try some jazz gigs, we could do a mini-organissimo reunion. Twins jazz on U street has Jeremy Pelt that W/E - I was thinking of going. Send me a PM if you want more info on the Marriott. I don't get a commission for recommending them, nor do I get a break on my gym and pool membership! Bertrand.

I wonder if he's the idiot who told Benson NOT to join Miles' band. Bertrand.

... Vincent Wilburn!!! More later. Bertrand.

You gotta admit he was pretty damn funny in High Fidelity, though. I loved the scene where he's chewing out the guy who wants to buy 'I Just Called To Say I Love You'. Bertrand.

It's a tough job being a record producer. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. David was given the assignment of listening to the date and, as a musician, could hear what was 'a bit off'. Now that he chose to omit those tracks, there are some complaints. Had he decided the whole session was releasable, he would have gotten complaints too, to the tune of 'this is one date Blue Note had been better off leaving in the can'. My one complaint is that this session was first dismissed as 'needs to be burned'. That was obviously an exaggeration. There is an obvious solution to the problem of how to make the remaining material in the Blue Note vaults that is 'a bit off' but not wretched available to the consumer. Make these tracks available on iTunes or some other download site (I vote for iTunes since it is what I use). At $.99 a tune, and 5-6 tunes an album, no one could complain about having spent a fortune on 'inferior material'. A good candidate would be the rejected Wayne Shorter session which David has admitted elsewhere (was it all about jazz?) is really not a total disaster. With a bit of clever marketing, this might just work. I really don't believe the current regime at Blue Note could pull this off, to be honest. Bertrand.

I have a TOCJ cut-out of Holiday For Skins Volume One I got at the Tower outlet in NYC years ago for $7. I never did find an affordable Volume Two! This will plug a hole - I hate missing a Volume. Hope it shows up at yourmusic. My bet of waiting for the Andrew Hills from the first Mosaic to show up individually is paying off. Now we just need Compulsion!!! and the 1966 session... Bertrand.

Aaaarghhhhh.... I didn't know about the recycling of the tunes from Another Workout! I need to put EVERY Hank Mobley composition into my iPod into a playlist and use that to get them straight. That's what I did with Monk. I'll start a thread later to try to sort this out. Bertrand.

JPF, Glad to hear Stuart Kremsky is still with Fantasy/Concord. I was a bit worried. He was looking into something for me, but it had been a long time... How does one contact Stuart now? Thanks, Bertrand.

David Chessky and Chuck Nessa. Bertrand.

I need to clarify - I am not importing the data at all. I just put the CD in and use iTunes (or Realplayer) as the playback system. When I take the CD out, the files are not on my PC. So there is no issue of extraction speed. I did try importing to iTunes and whatever playback problem I was having got carried over. I have been extracting at the iTunes default speed. The sound is fine for me, and except for the rare problems mentioned above, everything is fine. In other words 500+ CDs went into iTunes at that speed without problems. Bertrand.

OK - I'm going nuts. Time to resort to my friends at organissimo to help me resolve this. I'm having a lot of trouble with Andrew Hill's new CD Time Lines. It seems to play OK on my CD player, but I hit some problems on my computer (both realplayer and iTunes). Near the end of track 7 and the beginning of track 8, I start getting pops and skips which are in different places at different times, just to make things more confusing. I'm on my third copy from Borders' already - they were the ones who recommended returning them, I was skeptical. I first assumed it was my CD-ROM drive, but I have been continuously uploading CDs to my iPod with almost no problems. Once or twice (very rarely), I've had a song skip, but when I download again, it works OK, so I was ascribing this to dust or something. Also, I had A LOT of problems with the Andrew Hill Mosaic - Discs 2 and 3 were not playing properly on my computer near the end of the discs (and even not always on my player). Mosaic replaced them and in both cases, it worked on the third try (i.e. they transferred OK to my iPod and played on my player - I haven't played them on the player in a while, but the versions on my iPod seem to work). Also, the defective copies had some visible bumps on them near the end. Not the Time Lines. So, what's the deal: 1) If it's my CD-ROM drive, how come it's only this CD that always acts up? I could replace it (it's the bottom one - the top drive has been screwed up for a while, so I need to replace that one anyway). But there's no guarantee that will work - I really have no reason to think this drive has a problem otherwise. 2) If it's the pressing, has anyone else had this problem? Should I send it to Blue Note? Who should I send it to? It seems stupid to bring it back to Borders' anymore. 3) Is this a secret copy protection thing? If it seems to work on my player, I guess I could keep it and spend $10 to buy it on iTunes if I really want it in the iPod. Seems stupid though. Any ideas, similar experience etc. etc? Thanks in advance, Bertrand.

There a couple of titles in this series that I don't have in any form yet, so I might check them out. Any hope they can show up at yourmusic.com? Out There is one title I'm tempted by, but I have to ask: how unberable is the cello? I've heard very bad things. I hate to sound picky, put I've had some problems with Ron Carter before, so this is making me hesitate. Thanks, Bertrand.

Sorry about the posting above being a bit curt. I will try to give more explanations. There is a treasure trove of recordings, video etc. in the Library's holdings, plus sheet music galore (including the thousands of copyright deposits I have been gathering over the years). Of course, the Library has to be strictly rigorous in releasing any of this. All the rights-holders have to give their approval. As a result, even though I have alerted some record company executives about the existence of this material (guess which), I think they are hesitant to take on the herculean task involved in getting the approvals. The Monk/Trane from last year was a glaring exception - I was amazed at how fast it came out. I know both T.S. Monk and Ravi Coltrane were very gung-ho, which helped, but I think there's more to the story but I haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet. Anyway, for the same reasons, I am very rigorous in observing the rules with respect to the sheet music collection. I only make copies if I have permissions. All this would be fine, EXCEPT I have good reason to suspect things have slipped out and I think I know the source(s), and this really galls me, because it could compromise my whole project. A certain board member (who hardly ever posts) chastized me in a PM when I said that I did not have a copy of some tape in the Library with some comment like 'everyone gets tapes out of the Library of Congress'. This pissed me off royally, considering how much effort I have made over the years to stay within the system, even though it has stifled me sometimes in my research efforts. So, to answer your question more fully, it is not possible to get a copy of this tape unless you have permission from all the stakeholders. This would be, at the minimum, the Lee Morgan and Freddie Waits estates, Billy Harper, Harold Mabern, Jymie Merritt and Bobbi Humphrey, and the producers and/or owners of the rights to the TV show Soul! (which probably included the estate of the late host, whose name escapes me at the moment). The same tape has a show on Horace Silver, so there's a whole new set of problems. Just getting permission from Horace is probably an insurmountable challenge. It seems ridiculous to have to go through all this just to have a copy, especially when it's obvious that a lot of us would gladly buy a DVD of this show (from CD Universe, of course ) if it were to be released. Of course, no one will go to all the trouble described above for something that will not sell all that well. Bertrand.

Absolutely not. Bertrand.

In the South Bank show on Blue Note records, RVG claims that splicing and overdubbing were required to get Bob Cranshaw's break on the head to 'The Sidewinder' just right. Bertrand.

Sure, just don't get her fired on my account!!! Bertrand. P.S. Ask her if she can get iTunes to carry 'Zero Gravity', the bonus track from Wayne Shorter's Beyond The Sound Barrier CD, available only in Japan or iTunes from MOST OTHER COUNTRIES

Add March 22: Strathmore Hall Arts Center, Rockville MD. Not mentioned on Renee Rosnes' website for some odd reason. Bertrand.