monkboughtlunch

I picked up the new Workin RVG. I was disappointed. I've never heard the bass sound distorted before. It's like RVG accidentally added excessive compression (beyond his normal amount of post production compression) and red-lined the meters.

The 1963 Quartet date with Ayers on Atlantic smokes. But Collectables screwed it up when they reissued it. They buried it at the end of the CD with another artist in front. Also the remastering engineer used heavy no-noise digital hiss reduction (which sounds like it was transferred from vinyl) and you can hear swirling digital artifacts during the fade outs of each track. A superb album given substandard treatment on CD.

Kevin, Has Cuscuna ever commented on whether Kenny Burrell's "Freedom" date will ever be issued on compact disc in this lifetime?

has there been any word from blue note on how to get replacement booklets?

haven't heard the original. i think part of the problem is the mix. also, this was apparently recorded by graham's in house crew. don't get me wrong, it doesn't sound bad. just not great. a little thin. mix is a little poor and there is significant ground hum.

Yeah I picked up the Aretha 2 CD. Good music. Suprisingly the sound quality is something of a let down considering it was mixed from the multis. The sound isn't bad, but certainly doesn't rival state of the are location recording of the period.

I read the report on the Tocatta having a misprint. I just received my copy of Royal Flush from CD Universe and it substitutes 4 PAGES from the Cooker RVG!! How do I get a new booklet if I ordered it from CD Universe?

There is a great site listing upcoming jazz releases called Jazzmatazz. But it hasn't been updated for a couple of months? Has the site been abandoned by the owner?

Is the Aug. 15 batch actually in stores? I haven't seen them at Tower or Borders this weekend.

I guess the Jazz Crusaders are selling, since that seems to be the only material Cuscuna is now reissuing on CD from the Pacific catalog.

Yeah - I like Pacific Jazz too. Just curious if some of the CDs could possibly be restored to full length. For example, the Groove Holmes / Les McCann "Somethin Special" contains edits on the title track, plus a tape stretch at the very beginning of the song. Great music, but would love to hear it the way it was performed. Looks like some of those edits are lost to history.

Does anyone know if Bock edited solos out of the multitrack tapes or just the stereo mixdown masters? Just curious because he was very liberal with editing out music to fit the confines of Lp running time. So with CD reissues of Pacific Jazz material, is it often a case of multitracks are missing so edited masters are used? Or did Bock actually chop up the multitracks instead--so that even if they remix from the multitracks they still contain edits?

Here is an image of the single ...sorry I could not upload it http://www.rehashmedia.com/images/caltrippin.gif there is also a sound sample but not sure if it works http://www.rehashmedia.com/audio/caltrippin.ram Wasn't he on Charles' Professor Soul? Thanks for the audio clip! So does Kynard play piano instead of organ on Cal Green's Trippin' Lp?

An album by Cal Green called Trippin has been reissued in Japan. Kynard is on organ for this one. Has anyone heard this date? How is it? It's on an obscure label called Mutt & Jeff. How's the production and recording? Worth picking up?

is this Lp hard to find on ebay?

cool found it: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...=charles+kynard

Kynard is one of my favorite Hammond organists. I have not heard his 1963 Pacific Jazz Lp debut. Has anyone heard it? How is it? Has it ever been reissued--or has anyone asked Michael Cuscuna about it? I assume EMI owns this material now? They frequently reissue Jazz Crusaders material from the Pacific Jazz vaults -- why not Kynard?

Hey DMP, very cool! Did you happen to take any pics when you saw Grant perform?! I think it would incredible see him perfoming live since most published photos show him in the studio. Blue Note would probably pay you to license some live performance shots to include in future releases. Also - did Green continue to play live with Patton in the 70s? When did you see them perform together? Do you have any specific recollections of their shows together?

Hey Chewy - gotta disagree with ya. Grant's early rhythm and blues offerings-such as his sideman date with Sam Lazar in 1960, and his blues oriented Blue Note organ dates etc of the early-mid 60s are superb. There is an emotional directness and honesty in his blues playing of this early period that I think we all agree on. I don't think this emotional playing translates in his later overproduced funk material of the 70s. This is not to say that one can't enjoy Grant's 70s period material. If you can dig post-Lion Liberty era Blue Note production, please dig it. But this period finds Green in an overproduced, stylistically limited setting, riding the crest and fad of James-Brown pop militism--and straying from the impassioned blues roots that were his forte. I like James Brown and enjoy his 1967 Apollo Vol 2 Lp. But I don't find myself reaching for Grant Green when I want to hear James Brown. I think it is great that Grant tried a new approach. But given his short life, I think it's a tragedy that producers stuck him in that bag and he made slight album after slight album in the 70s--all basically following the same hackneyed blueprint. The Main Attraction on Kudo is the biggest POS I have ever heard. It is an injustice to his talent. It is disappointing that these later Lp's didn't reflect the diversity of his live repertoire of the mid-late 70s, including the blues and standards he was playing.

You know what I hate about this type of yammering? It's the fact that people consistently miss the point. It's hard to put this into words, but this is the best that I can do... Grant in his early days was a phenomenal guitarist. There's no denying that. His albums were great, all the way around. When he played with Baby Face Willette, it just sounded great. When he played with Big John Patton, it just felt great. When he played with Larry Young and Elvin Jones, well, damn. It was heaven. He locked up well with great backing bands and made great music, whether as a leader or a sideman. So far, I believe we're all in agreement. Here's what people forget though: His post-1969 was great stuff too! I'd have a hard time really calling it jazz, but it's great! It's great funk music. It's great dance music! It's infectious. It's driving. It's foot-tappin' feel good shake yo' ass music. And if ass shaking music was the point of Alive!, Green is Beautiful or Live at the Club Mozambique, then they accomplish their goals effortlessly. Which is to say that on some level, you're dealing with apples and oranges. When Scott Yanow's review of Alive! was still up on AMG, I thought it was one of the most insulting and ignorant reviews of a jazz album of all time. And when I got the chance to ask him about it, he said that it didn't hold up to Grant's earlier work (and on a technical level, maybe it doesn't). And my response to that (no matter who is saying it) is that you CAN'T compare The Sonny Clark Quartets with Alive! or Green Is Beautiful. It's simply pointless. The target audience was different, the groove was different, the feel was different. The concept was different. In other words, you're complaining that an album that was never meant to suit your tastes didn't suit your tastes. If you don't like vamps and boogaloos, I highly suggest not listening to Grant Green recorded after 1966. As for me, Grant's funky stuff was some of the first jazz that I really attatched to. Bitches Brew was first, and I dug it, but my friends wouldn't bitch when Alive or Green Is Beautiful was in the tape deck in the car. So I listened to those a lot more, and got really attatched to them. I heard Grant's "heavier" work later, and dug that too. Because, after all, believe it or not, sometimes, you can like more than one period of an artist's work. And I've heard Live at the Club Mozambique as of last night, and it is a B-A-A-A-A-A-A-D mutha. I like it. That version of Jan Jan is a monster. I don't buy that Green's earlier output should be classified as more technical. If anything, his later playing became faster (speed was never Green's strong point), more calculated--spewing the same pet licks over the vamps. His earlier material showcased him in a broader range of settings. Sure there were challenging dates in the early and mid 60s such as Solid, Matador and Clark Quartets, but there were also many so-called soul-jazz outings. These recordings find Green playing more lyrically, more directly than his later funk period. Yet he manages shake ass like a madman. For example, The Natural Soul smokes and grooves in a way that a contrived piece of tired funk like Jan Jan can't touch. Green always had a penchant for ass shakin - check his work with Willette and Patton etc. These are valid comparisons: both are greasy, funky organ combos recorded 10 years apart. Like I said, Green remained a superb player in the 1970s, despite the personal issues. There are moments of genius that shine through the post Lion-produced output, but his later recordings suffer from just that: poor producing, material of extremely limited variety, frequent overdubbing (of studio material) and the restrictive inability to showcase the range of his talents. Look back to the 1966 boogaloo The Yodel on John Patton's Got a Good Thing Goin. This vamp grooves and smokes in a way that Green's later post-69 overproduced, contrived and calculated output can never match. Lesser producers, lesser material, formulaic output: recycled pet lick vamping. It's no wonder that Green got sick of being limited and confined to doing only vamping and started playing standards on the live circuit in the 70s. He was too talented to be in one bag.

This is a very good release by Verve. The live bonus tracks on this release are soundboard tapes of live remote stereo FM Radio broadcast. They were not engineered by Van Gelder like the original album studio/live tracks. That is why the bonus tracks sound a bit different and survive in varying degrees of fidelity and also feature a radio announcer.

That's well and good (and I'm right with you on what you are biased towards) but "bored musicians trudging through" is clearly a projection of your own preferences on to the musicians. There's nothing that says these guys were "bored" by the material. You're bored with the material, as is your right. Hey Dan, Have you listened to this CD in its entirety? If you have, please let me know your thoughts. Another reviewer on this board stated that Green wasn't "into it" as much on this date as others.

My bias is towards blues based and straight ahead jazz material. I've tried to like Green's later material, but have been consistently disappointed despite giving it a chance and listening with an open mind. For me, there is less passion and emotion in Green's later playing, which relies too heavily on funky "pet licks" on top of boogaloo vamps and loses sight of his earlier highly emotive, blues-based sensibilities. There is plenty of organ jazz Green did in the early-mid 60s which smokes the Mozambique, Alive type 70s material.

I picked up this release. Here is my take on it: 1. Sound quality. Sound is mono but certainly acceptable. Green is a little too low in the mix sometimes, but as this was only a mono reference mix and never intended to be a release master, this is forgiveable. Sound is "dry" with virtually no room sound and audience is not always well captured. If you listen on headphones, you will hear occasional tape drop outs and azimuth problems affecting the cymbals. But in general the sound is good. 2. Performance - Green and Person certainly have intact chops, but these superb musicians are underserved by the middling material consisting mostly of one chord boogaloo vamps. Listening to this release, I kept wanting for them to play a simple basic blues -- it didn't happen. Instead, we have an hour of mediocre material performed by very talented musicians. In the head arrangement for "More Today Than Yesterday" Green an co. break into 4/4 jazz time for a few bars raising expectations that they may solo over chord changes, but they quickly revert back to boogaloo, dashing hopes for any glimpse of "classic" Green. But then it finally happens, Green and co. actually solo over chord changes on "One More Chance." Not too shabby. Another complaint about this material is that the "head statements" trudge on way too long on some tracks. For example, the head on "One More Chance" drags on for an unbearable 2:10 before Green's solo begins. "Everything I Play Gonna Be Funky From Now On" - this Lou Donaldson title could apply to Grant Green's ethos in the late 60s - early 70s. His music along with the African American political landscape became more militant and blended funky rock rhythms in jazz. But the boogaloo concept of jazz--for me at least--becomes boring after hearing bored musicians trudge through one-chord vamps for an hour. It is unclear whether Green really loved this type of monotonous boogaloo jazz music--or if it allowed him to pay the bills on the live circuit. Perhaps it was a combination of both. A little more variety in his live sets, adding blues and 4/4 jazz to complement the boogaloos would have showcased his talents more broadly. Green's chops were certainly intact in the early 70s: witness his workout on his superb blues composition "California Green," a studio track from 1971. Some have talked about a 1973 recording Green made with Houston Person called Eastbound (?) in which the musicians tackle straight ahead jazz material. It would be wonderful to see that released. I am thankful for Beldon pushing this to be released--hopefully we will see more Blue Note Green material, including the rejected Ike Quebec, Freddie Roach, Gene Harris recordings of the early 60s. The two dates with Johnny Hodges and Wild Bill Davis Green did for Verve should also be reissued.

Thanks for the review. I haven't heard this, but I doubt the odd sound you describe is due to undermic-ing. I think the multitracks are missing and the CD you hear is nothing more than a rough mono reference mix, presumably for the producer to review the material. If the balance is off, it's probably because the rough mixes were done on the fly, and never intended for commercial release.