jeffcrom

Johnny Hodges - Used to Be Duke (Verve)

Gil Evans - Lunar Eclypse (New Tone). Interesting and sometimes excellent collection of tracks from a summer, 1981 European tour.

Charlie Parker - At the Open Door (Ember). Fabulous playing by Bird. I had never noticed until today that this two-CD set is less than 70 minutes long - both CDs together, I mean. Charlie Parker -- Complete Dial Sessions (Stash). The session with J.J. Johnson. Jimmy Giuffre - New York Concerts (Elemental). Disc two. Charlie Parker - Bird in Boston: Live at the Hi-Hat Vol. 2 (Fresh Sound).

Complete Clifford Jordan Strata-East Sessions - disc 5, the Wilbur Ware Super Bass session. It seems like somewhat less than the sum of its parts.

Ralph Sutton - Piano Moods (Columbia 10"). 24 minutes of fierce and beautiful stride piano from 1950.

Roswell Rudd, etc. - Regeneration (Soul Note)

Stockhausen -Aus den Sieben Tagen: "Es" and "Aufwarts" (Deutsche Grammophon)

Great album.

My first car had an 8-track player, back in the mid-1970s. I liked it because I didn't have much money, and every discount department store in America (Woolworth's, K-Mart, etc.) had a rack of cut-out 8-track tapes for a dollar apiece. I found some amazing stuff in those racks - Wayne Shorter on Blue Note, Gil Evans' Ampex album, that Vee-Jay Young Lions album with Lee Morgan and Shorter, Jimmie Lunceford (!), a good bit of Charlie Parker.... In high school I borrowed an eight track recorder and recorded a bunch of original music as a gift to a girl. I "overdubbed" by recording piano parts, then playing them back on another 8-track player with a mic in front of a speaker as I played saxophone into the other mic. Sad to say, all that effort didn't get me anywhere with the girl. I'd like to hear that tape, though.

I don't have January 23, 1954 - but only for a few more days. I ordered the two Fresh Sound CDs of Hi-Hat broadcasts, which bring together most of them, including the one I'm missing.

Wadada Leo Smith / Louis Moholo-Moholo - Ancestors (TUM) Charlie Parker - Rara Avis (Stash). After listening to Bird for 45 years, I only recently realized how poor a handle I had on his 1952-54 broadcasts from the Hi-Hat in Boston - there are more of these than I realized. I'm going through my CDs along with Yardbird Suite, Lawrence Koch's guide to Bird's music, and Plosin's online Parker discography. It looks like I'm missing one complete broadcast. This CD has a nice Hi-Hat session with Herb Pomeroy on trumpet.

Duke Ellington - Sepia Panorama / Harlem Air-Shaft (as the original label has it). Rather than list all the 78s I've played today, I'll just mention one of the highlights. Victor 26731 isn't rare, but it's one of my favorite 78s. The folks who shelled out 75 cents back in the day got a real bargain: two masterpieces in superb, vibrant sound. I slightly prefer "Harlem Airshaft" - through-composed, with the soloists used for color and emphasis. (And that the weird little ten-bar intro: it's an overture, which only makes sense in hindsight - everything in it appears later in the piece.) But "Sepia Panorama" is also amazing - put together from (by my count) only 34 measures of written music. But those few written sections and the improvisations are paced and arrayed perfectly to create a three-minute mini-masterpiece that nobody but Ellington and his band could have come up with.

I was a fairly early CD adopter - I bought a CD player after the second major price drop - from $1000 US to $500 to around $250. I think that was about 1986. There was still not many CDs in the stores that interested me. The first two I remember buying were "Sweet Rain" by Stan Getz (made in Germany) and a Japanese "Moanin'" by Blakey - I think the label was JVC rather than Blue Note. But CDs had been around long enough for me to take advantage of the first wave of cutouts - I remember buying some of the early classical Telarcs from the discount racks. I used that first CD player (a Magnavox?) until it started getting unreliable. Then one day I was playing disc two of the complete Verve Bird set when the disc stopped playing, as had started to happen periodically. Only this time, the motor stopped, but the laser didn't. After about a minute, I smelled something burning. I ran over and ejected the disc, which now had a nice, clean hole burned through it. Back then, you could still actually get people on the phone, even at big corporations. I called Polygram; the person I talked to was horrified, and sent me a replacement disc at no charge.

Jemeel Moondoc - Revolt of the Negro Lawn Jockeys (Eremite)

Duke Ellington - Happy Reunion (Doctor Jazz). Just delicious.

Anthony Braxton - Four Compositions (1973) (Denon)

Microgroove 78s from the 1950s tonight. I'm glad I've got a flexible turntable setup so that I can play these properly. The Audiophile 12" records, put out by recording genius Ewing Nunn, sound fabulous. The Bells, cheap as they were (list price 39 cents), sound pretty good, too. Artie Shaw and His Gramercy Five - Besame Mucho / That Old Feeling (Bell 7") Artie Shaw and His Gramercy Five - Tenderly / Stop and Go Mambo (Bell 7") Shaw is frighteningly virtuosic on these 1953 sides - and it's a great band, with Tal Farlow, Hank Jones, Joe Roland on vibes, Tommy Potter, and Irv Kluger on drums. Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra featuring Jimmy Dorsey - Granada / You're My Everything (Bell 7") Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra featuring Jimmy Dorsey - The Man That Got Away / The High and Mighty (Bell 7") Okay big band pop, as of 1954. Harry Blons' Dixieland Band (Audiophile 12") Doc Evans - Traditional Jazz Vol. 1 (Audiophile 12") Doc Evans - Traditional Jazz Vol. 2 (Audiophile 12") Loring Nichols and His Band (Audiophile 12") Audiophile specialized in Midwestern dixieland in its early days. Clarinetist Blons' band of little-known players is pretty good. Trumpeter Doc Evans was the leading light of that scene, and his 1953 session, spread over two records, is really nice. The latter-day Red Nichols record is intelligent chamber jazz, like his best early work. There's a great version of Bix Beiderbecke's "Candlelight."

Steve Lacy/Don Cherry Quintet - Copenhagen, May 27, 1965 Steve Lacy Quintet with Derek Bailey - Radio France, October 17, 1976 Both of these were gifts from folks here.

Shirley Scott - Soul Sister (Prestige stereo). I have precious little Lem Winchester in my collection, so I was glad to find this yesterday. The Sunny Meadows Radio Show 1929 (Sunbeam). Transcriptions of an early sponsored radio show - Meadows was a washing machine manufacturer. Side one features Ray Miller's dance band, with some nice contributions by Muggsy Spanier.

Keith Jarrett - Restoration Ruin (Vortex). Okay, I found this one in an Atlanta record store yesterday, and vaguely remembered it as being Jarrett's early overdub-all-the-instruments album. I thought it might be interesting, so I bought it. I didn't realize until I got home that it's Jarrett's foray into pop/folk vocals, and that it doesn't even pretend to be any kind of jazz record. Two minutes in, I was horrified, and trying to figure out how I could unload it. But by the end of side one, I decided that I kind of like it for what it is. It ain't great, and I don't think I'll end up spinning it very often, but I'm keeping it for now - as a weird period piece, if nothing else.

Lee Morgan - Search for the New Land (BN NY stereo). Not in pristine condition, but still one of the best-sounding LPs I own. The music, of course, is fabulous.

The Gold Sparkle Band in a rare appearance, since they have been split between Atlanta and New York for many years now.

The only other released document of the Burton Quartet with David Pritchard in the guitar chair is a 1969 Nice, France concert (presumably from the same tour as this new issue) released as Green Apple on Moon and on some other issues. I'm in for this one.

More live Bird on Stash - Rara Avis.

Enjoying some of my most lo-fi live Bird on Stash: Bird Seed Volume One - featuring Bird with Dizzy Gillespie's big band in Chicago in the lo-est of fi. There was never a Volume Two of this series. The Bird You Never Heard. The sound is better here, in varying degrees. I like the 1950 New Brunswick, New Jersey session with an unknown band, even though the local guys can't keep a steady tempo.