jeffcrom

Some nice stuff there!

Dodo Marmarosa - Dodo's Back! (Argo mono). It sounds great with my new Audio-Technica mono cartridge - no more

Santa brought me the Audio-Technica mono cartridge that I asked for (I have been a good boy this year), and I'm giving it a workout with some of the records which the Grado didn't like. So far there are no tracking problems, and it sounds great.

Stanley Turrentine - Stan "The Man" Turrentine (Time stereo)

The first name that popped into my mind when I saw this thread was Jesse Stone, aka "Charles Calhoun," the name under which most of his R & B hits were written. Stone was born in 1901 and lived to the age of 97. The two 1927 Okeh sides by his Blues Serenaders (which included Jack Washington, later with Basie) are beautiful, raw territory big band music of the time - I've loved those two sides for years. He also record a couple of big band sides in the thirties, which I haven't heard. But in the 1950s, he was hired by Atlantic Records - the only African-American on the staff at the time - and wrote/produced "Losing Hand" for Ray Charles, "Money Honey" for The Drifters, and "Shake, Rattle and Roll" for Joe Turner. "Jesse Stone did more to develop the basic rock 'n' roll sound than anybody else." - Ahmet Ertegun

sigh....

I'm not exactly a disinterested observer on this one, but:

Sonny Simmons - Staying on the Watch (ESP)

Capt. John Handy - All Aboard, Volume III (GHB). The 1965 "December Band," famed among New Orleans fans. The cover proclaims "stereophonic," but it's not.

Clarke-Boland Big Band - At Her Majesty's Pleasure (Black Lion). The "musicians in jail" thread reminded me that I hadn't listened to this for awhile. What a fabulous record!

Benny Carter - The King (Pablo) I like my iPod for traveling, but it's nice to be back home and able to listen to vinyl through nice speakers.

I'm over a thousand miles away from my Lacy records and CDs, but it looks like russ has arranged the albums cleverly - look to the left of the title for the size of the ensemble.

Merry Christmas to everyone in Organissimo land.

This made me chuckle.

I've known many musicians who have spent time in jail for various reasons. The funniest story (although probably not to the guy at the time) concerns one of my closest friends, a guitarist, who spent a night in jail for jury tampering, of all things. He was playing a two-week gig at a hotel lounge in Dalton, Georgia. A jury was sequestered at the same hotel, and when my friend returned to his room every night after the gig, there was an armed policeman sitting in hall. Toward the end of the first week, my buddy decided to make a joke - as he passed the guard on the way to his room, he said, "He's guilty!" Almost immediately he was up against the wall being handcuffed. They took him before a judge the next morning, and he was told to leave town immediately; the band had to get another guitarist for the rest of the gig.

Congrats. How was the band?

Lou Donaldson - Forgotten Man (Timeless)

In my "past life," I was very excited when the Mingus at Antibes double album was issued. My first wife examined the back cover and said, in an accusatory tone, as if she had "caught" me, "You just wanted this because it has Eric Dolphy on it!." Well, duh!

Frank's Place, episode 13, "Season's Greetings." And since it was on the same disc, my favorite episode, #15, "Dueling Voodoo."

Two more while packing: Billy Ward and His Dominoes - Christmas in Heaven/Ringing In a Brand New Year (King) Roy Milton - Christmas Time Blues/Oh Babe! (Specialty)

Dang. Yeah, "Orange Driver" is a great record. When I have the boys over for an evening of blues 45s, that one is always a favorite. "Can you remember baby, when you lay down 'cross your bed; You was drinkin' that orange driver baby, yes and talkin' all out your head." RIP

My last night at home before Christmas - we fly across the country tomorrow. So I spun some seasonal shellac, some of it pretty odd: Norbert Ludwig (as Philip Hauser), pipe organ - Silent Night, Holy Night/Holy Night (Banner, 1926). Not sure why a church organist needed a pseudonym. Coppia Parisi - 'A Vigiglia 'E Natale/'A Storiella 'E Natale (Columbia, 1923-24). "Neapolitan Christmas Duet with Bagpipe," as the label says. It's on the Columbia "flags" label, in the green "E" (ethnic) series. Dr. A. Edwin Keigwin - A Christmas Greeting/A Morning Prayer (Columbia Personal Record, 1924-25). Two short addresses from a New York preacher, pressed by Columbia's custom recording department. Dr. Keigwin also apparently wrote a book called "The Meaning of Life." Rev. J.M. Gates assisted by Deacon Leon Davis & Sisters Jordan & Norman - Where Will You Be Christmas Day?/Will the Coffin Be Your Santa Claus? (Okeh, 1927). Rev. Gates' grim messages are much more entertaining than Dr. Keigwin's scholarly speeches.

"Honky Tonk" isn't on the box set (you'll have to get the Jack Johnson box for that one), but everything else is, including an alternate of "Mtume." Mixes are from the LP masters. "Calypso Frelimo" could use a remastering--it's always sounded partially submerged to me. I love that recording, too. Miles frequently played "Honky Tonk" in live performances from this era, but in a somewhat simplified arrangement. Only the studio version has the very cool metric modulation between the 4/4 sections and the 12/8 sections - meaning that the two sections are at different tempos, with a tricky, subtle relationship between them.

And do any of you know the 1967 "third stream" album Dedicated to Dolphy on the Cambridge label? It's so obscure that I couldn't find a cover picture online. I'm listening to it for the first time in a while, and wow - it's very good. There are five pieces written for or dedicated to Dolphy, by John Lewis, Harold Farberman, Gunther Schuller, and Bill Smith. Schuller contributes two compositions, and they're the only ones of which we have Dolphy recordings - "Night Music" and "Densities I" showed up years later on Vintage Dolphy. For a "third stream" record, the music is pretty hot at times - the "jazz" portions swing hard. Jerome Richardson and Bill Smith take the Dolphy role on various tracks, and manage to suggest ED without copying him. My favorite bass player, Richard Davis, plays on every track, and is just awesome. Among the other jazz musicians present are Joe Newman, Bob Brookmeyer, Hubert Laws, Jim Hall, and Mel Lewis. This album is probably not to everyone's taste, and I don't know how hard/impossible it is to find, but to me, it's excellent.

I couldn't believe that this was the first general thread dedicated to Eric Dolphy, but it seems to be. There are several old threads titled "Eric Dolphy," but I suspect that they all had subtitles, before those disappeared, since they all are narrowly focused on one topic. So thank you, Milestones - 'bout damn time. Dolphy's music spoke to me right away when I first heard it, around ten years after his death. The first track with a Dolphy solo I heard was Mingus's "Hora Decubitus." It was some of the most exciting music I had ever heard - it just floored me. Far Cry, the Douglas recordings, and Out to Lunch are some of my favorite Dolphy recordings. Max Harrison has frequently written about "roads not taken" in jazz - paths that were suggested, but not followed up on by subsequent musicians. Out to Lunch seems like an example of that - it's a mysterious thing: inside/outside, with a floating pulse and an ambiguous relationship between solo and accompaniment. It seems to me that a musician could spend a lifetime following up the possibilities suggested by that album.