jeffcrom

Ornette Coleman - Tomorrow is the Question (Contemporary). I don't pull out OC's Contemporary albums very often; I had forgotten how good this is. Roscoe Mitchell - L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples (Nessa). A masterpiece.

Allman Brothers Band - Fillmore East - Feb. '70 (Grateful Dead). Recorded by the Grateful Dead's sound man, Owsley Stanley, when the two bands were sharing a run at the Fillmore. This has been recently reissued, but I've had the older CD for a few years. Edit: I had forgotten this moment - between two of the songs, Duane Allman acknowledges Chico Hamilton in the audience.

Bud Powell - A Portrait of Thelonious (Columbia). I hope nobody will give me too much grief when I reveal that I've been listening to jazz for about 45 years, and today was the first time I heard this excellent album. Better late than never. Hank Mobley - Straight No Filter (BN 1989 reissue). So I have the 1989 and the 2000/2001 CD versions of No Room For Squares, The Turnaround, and Straight No Filter. The earlier reissues group the four recording sessions together (Straight No Filter has two session); the later CDs follow the original LP track groupings, with additional material. I find that I usually prefer to listen to the earlier CDs, with the complete sessions.

I've had the album for about a week, but I just had my first careful listen to the orchestral disc. I went into it prepared to be underwhelmed, but ended up very impressed. The musical dialects of the chamber orchestra and the quartet are very well integrated. Yes, there were a few moments that felt like lots of movement with no development or forward motion, but I only felt like that a couple of times. I really enjoyed this disc. I've listened to the quartet concert once, but not with real attention yet.

Treme Brass Band - Gimme My Money Back! (Arhoolie) Wayne Shorter - Emanon (BN). Disc 1, with the chamber orchestra. I'm quite impressed.

Nice! NP: Eddie Bo - New Orleans Solo Piano (Night Train). 1993 in NYC; 1995 in New Orleans. Not quite all solo - there is an unidentified conga player (Uganda Roberts?) on the New Orleans session. Eddie is obviously just throwing this stuff off with little or no planning - and it's still great. A personal note - some of my favorite musical memories of New Orleans involve Eddie Bo.

Wayne Shorter - Etcetera (BN). A flawed, inconsistent, fascinating album with moments of brilliance. Steve Coleman - Black Science (RCA/Novus)

Sam Rivers' Rivbea All-Star Orchestra - Culmination (BMG)

Bunky Green - Testifyin' Time (Argo mono)

DeDe Pierce and His New Orleans Stompers (Center). I can't find a picture of the original 1966 issue; just the Biograph issue from ten years later.

Oh, my.... NP: Sonny Berman - Beautiful Jewish Music (Onyx). The 1946 jam session by a bunch of Herman-ites is not as great as one might expect, considering the personnel, but it's nice to have more Berman and Serge Chaloff, considering how relatively little they recorded. Later, after the whole shooting match is over - yeah, not great, overall, but Sonny Berman's solo on "BMT Face" is just gorgeous.

Wadada Leo Smith - Divine Love (ECM)

All the Otis Rush sides from The Cobra Records Story two-disc box - about 50 minutes of music.

Hal McKusick - Jazz Workshop (RCA Victor). A remarkable jazz composers' album, with charts by George Russell, Gil Evans, Jimmy Giuffre, Al Cohn, and Johnny Mandel. In any other context, the Cohn and Mandel pieces would sound excellent, but they're kind of outclassed here. Russell's "Lydian Lullaby" and the long-ish "The Day John Brown was Hanged" are all the more impressive for being written for just four instruments - alto sax, guitar, bass, and drums. Horace Silver - Doin' the Thing (BN mono). New York label, with the "ear" and all, if it matters.

Just got back from a fully staged performance of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale - chamber orchestra, narrator, and three dancer/actors. The musicians were all on the faculty of Georgia State University, conducted by my friend Stuart Gerber, and the three dancers were students - who did very well, for the most part. (At times their inexperience showed a little). The music was impeccably performed.

That's had a place of honor on my shelves for many years, and I refer to it often.

Another . Incredible music, although it's not going to be to everybody's taste. (But nothing is, so why did I say that?)

Watazumi Doso - His Practical Philosophy (Columbia Japan). Originally a 2-LP set. The first half is a 1973 lecture/recital - in Japanese, of course. So I most often turn to the second half - a studio recording of the great flutist from 1974. Watazumi was one of Steve Lacy's favorite improvisers.

The Bebop Revolution (RCA/Bluebird). I keep this CD for the four tracks I don't have elsewhere: the wonderful 1946 session by Kenny Clarke and His 52nd Street Boys. I enjoyed that twelve minutes of music so much that I turned to this collection of Clarke's European recordings I found about 20 years ago: Special Kenny Clarke (French EMI). This starts with KC's first session as leader, recorded in 1938 in Stockholm, while Clarke was on tour with Edgar Hayes' big band. He plays xylophone (!) exclusively. Much excellent music follows.

Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain (Columbia 6-eye mono) Sam Rivers Winds of Manhattan - Colours (Black Saint) The Lee Konitz Nonet (Roulette) Edit: A new record - I just corrected a quadruple post.

I didn't mean to imply that the Varsity Seven sides had never been reissued - I believe that they are included in the Classics Coleman Hawkins series. But those are hard to come by now if you don't want the more recent CDr versions. Not Varsity - English Columbia, I think,

The Soul of the Koto (Lyrichord). Gorgeous music, but I wish the names of the performers had been given.

Varsity was one of Eli Oberstein's many labels - Crown and Royale were others. Oberstein had a long career in the discount-label record business. I also have Varsity 78s by the Les Hite big band and Jess Stacy with a small band. Jack Teagarden's big band recorded for them for awhile and some Harry James records ended up on Varsity, but I'm not sure how that happened. I'm not sure who owns the label now. The Varsity Seven sides are hard to come by on reissues, which is why I decided to go ahead and seek them out on 78. I have a Varsity/Royale catalog, but I'm not sure about the vintage. I'm guessing that it's earlier than the Varsity Seven, since they're not listed. There's lots of light classical and diposable pop stuff; not much jazz. There are some Fletcher Hendersons that were originally on Crown. But the most interesting section of the catalog is the short "race" section. All the artists are given pseudonyms. I don't know who everyone is, but the "Harlem Wildcats" are Joel Shaw's white big band, again, I think, from the Crown catalog. But some of these are reissues from Paramount - legit or not, I don't know. 6002, by "Billy James and Orchestra" is in fact a Blind Blake record - just guitar and vocal. 6010, by the "Down South Boys," is a rare one, by the elusive bluesman King Solomon Hill.

Ray Charles - The Genius Sings the Blues (Atlantic mono). This wonderful compilation of hits and obscurities was issued in 1961 from 1952-58 recordings. The piano/vocal solo "Someday Baby" was first released here; it's the only surviving track from a solo, no-band session made in 1953.

Steve Lacy - Catch (Horo). Duo with Kent Carter. Hlrace Parlan - On the Spur of the Moment (BN/Music Matters reissue) George Lewis and His New Orleans All Stars (Catalyst). Recorded in a Tokyo during Lewis' last (1964) of three Japanese tours. A really nice band, with trumpeter Jack Willis and trombonist Louis Nelson completing the front line. Willis was a really interesting player. He played with Ray Charles for awhile, and was something of a modernist. I hear Bobby Hackett, Miles Davis, and Clifford Brown in his playing. At the same time, he fits in well here. He was Lewis' regular trumpet player during this period, and he sounds like he loves playing this music. George Lewis and Louis Nelson could only do what they did (if that makes sense), while Willis was part of a later New Orleans generation, maturing in the 1940s and 1950s, that could play anything - traditional jazz, bebop, R & B. But when they played the older music, they played with the authority of musicians who grew up hearing that style as part of their daily soundscape.