jeffcrom

Did Prestige go out of their way to confuse us? I'm listening to an LP I picked up today: Gene Ammons - The Twister (Prestige 7176 blue label mono). The Twister was a reissue of Jammin' in Hi-Fi With Gene Ammons, and my copy seems to be a mid-60's pressing. But I can't find a single picture online of my cover. The first Twister cover was a very plain yellow-and-red text-only design. Mine has a picture of Gene playing his tenor which takes up most of the cover; his name and "The Twister" are in a groovy '60's typeface at the top. While searching the tubes of the internet, I found that the conventional wisdom on another forum is that none of the Prestige issues after the yellow-and-black label era sound any good. My copy is near mint, with Mr. Van Gelder's stamp in the dead wax, and it sounds wonderful.

This is another of those "I love this place" moments. Thanks!

Almost the same amp/receiver that powers my 78 rig - the few slight differences hint that yours is a year or two earlier or later than mine.

How's the Watkins? This is on my wish list for quite some time, but I have no idea what type of music this really is ... Hope chewy doesn't mind me giving my opinion. It's basically hip bachelor pad music with some jazz touches - mostly in the form of improvised solos by Watkins and Eddie Costa. I like it a lot, for what it is - just don't expect a Jazz album with a capital "J."

The English translation of that book, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, was extremely important to me as a young man learning about the music. His detailed analysis of "Concerto for Cootie" is brilliant music criticism. His second book, Toward Jazz is almost as good, although in hindsight his critical approach in these first two books is somewhat severe. (How can anyone not like Johnny Dodds and Benny Carter?) His third book, The Worlds of Jazz, is something else. It's one of the strangest jazz books ever written: a set of allegorical fiction (for lack of a better term) which revolves around and illuminates the jazz world. My favorite piece is "Outside the Capsule," in which archeologist/priests of the future find a battered copy of the Bag's Groove album and painstakingly analyze the bass part of the title cut. I think Hodier's music is amazing. I spun the Philips LP of Anna Livia Plurabelle, his strange James Joyce cantata, recently, and will certainly play some of his music today. RIP to a great composer and thinker.

Claude Thornhill - Dinner for Two (RCA Camden). 1949-50 recordings. Not much jazz here, but there are a couple of good clarinet spots by (I think) Hal McKusick.

Curtis Amy - The Sounds of Broadway/The Sounds of Hollywood (Palomar mono)

Tromboneliness is a good one - it was also issued on Sackville as well as MPS.

Gerald Wilson - On Stage (Pacific Jazz mono)

I don't like that one as well as Verbal Communication in the Manner of Youth.

I've spun dozens of 78s over the past few days - more than anyone wants to hear about or I want to write about. Some of the highlights: Six Bluebird and Victor records (1938-1949) by Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra. The best of these sides are really good; the band had quite a few good soloists, although no great ones. And you never hear Hawkins mentioned when folks are discussing those big bands that survived into the post-war ear. The later sides sound much like the earlier ones, with a bit more R & B and bebop touches thrown in. James Moody - two on Prestige and one on Mercury, from the late 40's and early 50's. Eddie South - three from the late 1920's and early 1930's, on Victor and Bluebird. Slightly poppy hot jazz, with great playing by South, guitarists Mike McKendrick and Everett Barksdale, and young Milt Hinton. And a bunch of very early records, from the first decade of the 20th century, including lots of banjo and band ragtime and three 1904 sides by the early saxophone virtuoso Jean Moeremans. (I've tripled the size of my Jean Moeremans collection in the past week, since I only had one before that.)

If you're going to turn the tracks into mp3s, you should be able to "scrub" that track in mp3 form by going into "properties" and changing the artist and title to unknown.

Yes, a component CD burner makes audio life so much easier. I've had one for years, primarily to digitize LPs. At some point I realized that my Philips CD recorder actually sounded much better than my primary CD player, so I ditched the CD player and play CDs on the Philips.

I kind of like Buttercorn Lady, although nobody else much seems to. I even think that Chuck Mangione sounds pretty good on that one.

No cred loss to me--I love bachelor pad/space pop/exotica. This summer I found a bunch of SESAC 7" EPs--I guess they were bumper and background music for radio stations. It was all over the place from easy listening to "College Gridiron Songs". Jazz artists too...and a Bobby Hackett (which is what made me think of it). Here's a quick pic of a few of them: I've got that Ellington Sesac EP, and the Chico Hamilton one with Eric Dolphy - that one's pretty cool.

Bobby Hackett - That Midnight Touch (Project 3) I've got an unaccountable affection for those Bobby Hackett bachelor pad albums. If it helps my serious music cred any, I've also listened to Hindemith, Fela and Miles today....

Leonard Chess Howlin' Wolf Redd Foxx

Hey, I only saw that now... thought you'd not seen my part about a second one. And since this here's a different environment from the other bulletin board, I'll limit it to one disc anyway. So please delete that other one a year later! Thanks! Okay, but let me know if you change your mind.

Hardbopjazz, I know you posted this in the BFT Master List thread, but it really belongs here, so I'm putting the reply here. This is the second time in a few days I've had to disappoint someone. Assuming that the current level of interest in the BFT keeps up, we try to leave 12 months between BFT presentations by the same person. With that in mind, I've put you down for March of 2013, in addition to #96. That could change, depending on cancellations or a dearth of presenters in 2012, but you probably won't get moved up as much as #99, in any case. I know that March of 2013 seems ridiculously far away, but time passes in the BFT world quicker than you realize.

I've liked that one since back in the day. Right now, a recent find: a 10" LP on the Jump label, by the trio of Eddie Miller, Stanley Wrightsman and George Van Eps. I have some of these performances on 78, as well as some 78 sides that aren't included on this album. The liner notes indicate that some of these tracks are different takes from the 78 issues, so I'm looking forward to doing some comparisons to see just what I have. I couldn't find a picture of the LP online, but here's one of the 78s:

Johnny Hodges - The Eleventh Hour (Verve mono)

The World of Duke Ellington Volume 3 (Columbia). Great stuff from the early 50's. Fake stereo, but most of it sounds pretty good with a mono cartridge.

Thanks - it's always good to have someone ready to step in if things go awry.

King ubu posted this in the BFT Master List thread, but it really belongs here, so this is where I'm putting my reply. First things first - I've put you down for BFT #98, May, 2012. Thanks for volunteering to present another BFT. Secondly, I would like to suggest that you cut down the length of your BFT. Back in April, 2009, there was discussion of ending the blindfold test (or at least putting it on hiatus) due to declining participation. (The thread is here.) Part of the problem turned out to be that some folks felt that they didn't have time to devote to listening and commenting on two discs' worth of material. In reading that thread a few minutes ago, I don't know if it's clear that a consensus was reached, but the general feeling seemed to be that BFT's should be limited to the length of one CD, and that's what I put in the BFT FAQ's when I took over as BFT manager. Since then, I've noticed that the length of some of the BFT's is creeping up again, and I think that's a mistake. That being said, I consider myself to be the BFT facilitator, not dictator. I don't feel that it's my position to tell anyone that they absolutely can't go over 79 minutes, but I think that by doing so, you're going to test folks' patience. I know that I probably would not listen to all of a 160-minute BFT. I would like to see all BFT participants limit their tests to the length of one CD; take that for what you will.

Post-gig wind-down: Paul Bley - Closer (ESP mono). One of the great piano trio albums.