jeffcrom

Evan Parker - Saxophone Solos (Incus)

Soul, R & B, funk, soul-jazz 45s tonight: Freddie Roach – Brown Sugar/Next Time I See You (BN) Aretha Franklin – My Song (Atlantic promo – same song on flip) Jackie Moore – Precious, Precious/Willpower (Atlantic) Ella Brown – Touch Me/A Woman Left Lonely (Lanor). Tasty guitar fills by Duane Allman on this one. Charles Williams – Please Send Me Someone to Love/Bacon Butter Fat (Mainstream). Don Pullen on organ. Irma Thomas – Set Me Free/Don't Mess With My Man (Ron). I literally bought this record off a guy on the street in New Orleans. Parliament – P-Funk/Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (Casablanca) Maceo and the Macks – Parrty, parts 1 & 2 (People) Syl Johnson – Take Me to The River/Could I Be Falling In Love (Hi)

Miles Davis - Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, disc 2

Gil Evans - Out of the Cool, as reissued as half of The Dedication Series/Vol. IX: The Great Arrangers (Impulse)

This morning I spun a new-to-me LP that's one of the best one-dollar thrift store records I've ever found - mint condition vinyl, immaculate performances, excellent music I had not heard before. And so obscure that I couldn't find a picture online. Two British Quintets (Spectrum LP) - Ramon Kireilis, clarinet, with the Lamont String Quartet Sir Arthur Bliss - Clarinet Quintet Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - Clarinet Quintet in F sharp Minor, Op. 15

Some folks here were pretty interested in the Don Byas Jamboree recordings I posted about. Byas also recorded two sessions for the Super Disc label in 1945 - the first with Erroll Garner on piano, the second with Johnny Guarnieri. The Super Disc "Harvard Blues" was one of the two records that got broken in all the moving of records that was required when I had my 78 shelves built last year. I just found a replacement, so I celebrated by playing all the Byas Super Discs. Two have the Erskine Butterfield Quartet on the flip - those have Shorty Baker on trumpet and some nice guitar by Al Norris of the Jimmie Lunceford band. "Slam-in' Around" features Slam Stewart "on Singing Bass." Three O'Clock In the Morning / One 'O Clock Jump (Super Disc 1006) Harvard Blues / St. Louis Blues Boogie (Erskine Butterfield) (1007) Slam-in' Around / Anything (Erskine Butterfield) (1008) Melody in Swing / Super Session (1010) Embraceable You / The Sheik of Araby (1011)

So my oldest friend and sometime musical partner, a writer by trade, spent the afternoon with George Clinton. This article in Flamingo magazine was the result. http://www.flamingomag.com/2018/08/27/george-clinton/

Denver Oldham - Piano Music of William Grant Still (Koch). "Bells," "Seven Traceries," Blues from Lexon Avenue," Swanee River," "Five Preludes," "Summerland from 'Three Visions'," and Africa. Africa was an orchestral piece, but the piano version on this 1991 CD was the premier recording. (The orchestral version has since been recorded.) Catherine Parsons Smith, in her book on Still, called Oldham's recording of Africa "a poorly edited and not well performed piano version." I can't speak to the accuracy of the edition, but I don't hear much wrong with the performance - maybe it's a little flat compared to the rest of the CD. But it's not bad, and the rest of the CD is excellent; it has gotten consistently good reviews.

Derek Bailey - Fairly Early with Postscripts (Emanem). Maybe not the best Derek Bailey album, but probably the most entertaining one - mixed in with the hard-core Bailey improvisations are musical jokes and audio letters with guitar accompaniment. Anthony Braxton - Quartet (Coventry) 1985 (Leo) Roy Eldridge / Benny Carter - Urbane Jazz, from New Jazz Sound/The Urbane Sessions (Verve)

Don't know the answer to that (although I think you might be right), but I have several blue and yellow label BN 78s - both trad (Port of Harlem Jazz Men) and modern (Gil Melle). I'm not sure what the deal was with those. In the last few minutes of Charlie Parker's birthday, I'm spinning two complete sessions - complete as least as far as 78 issues: Billie's Bounce / Now's the Time (Savoy 753) Thriving on a Riff / Warming Up a Riff (Savoy 945) Ko Ko / How High the Moon (Don Byas) Savoy 597) A Night in Tunisia / Ornithology (Dial 1002) Moose the Mooche / Yardbird Suite (Dial 1004) When I first started collecting 78s in earnest, about nine years ago, a friend brought over his copy of Dial 1002. It was so alive and "present" (especially Miles's trumpet sound) that I knew I had to have this session on mint 78s. It took me a few years to find good copies I could afford.

I read this comment to my wife, and she sarcastically said, "Yeah, you're really special."

12" Blue Notes tonight, starting with Blue Note 1. It's not the first pressing, which had a blue and pink label due to a printing error, but I'm glad to have it. What a noncommercial first issue for a record company - two slow improvised piano blues. Meade Lux Lewis - Melancholy / Solitude (BN 1) Port of Harlem Jazz Men - Mighty Blues / Rocking the Blues (BN 3) Art Hodes' Blue Note Jazz Men - Sugar Foot Stomp / Sweet Georgia Brown (BN 34) Sidney Bechet's Blue Note Jazz Men - Blue Horizon / Muskrat Ramble (BN 43) "Blue Horizon" might just be my favorite four minutes of jazz clarinet.

Sun Ra - Astro Black (Impulse)

That's the one I was spinning when, during a Marsh solo, I realized that I was staring at one of the stereo speakers as if trying to see what he was doing.

Desert island music. I've been listening for over 40 years and it just keeps getting deeper.

Here's his Atlantic album on its own. Some folks don't like this album as much as others by Marsh, I think because the two tracks with Philly Joe Jones on drums are a little nervous-sounding. I think Marsh plays very creatively, though. https://www.amazon.com/Warne-Marsh/dp/B00DD0AH3O

The first LP from the 6-LP/4-CD box set Syl Johnson: The Complete Mythology on Numero. That first LP has all of Johnson's Federal singles, and Numero did a good job with the mock period cover design. There is some fabulous music and a few clunkers here.

And there are a bunch of copies on Ebay. They're listed as imports because Bissonnette sold his remaining stock to a British label, I believe.

Sidney Bechet - Jazz Nocturne 1: Bunk, Bocage & Bechet in Boston (Jazz Crusade). This series opens with perhaps the best music Bechet and Bunk Johnson produced during Bechet's 1945 residency at the Savoy Cafe - a rehearsal, during which Bechet plays only clarinet. (Bunk disliked Bechet's soprano sax.). There's also a broadcast with Peter Bocage, who replaced Bunk for a few weeks.

Gregg Stafford and the Easy Riders Jazz Band - Walking With the King (Jazz Crusade)

I wanted to post a memorial tribute to Bill Big Bissonette, who will not be known to many folks here, probably. I just learned that he died two months ago, June 26, 2018, at the age of 81. Bissonette was a trombonist, drummer, and record label owner, specializing in traditional New Orleans revival music. As a trombonist, he was enthusiastic and unoriginal, imitating the style of his idol, Big Jim Robinson as well as he could. I've got a couple of albums that he plays drums on, and I remember his playing as a trad jazz percussionist to be similarly competent and imitative. His Connecticut-based Easy Riders Jazz Band was a decent revivalist band, and was famous for inviting "real deal" New Orleans musicians up for New England tours. In this capacity, he made one of his most important contributions to jazz by putting together "The December Band" for a series of concerts in Massachusetts and Connecticut in December, 1965. The December Band combined four New Orleanians - Kid Thomas Valentine, Big Jim Robinson, Captain John Handy, and Sammy Penn - with four members of the Easy Riders. The December Band is legendary among fans of latter-day New Orleans trad jazz. Six LPs were recorded during the tour - including The December Band, Volume Two on Bissonnette's Jazz Crusade label. That one is included as one of the 250 albums in the book The Essential Jazz Records, Volume One: Ragtime to Swing by Max Harrison, et al. That tour also brought Captain John Handy to the attention of someone at RCA - he subsequently recorded two albums for them. The Jazz Crusade label, inconsistent as it was, probably represents Bissonnette's greatest achievement. He relied too much on the Easy Riders rhythm section, which was kind of archaic, but recorded some excellent New Orleans-style music in the 1960s. He then retired from music and sold his recordings to the Jazzology group, where many of them can be found now. But he started playing again and revived Jazz Crusade in 1990 and had a pretty good 20-year run. I was on his mailing list, and enjoyed getting those catalogs four times a year. The latter-day Jazz Crusade issued some excellent music (along with plenty of mediocre stuff), with cheaply printed inserts that I suspect Bissonnette made at home. Among the highlights of the later Jazz Crusade are seven CDs from Sidney Bechet's 1945 run at the Savoy Cafe in Boston, with trumpeters Bunk Johnson, Peter Bocage, and Johnny Windhurst Right now I'm listening to a 1999 Jazz Crusade CD, Walking With the King, by Gregg Stafford with the Easy Riders. In the liner notes, Bissonnette talks about how things had flipped since the 1960s - back then the New Orleans musicians were the old guys, and the Easy Riders were the eager youngsters. On this album, Stafford (who plays great here) is the youngster at 45. I corresponded with Bissonnette back in the day, and was surprised at range of music he enjoyed listening to. I remember that he was a Caruso fan like me. RIP, Big Bill, and thanks for your modest, but very real, contributions to jazz.

Bobby Hackett - That Da Da Strain (Portrait). 1988 reissue of 1938-40 small- and big-band sides.

Nat Adderley - In the Bag (Jazzland OJC). An overlooked album featuring several fine New Orleans musicians. Miles Davis - the Airegin/Oleo session, from the Prestige Chronicle box set. AMM - AMMMusic 1966 (Matchless). This 1989 CD issue has track divisions so that you can program to listen to the original LP edit. That's what I'm doing tonight.

Othar Turner's Rising Star Fife & Drum Band - Field Recordings from Gravel Springs, Mississippi (Sugar Ditch). A four-song EP recorded in 1995. I heard this band in Clarksdale that summer, and spoke afterwards with R.L. Boyce, the bass drummer. R.L. gave me lengthy, and somewhat confusing, directions to Othar Turner's farm, so I could attend the annual Labor Day fife and drum picnic and barbecue a few months later. I wrote down the directions as R.L. gave them (I still have them), and on Labor Day fruitlessly drove all over the Mississippi hill country looking for the Turner farm - which of course I never found. Duke Ellington - Concert in the Virgin Islands (Reprise). Great album, recorded in the studio in New York in March, 1965, rather than live in the Virgin Islands. I knew Steve Lacy's version of "Virgin Jungle" before I knew the original.

Julia Lee - Kansas City Star (Bear Family). Earlier today I spun some of Lee's 1947 Capitol sessions with Benny Carter; right now it's the George Lee Orchestra, 1927-29, from disc one.