jeffcrom

I picked up a stack of ten- and twelve-inch LPs today, but the coolest one was a 10" early-50's London issue of Sidney Bechet's ballet La Nuit est une Sorcière. It's a pretty deluxe edition - it's in a box with an inner sleeve and liner notes in English and French. The vinyl doesn't look like it had ever been played before I put it on the turntable tonight.

Picked up a stack of LPs today, including several cool ten-inchers. Among those were the two volumes of Jamming at Rudi's on Rudi Blesh's Circle label. They were both recorded in 1951 at jazz parties at his apartment. Volume 1 is a New Oreans-style jam built around Conrad Janis's amateurish trombone, but also including Danny Barker, Bob Wilber, Pops Foster, Ralph Sutton, and Eubie Blake. Volume 2 is Kansas City-flavored, and has some great Hot Lips Page. Jazzology owns this material now, and has issued a CD with some previously unreleased tracks, but that CD is missing some of the tracks on these albums.

Old threads never die.... I want to like the Micros more than I do. I have one CD, which doesn't get played very often.

On Ebay even as we speak.

Hey, I like early opera 78s. If all my friends here would just chip in a few thousand dollars apiece, I could buy this.

Bill Evans - The Secret Sessions (Milestone) Disc 5, with Eddie Gomez and Philly Joe Jones.

Okay, I'm not into all the album cover threads as much as a lot of the folks here, but this one spoke to me right away. This is actually a pretty good album, but lordy, the punctuation! Besides the semi-ridiculous contraction of "New Orleans," it has an arbitrary comma and an example of the dreaded extraneous plural apostrophe. Spontooneous, I couldn't see your last two images.

The Return of Jess Stacy (Hanover mono) - Inscribed by Mr. Stacy to my wife's aunt and uncle, who were friends of his. Thesaurus of Classic Jazz (Columbia), disc 2. This is a 1959 four-LP collection of the music of the "white New York school" - Red Nichols, Miff Mole, etc. Disc 2 has has 12 beautiful track by Miff Mole's Little Molers, with Nichols, Jimmy Dorsey, Adrian Rollini, Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Lang, etc.

The December Band, Vol. 1 (Jazz Crusade mono). The December Band consisted of four New Orleanians (Kid Thomas Valentine, Captain John Handy, Jim Robinson, and Valentine's drummer Sammy Penn), three New England trad guys, and British clarinetist Sammy Rimmington. The did a New England tour in December, 1965 that eventually resulted in six albums, of which this was the first.

Bunk Johnson - Spicy Advice (Circle) The 1944 World Transcription session, alternate and incomplete takes and all. This actually predated the first American Music dates with George Lewis and Jim Robinson by a couple of months. It's a nice session.

Miles Davis - The Complete On the Corner Sessions (Columbia) Disc 4. "Calypso Frelimo" is one of Miles' masterpieces, in my opinion - 32 minutes of incredibly bad-ass music. And "He Loved Him Madly" is pretty good, too, although it's about 10 minutes too long.

Sorry for going even further off topic, and pardon me if I've told this one before. But this reminds me of a story in John Chilton's biography of Sidney Bechet. Bechet was playing a trio gig with a pianist and a drummer. A fan came up and requested "Body and Soul," handing Sidney five dollars. After the trio played the song, Bechet gave the piano player a dollar and put the rest in his own pocket. The drummer indignantly asked, "What about me? I played it, too!" Bechet pointed to the pianist and said, "No, we played 'Body and Soul.' You just went 'swish, swish' like you'd do on any slow song."

You need it.

Just gave this one a spin for the first time in a while (a few years, probably): Raymond Burke's Speakeasy Boys 1937-1949 It's one of the blue-label, non-Bill Russell issues, and contains what I think are Wooden Joe Nicholas's only recordings not made for Russell. Burke (1904-1986) is one of my favorite New Orleans clarinetists, and the meat of this CD is a 1949 session (with Nicholas) recorded by New Orleans jazz fan Herb Otto. Four the of the sides were issued on the Paradox label, as I understand it, but there are a total of 15 tracks from this session. The Herb Otto session is pretty sloppy at times, but the best tracks, like the slow "Backroom Blues," are wonderful. The other tracks are private recordings or demos featuring Burke, dating from 1937 to 1942, and are musically very good and sonically pretty bad. This one's well worth picking up, but only if you're willing to accept some "feet of clay" weaker tracks, and some scratchy acetate sound.

Albert Mangelsdorff - Tromboneliness (Sackville) Jazz for a Sunday Afternoon, Vol. 4 (Solid State); Marvin Stamm, Garnett Brown, Joe Farrell, and the great rhythm section of Chick Corea, Richard Davis, and Elvin Jones.

Somewhat off the topic of discographical details, but how is the sound on the CD? I'm asking because I have the King 78 of Stardust/Ratio and Proportion, and it's thin and unpleasant sounding. It sounds like it was dubbed from the Sensation 78, not from the master.

Happy Birthday, Gold Bug!

"Footprints" from that album raises the hair on the back of my neck.

Albert Ayler - Witches & Devils (Arista/Freedom). This 1964 recording (also known as Spirits) was the first fully mature Ayler album, and the 1975 reissue was the first Ayler album I owned. It's still as frightening and beautiful as the cover.

How's the Ayler? Is that a good one? It's good, but it wouldn't be among my top half-dozen Ayler albums. Get it if you have most of his stuff and still want more, as I did.

Understood! And I understand your larger point, I think, although I don't totally agree with it. Mr. Sangrey has put it more clearly and succinctly than I was able to.

One of the great CTI releases. 'Great Gorge' is a track best known by beat-heads. The buzz is justified, given the 11:43 of smoldering rhythm by Clarke and DeJohnette. Caveat: the Pete Turner photo montage is my nominee for CTI's most 'WTF' album cover. Thnks for the info. I will try to find it. While you're looking, try to spell "Farrell" correctly - I didn't!

I hear you, but what I mean by "influence" might be different from what you mean. I still contend that Parker, who is indeed very much his own man, and who doesn't really sound like anyone but himself, was influenced by Ayler. It seems to me that Ayler's music, even more than Coltrane's, pointed the way to create a jazz-based music without conventional tonality and regular pulse. That doesn't mean that I think Parker sounds like Ayler. In any case, I'm not alone: John Fordham, from an article on Ayler in The Guardian music blog: The unique sound of British total-improv original Evan Parker still has Ayler inflections.... From Parker's own website: In spite of this major group activity, it is as the creator of a new solo saxophone language, extending the techniques and experiments started by John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, but taking them away from the rhythmically jazz-related areas and into the realm of abstraction, that Evan Parker is perhaps most recognised. I'm disinclined to attempt a response to this.

More than maybe. Definitely, and acknowledged by Trane. Good list of Ayler-influenced players. One major disciple you left out was David S. Ware. Yeah, that was a pretty major oversight. Lots of others I could have listed, too, who may or may not be considered "major" (Frank Wright, Arthur Doyle, etc.)

One of the great CTI releases. 'Great Gorge' is a track best known by beat-heads. The buzz is justified, given the 11:43 of smoldering rhythm by Clarke and DeJohnette. Caveat: the Pete Turner photo montage is my nominee for CTI's most 'WTF' album cover. I agree that it's among the better CTI's. I like it better every time I spin it. Now for something completely different: The Klezmorim - Metropolis (Flying Fish)