jeffcrom

Marion Brown - Three for Shepp (Impulse) I've had the LP for about 40 years. Today I found a ridiculously cheap copy of the 1998 CD and picked it up to have a digital version. It sounds very good.

A friend is clearing out CDs and gave me (!) this super-fancy 5-CD box set - RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson on the Free Reed label. He's the friend who finally made me a Richard Thompson fan by playing me the right song at the right time, so I guess it's a fitting gesture. It was very generous of him.

Two complete sessions: Sidney Bechet with Noble Sissle's Swingsters - When the Sun Sets Down South / Blackstick & Sweet Patootie / Viper Mad (Decca, 1938) Don Byas - My Melancholy Baby / Once in a While & Avalon / Blue and Sentimental (Jamboree, 1945) The Bechet session is particularly nice. The ensemble gets a lot of different textures and colors with just three horns. The tenor player, Gil White, doubles on clarinet, as of course does Bechet, so there are lots of combinations possible with the trumpet.

Aretha Franklin - Precious Lord, Parts 1 & 2 (Checker)

Bob Dylan - The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert (Columbia/Legacy)

Tony Parenti - Jazz Goes Underground (Jazzology). A latter-day (1969) offering by one of my favorite New Orleans clarinetists. Besides Parenti and ringer Knocky Parker on piano, all of the musicians were part of the once-thriving Atlanta dixieland scene. As a young man, I did a couple of gigs with the drummer, Spider Ridgeway. He kind of scared me. Later: This album is somewhat cornier than I remembered - mostly due to Parker's piano playing, I'm sorry to say.

Lee Konitz Meets Warne Marsh Again (Pausa). Amazing improvising.

Spiritual Starlites - Long Black Limousine (ASL). A quick search reveals that I've posted about this, one of my favorite Atlanta gospel albums, half a dozen times. But this is the first time I've found a picture of the cover on the web. I wish it wasn't obscured by the shrinkwrap; it's a great album with a great cover photo.

Anthony Braxton - The Complete Braxton 1971 (Arista/Freedom). Sides one and two, conveniently housed on different records of this double album. Morgana King - The Winter of My Discontent (Ascot mono). Ms. King's 1964 recital of Alec Wilder's songs.

Aretha Franklin - Spirit in the Dark (Atlantic). One of her finest, although it only had a couple of hits. Listened while sending forth positive thoughts. Johnny Hodges - Don't Sleep in the Subway (Verve). Not for deep listening, but perfect music while I was cooking dinner. George Adams/Archie Shepp/Heinz Sauer - Frankfurt Jazz Workshop '78: Tenor Saxes (Circle). I was not aware of this excellent record until I came across it online about a week ago. It arrived today. Preservation Hall Jazz Band - Run, Stop & Drop!! (The Needle) (Legacy). Last year's Record Store Day example of the PHJB's evolution from a strictly traditional band into a band which plays contemporay eclectic New Orleans music. I like it. Recorded live at the Hall.

Of possible interest to some folks here - an early recording of "High Society," the traditional jazz standard that began life as a march: https://78rpmblog.blogspot.com/2018/08/an-early-high-society.html

Looks like its here: https://www.amazon.com/Quadromania-Muggsy-Spanier/dp/B0007UPSJQ/ref=sr_1_18?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1534166352&sr=1-18&keywords=muggsy+spanier and here: https://www.amazon.com/Chronological-Classics-Muggsy-Spanier-1944-1946/dp/B000024XCE/ref=sr_1_23?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1534166352&sr=1-23&keywords=muggsy+spanier The titles are "Muskrat Ramble," "Tin Roof Blues," Feather Brain Blues," "Lucky to Me," "That's a Plenty," and "Bugle Call Rag."

Love that Susie Ibarra disc. Now playing: Sam Rivers - Dimensions & Extensions, from the Complete Blue Note Mosaic box. I listened with Chuck's reservations about this session in mind. I understand his qualms, but I mostly like it. There are tunes that only catch fire when Rivers is soloing, and Donald Byrd seems ill at ease - but to me the positives outweigh the negatives. Although if I could only keep one Sam Rivers album, this wouldn't be it.

I'm choosing to interpret this thread my own way - I don't know how many of these solos are "essential," but here are half a dozen of my favorites that (I think) haven't been mentioned in the Jazz Times article or in this thread: Miles Davis - Move (from the Birth of the Cool sessions). Miles builds this solo up from fragments in a way that doesn't totally make sense until he's finished - then it's apparent what he had been up to. Louis Armstrong - That's My Home (Bluebird alternate take). This take was issued on Bluebird several years after the original Victor record. It gets to me far more than the originally issued take - it's some of the most eloquent music I've ever heard. Von Freeman - Footprints (from Live at the Dakota). Weird, raw, and kind of frightening. Lester Bowie - Obe (from David Murray's Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club, Volume 1). Long and avant-lyrical. Bix Beiderbecke - Sweet Sue (Paul Whiteman). At the end of a long, "classy," ponderous arrangement with a painful falsetto tenor vocal, they turn Bix loose for 32 bars which make the previous three minutes disappear. And not to slight the bass players: Wilbur Ware - Decidedly (mono take from Mulligan Meets Monk). Ware takes the "walking" bass solo to the next level, at times shifting to walk on the off-beat.

David Murray/Milford Graves - The Real Deal (DIW)

This again today - really nice. Pee Wee is in excellent, eccentric form. Ernie Caceres is featured on "Bugle Call Rag" and sounds so good that it makes me wonder why he isn't more widely known in the pantheon of baritone saxophonists.

It's "boppish" Hawk, which of course is still several steps in from Charlie Parker. But your first instinct would probably be right. But I do tailor my record parties to the interests of the participants. If you ever drop by, we'll have a great moldy fig night - plenty of old New Orleans stuff and no Ellington later than 1933.

Contours from the Sam Rivers Complete Blue Note Sessions

I just heard Mr. Bradford play a quote from Petrushka that I had never noticed before.

Bobby Bradford/Frode Gjerstad Quartet - Silver Cornet (Nessa)

I know you would want to miss the first couple of records - would you want to arrive before or after Coleman Hawkins? Now playing: Kenny Clarke Plays Andre Hodeir (Epic). Clarke is excellent and Hodeir's charts are fascinating, but Martial Solal just about steals the show.

As I sometimes do, I worked my way backwards through the history of jazz tonight - stylistically, if not strictly chronologically. Don Pullen featuring Sam Rivers - Capricorn Rising (Black Saint). Gary Burton - Who is Gary Burton? (RCA). Jazz at the Philharmonic - The Coleman Hawkins Set (Verve). Billie & DeDe Pierce - At Luthjen's (Center).

Pure Desmond by Paul Desmond is the album by him I would keep above all others.

Chico Hamilton - The Three Faces of Chico (Warner Brothers mono). Of interest mostly for the three quintet tracks with Eric Dolphy. Chico sings on four tracks, and I find his vocals pretty awful.

Steve Lacy made twelve Japanese tours between 1975 and 2000, and fifteen or so albums were recorded on these trips, including some of Lacy's rarest. Several of these were solo albums, but many are with percussionist Masahiko Togashi - duos and ensembles of various sizes. Lacy and Togashi had a special rapport, and the resulting recordings are consistently excellent. Some appear under Lacy's name and some under Togashi's. Look for: Stalks (if you can find it) - under Lacy's name, with Togashi and bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa Eternal Duo and Twilight - Lacy/Togashi duos. Twilight was actually recorded in Paris Spiritual Moments and Voices - under Togashi's name; trios with Kent Carter on the first title and Jean-Jacques Avenel on the second Bura Bura - a fabulous quartet led by Togashi, with Lacy, Don Cherry, and Dave Holland Apices - a trio with Lacy, Togashi, and pianist Masahiko Satoh There are other albums from Lacy's Japanese tours, but these are my favorites.