jeffcrom

Abe Ellstein's Orchestra with Dave Tarras - Frailach Music (Banner). A truly horrible-sounding mastering of some great klezmer music.

Eric Dolphy - Quintet U.S.A. (Unique Jazz). A 1962 gig with a group built from the revolving cast Dolphy drew from for his gigs - in this case, Eddie Armour, Herbie Hancock, Richard Davis, and Edgar Bateman.

I haven't heard the entire album, but "Someday My Prince Will Come" (from the Columbia box set) was one of the two or three recordings that turned me around on Brubeck.

Among all the 78s I've spun in the past few days are these, which I don't think I've mentioned before: Mary Lou Williams - Knowledge/Oo-Bla-Dee (King, 1949) MLW in her bebop mode, with Idrees Sulieman, Mundell Lowe and George Duvivier on hand, among others. Side two is an attempt at a bop pop song (Benny Goodman also recorded it) with Kenny Hagood on vocal. Earl Bostic - Ubangi Stomp/Time on My Hands (King, 1954) Blue Mitchell and Stanley Turrentine are in the band, but Earl Bostic's records were pretty much all about Earl Bostic, so you don't hear much of them. Skip Hall - Two Left Feet/Skip a Page (Jamboree, 1949) Jump blues with Buddy Tate, Buck Clayton, and Walter Page. Una Mae Carlisle - Without You Baby/'Tain't Yours (Joe Davis, 1944) Ray Nance and Budd Johnson do some nice playing on this. Armand Hug/Ray Bauduc - Breezin' Along/Little Rock Getaway (Okeh, 1950) I've always liked New Orleans pianist Hug. Tommy Dorsey - Mendelssohn's Spring Song/Liebestraum (Victor, 1937) Dorsey had a great band during this period - Bunny Berigan, Bud Freeman, Dave Tough, etc. The Tennessee Ten - Waitin' for the Evenin' Mail/'Tain't Nobody's Business If I do (Victor, 1923) This was an expanded version of the Original Memphis Five, a band which I love. Unfortunately, twice as many musicians resulted in music which was half as good.

I'm thinking that I'm glad I didn't pay more than six bucks for the 28-minute-long reissue CD I just listened to.

Very interesting video - thanks for the link.

Globe Unity Orchestra - Jahrmarkt/Local Fair (Po Torch) Horace Silver - In Pursuit of the 27th Man (BN)

Michael J. Smith - All Our Steps (Day Eight Music). Michael's "fusion" album, with Jonas Hellborg and Michael Shrieve. It sounds pretty good to me right now.

Steve Lacy - Hocus Pocus (Book "H" of "Practitioners") (Les Disques du Crepuscule). Mr. Lacy solo, playing a book of his saxophone etudes, with improvisation. He said that his idea in writing these exercises was to write the kind of thing he usually wrote, but harder. Theses studies were published in his book Findings, and I play them when I want to practice something which will kick my ass.

Bouzouki and Clarinet (Greek EMI/Regal) Anonymous but amazing performances of Greek music - side one is rural folk music, with some amazing clarinet playing; side two is urban tavern music, c. 1974. Here in the Eastern U.S. time zone, the day will be over in less than an hour, and I hadn't listened to any jazz yet today. So: Donald Byrd - Fuego (BN). I think this was the first Blue Note record I ever bought, about 35 years ago. It's got the dark blue/black note label from the early 70's, but it's got the RVG stamp, and sounds pretty good.

What am I doing what again, now?

In the mood for some world music, inspired by Cinco de Mayo, I guess: records by Curti's Mexican Orchestra, an anonymous Mexican String Orchestra, a Spanish String Orchestra (these all on the great green-label Columbia E series), the Imperial Russian Balalaika Orchestra (Victor, 1911), and the two most amazing records: a late-20's Columbia by Orchestra Bratia "Holutiaky-Kuziany," a Lemko-Ukranian group consisting of arco bass, two violins, and clarinet with some raw vocals, and a late-30's Decca Turkish record - one side by Hamiyet and one by Besiktash Kemal Senman, with some of the most microtonal clarinet playing I've ever heard. At least I think it's a clarinet. All great stuff - discovering amazing music from other traditions has been one of the things I've most enjoyed about collecting 78s.

Is this quite obscure, and how is it? It's from 1976, on a Polish label, and it does seem to be pretty obscure. I found it in a little record store in Malmo, Sweden a couple of years ago - a nicer copy than the one pictured here. Musically, it's excellent - one of my favorite of Michael's recordings. Michael's frequent partner in those days, Laurence Cook, is on drums; there are two bassists, Kent Carter (doubling on cello) and Jacek Bednarek, and two alto saxists, Claude Bernard and the outstanding Zbigniew Namyslowski. The cover reverses the instrument credits for Bernard and Cook. I'd describe it as pretty intense free jazz with some nice passages of lyricism.

Yes, the play button just gives you a short sample. To download, you have to put the concert in your cart, as if you were buying a download, then go through the checkout process.

Disc 2 of this album tonight.

Michael J. Smith - Geomusic (Muza)

Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha on Deutsche Grammophon, conducted by Gunther Schuller. I don't pull this one off the shelf very often - it's probably been five or six years since I listened to it. And while I like it, every time I hear it, I wish it were better. The music is pretty good, but the libretto, written by Joplin himself, is painfully amateurish. I wish he had gotten James Weldon Johnson to write the libretto.

Tonight I tried a Mexican recipe that recently caught my eye - chicken with tomatillo, chipotle and brown sugar sauce. I had never dealt with tomatillos before - they're the smaller, greener, tarter cousins of tomatoes. They have a papery husk which peels off, revealing the green vegetable beneath. Since this was the first time I had tried this recipe, it took awhile to prepare, but it turned out just about perfect when served over yellow rice. It was a bit spicy for my wife, so next time I might cut the amount of chipotles in adobe sauce in half.

That Lacy is a fine one! I didn't know you worked with Michael J. Smith - fine player, that Geomusic stuff is really intense. Shit, I owe you a couple of Lacy CDs don't I? Yeah, Michael lived in Atlanta for a year around the turn of the 1990's. We did some recording that Michael never released, but I put out a couple of tracks on a CD of mine. He got pretty discouraged (understandably) with the Atlanta music scene and went back to Sweden. But in that year, he was quite a figure around here - he'd wear colored jumpsuits with white boots and drive around in a Delorean.

Professor Longhair - The Last Mardi Gras (Atlantic). This wonderful, cooking, sloppy 1978 live double album has never been issued on CD, at least in the U.S.

Steve Lacy - Flakes (Vista). Vista was a short-lived subsidiary of Italian RCA, specializing in avant-garde jazz. This is Lacy at his most "poly-free" radical. My old boss Michael J. Smith plays some wild Hammond organ on "The New Duck." All-Star Marching Band - New Orleans Parade (GNP/Crescendo). This 1978 brass band recording is by a pick-up group, drawn largely from the Onward Brass Band, but it looks like there are few Olympia and Young Tuxedo musicians on hand.

Jazz for a Sunday Afternoon, Volume 3: The West Coast Scene (Solid State). Bobby Bryant, Sweets Edison, Pete Christlieb, Harold Land, etc. Leo Smith (not billed as Wadada on the cover) - Divine Love (ECM). Definitely one of ECM's best releases.

"Nonaah" - that's what the kids are calling it these days.

Murray Lehher with Dave Tarras - Freilachs for Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and Other Celebrations, Vol. 2 (Request stereo)