jeffcrom

Dick Grove - Little Bird Suite (Pacific Jazz). Beautiful, subtle orchestral jazz.

Hmm.... I have read that it was George Adams. I hear some of his signature licks, and he was in Marr's band around that time. Maybe I'll compare to some Rusty Bryant later this week.

The Jazz Scene - copy #3035 (of 5000). Finally scored a nice copy of this at a price I was willing to pay. It still wasn't cheap, but it was less than the usual going rate. And adjusting for inflation, I paid less than the original 1949 list price, which was $25. My cover is in much better shape than the one in the picture, and the records are in excellent condition; they sound really good. The Gjon Mili photographs are magnificent, and make much more impact reproduced at this large size, as opposed to the CD reissue. I'm very pleased to have this album.

Blues haiku #6: For Robert Johnson I drank the poison You poured in my whiskey glass; Now I'll never die. Blues haiku #4: Sonny Boy's tombstone: Outside Tutwiler, hidden; I left him a harp. Blues haiku #5: after Robert Johnson Stones in my passway; Pick them up, go around, stop. I don't get to choose

Eddie Costa / Vinnie Burke Trio (Josie). Originally on Jubilee. Anthony Braxton - Alto Saxophone Improvisations 1979 (Arista) Karl Berger - Tune In (Milestone). Happy birthday, Ed Blackwell.

Blues haiku. The first two lines are taken almost verbatim from "I Never Miss the Sunshine," recorded by blues singer Clara Smith in 1923. I never miss the sunshine; I'm so used to rain. Light and joy seem far away.

Bill Evans - Another Time (Resonance). I was slightly disappointed with Some Other Time, recorded by the same trio two days earlier, but this concert is all kinds of fabulous.

I only know that I don't have any of these tracks elsewhere, but I don't have any of the "complete" live collections. I would guess that they can be found there.

Charlie Christian / Wardell Gray - Tribute From Sweden (Fran Staterna). A Boris Rose production, disguised as a Swedish release to avoid legal repercussions. Christian gets side one; Wardell side two. The Wardell side, with the Benny Goodman Sextet and the Count Basie Seven, is all kinds of fabulous. My cover looks like this, but is light pink rather than blue.

Giants of Jazz (Atlantic) Georgia Blues Today (Flyright) I regret what I didn't know. I'm old enough that I could have driven the 70 miles or so to Perry, Georgia and danced to guitarist James Davis' instrumental "drum music" at his regular Friday night gig. If only I had known.

Dewey Redman - Coincide (Impulse). Hard-core, even for Impulse. And really good.

Buddy Guy - The Complete Chess Studio Recordings. I'm a happy boy right now - this was not stored where I thought, and I haven't been able to find it for some time. I actually thought that I had gotten rid of it in a CD purge, and was going to buy another copy. I found it while pulling records and CDs for a music room remodel.

Lots of shellac, lately. But I don't think I've mentioned this one - James Moody, recorded in Paris (in 1951) with an orchestra arranged and conducted by Andre Hodeir. The piece on the other side, "September Serenade" (credited to Gillespie/Williams) is a variation on Dizzy Gillespie's 1945 recording of "I Can't Get Started." I have to say that the orchestration is a bit overripe.

I really like Deuchar - I'm glad I discovered him a few years ago. Julius Hemphill - Blue Boyé (Screwgun), disc one. Reading the reissue liner notes by Tim Berne, who produced this CD version, makes this solo album seem even more miraculous. Most tracks have two or three overdubbed woodwind parts, plus "hambone" percussion on "OK Rubberband." Berne, who was at the recording session in 1977, says that Hemphill never even took his overcoat off, and recorded each part in one take. It sounds to me as if it would have taken several days of studio work. But I'm not Julius Hemphill.

This again. Now one of my favorite gospel albums on my shelves.

In my humble opinion, the verse to "How Long Has This Been Going On?" adds a lot to the meaning of the song - musically and lyrically.

Hank Jones, Kenny Wheeler, and now: Kid Howard's La Vida Band: Afraid to Stay Here, Afraid to Leave This Town (Icon mono)

Write a line then instead of just pressing "enter" to get to the next line, press "shift / enter."

Shorty Rogers - Modern Sounds (Capitol three-record box). I have this material on LP as well, but this set "pops" out of the speakers nicely. Art Pepper and Hampton Hawes win.

The Jazz Scene (Verve). Listening to the original configuration - the 12 originally-issued sides.

I love that stuff, especially the intensity of "That Certain Door." Jemeel Moondoc - Revolt of the Negro Lawn Jockeys (Eremite)

Max Harrison is another critic who really understands Tatum. His short essay on the pianist in Jazz on Record 1917-1967 is excellent. Since I doubt many folks have access to it, here are some excerpts: Externally, then, Tatum's music offers a fantastic array of pianistic devices, but we shall be mistaken if we allow this to dazzle us for it is the smaller part of his achievement. We shall also be misled if we expect him to build new melodies on the chords of the pieces he plays, like most soloists, for Tatum represents, among other things, the final sophistication of stride school practices. This means that he uses a melody, preferably a well-known ballad, as a cantus firmus around which evolves a structure of ever-changing textures, full of countermelodies, inner voices. Sometimes a melody is "analysed" into its basic motives, which recur again and again, often modified, usually revoiced, reharmonised and over various intensifications of stride bass patterns. And later: As one recording session follows another, while his virtuosity becomes more extravagant the rhythmic invention grows more acute and personal, the harmony more complex yet sensitive. While a certain part of this music's expressive force derives from tension between its athletic execution and the sensual complexity of its harmony, the main point is that Tatum's staggering technical command is the vehicle of a vast harmonic and rhythmic imagination. These are the elements through which he principally works and he is by far the greatest harmonist jazz has produced.

Oh, wow! I was just a kid, it seems like now. Petrucciani played first because he had a plane to catch, and we enjoyed joking about how Michel Petrucciani opened for us.

Stockhausen - Opus 1970 (Deutsche Grammophon LP). This is basically a version of Stockhausen's "Kurzwellen," a piece in which the performers respond to random short-wave radio signals. Here, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, the radios have been replaced by tapes of Beethoven, prepared by Stockhausen to sound "short-wavy." It actually works pretty well, in my opinion, but I guess Stockhausen later rejected the idea, since he never reissued the recording in his Stockhausen Edition CD series.

Willis Conover's House of Sounds (THE Orchestra) (Brunswick). The Washington big band that backed Charlie Parker (One Night in Washington) six months earlier. Several of the same arrangements appear here.