jeffcrom

Wuxtry?

"Wind instrument" means any brass or woodwind - anything you blow through to get a sound and subsequently have to get the spit out of.

Albert Ayler - Holy Ghost (Revenant), disc one. This disc starts with Ayler's first recording as a mature musician - a June, 1962 broadcast recording with Herbert Katz's Finnish band. It's fascinating, and pretty great. It's obvious to me that Ayler knows exactly what he's doing on these standards; his playing is strange, but not random. He knows the melodies, the form, and the chord structures, but he's hearing something very different from his Finnish colleagues. And the 22-minute piece by the Cecil Taylor Quartet (Taylor, Ayler, Jimmy Lyons, and Sunny Murray) that follows is epic, amazing, important - a holy thing, really.

Steve Lacy recorded dozens of solo albums, but 5 x Monk 5 x Lacy on Silkheart is the one I would take to a desert island.

Lee Konitz - Very Cool (Japanese Verve/Polydor)

Albert Ayler - Witches & Devils (Arista Freedom). AKA Spirits.

Just wanted to add a new (to me) discovery to my list of favorite Claude Jones solos. It's another short one - Jones takes the bridge in the middle of a Chu Berry tenor solo on Cab Calloway's "She's Tall, She's Tan, She's Terrific." The gorgeous ascending phrase at the end of this brief outing makes this one well worth hearing.

Pee Wee Russell Plays (Dot). An all-original program.

Matthew Shipp solo, at a tiny little club in Tallahassee. It was pretty great. Afterwards I said hello, and we talked admiringly about Allen Lowe.

Horace Silver - Doin' the Thing: At the Villige Gate (BN mono)

It's an Esoteric Sound Rek-O-Kut CVS-14. I hate the name, which was an old brand bought by Esoteric Sound. But it's kind of an amazing table for my needs. (I've talked about it some on another thread, so pardon me for repeating myself.) Before I got this turntable, I had a variety of records that I couldn't play properly - a handful of verticals, some very early "78s" that actually play properly at around 71 RPM, some Audiophile microgoove 78s from the 1950s, and even some modern stereo 78s. I now can quickly switch between three headshells with different cartridges - stereo LP, mono LP, and 78. And I have several size styli for the 78 cartridge, and will add more over time. So I can combine any speed with any cartridge. (I finally heard those Audiophiles as they were supposed to sound!) Anyway, I'm having fun.

Go for it, Alex. I have bought a ridiculous amount of recorded music lately.

This is tempting, even though I have two of the CDs and more of this material in other formats. While I mull, someone with a taste for mid-forties mainstream jazz should snatch this up.

An account put together from various Lacy interviews: The musicians were regular Lacy associates of the time, based in Rome. Enrico Rava's wife was from Argentina, and booked them a series of concerts at a theater in Buenos Aires. They bought one-way tickets, but hardly made any money in Argentina, and couldn't afford to get home for eight or nine months. "That was the wrong group at the wrong time in the wrong place playing the wrong kind of music...." He said that they did build up a small following over the months, but they were really glad to get out of Argentina. Thanks for unearthing those quotes. Seems extraordinary that they achieved excellent and well recorded session under those circumstances. That also explains for me why some early Rava leader sessions are recorded in Argentina. Thanks Jeffcrom Lacy was indeed based in Italy at that time ("Disposability", "Sortie", "Nuovi Sentimenti"...), but his regular associates would have been Kent Carter and Aldo Romano, so I'm still wondering how he ended up with Dyani and Moholo in South America. Yeah, I wasn't really accurate about Dyani and Moholo, was I? They were based in London at time, I think. But a quick look at 25 Years of Fish Horn Recording (H.L. Lindenmaier's Lacy discography) shows that this group did some playing together before the trip to Argentina. In March, 1966 they played the San Remo Jazz Festival, and apparently made an unreleased album, Zyatsha, in London. Wouldn't it be great if that turned up?

I love those Eddie Miller trio recordings for Jump. I have two 78s and a 10" LP, and used one ("Ain't Misbehavin'," I think) on one of my blindfold tests. Last night - blues and R & B 78s. Tonight, Prez - nothing I haven't mentioned before... But I really like listening to Aladdin 137 and 138 back-to-back - that's the session with Joe Albany. And Mercury 8934 ("Three Little Words" and "Neenah") really has that "Oh my god, he's right here in the room with me" presence. You can hear the air going through the horn. Then Big Bill Broonzy with Punch Miller on Okeh and Columbia. Punch Miller was a badass in his prime.

I enjoy your reviews, James.

An account put together from various Lacy interviews: The musicians were regular Lacy associates of the time, based in Rome. Enrico Rava's wife was from Argentina, and booked them a series of concerts at a theater in Buenos Aires. They bought one-way tickets, but hardly made any money in Argentina, and couldn't afford to get home for eight or nine months. "That was the wrong group at the wrong time in the wrong place playing the wrong kind of music...." He said that they did build up a small following over the months, but they were really glad to get out of Argentina.

Not always - they continued to offer albums sequenced sequenced the old way as well as those for automatice changers. There were also albums for DJs (who used two turntables) - they were sequenced in what first seemed to be a random order, but no two sides which followed each other were ever placed on the same record.

A 12" 78 has about four and a half minutes of music per side. I have digitally put together some of my multi-side classical 78 recordings for iPod listening. The conductor and producer generally found logical places for the side breaks. In the early days of 78s (say, before 1925), scores were often hacked to pieces to fit on one or two sides of a record. It was around 1925 that Columbia and Victor/HMV started issuing multi-record albums of complete works. After that, I don't think that pieces were edited for recording very often, although I know that sometimes repeats weren't taken.

Happy Birthday, Allen!

JImmy Smith - Rockin' the Boat (BN mono)

Paul Motian - Le Voyage (ECM)

This post is to document my further descent into madness. So my new turntable has a switch which enables it to play vertically-cut records. These records are the losers in the lateral vs. vertical record technology war of the early 20th century. By 1920, nobody but Edison was still making vertically-cut records, and they held out until the company was almost out of business before starting to issue laterals. But Edison insisted that his quarter-inch-thick vertical records, playable only on Edison machines, were superior to all other records on the market. Sonically, he might have been right. I've picked up half a dozen Edisons, and they are really excellent-sounding acoustic recordings - some of the best-sounding acoustic records I've ever heard. But they really take up a lot of space - I've got to be choosy about picking up Edisons. But that's not hard - the good news/bad news is that most of what Edison recorded was crap, musically. But there are some interesting Edisons - Fletcher Henderson recorded two sides in 1923 (not paired on the same record, unfortunately), the Louisiana Five, a band I particularly like, made four sides, the early country music pioneer Ernest Stoneman made a bunch of records for Edison, as did the California Ramblers, and the Fisk University Jubliee Quartet recorded as the Southern 4. So here are the highlights of my descent into Edison madness so far. I won't mention uninteresting flip sides. Fletcher Henderson - Linger Awhile (1923). A stock arrangement, it sounds like. But toward the end, the band loosens up and gets pretty hot. Louisiana Five - Foot Warmer/Be Hap-E (1919). Alcide Nunez's New Orleans clarinet takes the lead. Rudy Wiedoeft - Saxophone Fantasie (1920). An elaborate semi-classical piece by a pioneer recording saxophonist I admire. Southern 4 - Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray/Good News, Chariot's Comin' - O Mary, Doan You Weep, Doan You Moan (1921) Ernest Stoneman - The Old Hickory Cane/Watermelon Hanging on the Vine (1926) The picture of the Henderson disc above, taken from Ebay, is apparently my copy. Edison didn't press the labels into the shellac, like everyone else - they glued them onto the fiber core. So lots of Edisons have label damage, or sides with the labels missing. Oh, and a ten-inch Edison side contains an average of four minutes of music; some sides play longer than that. So I've gone a little crazier - but, again, I think that the fact that most of the music on Edison is lousy will keep me from going too crazy.

Puzzled me, too, but Jim explains all in post 10.

Bunky Green - Playin' for Keeps (Cadet mono)