jeffcrom

Lo-fi, made on a wire recorder, if I recall, but excellent music - in the vein of the Captiol sides.

After more Billie, the guy who doesn't listen to much vocal jazz is spinning: The Complete Helen Merrill on Mercury.

Yeah, after posting the link, I poked around a little bit and came to the same conclusion.

Well, there's still a website. I've ordered from it, but not for several years.

Jamison Williams - Disney Classics, Vol. VI (Vantage Bulletin). Okay, this is weird. Jamison Williams is a Florida avant-garde saxophonist who is seemingly obsessed with all things Disney. This is the sixth extremely-limited-edition 7" record of solo soprano sax deconstructions of Disney songs he has put out. Each one is hand-lathed and comes with a "read-along storybook," as shown here. This one has "A Spoonful of Sugar" on one side and "When You Wish Upon a Star" on the other. I also bought a similar limited-edition cassette (with storybook) of two duets with Dan Kozac: "Zip a Dee Doo Day" and "The Bare Necessities." The package (which arrived today) was full of all sorts of freebies, including several CDrs and another cassette. It's all intriguing and fascinating, but I need to do some further listening to decided how good it actually is.

Complete Billie Holiday on Verve, disc one. For years, I wasn't convinced that I need this, and I made do with bits and pieces of Holiday's Verve recordings. Well, a local record store had the this box for a ridiculously low price, so I couldn't pass it up. Disc one was beautiful; turns out that I did need this.

J.D. Parran! Does he play with a King Crimson vet on this one? We have a winner! And yes, he plays with Mr. Muir on this record.

Trios by Company (Incus). The record collecting bug is strange. This afternoon, for some reason, I became obsessed with trying to track down some of the Company recordings on my want list. It was a fun hunt, but at one point I asked myself, "Why don't you just play some of the Company recordings that you have, dumbass?" So I'm playing this one, and enjoying it. And it amuses me greatly that there is a musician who has recorded with Company, The Shaking Ray Levis, and The Band. So I guess that's tonight's trivia question.

Gary Bartz Ntu Troop - I've Known Rivers and Other Bodies (Prestige). Live at Montreux, 1973.

Happy 97th birthday to the spirit of Dizzy Gillespie! Spun this four-pocket Musicraft album, as well as: Our Delight/He Beeped When He Should Have Bopped (Musicraft) Salted Peanuts/Be-Bop (Manor) I Can't Get Started/Good Bait (Columbia, reissue from Manor) Metronome All Stars - Overtime/Victory Ball (RCA VIctor)

Chick Corea - The Song of Singing (BN). I've said before here that I like pretty much everything Corea did up until the time Circle broke up. This trio (Corea, Holland, Altschul) really listened to each other. It just occurred how much adding Braxton to form Circle was a two-edged sword. It somehow made the group greater and diminished it at the same time.

Spinning this one myself now.

R & B today: Fats Domino - Nobody Loves Me/Cheatin' (Imperial) Fats Domino - Bo Weevil/Don't Blame It On Me (Imperial) Fats Domino - So Long/When My Dreamboat Comes Home (Imperial) Kid King's Combo - Banana Split/Skip's Boogie (Excello) Kid King's Combo - Chocolate Sundae/Greasy Feet (Excello) Joe Lutcher's Jump Band - Bebop Blues/Shuffle Woogie (Capitol). Some nice solos on side two - Lutcher on alto sax and Karl George on trumpet.

Clifford Jordan/Sonny Red - A Story Tale (Jazzland mono)

Yep, although sound quality ain't great - at least on the CD. I was there - it was a great night, even though the clubowner had to explain that "LTD" stood for "Late Tall Dexter."

Interpretations by the Stan Getz Quintet (Norgran)

.......Wilbur Ware was unfortunately not overly prolific and I agree that all his recordings are important, but again (hope not being too pushy...) if it would come down to 1 TRACK which stands synonymous for your appreciation of Wilbure Ware`s euvre, which one would you choose ?? For my answer, see post #3.

Basin Street Six (EmArcy 10" LP). Almost the same band as above, a year and a half later, after the younger members all rebelled against Zito and quit en masse to form their own band. Girard and Fountain are even more impressive here.

Phil Zito - Dixieland Express (Columbia 10" LP). Phil Zito was a bombastic New Orleans drummer who had a talented young band when he recorded this album in 1949. This represents the recording debut of both George Girard and Pete Fountain; they were both 19 at the time. Girard is already very impressive.

Duke Ellington - Happy Birthday, Duke! (Laserlight); discs 1 & 2. This was an interesting period (1953-54) for Ellington, in my opinion, and it's nice to hear him and the band unfettered by Capitol's sometimes questionable production directions.

The New Orleans All-Stars - In Concert at the Dixieland Jubilee (Dixieland Jubilee). It sounds like it could be pretty grim, but this is a very good album. Four excellent New Orleanians join three west coasters in a 1954 Pasadena concert. The Louisianans are the jazz pioneer Johnny St. Cyr on guitar, Raymond Burke (one of my favorite clarinetists), trombonist Jack Delaney, and the ill-fated trumpeter George Girard, who died two years later at the age of 26. Girard is at his best here. I've often wondered whether, if he had lived longer, he would have developed into an even more magnificent New Orleans trumpeter or turned into a Pete Fountain/Al Hirt-style pop/crossover artist. There are a few hints of that direction in his recorded output. But the six years or so of his recording career resulted in many impressive recordings; maybe I'll start a thread and write more about him. Buglin' Sam Demekel appears on bugle and vocals on a few numbers - he had a horse-drawn waffle wagon in New Orleans, going back to the 1920s, and played jazz tunes on his bugle to attract customers. Even before he became a minor figure in New Orleans jazz in the 1950s, he was immortalized by a 1924 recording by Johnny Bayersdorffer's Jazzola Novelty Orchestra, "Waffle Man's Call."

It's one of those reviews that you come away from knowing more about the writer than about the music.

Original Dixieland Jazz Band - The London Recordings (World/EMI)

Classic Capital Jazz Sessions - the Benny Carter big band.

The Hurricane Brass Band Tuba Fats Mama Cass