jeffcrom

Joe Harriott - Abstract (US Capitol mono). I've had this one for years, and have always enjoyed it, but it's clicking for me tonight in a way it never has before. Brilliant.

Not to be overly dramatic, but that was one of those life-changing albums for me.

I believe so, but I'm not sure if he produced all of the "heavy" jazz sessions. The ones I have are: Bill Barron & Ted Curson - Now Hear This (AF) Bill Barron - West Side Story Bossa Nova (Dauntless) Walt Dickerson - Jazz Impressions of Lawrence of Arabia (Dauntless) Walt Dickerson - Unity (AF) Elmo Hope - Sounds from Riker's Island (AF) There's an attractive looking Prince Lasha session with the Bossa Tres that I've never actually owned. For what it's worth, my mono copy of Jazz Impressions of LoA is on MGM.

Miles Evans Mercer Ellington Caspar Brötzmann

Heather and Glen (Tradition). Folk music from Scotland, largely recorded by Alan Lomax in 1951. Beautiful stuff.

Okay, I went to my favorite brick-and-mortar store today and picked up the CD. The short story is that, warts and all, I like this music a lot. And there are plenty of warts. Yes, Paris Wright, the young drummer, rushes some. That doesn't bother me much - I've never minded the tempo picking up a little nearly as much as when the tempo drops. It bothers me more that the rhythm section is just not together much of the time - they can't agree on where the beat is. And Wright's approach to "Ruby My Dear" is clumsy, and detracts from the mood. Ironically, the only performance that rushed so much that I was uncomfortable was "Nutty," with Philly Joe on drums. That tune rushed more than any of the ones with Wright on drums. But to me, the bottom line is that Rouse is in good form and Monk in great form. His solos are wonderful, and his comping (on "I Mean You" and "Straight No Chaser," for instance) is masterful; it reminds us that Monk is thinking compositionally. This kind of thoughtful, involved comping ties things together and takes the music to another level. The sound is kind of bootleg-y, the rhythm section is uncomfortable, and tunes speed up. Except for the rushing on "Nutty" and Wright's drumming on "Ruby," little of that bothered me that much. This is an exciting performance, in spite of the above-listed flaws, and maybe, to some extent, because of them. It's jazz, baby.

Commodores and similar music today: Jack Teagarden and His Swingin' Gates - Big T Blues/Chinatown My Chinatown (Commodore) George Brunis and His Jazz Band - Sweet Lovin' Man/Wang Wang Blues (Commodore). Some nice Tony Parenti on this one. Eddie Heywood and His Orchestra - T'ain't Me/Save Your Sorrow (Commodore). Really nice, with Doc Cheatham and Vic Dickenson, among others. Mel Powell - When Did You Leave Heaven/Blue Skies (Commodore) Mel Powell - The World is Waiting for the Sunrise/Mood at Twilight (Commodore). Powell's 1942 Commodore session is excellent - Billy Butterfield, Lou McGarity and Benny Goodman (using a pseudonym) help out. Dave Tough - You Were Meant for Me/East of the Sun (Jamboree) Dave Tough - Love Walked In/When You're Smiling (Jamboree). Dave Tough's only session as leader, in its entirety. Trumpeter Joe Thomas and Ted Nash on tenor form the front line. And a Commodore album: Eddie Condon and His Band - Jazz a la Carte. One record each from three December, 1943 sessions. Max Kaminsky and Pee Wee Russell are on all three, along with a changing cast of characters.

What do you think of this one? Good; not great. Where I'm coming from - I have exactly two Jane Ira Bloom albums, this one and a more recent one, plus scattered tracks here and there. She's someone I want to like more than I do, if that makes sense. I'm not sure what it is, but I can't get into her music that much. That being said, I've enjoyed this album since I bought it - more than anything else I've heard by her. I do think that her use of electronics is organic, and works better than most such attempts.

Art Hodes All Star Stompers (Jazzology). A nice little swing/dixieland session from 1965. My copy is autographed by Tony Parenti to "Ken."

Jane Ira Bloom - Slalom (Columbia)

Major Holley Sargent Shriver Captain John Handy

I had not read your post until I clicked on this thread to post that I was listening to this set. Right now I'm on disc three - Blues & Roots, plus alternate takes - but may continue on to other discs.

Today a contingent from the 4th Ward Afro-Klezmer Orchestra "played home" Ria Pell, the much-beloved Atlanta chef, gay rights activist, and character, who died unexpectedly earlier this week. We played played strictly from the New Orleans brass band repertoire, rather than our usual jazz/funk/klezmer/Afropop music. It was quite an experience and quite a funeral. Here's a picture from the Atlanta Journal/Constitution website: The heavily bearded grand marshal, just behind the hearse, is Ria's friend and fellow Atlanta chef Jim Stacy. Look carefully at the length of the procession of marchers behind the band - the line extended a good bit further out of the frame of the picture. There were well over a thousand attendees. It was something.

Max Harrison, in his notes to Bix Beiderbecke and the Chicago Cornets, did call Martin Williams tin-eared, but not by name. He berated the "tin-eared commentator" who called Beiderbecke's solo on "Royal Garden Blues" "a kind of parade horn" - a quote which I recognized from Williams' chapter on Bix from The Jazz Tradition.

Donald Byrd - Fancy Free (BN Liberty)

Duke Pearson - Merry Ole Soul (BN Liberty)

Yes, that's one of the great ones by Mr. Lacy.

Piano Red - Happiness is Piano Red (King)

Dewey Redman - Coincide (Impulse) Chico Hamilton - The Gamut (Solid State). Not his best, but there is some nice playing by Jimmy Cleveland, Britt Woodman, and (before he moved to Europe) Steve Potts.

Sure - maybe send me the download link a little early.

Yes to Morgenstern and Gushee. Stanley Dance's many notes to Ellington's albums are not literary masterpieces, but his depth of knowledge concerning Ellington's world means that they are usually informative. Max Harrison hasn't written that many album notes, but when he does, the results are usually excellent. The sometimes overly fussy Martin Williams wrote some great ones and forgettable ones. Don't know if this counts, but the notes to many American Music CDs are taken from Bill Russell's diaries, presumably edited by Barry Martyn. They're extremely interesting to me. Among folks around here, currently active or not, I agree about Misters Kart and Litweiler. Donald Clarke and Chris Albertson have written some excellent ones. And the one set of liner notes I've read by Jim Sangrey, for Chuck's CD reissue of Warne Marsh's All Music, is, as you might expect, offbeat, original, and perceptive.

Donald Byrd - Fuego (BN dark blue label stereo)

Old-time country today; the first and third are new finds, which nicely complement records I already had: Georgia Yellow Hammers - Pass Around the Bottle/Johnson's Old Gray Mule (Victor, 1927) Gordon County Quartet - Walking in the King's Highway/Beyond the Clouds is Light (Columbia, 1930) This is the same group under two different names; they were from Gordon County, Georgia, in the foothills of the Appalachians. Scottdale String Band - Chinese Breakdown/In the Shade of the Parasol (Okeh, 1927) Scottdale String Band - Carolina Glide/My Own Iona (Okeh, 1927) These guys worked in the cotton mill in Scottdale, down the road from me a few miles outside Atlanta. They were a little unusual in that they didn't use a fiddle; the lead was split between mandolin and banjo. Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers - Washington and Lee Swing/Goodnight Waltz (Conqueror, 1931) The great team of Ashley & Foster - Gwen Foster on harmonica and Clarence Ashley on guitar - plus unidentified others.

It's from the same Hillcrest performances, but it's different material. The America material came out in the US on Inner City as Live at the Hillcrest Club 1958, credited to Coleman, but Bley put out other performances on his own Improvising Artists label as Coleman Classics 1. (There was never a volume 2.) I'm not even going to look, but I'll bet the one of the public-domain labels has a "Complete Hillcrest Club" CD.

Last night, back to back: Paul Bley - Solemn Meditation (GNP Crescendo) Ornette Coleman - Coleman Classics 1 (Improvising Artists). The latter is really by the Paul Bley Quintet, of course, with Ornette and Don Cherry, recorded at the Hillcrest Club, about six months after the GNP Crescendo date. Solemn Meditation seemed pretty good until I played the Hillcrest record - it's on another level. For anyone who hasn't read this interview of Bley by Bill Smith, here's the part that describes how the Hillcrest date came about; it always makes me smile: The Hillcrest Club was a club on Washington Boulevard, which is in the black section of Los Angeles, right in the middle of it. That area had a tradition of live performance. Les McCann played our Monday night jam sessions. When I arrived in Los Angeles after along college tour with a trio that I brought from New York we added the vibraphone player, Dave Pike, and went into the Hillcrest Club and stayed roughly close to two years; six nights a week. (This is the band that made the record Solemn Meditation - Gene Norman GNP 31). And over that period of time some of the players went back east and were replaced. Billy Higgins replaced Lennie McBrowne, Charlie Haden replaced Hal Gaylor, the Montreal bassist. One night Billy Higgins said, “a friend of mine, Don Cherry, brought a saxophone player and wants to sit in”. I normally never let anybody sit in, we sent them all to Monday night and gave them to Les McCann, but because it was somebody in the band and they almost never made any recommendations for somebody to sit in we said “no problem”. After playing one set with them Charlie and I went out in the back yard and had a confrontation. We said. “Look, we have been working in this club for a long time and most probably could stay here as long as we wanted. If we fire Dave Pike and hire Don and Ornette we won’t last the week. We’ll be lucky to last the night. What shall we do?” And we looked at each other and said — “Fire Dave Pike!”