mikeweil

I used to have quite a few duplicates of my favourites, but nowadays I try to save shelf space and try to avoid them. One issue of a session is enough.

I've been thinking about this for a while ... I'm far from having heard everything Stan recorded, and suspect the Mosaic box might include some that would become favourites pretty soon, but I really dig some of the stuff he did with Max Roach, because that's where he first caught my attention, especially the live recordings fromParis that made me really check out what else he had done, and some of the later Blue Note stuff with horn sections arranged by Duke Pearson.

It's about time for an albums covers forum

Thanks Jack - saw there was a European reissue as well - this was on my radar for some time, but I needed a boost in form of board member commentaries like yours to make me really want and get this

Is that album still available?

Oh, my ..... another giant gone. R.I.P., and thanks for putting Aretha back into the church, among many other great things.

Now although we have plenty of Coltrane out, this would be great to hear, especially the complete Hartman session. Now can someone explain why Universal will not go for this? Mosaic could handle that.

What a story! Good to have you back!

Do you have this one? I have always been curious about it - I have the other Mainieri Solid State LP.

Apart from the fact that it contains a lot that's more R & B and comedy than bebop, it is a rare glimpse at the early Gillespie orchestra. Fun it is, but remember the music is not always in complete sync with the film as it was dubbed in later. I never regret I got it.

That's true, unfortunately. I recently bought the A.K. Salim double disc. It includes all of his leader dates for Savoy, of course no unreleased material (the Savoy disco says there are still a few tracks on the shelf), and the two alternates issued on the recent US reissue of "Pretty for the People" are not included - although there would have been enough playing capacity left. I don't know, perhaps they don't want to make it too obvious where they get their material from ... Anyway, I ended up burning the two alternates on to a CD single and will sell the other issues - I need shelf space real bad!

Why not ask the composer at http://www.clarefischer.com/ ?

On the Blue Note website they state they chose "Howlin' For Judy" as title track 'cause it was used as a sample by someone prominent - this type of use seems to dictate reissue potential, not musical content. I guess the same goes for the Mizell stuff. I don't see Cuscuna, OTOH, being that much interested in the type of early fusion music these Steig sessions represent.

That's an aspect of Brahem's music that disappoints me a little - as I said, I saw that trio live, and it was beautiful but at the same time very controlled, almost restrained, although Erköse got around to some more ecstatic playing than on the CD. I'll have to look for the Bunka - he's a long standing world music pioneer on the German scene, and one of the first to play oud in such a context. I was given Egypt as a gift a while ago - indeed a very beautiful album! Could be - I never liked that spacy ECM sound, and in these cases, it tends to kill the groove.

Since he's from Tunisia and one of the country's acclaimed oud masters, it should ... Agreed - I heard this trio live - a little restrained, but beautiful. No piano here, fortunately ... Haven't heard this, only a more recent one with piano - I stick to my skepticism towards piano and Arab scales. Makes it sound like film music, somehow - themes in sarch of movies (Brahem did some soundtracks, and his music works great as such).

I have the LP version. Note that it is not the Duke's complete Columbia recordings of that period - the tracks released on three 12" Columbia Lps were not included as CBS France had already reissued them as single albums. The music is good, though ... I see Mosaic do this batch properly in the coming years. Two of the three Lps not in that set were available as single CD reissues from Columbia:

That was one of the tracks on the Legwork LP on Solid State. The three Sonny Lester produced LPs, This Is Jeremy Steig, Legwork, and Wayfaring Stranger (the latter only was released on Blue Note because Liberty had bought Solid State and transferred the unreleased LPs to the Blue Note catalog) easily fit on a twofer. If they had tossed in the Fusion sessions that were issued on Groove Merchant as well as Capitol it would make a nice Mosaic Select and still had enough playing time left to include the Mike Mainieri LP with Steig. We'll see ..... Well, I saw: the track list on the Blue Note website: It's a compliation of 7 tracks from the Wayfaring Stranger and Legwork LPs - disappointing - both albums complete with the first, This Is ... would have made a nice twofer. I will keep my LPs. For the cover they used Jeremy's photo from the front cover of Stranger with his painting from the back cover of Legwork. This is one of the most disappointing resissues from Blue Note in some time! :tdown

I find the oud and the piano a mismatch - due to the largely different tonal systems underlying the development of these instruments, one has to chose one system, which must the Western equal temperament, as it is impossible to re-tune the piano each time one changes the traditional Arab maqam. So the oud is tuned to a Western scale and looses much of its tonal charm. I don't like it. The piano should be avoided whenever non-Western instruments tuned according to other tonal systems are involved. Horns and bass are okay, guitars to a certain extent, but the guitarist needs to understand the non-Western tonal systems and must avoids conventional thinking in chord sequences and harmonic functions, but select chords according to their sound only. For this reason I find Rabih Abou-Khalil's recent recording with Joachim Kühn a failed experiment, not mentioning the fact that a piano overpowers the oud if the latter is unamplified.

Fresh Sound does a lot of nice compilations US labels would never get around to, like the Sahib Shihab, compiling sessions, including half albums and single tracks scattered over anthologies on several labels, on to one double disc - Mosaic could do this, but probably avoids the copyright hassle. Same for the Carmen McRae - the Fresh Sound completes her first sessions with small group backing for Stardust/Bethlehem and Decca, some of her nicest sessions, IMO. Who else would have done this?

Thanks for the link - it showed me that there are only a few copies left of the book, which I immediately ordered from Noal. He's one of the best discographers around.

I need this - but the shipping charges to Germany are $ 25.00 !!!

This is excellent music and contains some of the cornerstones of Afro-Cuban Jazz - if there is a middle ground between Afro-Cuban music and jazz, O'Farrill (the son of Irish immigrants) hit it bullseye. I also mourn that Verve never got around to compile the Norman Granz recordings of Machito in the same caretaking way - there would be some overlaps (which could be omitted) but the few examples of tracks on various Verve compilations show that the masters in the Verve vaults sound much, much better than the heavily noise reduced tape transfer that is availbale on Pablo. But there has never been an issue collecting all tracks including all takes of "Tanga". For the US, the music of O'Farrill and Machito - i.e. Mario Bauza - is the first musical high point of the genre.

Great!!! Thanks, Niko!