mikeweil

Don't get me wrong - I love Herbie, and owe more to him for my own rhythmic awareness than to any percussionist, but right now I find the looser approach I hear in Duke's trios more attractive. Each has its own merits. Yes there is a number of vocal tracks, but he makes them really interesting: one is in 7/4, one is in 3/4 with an anticipated downbeat in a funky shuffle feel etc. - plenty ideas. Where others graded down to rather simplistic standard funk grooves in their vocal numbers Duke stills was unorthodox, and the chord changes are very well chosen. One of those vocal numbers in a slightly slower tempo could be played as an instrumental by the Mahavishnu Orchestra and nobody would notice. This guy has my respect!

Indeed shocking! I do not consider myself a fan, but this is a tragedy! R.I.P. and peace to his family and friends.

On a superficial level, yes - some of the vocal tunes. But Duke's voice is quite different. He was forced to start singing while with Zappa, and found out he was best using hismfalsetto register, which sounds nice - his singing is definitely a lot better than Hancock's! The common denominator with Stevie is the positive vibe the tunes radiate, I'd say. Well, some of the rhythms are inspired by Zappa, some of the fun tracks are, but in my ears only about 20% jump out as strongly Zappaesque. Duke admitted that he was learning much of his synth stuff by trial and error - Zappa bought an ARP 2600 which wasn't the easiest model to handle, took it home several times and kept struggling with the manual, so he got himself an ARP Odyssey which was easier to operate. His sound is very personal to my ears and different from those of Hammer, Zawinul, or Hancock - the latter's sound is dated compared to Duke. Since Duke used a Wurlitzer more often than a Fender Rhodes and the Hohner D6 clavinet in a rather unorthodox fashion, it sets him apart. Hancock's rhythm keyboards are much closer to Stevie Wonder's than Duke's. Some of that stuff sounds incredibly fresh and overall very positive - in the way that many Zappa tunes sound positive - you get the idea? And the groove is basically very loose with a lot of jazz approach, even looser than Weather Report's. In retrospect, Hancock's grooves sound stiff in comparison. And although Duke did overdub a bit, it all sounds very impromptu the way he does it, not as constructed as Hancock's. There even is a long solo track from "Faces in Reflection" done live in the studio that's downright fantastic - I listened to that one in the dark and several times in a row back then.

Duke states in his personal notes that the Fantasy Studios were kind of a meeting place for many musicians and so they turned out playing on a lot of each other's albums - Duke was on Jean-Luc Ponty's for Pacific Jazz and two of Joe Henderson's for Milestone, some Flora Purim, Cal Tjader's Amazonas that Airto produced - sometimes using his Dawili Gonga pseudonym.

No - what is it?

It's expensive even for German standards. I was lucky to get the last copy Zweitausendeins had in stock several years ago for around that price - I think it was in Deutschmarks what it is now in EURO!

Discs were in the mailbox this morning - the first track is much to my liking!

The George Duke Quartet - a 1966 MPS LP (the one not included in the new MPS reissue box)

I grabbed this as I had only three of the six LPs included here, and I like it much more than I thought. Actually it brought back memories of how often I spinned these back in the day, and in retrospect I find George Duke's keyboard artisrtry and his take on the merging of jazz and rock/pop/soul as convincing and fresh as Hancock's or Zawinul's. He was a member of Cannonball's band when he started this series and went on to Zappa, and both influences clearly show. Has anybody here got this? Were these available in the USA back then, and is the box now? I'm curious about your opinions ..... I have the impression Duke's albums are not as well known as those of his fusion keyboard colleagues. LPs included: Solus & The Inner Source Faces in Reflection Feel The Aura Will Prevail I love the blues, she heard my cry Liberated Fantasies

A caption for the Org cover might go: "I knew right away that f......ng record company agent wouldn't show up - now we have to to the whole damn production ourselves!!

... the fact aside that Sax was not a jazz musician, an excellent choice!

Now with two games over, I find the teams of the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain to be the candidates. The Germans? It is one of their specialities to struggle in the first round and then bite through the contest. But it's not elegant soccer. The Austrians through them out of the contest in 1976 in a similar situation - a historic win of the Austrians. I'll watch that one, for sure. The Dutch deserve it for their spirit. The French and Italians now get the payback for their weak show in the last World Championship final - I thought neither of them really deserved it. Remember the English got theirs in the qualification! That the Greek win four years ago was a one shot was predictable.

... they, not we, shouldn't have left the field in the first place, and they're not alone. Did you get what some Polish politician said about German player Podolski - a Poland-born German who scored against the Polish team? Ridiculous. Or that Swiss player from Turkey being afraid of celebrating his goal against the Turkish team? He was afraid his family back there might get into trouble. I like to watch these games but find the nationalist aspect of the whole contest all the more absurd these days. I find the concept of nationalism all the more absurd every day with migration and globalization going on the way it does. International sports contests are some of the last reservations of nationalism in our time. So we're outside the field with one foot from the start, it seems? Oh well .....

Same here, although it was a while ago ...

There is a feature article on Jordan in the July 2008 issue of Germany's Fono Forum classical magazine,which features a few pages on jazz each month. I sense this will boost sales of the Bear Family box 'cause they recommended it, so consider an order now if you want it .....

... and I should add, it's every bit as good as a Mosaic, production-wise!

Well ..... it's a nice blowing session, held late at night due to Ray Brown's and Shelly Manne's studio commitments, and certainly not as arousing as the Village Vanguard live trios or some of the RCA stuff, but still - I would buy it. But please keep those tapes away from RVG! Joe Tarrantino or Kirk Felton are the better choices for a new remaster, or Steve Hofmann (if he hasn't already done it). p.s. Yes Hofmann has done it, for Analogue Productions, and there's a Hong Kong Fantasy SACD as well: http://www.sa-cd.net/search/rollins

It was hard to avoid hearing excerpts from Loverly on jazz radio shows over here featuring new releases since it came out. I find Dust My Broom rather boring, full of second hand blues licks, Marvin Sewell being nothing as arousing as the guitar on the original, and Caravan was rather nicely tickling along, without really catching my attention. I wouldn't buy a CD of her even if it had her doing a striptease bonus video ....

Wow ..... he doesn't state his year of birth, just like an opera singer. Sure looks younger than his years ...

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 .....

IMHO Eddie Henderson's album got less and less exciting after his two Capricorns - the first Blue Note was exciting - Harvey Mason really firing up the groove - but the second really didn't take off. Nice but a little lame compared to Sunburst. The Capitol Lps that were to come have their moments, too, but it really went downhill after the Mwandishi band.

There's a special rule for such cases - not even Günther Netzer knew it quite surely. They analysed the scene in slow motion on German TV - the goal was correct. Italy looked pretty clueless most of the time. Their coach lamented his team being basically too slow and technically underaccomplished for today's European standards - they didn't show him he was wrong.

I was at a classical concert - baroque chamber music - this afternoon, and there were some flaws. These were not topnotch performers, but I liked their unpretentious approach, and they gave their best. Some works were difficult to play. While having dinner with my wife afterwards, I remarked that I started to hate these perfect edited performances one usually gets to hear when buying a disc. It's okay for a published recording, but the basic attitude should be a liitler looser. It may be due to the greater competition everywhere. But nobody's perfect, not even the greatest. Coleman Hawkins, when listening to a playback of his solo on Max Roach's "We Insist: Freedom Now! Suite" and being asked if he wanted another take as there was a squeak of the reed on the take, refused, saying there should be a fault on every great record. That's a healthy attitude!

My first choice for for his orchestral works: I have never heard a more moving version of the piano concerto for the left hand! This includes the only recent recording of the Bolero in the exact tempo the composer wanted - already his contemporaries started to ignore his wishes, much to his dismay. For his piano works, his own recording for Welte-Mignon pianos would be my first choice - about to be reissued, I will post here as soon as it is out.

I have that Bear Family box - lots of fun music inside, and very well played, too. Musicians like that are no longer around, I'm afraid ... The box is still available, btw!