mikeweil

Was that in the fall of 1986 perhaps? No, it was October 3, 1978 (I still kept records about the concerts I attended at the time) - Bill Hardman, Junior Cook, Hugh Lawson, Yoshio "Chin" Suzuki, and Steve Phillips (very nice drummer that I never heard of again. The Doug Hammond Trio with Marvin Blackman and Hal Dodson was in the audience, and Cook insisted that Blackman take his sax and blow some chorusses - fascinating to hear how different two players sound on the same instrument. I was pretty close with Doug at the time, and he introduced me to the whole band. It was like in a New York club!

The vinyl of my copy is clean. Problem is the flat sound that comes from it, as was the case on so many Riverside/Jazzland albums! Before getting this original copy, I had a French vinyl reissue from the 70s that sounded better than this. I still have a copy of it somewhere. I should probably get the CD version if you're happy with it! I have the US limited edition OJC vinyl issue and it sounds fine. Maybe there are some of this around ... but this is so good an album, musically, that the sound is not so big an issue!

Saw him live with the band he co-led with Bill Hardman - great, and very nice person. Check out the Blue Mitchell-Junior Cook dates they recorded after leaving Horace, starting with The Cup Bearers on Riverside. His later Muse albums were all very good, no matter if as a leader or sideman.

well, this is in a state of deconstruction, but .....

Oh - I overlooked that "the rest of the material". Thanks!

Most used to mockingly call this band "Tony Williams & The Jazz Messengers" ..... You could have simply listened back then. No use in crying about missed opportunities - there are many gaps like this in my collection. But I bought all of Tony's Blue discs right away. The live may be the best or - to say it better - most representative of the band. I wonder why he wasn't involeved in the mix and selection of the tunes.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch! Das gibt 'ne Freikarte am 30. April!

PM will be sent re Payton/Chetaham and the two Impulse Harrisons.

Couldn't say it better!

The personnel you listed is a collective listing. 1: Forrest, Nelson and King Curtis with Gene Casey, George Duvivier and Roy Haynes, Sep 9, 1960 2-3: quartet with Forrest, Hugh Lawson, Tommy Potter and Clarence Johnston, Oct. 19, 1961 4-6: Forrest with Nelson orchestra: Ernie Royal, Jimmy Cleveland, George Barrow, Seldon Powell, Chris Woods (?), Mundell Lowe, Richard Davis, Ed Shaughnessy, June 1, 1962 7: quintet with Forrest, Calvin Newborn and rhythm as 2-3, Sep 1, 1961 8: Prestige All Stars with Forrest, Art Farmer, Idress Sulieman, Buster Cooper, Jerome Richardson, Pepper Adams, Ray Bryant, Tiny Grimes, Wendell Marshall, Osie Johnson, playing a Jerry Valentine arrangement, Aug 29, 1958

Just re-listened - the 3 tracks Nelson arranged are some kind of reference to the Mancini sound (one tune is a Mancini movie theme). Although there is one Chris Woods listed as pianist, I can't hear a piano on these tracks - was there a pianist with that name? Mundell Lowe's guitar is way up in the mix, and he comps heavily as if to fill the spot of the missing piano. George Barrow and Seldon Powell are credited for tenor sax, but I hear a baritone - Barrow, I suppose. Not the most successful of sessions, and as all of the other tracks were added to the respective sessions as bonus tracks, for completists only.

This album is more or less a collection of leftovers issued after Forrest had left Prestige - seems that octet LP with Nelson was begun but abandoned, and they used unissued tracks from the prevous sessions as fillers. That Forrest/Nelson/Curtis track was added to the respective OJC CD reissue as a bonus track, the other quartet tracks, too, IIRC. They could have added the Nelson tracks to one of these as well - all that's new to this CD are these 10 1/2 minutes - the CD bonus track was from a Prestige All Stars session. So if one has the other Forrest OJC CDs one gets a lot of duplicates and just 10 1/2 minutes of new music ...... That said, the Neslon arranged tracks are nice but they didn't make me run wild - I had expected much more from that combination, especially after the really nice exchanges on that Soul Battle session.

My sense of the term "African-American" is of a person squaring up his shoulders and sticking his chest out - so I think that's about national pride. Kind of a people pulling themselves up to their full height after the humiliations of slavery and segregation. So I think a pride in their heritage comes into that, in that by dressing up in dashikis, blacks were able to identify themselves with pre-slavery ancestors = people who could carry themselves around unabashed - without the fear of the whip. I'm not sure it's about inventing an identity so much as seeing their identity in as positive way. I don't think they invented the tradition of African forebears so much as brought it out. Any musical ramifications? Simon Weil I take your comment as a warning not to generalize - which I did not intend to. The one example that comes to my mind is the Capoeira movement in Brazil, where fragmentary traditions originating in Africa were forged into a new whole and legend was created along the way to "explain" the historical connections. See Gerhard Kubik's books on the subject, "Angolan Traits in black Music, Games and dances in Brazil" and "Extensionen afrikanischer Kulturen in Brasilien". To summarize: The training of the body, which had its roots in initiation rites for young males in Angola, was re-defined as self-defense training in the historical process of opposition towards slavery, and music and instruments adopted to accompany it (berimbau, agogo, and atabaque) that originally had no connection to it; the etymology of the term "capoeira" also was defined beyond scientifically proven facts (I can't recall the details on this). But today Brazilians tend to see this as an unbroken tradition pointing back to Africa in the form it is now practiced. Could that be an example? I would have to read Hobsbawm's book to see if this really fits as an example.

This is one of my all time favourite blues performances , too!

Harmonia mundi France has issued some discs both as CDs and hybrid SACDs, but these are exceptions, afaik.

I updated part 2 of the disco attached above - please replace the file on your hard disks. I added two more CDs recently released.

I think the look back to African roots among African-American people in the 1960's and 1970's has a lot of aspects of inventing a tradition. I think this always comes into play when people are somehow removed or cut off from a major part of their roots - then you have to re-invent. It is part of forming your identity.

Much of all the interesting thoughts written here leave me with one central point: The music industry wants to make money, which is alright with me, but seems to be fixed on some aspects, like large sales figures - a factor that implies certain production processes. They should think up profitable ways of selling small quantities of rarer product to specialized people like us - if we were pop freaks we wouldn't give a damn!

..... and how many books are there that never ever will be available as e-books?

I would like to think that Concord will realize who their main audience for OJC-type material is, and offer a lossless option at a competitive price, as well simple higher bit-rate mp3s. That would be smart of them. And not necessarily just for the OJC-type stuff either. There's an audiophile market for almsot every genre. The beauty of downloads is that you can offer all these levels of quality w/o having to incur the expense of manufacturing hardcopies, and then putting them on the market to wait for them to sell (yeah, I know about wholesale, middle man, etc. but with the decline in brick & mortars, the wholesale level becomes all the more critical, I'd think). What could be a "safer" (from an investment/return standpoint) form of retail for any label than preparing a master, loading it onto a server, and then letting consumers obtain the material directly from the server? Talk about cutting out the middle man/men! Think back to when Bret Primack fielded complaints here about the bit-rate of the new Sonny Rollins side that was being offered for download. He upgraded it what, overnight? Or almost? How much expense do you think was involved in that? How much time & labor? I'm telling you, in theory, downloads could be a godsend for those of us interested in obsure (relative to the broader marketplace) material. No longer will we be dependent on somebody deciding that the market will support a manufacturing run and release. It can all be on servers, in excellent quality, and we can, at last, "have it all". That's in theory. The reality might well be something else. But any way you look at it, this is definitely the beginning of something new in the music industry, and it's in the beginning that consumers can have the most direct impact. Once a comfortable "consensus" has been reached, the industry will hunker down. So waht I say to those who resist the notion of downlaoding is this - now is the time to use your misgivings to your advantage. Participate in the process vocally & vigorously. Make some noise to let the companies know what you will or won't accept and spend some $$$ accordingly. Reward those who do it right and rip those who don't a new one. Do it while the window of opportunity is still open. It ain't going away, this downloading thing. You can't kill it, but you sure can decide how it goes. So speak now, or forever hold your peace. Similar thoughts here. I don't see a point in offering lower resolution downloads for jazz collectors like most of us here - you can download 700 MB (the file size of an 80 minute CD) in a few minutes. Those kids listening to music only on the comps or iPods might not hear the difference, but I do, and won't go for MP3s - it all sums up to the fact that the industry always thinks in large figures, and the rarities - jazz is one, with less than 5% of sales totals - will always remain neglected, no matter what format we're talking about.

I remember him mostly from one of Bobby Bryant's LPs - highly energetic tenor. I agree that he should got more exposure. R.I.P.

Can't check it discographically right now, but it seems the first tracks of that Verve comp are from the 1954 EmArcy sessions, the last two from Buttercorn Lady, the two or so before from another Mercury LP. AFAIK all of this was reissued as individual CDs some time or another. I had Buttercorn Lady but sold it - to my ears, a far below average Blakey album, despite the interesting sidemen.

"... the consumer trends ...": They should consider which consumers they are adressing with jazz releases! If one gets CD quality sound along with high resolution artwork and liners, I'd accept a download. But I's always rather buy a CD. Why don't they go for custom CDs with oop titles, especially as the digitalized files are all available?

He was the first Polish jazz musician in my life I saw perform. It was on a German Jazz Festival evening in Frankfurt - he wasn't scheduled but had dropped by with his band on his way from Poland, and the festival director sneeked him in 'cause he knew him. Excellent impromptu set! R.I.P.

Ervin played some of his best solos on Randy Weston dates - "Portrait of Vivian" on the 1966 or so Monterey recording is moving to tears (he reportedly had his own flowing while playing this tribute piece).