mikeweil

I only have two: a copy of Bill Haley's Rock Around The Clock on German Brunswick, and two Gershwin piano solos, both hanging on the wall for decoration haven't had a suitable player for more than 20 years.

In a way, Third Stream before that term was coined.

You wanted Rhodes, not B-3 - so how about Four Track Mind on Criss Cross with Kevin Hays on Rhodes and Mark Turner blowin' the 2nd horn? Some nice funky grooves on it.

The news in this thread might help to fill some gaps.

Sounds very much to me what an elder Blue Note Board member once e-mailed me about his German lessons in the army in the 1960's - he was stationed not very far from where I live. I better not correct your first exclamation ...

Jahre später fand man seine Leiche ....

No you didn't, but wished me a merry Xmas instead ...

Agree on Patterson's supreme ballad artistry. Got a vinyl copy of Soul Happening last week, which includes another ballad masterpiece, Love Letters.

I ordered a Helen Humes OJC when it became AOTW last year and haven't got it so far - but this happened from time to time in the past - with a catalog as large as this it is no wonder some titles are OOP for a while.

Up! Will spin this again tomorrow.

IIRC Michael Cuscuna commented on the version with overdubs that the orchestral parts almost totally obscured Wynton Kelly's piano, which was the reason he left them off the earlier two-LP Verve reissue - or was this reissue produced by somebody else? I don't have it anymore. In any case, although I understand some here like the overdubbed versions, I would never consider buying them. This was not the way Wes played his music, and reinforces my thoughts that Creed Taylor didn't consider a "pure jazz" recording as commercial.

I voted for Total Eclipse, as I love the Hutcherson/Land Quintet - Patterns, Spiral, & Medina are igh on my list, too. But they're all great.

No idea. Mostly original compositions that were not recorded on any other album. An excellent discographical source on Lucky Thompson can be found here.

Enough reason for me to lay my hands on the SACD, as I intend to get me a player later this year.

Thanx a lot, John - I will let you know what I think about it!

Don't know whether this is of any help, but Grant Green sole Verve LP with Larry Young was recorded May 26, 1965. Bruyninckx lists two unissued sessions recorded August 5, 1965 and September 1, 1965, but no personnel or tunes. So at least these musicians were associated with Verve at the time.

Thank you so much, my friends - some of the nicest birthday cakes I ever got! I had some friends here yesterday, and I even got some CDs as gifts - which usually nobody takes a chance at after seeing my collection - a beautiful Youssou N'Dour CD, Egypt, and one by a well known German satire writer which all had us ROTFL ... and a friend gave me the John Lee Hooker DVD. After lunch with a friend my wife and I had to go to work, and I made the mistake to visit the Frankfurt Zweitausendeins store afterwards - wanted to see if they still had the last Thad Jones/Mel Lewis reissue, which was gone, but they had a bunch of Fantasy/OJC CDs at great prices, so I bought me some more gifts and only two of them were latinized. No, I'm not cheating - this is for the Gods only, I really turned 51, and I certainly feel more tired like last year. I will do my best to get the Tjader disco finished before the first digit changes, and hold up the Blindfold torch. The Guaguancó will be played tomorrow when my longest standing student group dops by for drumming lessons. p.s.: Big Al, did you know what you were saying?

I think this mess has a lot to do with the way Verve handled these recordings in the first place. They made money with Verve doing the more "commercial" stuff and were reluctant to record Wes in a pure jazz setting - much of this was available from Riverside and Pacific Jazz - and Richard Bock did not hesitate to reissue Wes with overdubs when Verve scored big with this. They simply did not put enough care into these recordings in the first place, methinks. And it got worse with Creed Taylor's productions on A&M ...

The two-disc set you ask for is the Impressions set - they won't reissue this as a VME as this series reissues only "original" LPs. The format dictates the way the music is issued - not enough studio material for an LP or CD, not enough live material in decent sound quality for a whole LP or a double ... I understand there must be a Wynton Kelly trio track from the live sessions that turned up on a Verve compilation or a Japanese posthumous issue - I would have seen that included on Inpressions rather than a track from the Jimmy and Wes sessions. Mosaic should do a Wes live box set collecting all the material from various labels, Verve, VGM and the bootlegs.

I'd rather see these instruments owned by a foundation lending them to young talented musicians, complete with a maintainance contract. They should be played and not gather dust in a colleczion or museum, private or public.

Indeed - that's what the pros on the vinyl market do.

Truly great story - now I know how Gravatt came to play like he did - plain crazy! I mean - his duo with McCoy on Focal Point is beyond anything I could imagine ...

So that's what he looked like - these are some nice tunes he wrote. Thanks for posting that photo, Tom - you ever checked out the hard bossa thread?

Who's that on the picture with Herbie?