mikeweil

Here are the five purchases of 2004 that impressed me the most: Roberto Juan Rodriguez - Baila! Gitano Baila! (Tzadik) Look at my avatar. Highly original Cuban stylings with Jewish and Gipsy touches, lots of musical humor. Moacir Santos - Coisas (Forma/Universal) Wanted to hear that for decades - and I was not disappointed! Beautiful!!!! Dario Deidda - 3 From The Ghetto (GoJazz) Great Italian Jazz beyong stylistic borders. Louis Couperin - Harpsichord music played by Skip Sempé (Alpha) beautifully played and recorded Pancho Quinto - Rumba Sin Fronteras (Riverboat) Some of the most creative Cuban percussion you have ever heard. Sorry, I will not / cannot restrict myself to jazz ..... -_-

The Verve Prez box, of course - if you can get beyond your distaste for fancy packaging ...

Anyone who's been to Switzerland knows most of this country always looks like they just finished the clean sweep. Well, except for the Italian South ....

... and, BTW, if you want to pronounce her name corectly: Seela (like in "Sheila") Jeavickjea ("jea" like in "jealous", slight accent on the last syllable.

Here's her website. She's from Turkey and came to the USA in 1993. But she's the pianist on the record ..... Rich Perry plays tenor on the CD.

Klook in his Parisian prime can be heard on two sessions with Bud Powell recorded for French CBS and reissued by Columbia Legacy a few years ago in great sound: A Portrait of Thelonious A Tribute to Cannonball All the Savoys are great, both leader and sideman dates. But "Kenny Clarke Meets The Detroit Jazzmen" is a model in intelligent small group playing: no two tracks have the same solo order. This is the issue with the bonus track: The two Classics CDs cover his early dates:

I hear the "maturity" as well, but hope went through a lot of things until he recorded them, and I hear a little less focus and, of course, much less fire than in the Blue Notes. Just my opinion. The Blue Notes - great tunes that would deserve to be played more often - and the Riverside with Percy Heath and Philly Joe Jones - his old section mates from the Joe Morris band - will always remain my favourites.

I have the Chiaroscuro CR 2009 pressing, and it clearly states at the bottom of the credits "Original recording produced by Walt Dickerson". Nat Hentoff's elaborate liner notes - too long for me to type them out - paint a much more complex picture - were the Audio Fidelity's liner notes by Hentoff, too? I just quote the beginning: Seems like Dickerson was sort of a contractor/assistant producer.

Sounds like an error made while assembling the master - I will check the copy in the shop I will visit tomorrow.

CDs are made from polycarbonate - there must be some website or chemical or technical encyclopedia telling what solvent affect the polycarbonate, and which do not. I would choose one of the latter group. I would also try the solvent on a disc already ruined - a burned disc that doesn't play or one of those blank decoration discs the shops use or whatever. It is important to never rub in a circular manner, always from center to edge.

link link

I had a piece of pumpkin pie recently at the occasion of a friends' birthday - her neighbour is from the US - but why can't I remember if there were onions in that pie?!? Maybe she mashed them - that's what I would do anyway. I will ask her at the next occasion.

hmmm .... so Wynton was at the center of the jazz world - or was that Lincoln center .... am I missing anything? We personally make it up what is at the center of our little personal jazz world - anybody aspiring to be there gets himself into trouble - although I doubt Wynton cares that much about what is written here about him. I thought the times were over when the jazz (or any other) world needed a "leader"! And I'm glad I don't know what comes next - otherwise it would be damn boring!

Like a reaffirmation in the U.S. that the purpose of copyright is NOT compensation for creators. It's giving creators a limited-time monopoly so that they have incentive to create. And we want them to create so that their work eventually becomes part of the public domain for the sake of the greater good. Without those principles, we are in for a long haul fighting off perpetual copyrights. Then why do US publishers want Europe to expand the copyright to 75 years as in the US? I think the whole debate revolves around two points: 1 - the idea of copyright in the sense of some kind of private ownership, so you can make money out of "it", whatever "it" may be 2 - the idea of free accesability of information, which in a way is the opposite of private ownership. This reminds of the times when photocopying was invented - as it grew cheaper to make a copy specialized magazines noticed that an increasing number of people went to the library, copied just the one article they were looking for instead of subscribing for the magazine. How many of these magazines are left? I bet the inventor of photocopying machines and their first users didn't think so far. Reproduction techniques get more convenient and effective by the day, and copyright law is still thinking in terms of the "hard" copy. Even we record collectors do, prefer the "real" disc - analogue or digital - to a CDR or MP3 file or whatever. We are right in between the old "hardcopy" world and the future virtual world, where you pay a monthly fee that is distributed among those contributing to the system. The German public Radio and TV system was one that worked pretty nicely that way, until some dumb politicians allowed private TV. What would you pay for on the web - besides organissimo, that is? What are most people willing to pay for? Porn sites? The web - just as the posibility that anybody can make a CD these days, which was discussed in another thread - bears the potential of radical democracy - support what you use and appreciate, and spend your money to put info on the web that you think is important. Okay, but how do you make a living? I dunno - not by selling ideas. Besides that, as long as the zone stays grey, I think posting a link after your cut-and-paste job is sufficient. There are a lot of contradictions here - you want your music to be heard, but if you want to make a living from it you automatically have to restrict access to it, i.e. only paying customers get to hear it. Oh the days in the stone age village, when musicians were fed by the others when they did their job ....

Got me this one earlier this month as Fresh Sound did a limited re-pressing - more of the jam session type, thus not as exciting as his more arranged projects, but still very nice and better than most impromptu performances.

The original issue was Blue Thumb BTS 6003 Hugh Masekela – Home Is Where The Music Is. Double LP reissues as Impulse IA-9343/2 and Impulse 2-4147 Hugh Masekela – The African Connection. The last is only a re-numbering after Impulse was sold - the Impulse issue should be available used somewhere. It's a great album, produced by Stewart Levine and Caiphus Semenya - the latter also wrote five of the ten tunes. The jazziest Masekela I know. It was recorded in London in January, 1972.

Yeah! Especially drummer Greg Hutchinsons rap on top of a funky beat in the closing track is a treat!

I just love Marcus Roberts' "Prayer For Peace"!

What do you expect me to say? These are absolutely essential classics, they are all there, in reocrding order, with a nice booklet, in excellent sound .... the only thing that bugs me is that they could have packed it all on just two CDs. I'd say if you can get it at a good price ... Amazon.de still has the older CD of The Great Ray Charles. Used copies too. Same for the box set: Amazon offers.

Only one track from one of the live recordings.

Is there the -option here, as well? How are these? I would advise a purchase as this comes in a CD-sized cardboard box with a nice thick booklet with lots of photos and elaborate commentary - it's not very expensive and worth the money. One of the nicest reissue jobs Jordi Pujol ever did! These early recordings were mistreated with overdubbed strings and/or drums, vocal choirs, spliced and edited to turn vocals into instrumentals or vice versa ... Pujol was the first to collect them all and reissue them the way Charles had recorded them. Stylistically they show how great an influence the trios of Nat King Cole and Charles Brown were on Ray Charles: take a mixture of them and a few dashes of Charles' later Atlantic R & B, and you get an impression. Of course the sound is inferior to that of the Atlantic sides - all had to be dubbed from 78's. Most of them are trios with guitar and bass, but the rhythm gets hotter with each track. Lots of blues - l listened to them again and they seem to be somewhat underrated - I never see them discussed. Of course Ray still had to forge his typical style, but they are a liitle above average when compared to contemporary recordings. link

... except for the two trio tracks from the first Milt jackson session, which were added as bonus tracks to the Charles Jackson 2-CD box.

It is!!!