mikeweil

I JUST GOT AN E-MAIL FROM MICHAEL CUSCUNA!!!!!!!!!!! I'm influencing reissue policy!!!!!! Good work, Jim!!! Would be a nice item for that Afro-Latin series. Can you PM me his e-mail, I have a discographical question about the circumstances of the early Thad Jones & Kenny Burrell Blue Note sessions that only he can probably answer, I posted it here to no effect. Thanks!

How many LPs were in them? I have an EPIC 4-LP box (SN 6042) Swing Street, covering the jazz stylings on New York's 52nd Street, 1933-1945. Lots of rare stuff in there, too.

I get the impression the date at which individual CDs arrive gets very hard to estimate: We Europeans had the disc one week earlier than some US participants. How about announcing a start date for the discussion that is two weeks after the shipment date to ensure everyone - or at least the majority has received a disc when the discussion starts?

Considering it takes much longer to get a CD into the remote regions of Michigan than over the drink we should consider a common discussion start date regardless of when we get the discs, to give everybody an equal chance.

I recently told my wife she should invite my friends first - including those from the board to take what is missing in their collection, and have them help her sell the rest on ebay - if there is anything left, which I doubt.

Anybody buying a Mosaic for an investment should be threatened with being banned from this board!

Word!

Al Hibbler tops my list. Without him and Rahsaan Roland Kirk on that beautiful Atlantic LP "A Meeting Of The Times", I probably never would have bcome an Ellington fan. Still have to check out Joya Sherrill and Betty Roché. Jeffries is nice, but not quite my cup of tea.

Can't confirm Mingus, but found he played with Johnny Otis and a host of other R & B stars, Little Esther (Phillips), Roy Milton, Lucky Millinder, Pee Wee Crayton, Ruth Borwn, Sugar Pie Desanto a.o. in all stages of his career.

Wasn't he one some Mingus album? Edit: Was probably my confusing him with trumpeter Eddie Preston - sorry.

With all respect Jim, this reads impressively, but too many words ..... I'd say he never resolved, he couldn't! Maybe he even didn't want to, but only after he recognized he couldn't. (Very few people can, BTW, ever fewer try, but most do not face ambiguities as wide as Miles did.) This makes him (his music included) so fascinating - or we wouldn't discuss this at such length. And I don't see peace in him, no way - if he had been at peace with himself and his musical ideas he wouldn't have been driven to do all the things he did in his life. He probably would have sounded as dull as couw perceives him.

You better not. Ain't nobody been listening to no jazz records at age 1, except in mammy's womb.

C'mon, let's all pity the poor fellow ... he had to!

This one has been mentioned here, but can anyone give a more detailed impression of that one, please?

Monk on Blue Note was my first, I think when it was just out. Got the Mulligan/Baker, Ammons/Lewis and Art Pepper with the second order. Then I believe it was the Tina Brooks. I intended to get them all, but funds wouldn't allow .....

Blue Mitchell. After that, the Duke Ellington Reprise in its German Spiegel edition, if that counts.

Chops are the one aspect of a musician that is easiest to be judged. But the technique per se does not say anything about the musical qualities as a whole. Chops alone are not what it's about, but the chops you need to do what you hear, and there he was an individual of the highest order. I have to admit this - I don't like his tone that much, just like couw, but I have to give him credit for what he did.

Is (was?) he related to Valerie? She is his sister, still active as a piano teacher in New York. She wrote and arranged a number of tunes for the band in which her brother played in the 1960's, and both syblings recorded a couple sessions for Atlantic back then, but his and one they made together remained unissued and were probably destroyed by the 1974 fire in the Atlantic vaults. Only one album of her was released, without him. He obviously passed away in the 1970's or 1980's, but so far I could not find out when or how. (Edited for discograhical accuracy). Now how do ya like this sax man, I ask once more, JIM????

I think it is impossible to separate the man from the music. More than with anybody else. The character traits that made him nasty show in his music, the contradictions.

I guess so. His ego needed food-a-plenty, of many a kind: cars, women, musicians, funny stuff for the nose (to use an expression from a live Rahsaan Roland Kirk record), and, most of all: money. He used, as we all know by now, many a composition of other people, some were given to him, e.g. John Lewis' Milestones, others he downright stole: Eddie Vinson's Four and Tune-Up, Mundell Lowe's Solar, the parts Bill Evans wrote for Kind of Blue ... He was proud of the guys in his band end envied them at the same time. Same probably applies to his relationship to his influences. I see his life and music as a constant search for himself - the photos in the Jack Johnson box clearly confirm this. He liked to provoke and needed it to define himself, was probably never really satisfied with his music. The spontaneity of his bands is seen as a typical jazz thing, but on the other hand he never indulged in rehaesring as much as Ahmad Jamal, whose trio was much more together in certain ways. I find it hard to write about Miles. His personality is so multi-faceted and complex and encompasses so much of the social and musical scene he was part of that one single statement will always do him wrong. (Besides, my attempt to contribute to this thread was torpedoed by two browser crashes and the board being down during the last two days ... ) There was a time when I was fascinated by his music: When Bitches Brew came out the title track was broadcast in full length several times over local radio stations, which was a rarity! I listened, curiously, bought the album, took it in many times; Live-Evil hit me even harder, I once caught myself playing along and doing the same things as Airto, although I didn't pay any attention to him. But I liked these electric bands always better when he didn't play, he sounded a little predictable to me. The jazz scene would be different without him, that's common sense. But he made it hard for anybody to love him, the way he was. He wanted love it seems to me, but enforced obedience, in a way, or admiration, and that drives many a person away from him. The talk about personal demons is in order here. But without these demons he probably wouldn't have achieved anything important and wouldn't be as fascinating.

Never heard of him .... p.s. this refers to couw's post two steps above - MWTGA and I seemingly posted simultaneously.

Re # 13: I fills me with deep satisfaction that this largely underrated man is judged for being a good player by most participants. I'm talking 'bout the alto sax, of course - he's not the leader, BTW.

Of course it is this track, not another version - it's weird that I sometimes hear sonic differences to the disc or LP I have in my collection.

Sorry to hear this. An excellent swinging drummer whose playing I always enjoyed. RIP