Joe Bip

Ralph Towner, 85, has died. I'm a big fan of ECM Records, so I have many Towner albums, some of which I'll revisit today

Now Jazz Now or Now Jazz 45–65 years ago?

kh1958 already listed a Billy Strayhorn piece, but there's an entire Strayhorn-Ellington-Johnny Hodges aggregate that's a special wing of Ellingtonia that's uniquely sad and beautiful. These reach the highest musical standards of all time and are never maudlin. "Blood Count" "Passion Flower" "Ballad for the Very Tired and Very Sad Lotus Eaters" "Isfahan" ...more! And also related to Ellington, here is Abbey Lincoln's for-the-ages "Come Sunday" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAvN_ygGtdM

"The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center" rolls off the tongue so pleasantly it almost flows like a piece of music in itself. /s

Finally (in 2019), an excellent book on Brubeck's music. I'm learning a lot from it. I'd love to buy more of the books from the Oxford Studies in Recorded Jazz series, but the academic pricing puts nearly all of them out of my reach even for paperbacks. Other recordings featured in the series include the Hot Fives and Sevens, Goodman 1938 C arnegie Hall, Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy, Monk Quartet with Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, Mulligan's 1950s Quartets, Miles's Second Quintet, Jarret's Köln Concert...There hasn't been one since the Mulligan in 2023, so who knows if the series has been discontinued.

Joe Harriott? Michel Petrucciani? Betty Carter?

I haven't had any bad experiences with them.

I've watched this so many times. What a live performer! Doesn't even need the mic. Also, lots of Stax singles and demos

Huge discounts on Bob Dylan box sets at Movie Mars: The Cutting Edge is $51.95 Basement Tapes is $57.95 The 1966 Live Recordings (36xCD) is $55.95.

I have quite a collection of Ran Blake LPs and CDs but haven't kept up with anything more recent than the duets with Sara Serpa from 2010. So many duets. I'd love to hear his 1994 appearance on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz but haven't found it archived online yet. Something I found out recently was that he wrote liner notes for other musicians' albums several times: Chris Connor – Cocktails and Dusk; Free Spirits reissue Horace Silver – The Trio Sides (Blue Note) Mal Waldron – One and Two I don't own any of these releases, but I very much wanted to read the Waldron liner note, so I used a magnifying glass and read the image on Discogs. He recounts his intense lessons with Waldron, who at first did not want to take him on as a student. Blake said he's never met a more patient person than Waldron. He also recalled working in the kitchen at the Jazz Gallery nightclub and making something called "Ivory Soap mayonnaise." 🤨 He refers to "High on a Windy Hill" as one of the most harmonically sophisticated ballads ever written. I don't know if he essayed it for any of his recordings, but here is a fairly recent YouTube performance: Ran Blake - High on a Windy Hill (Tribute to Chris Connor)

I've used this site for years and, for me, there's always a button with the triangle "play" icon. The recording is someone saying Yan GAR-bar-ek That means I had it almost exactly right; I would usually tend to say Yan Gar-BAR-ek.

You can hear it here: https://forvo.com/word/jan_garbarek/#no

Ellington - Fargo Keith Jarrett at the Blue Note - There are many live recordings of the Standards Trio, but this set is probably my favorite Charlie Haden - Montreal Tapes all those Nuits de la Fondation Maeght sets Anthony Braxton Quartet - Willisau 1991 Cecil Taylor in Berlin 88 (though I've never seen this box set, I collected the individual CD releases) Cecil Taylor - 2 Ts for a Lovely T (recorded 1990)

They've been nailing the cover art lately

Charlie Parker Mercury & Clef 10-Inch LP Collection Maybe not a box set, strictly speaking, but I'm starting to listen to the Ahmad Jamal Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse 1960s sessions, recorded at the same place where Coltrane performed in 1965 and that I've heard is now a parking lot. On deck are the Black Saint/Soul Note box sets collecting albums by Kenny Wheeler, Roscoe Mitchell, and Oliver Lake, some of which I already have, others are new to me.

The times in the track lists got very messed up. For one thing, so many are way off. For example, on Disc V, I expected the group to stretch out for nearly 17 minutes on "Tea for Two" but the track is nearly 10 minutes shorter than that. "Don't Blame Me" is listed as 15:15 but is 8:54. Another thing is that the track lists assign the exact same time to every different version of a song, no matter how many there are of (sometimes very) different lengths.

For that price, I'd say grab it. Someone will! I noticed a chancer on eBay who's asking that price just for the last disc of the set. I've been making my way through the set starting with pianists I'm the most familiar with. The Earl Hines trio was predictably great. This purchase also led me to revisit pianists I hadn't listened to in years, like Ralph Sutton, Jess Stacy, and Joe Bushkin. When I went for this set, I already owned the latter's Piano Moods album on a CD that also included his follow-up After Hours, which adds in some fine playing by Buck Clayton.

Columbia Jazz Piano Moods set the mood for roughhousing with my four-year-old, a recent purchase (the Mosaic set, that is), specifically the Tatum concert, which sounds much clearer to me than my 1970s Columbia vinyl release of the same date.

(Emerges after ten years of reading and not posting to ask:) How many sales are they losing by having the preorder be "out of stock" during a sale promotion with a specified end time? I was ready to order this but thought I had all of Saturday at least.

Ah, thanks. I was trying to order a couple of Selects in addition to a big box or two and didn't see the red text for the latter.

Am I missing something? How do I get the discount to show up?

How long did yours take to arrive. Still waiting for a shipping notice a week later. I ordered on Feb 22, received confirmation right away, and it came March 6, so 12 days total. I don't know what the stock/fulfillment time situation may be since then, but the price is so good it's probably worth waiting it out, especially since we know they've actually been fulfilling orders on something that I thought at first to be a price mistake.

Miles Bootleg Vol. 2 is available from WOW HD for $15.99 with free shipping. http://www.wowhd.us/CD/miles-davis-miles-davis-quintet-live-in-europe-1969-3cd-dvd/dp/32012157#bc=9de5 I received mine today. It's a reputable site (used to be called CD-Wow).

Earlier in the year, I enjoyed this feature on the Tzadik site. They had over 50 artists choose a favorite disc from the back catalog and write up a short review/recommendation of it.

The Miles set can be purchased for $27 and change from Barnes & Noble using the code N7C7K8T, which expires 9:00 EST tomorrow morning.