Daniel A

For several years I played in a big band, and "Basie Straight Ahead" was a tune I never tired of. I don't know why, but it feels so good every time; the voicings and the interplay between the piano and the band. I also fully support the idea that music can be everything at once. One example of things I am endlessly attracted to is Clare Fischer's arrangements for George Shearing's bossa nova album on Capitol. On the surface, it's easy listening. But if you actually listen to the voicings for the woodwinds, they are super sophisticated - and jazzy!

Sad, but maybe not unexpected. Obituaries in main Swedish newspapers do not state on which day he passed, but some sources say yesterday, May 15.

I believe you're thinking of "mmilovan". Catesta was one of the "original" members here, as was Jim R.

I think we are spoiled. How much was a CD 30 years ago? $16.99? Considering the inflation that would probably be more than twice as much in today's money. $35. For one CD.

I was 26 when I got my first set and 40 when I made my latest purchase, but that was almost a decade ago. There are still a couple of sets I might want to get second hand (e.g. Jackie McLean), but mostly I have what I need.

Crippled left hand from childhood polio.

Nice story, Clifford. Hope to see you here at some point! I would never have thought that Andra Jazz would live on and retain some of its character post-Harald, but the shop's still there.

If the source for this compilation was Swedish Radio, I assume there might be additional tapes there (I don't own the CD, so I don't know what the liner notes say).

I found this on the Downbeat site: "Due to Switzerland’s public domain laws, material recorded prior to 1970 doesn’t require any licensing agreement, so Uehlinger, with the massive help of recording engineer Michael Brändli, has been releasing new packages of previously issued work from artists like Marion Brown, Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Paul Bley, to say nothing of vintage Charlie Parker work." https://downbeat.com/news/detail/ezz-thetics-reissues-60s-free-jazz-classics As far as I can tell, the duration of so called "neighboring rights" in Switzerland is still 50 years, i.e. they have expired for anything recorded and/or released up to 1972.

Some estates obviously have an opinion, which might or might not be in line with what the artist would have wanted. I remember when a planned reissue of Stan Getz' "Sweet Rain", which was supposed to include unreleased material was allegedly blocked by the estate. But sometimes this kind of stories seem to be about money rather than "art". Some 30 years ago a friend wanted to rearrange a Leonard Bernstein composition for an orchestra we played in. He contacted the publisher, which said that the estate opposed of everything, adding that "Had Lennie lived, the answer would likely have been different, but..."

I sent an email to Hat Hut a couple of months ago, asking whether these recordings were licenced. There was no reply.

Povel is a really fine player. He has mostly appeared on recordings by other leaders, and partly buried in German big bands. But he had many nice features for instance in Peter Herbolzheimer's Rhythm Combination and Brass. He has always been a good contributor to every recording I've heard him on.

Astonishing performance!

A later post in that thread quotes an article written by the son of the founder of the firm Danelectro: Dad’s reverb used crystals and circuitry to turn mechanical vibrations in long springs into electrical signals that could be modulated to produce varying degrees of reverberation—depending on how far up you turned the dial. While Dad developed the reverb effect to mimic the rich sound heard in a concert hall or large room, Vinnie discovered that if you daisy-chained multiple reverb units together, you could produce an “underwater” sound—something you’d never hear in a concert hall. Together, Dad and Vinnie worked out how to produce this effect with a single device housed in a box topped with an array of pedals that enabled Vinnie to produce as much or as little of the “underwater” sound as he liked, controlling it with his feet while playing.

In the late 1990s I found a used Bacharach casette tape for around 50 cents. I became totally obsessed with this version of Wives and Lovers, to the point that I started a jazz group which (at least initially) performed only Bacharach tunes: Another tune we played was the under-recorded Promises, Promises: I definitely agree about the hidden complexity of his compositions. There's really nothing like them in the history of popular music.

Several musicians added, but not Liebman. Joe Farrell is on saxophone. Follow felser's first link above for discographical data.

Here is another recording of Lush Life, which is said to be from 1983: https://youtu.be/ILDqWHutba0 Hartman's appearance is similar, so these clips may be from around the same time. According to a comment from Hartman biographer Gregg Akkerman: "It was taped in April 1983 and he had not yet been diagnosed with cancer [...] This is probably his final performance anywhere."

"Sonny" seems to be in Db (if the speed is correct). FWIW, it starts on a DbMaj7.

Of course, that every second buyer does not own a turntable does not mean that every second LP does not get played. Probably, those who have a player buy more releases than the other group.

Haha! (BTW, the picture I posted was an actual picture of the Doctor - doesn't fully inspire confidence with me).

I couldn't resist to follow this up because of the Swedish connection. Mostly fake news. Some googling for the one named doctor in that article revealed that he is a doctor of... Theology. 🙄

Concerning what makes a pressing "defective", is there some sort of formal standard - like "Redbook" for compact discs - for vinyl LPs? I'm thinking that groove width and depth, frequency response, dynamic range and so on are all quantifiable. Or can you produce an unplayable record and still promote the product as an LP?

I now realize that this is exactly the point you made from the beginning, so sorry for somehow distorting it into something else. But it made me seek out a Johansson recording I hadn't heard in years, so it had a positive side effect. 🙂 What might be a point in another discussion, though, is that the influential Johansson recording (towards ECM) was not as representative of his overall output back then.

Has prices for Japanese pressings really come down? I haven't seen much evidence of that myself, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. And while the mastering of Tone Poets might (sometimes) be superior, my personal experience from (many) Japanese vinyl releases from the 70s up to the 2000s is that they win out from a production values perspective.

I think I own only one Tone Poet release, but this thought has occurred to me as well! 🙂