MomsMobley

harpsichord: ALL cds by Blandine Rannou (her new Goldberg is awesome); Celine Frisch (her Goldberg is also awesome, my favorite); Christophe Rousset; Andreas Staier; Skip Sempe. start here, do NOT-- repeat-- do not get any cds by Gustav Leonhardt. if you have the taste and the time, Davitt Moroney's William Byrd keyboard box is an amazing thing. Pierre Hantai's John Bull recording is essential. http://www.amazon.com/John-Bull-Doctor-Pièces-Clavier/dp/B000059OBN other composers to check out: Froberger (young Richard Egarr was esp. good here, he got more boring as he 'matured'); Frescobaldi; Domenico Scarlatti; Louis Couperin; Francois Couperin; D'Angelbert; lute: Dowland, Weiss, Kapsberger; Paul O'Dette, Nigel North, Hopkinson Smith, Elizbeth Kenny, among others, are all excellent in their ways. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u49xW7KVznk gamba: as long as you realize Jordi Savall ain't the last word, nearly all his recordings ARE worth hearing; figure out your repertoire and dive in. everything Paolo Pandolfo has done is excellent also. lemme know when your ready for consort music. violin: hop on the Telemann fantasias but don't expect Bach. Telemann was a great great composer but these aren't his most important pieces. can you deal with continuo? if so Biber is endlessly challenging and rewarding, go for Reinhard Goebel first, skip Andrew Manze, whom only dead fish sect of limey critics could ever have mistaken for unhinged. recorder: not a repertoire I pursue but if you wanna go that way, try your home boy Frans Bruggen in whatever looks interesting. this just off top of bean, forgetting much.

** EVERYTHING IS WRONG WITH STARKER ** tone, rhythm, articulation, the works! the guy had zero clue when he started and had no better ideas three dreary recordings later. just because it was well-marketed in an era of few choices doesn't mean it's worth hearing today. I hope the 'audophiles' who have the 'cherished' SACD of the Living Presence recording at least put on the proper 'interconnects'; ridiculous that some alleged 'golden ears' don't realize the importance of having the proper interconnects for particular types of music: chamber, orchestral, keyboard, vocal etc. There are no youtube clips but Amazon has samples of the superb & superbly individual Bruno Cocset set-- http://www.amazon.com/Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Suites-Violoncello/dp/B00006L7TD

Helene Schmitt p/s--

co-sign Mike, and I can spot him distaste for John Holloway's tone; I cut Holloway slack because I grew up on his Biber but it's pretty much the only representative of the style I still abide. LK, I wouldn't say the lesser HIP people were hiding anything but more than a few did caught between exploratory performance practice, less-than-mind-blowing-chops AND-- this is more key than technique per se (the old Schnabel/Cortot argument on strings) is that the Brits and the Dutch were so damn po' faced... Harnoncourt and his adepts weren't but there the iffy musicianship with ancient instruments can be problem. (Harnoncourt's first St Matthew is still a favorite, however.) With exceptions like the great Skip Sempe (an expat, of course) American baroque music practice is often a bummer too btw-- all those lousy Nicholas McCegan records, American Bach Soloists, etc. Now let's take the Brandenburgs, listen to the musicianship by * Cafe Zimmermann * Hesperion XX (Jordi Savall) * Concerto Italiano (Rinaldo Allessandrini) * Il Giardino Armonico * Freiburg Baroque * Musik Antique Koln And it's THRILLING... vastly more satisfying than most 21st c. jazz or "creative improvised music" hokum too btw. Masaaki Suzuki, alas, is almost Dutch Japanese and usually duller than need be and hiding behind Lutheran liturgy doesn't help. I heard an excellent interview with Viktoria Mullova a couple years back about her decisions in recording the Bach S&P... Basically, anyone who doesn't consider period instruments even when playing a modern violin is deluding themselves and I agree. http://www.amazon.com/Sonatas-Partitas-Solo-Violin-Mullova/dp/B001SB1KHW Same goes for cello of course-- just because SOME period performers are as boring if less bloated than modern performers doesn't mean the sound world is incorrect-- and I'll give up Fournier, sure, and throw out all those old Karl Richter records too (really)... I'll hang on Walcha in mono though. That last sentence seems to me to call for two qualifications: 1) Provided the players are really good, and too many HIP specialists IMO have been so-so players hiding behind their HIP allrightnik-ness; 2) It also can work like gangbusters on instruments different from the ones Bach had -- no, not the calliope, but ... well, you know the drill.

ah but there are SIX suites LK... true, Schiff is very Gould-ian but I'll take his fleetness and caresses over the drone of flat-flooted schmoes all day every day. i'm having trouble posting youtube this moment but, after Tortelier, I ** think ** I'll still plump for Fournier on Arkiv as best in the old style. http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Suiten-für-Violoncello-solo/dp/B000001GRZ

Skip it. Starker is a wholly ersatz grail, not even in the top 10 of his basic style in Bach and only 'vaunted' because of the Wilma Cozart Fine cult; not an uninteresting story to be sure but not one important enough to put production over performance. Heinrich Schiff >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Paul Tortelier-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXAqiDzu2PQ Starker doesn't even breathe the same air. Note there are two EMI Tortelier/Bach recordings; I prefer the first, 1960 recording, though the 1983 has its merits and advocates also.

but there'a a lot more to Bach especially than Szigeti's vibrato... I do appreciate Josef, especially his Busoni, but the R-A-N-G-E (repeat r-a-n-g-e) of potential period practice >>>>>>> the range essentially romantic era violinists brought to Bach. Thus Zehetmair on a modern instrument is superb... while Szigeti only reminds me what a GREAT era of Bach performance we live in and what a long road it was to get here. Too bad Rene Jacobs hasn't recorded either of the Passions though or more cantatas. same goes for the cellists btw, Starker is just dull, not even larded; Heinrich Schiff, on a modern instrument, whom I forgot to mention in the cello thread, blows him away in every way possible save "iconic." In my world, nothing is hipper than Szigeti. 20th and 21st Century children working with ancient instruments, or reproductions lose music as they search for technique.

wow. i'm a satisfied Amazon customer in a # of areas, return policy is aces when its been required but this is a RIDICULOUS effin' policy. (i've heard of some similar proprietary shenanigans on the books end-- esp. e-books-- but didn't play close attn to the issues involved.) what if you or any other label owner reasonably declines to sell ANY mp3? tough shit? amazon's cut on the retail isn't enough to host your 30-second samples? i don't know the business #s but it's too bad Nessa can't be on, say, Naxos.com, like BIS is and likewise doesn't sell MP3s or lossless (praise be Robert von Bahr.) (Though I'll note Hyperion and Chandos both sell CDS, MP3 and lossless.)

Mandrill, how'd you get hip to Helene Schmitt? I'm a big fan of her work and much of the label's Bach, especially the Cafe Zimmermann and Celine Frisch, whose Goldberg is THEE best harpsichord version bar none. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeALpnLyb5o I know it's a tuff sell re: more Bach concertos but I think this equals or even beats Freibourg Baroque, my previous standard + Cafe Zimmermann give you more-- http://www.amazon.com/Concertos-I-VI-J-S-Bach/dp/B005IQXUQW Bach solo violin-- Modern: Zehetmair, Kremer, Julia Fischer (the last three all HIP influence)... If you gotta go old school, both Milstein are still tolerable but Mullova is better Bach tho' the great Isabelle Faust has only recorded half of 'em so far, when complete hers will almost certainly be way up there-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC6W-6it_AU HIP: while I can appreciate my estimable colleague Mike Weil's advocacy of Huggett, I find her too sober for my tastes; likewise Podger, Van Dael, Wallfisch, etc. Kuijken is a straight snooze. In that general bag, John Holloway is best/most interesting, I think, but for pure pleasure, I'll whip out Schmitt and the recent-ish Amandine Beyer on Zig Zag, which I'm still living with but is more than provisionally excellent-- http://www.amazon.fr/Bach-Sonates-partitas-pour-violon/dp/B005H3HXQE

Glad you got this, LK... I assume you got Gaillaird II-- http://www.amazon.com/J--S-Bach-Suites-violoncelle-1007-1012/dp/B004NWHV6W/ Gaillard I, issued as two separate-- and beautifully packaged-- Ambrosie label CDs was excellent too, though the label could be elusive. I think her's is by far best of the 'period' performances; the rest, even Byslma I-- are pretty po' faced and though I have affection for Fournier and Tortelier, NONE of the traditional recordings would rank in my top 5; (and if one did, Starker it definitely wouldn't be, nor absurdly hyped-on-release Isserlis The Rostropovich is a bad and not-tasteless-enough joke.) Caals we gotta deal with vis a vis history of performance practice but its musical interest is otherwise slight. May I never hear Ron Carter (or William Parker) play arco again--

the Mabern records are decent if inessential; if you feel that way about Harold's whole career (understandable), I'll add he's a FASCINATING and excellent interviewee, great source of Phineas Newborn lore so I cut him a little slack... HOWEVER, I had occasion last night to listen to three hours of live 'peak' Jarrett ('American Quartet') on wkcr.org presented by the estimable Mitch Goldman and, in answer to the age old question, is it worth suffering Jarrrett (and, to a lesser extent, suffering Motian also) to hear the great Dewey Redman, sorry to say-- It. Is. Not. Even. Close. Jarrett is so goddamn insipid-- cutesy-pie gospel ostinato bullshit with totally misplaced ersatz 'classical' tone production (no wonder his later Shostakovich, Bach and Mozart are laughable... I guess if you're an ofay scared of gospel per se and 'jazz' fan ig'nant of or antagonistic to 'long-hair' music this was a breath of fresh something but for the rest of us, it's utter GARABGE and ** never ** got better, no matter one's po' mouth rationalization that well, its success let Manfred do lots of other things... About the only HOT moment of the whole program was when Mitch highlighted an especially hot Dewey mussette solo but otherwise, rather than make me reconsider Jarrett, it made me question Dewey's contributions to the mess. Semi-interesting to realize much of Motian's later banality was already present here too, bleh. In penance, I listened to Hampton Hawes' THE SERMON four times in a row, then watched this-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbb63TIseiU Sonny Criss' Cravat >>>>>> Jarrett's career Sadly, nothing there I'd want to buy.

yah here's a suggestion... Suk it!! http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Piano-Trios-Nos-Schubert/dp/B0019F8HKA avoid the Denon remake unless a Suk Trio completist.

More like not good enough! Unless you're a Boulez completist, PB's CBS recordings are far preferable to the DG and tho' it seems the recent-ish Sony bargain boxes are out of print, these aren't rare cds (or lps) in various guises. http://www.amazon.com/Ravel-Orchestral-Works-Maurice/dp/B000002705 http://www.amazon.com/Debussy-Orchestral-Works-Claude/dp/B000002C00 Get the classic Webern box (definitely not the lame DG remake), ALL his Schoenberg and the two Varese while you're at it. If anyone want some froggy Ravel piano to go with their Martinon and complement Marcelle Meyer, Robert Cassadesus and Samson Francois... jean-Phillippe Collard's set is excellent, underrated-- http://www.amazon.com/Ravel-Complete-Works-Solo-Piano/dp/B0002XV2Y8/ also, the Percy Grainger box on Chandos would kill at nearly any price, let alone $65-- http://www.amazon.com/Grainger-Susan-Gritton/dp/B004HEDGGU

1) there's no such thing as 'piffling minutia'; it is-- or should be-- all part of the architecture. 2) it is impressions lower case: Grant was a highly accomplished mimic and a genuine fan of contemporary comedy and offered friends and nightclub audiences superb deadpan versions of Lenny Bruce, Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Jonathan Winters, Redd Foxx (of course), Moms Mabley (who?), Allan Sherman, Godfrey Cambridge, Bill Cosby, Don Rickles, Richard Pryor-- even Woody Allen!! 3) ideally one can utilize various modes of historical research/writing and come up with a composite structure likely to contain more truths than lies or evasions; unfortunately, most journalists (or fan writers) and most historians are ill-equipped to achieve this though the recent exceptions like John Szwed and Robin D.G. Kelley are highly laudible.

Ah but there's a VERY important difference between "likes" and "respects"; too many people conflate dislike of Mike into dismissing his real achievement, as vocalist, band member, cheerleader. MIU is also a gloriously weird episode in a corporate history full of them. He's also just one dude-- can't blame him 1966-67 alone; And who's to say his "issues" aren't skewing his "best" judgement as much as the Wilsons effected theirs? I'd rather "MIU" than BW's horrific Gershwin and Disney albums too btw. That's not to let Mike off the hook but he was there, he was HERE-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfDFee-GgU8 Dennis balls deep was lucid, it was the drugs that sank him.

this isn't directed at you Quincy but i can't believe some of utter crap touted on this board-- jazz and non- (especially non-)-- and yet there are also people wholly dismissive of later-- admittedly dying-- Dead. i'd rather Jerry's knees than all Keith Richards and Robbie Roberston (or the Stones, or the Band, or any fucking Beatles cover by anyone, JG included) combined (just as a for instance). re: "So Many Roads," there are couple dire selections there, yes, but also some gems as you note.

I'd be surprised if you like what you find there. If you like parts of Lucky Old Sun (which I forgot to mention as third mostly good or better BW solo) than this is everything that ain't. If the mere presence of Robot Brian as opposed to the engagement of whatever battered mix of memory, desire and humor the original Brian could summon along with his (food/drug mediated) depression/happiness then... Note 1: I already suppressed the fact I listened to a song co-written by Jon Bon Fucking Jovi... Good luck with that one yourself. Note 2: I didn't discount this record just because Carl and Dennis are dead but don't believe the wow-they-aren't-dead-yet-hype, this is the most BORING Beach Boys record w/ Brian since Keepin' The Summer Alive; again, at least Light Album was weird; at least Beach Boys (1985) had "Male Ego"; the new one is 'classier' at first listen (and obviously eschews the hideous '80s production style) but underneath the competent execution it's pretty much CHINTZ. Not chintz:

ja joe, highly interested in the story but i'm afraid the album is better than not-horrible... i had to listen of course but could it be otherwise? there are two sleepers in BW's catalog (assuming we all recognize Love You as a form of genius) and they are the maligned but half great Andy Paley/Eugene Landy album Brian Wilson and maligned but brilliant blues album, Van Dyke Parks Orange Crate Art. The Smile simulacra was pretty good but the rest of BW's solo career is pretty sorry, though the unreleased Sweet Insanity would have at least been suitably weird. Greatest Brian Wilson song ever as of June 6, 2012: "H.E.L.P. Is On The Way" (which I can't find on youtube but it's on Disc 3 of the "Good Vibrations" box). Greatest Beach Boys book everyone should read but maybe haven't: David Leaf, "Beach Boys And The California Myth"-- http://www.amazon.com/The-Beach-Boys-California-Myth/dp/0448146266 Blondie Chaplin Changed Our Lives http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRyD-biu7mQ

AMCD 60 CHARLIE LOVE Love (tpt), George Lewis (clt), Louis Nelson (tbn), Louis Gallaus (pn), Albert Jiles (dr), recorded Algiers, La. 9/2/62 + an early 60s trip of Love, Emile Barnes (clt), Emmanuel Sayles (banjo) both are tremendous, throw out your Alan Shorter, Toshinori Kondo, Steven Bernstein records and wait till the sun shines, Nellie!! http://www.amazon.com/Charile-Love-Louis-Nelson-George/dp/B000001YIF *** AMCD 106 Herb Morand's New Orleans Band 1950 Herb (tpt), Albert Burbank (clt), Eddie Pierson (tbn), Lester Santiago (pn), Louis James (bs), Morris Morand (dr), New Orleans 2/15/50 You can't ever have too much Herb Morand so no complaints about the unreleased alternates of "If You're A Viper" and "Have You Seen My Kitty." Were there only more!! Second half of the album is Paul Barbarin & His New Orleans Band, January and May 1951. Ernie Cagnolatti >>>>>>> Enrico Rava and that's just fidgety feet! http://www.amazon.com/1950-1951-Herb-Morand/dp/B00000I0GU

"The Last Public Hanging in West Virginia" is one of T's best, though F&S didn't quite nail it, alas. It later became a signature piece for Dave Evans-- I prefer the studio version but this will git ya' most of the way there (albeit a little slowly)-- Comparison of the contemporary solo Flatt and Scruggs Revue sides is an interesting endeavor-- both are worthy.

ah, some questions answered! dig the Rose Leaf Ragtime Club interview with... Knocky Parker! http://www.roseleafragtimeclub.org/f/interviews/parker1.php The Light Crust Dough Boys gig alone is fascinating; that he did other things-- + English PhD & professorship-- amazing. Bill: Then, after the war, you really got into the jazz area more, didn't you? How did that happen? Knocky: I don't know how, Zutty Singleton...Oh yes, I do too. On my two weeks holiday, the first year with the Doughboys, I spent in New Orleans and got a job there at the—some hot spot—the "Little Puppy," or something. There was a clarinetist, I think his name was Sid Arodin... *** B: Since you brought up his name, did you know James P. Johnson? K: Yes! Yes, very, very well. We two, for many, many occasions worked together at Bob Moss's concerts in New York. And, of the two of us, week after week, month after month, played together there and were good, good buddies... ... James P. was supposed not to drink, and his son was there along with him to see that James P. didn't drink. But the very first thing when the evening started, the son would get drunk, and that was it, you know, because he'd be the drunkest of them all. And poor old James P. would drink. I never saw him drink too much, but it was bad for his health for him to drink anything at all. I'm sure that's true, you know, it was injurious. He was on his last days. But he was a phenomenal virtuoso, a flawless technician and a superb artist.

From Light Crust Doughboys to Doc Evans to Sleepy John Estes ("The Legend of..." lp on Delmark) to solo Jelly Roll Morton & Scott Joplin (which I've not heard)... is it possible there's never been a Knocky Parker thread before? Any Chicagoans present at the Estes session or related gigs? and what of Parker's other career as a Professor of English? Dig, University of South Florida (Go Bulls!) even has a Knocky Parker Award for Creative Nonfiction Writing-- http://english.usf.edu/awards/ LIGHT CRUST DOUGHBOYS 'Tiger Rag' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_po4iAUw0Fg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiFZ1WeTwp0

Thanks for the pics, Jeffcrom. Question: was there ever only one volume of Jelly Roll Morton LOC recordings on Solo Art, with R.T. Davies pitch correction, Jack Towers mastering? Recommendation: Barnes Bocage Big 5. Liner notes by artist James McGarrell below, from deeply hidden 'frame' here http://www.jazzology.com/jazzbeat.php?id=82 though in typical charming fashion the website sells the family of labels short. Here's the cover-- http://www.amazon.com/Big-Five-Barnes-Bocage/dp/B000001YIW I'm almost-- ALMOST-- tempted to say it's safe to be a blue label American completist. Question: Is that too optimistic for a few of the more obscure/repetitive live recordings? *** BARNES-BOCAGE BIG FIVE By Jim McGarrell In 1950 I went as a penurious art student to New Orleans for a few days. I was following an interst in the music of that city that had begun when I was a teenaged collector of 78 rpm shellac records from the 1920s. From the writings and recordings made by Bill Russell on his American Music label in the 1940s I learned that there were still musical contemporaries of Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, and Jelly Roll Morton plying their craft in the Crescent City and I wanted to meet and hear them while they were still alive. Most were around the age I am now as this is written, in their mid-sixties, which seemed to me quite ancient; I was afraid they might expire any day. I had no way of knowing when I landed in the city that, just as the genuine jazz sound was unlikely to be heard on used records found in white neighborhoods in Indianapolis, the best musicians usually played the best New Orleans jazz in street bands, bars and dance halls away from Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, where I naively went to look for it. I was lucky, however, because the great early George Lewis Band had just gotten a gig at the El Morocco there and most of his sidemen were known to me from Russell's recordings. I listened through every set, bought them the occasional beer, visited their homes, and began a friendship which lasted several years. When I returned for the whole summer in 1951, I noticed two other young white guys lingering on the sidewalk outside the club between sets through which they, too, attempted to nurse a single drink. These kids were Alden Ashforth and David Wyckoff, who were acolytes to Bill Russell and who had stopped off in Chicago to meet him after running away from their freshman year at Harvard on a jazz pilgrimage to New Orleans. When we had exchanged mutual enthusiasms, they told me excitedly of the street and dance band music they had found in just a couple of weeks there, and especially of the clarinetist Emile Barnes who had not been heard by any of the few jazz preservationists from the North of the previous decade, not even Russell. They took me to hear him on his weekend job at a nondescript little back street place with trumpeter Lawrence Toca and two rhythm players. As soon as I heard a few bars of his warm Albert clarinet vibrato I knew I was in the presence of the same earthly sound that had thrilled me under the hiss and crackle of the shellac records of Sidney Bechet, Johnny Dodds and Jimmie Noone, the sound that had won me to New Orleans music as a teenager. I learned from my two friends and from Barnes that he handcrafted mattresses as a day job because he could not support his family from music alone; that he had been the clarinetist in the legendary Chris Kelly Band and the Camellia Band of Wooden Joe in the nineteen-teens and twenties, and that he would like to find the bigger audience that his music deserved. Alden, David, and I were convinced he was too important a musician in the development of New Orleans jazz never to have been recorded. Meanwhile the families of Alden and David found them by employing a private detective, and Alden's father descended upon us to try to persuade them to return to college. I was the beneficiary of a few wonderful dinners (one at Galatoire's that we never could have afforded otherwise) as part of his gentle and generous persuasion. They struck a bargain that if he would provide an Ampex tape recorder and funds to record the Eureka Brass Band and a couple of studio sessions with dance band musicians—especially Barnes—they would return to college the following autumn. He agreed, and that, of course, is how they made the first recording of an existing, practicing jazz marching band. They decided that Barnes, however, should be showcased in a couple of all star ensembles with the best other they also wanted to record. That Kid Thomas would be one of these became obvious when, following a tip, we went across the river to the town of Algiers and heard his astonishing trumpet playing. Here was another brilliant musician unrecorded and previously unheard by aficionados from outside the city. Bill Russell came down from Chicago to help Alden and David with technical aspects of all of these sessions. I acted as a gofer and bought beer for the musicians out of my wages as a short order cook in a hamburger joint above Canal Street. After that halcyon summer of 1951 I went back to being an art student, first at Indiana University-- where I arranged and promoted a concert of the George Lewis Band in 1953—and later as a graduate student at UCLA—where I found myself becoming the chauffeur for the Lewis band when they played a gig in Beverly Hills in 1954. By this time two of the Ashforth/Wyckoff American Music sessions featuring Barnes had been added to the American Music list, and I kept thinking that, as wonderful as much of the music was, there were only flashes of the brilliance we constantly heard when Barnes was playing on jobs with musicians, maybe lesser ones, but ones of his own choosing, in his own pickup bands. When I learned from friends in New Orleans in the spring of 1954 that he had begun playing regularly with the venerable trumpeter Peter Bocage in a five-piece ensemble, I determined to do a session of my own with that combination. Never mind that they used an electric guitar rather than a banjo, that they blew pop tunes rather than jazz standards, or that they played for the pleasure of neighborhood dancers rather than jazz-conscious listeners. I didn't want to embalm some re-creation of a music from the past; I wanted to capture a live music of that present time. I was able to put the whole thing together over the summer of 1954 with a couple of auto trips from Los Angeles, some phone calls, and the help of friends like David Wyckoff, Billy Huntington and Dick Allen. I rented the legendary San Jacinto Hall where Russell had recorded Bunk and George Lewis in the 1940's. but where recent visits by Fats Domino had obliterated these occasions in the mind of the proprietor. I paid Union scale wages out of savings from my teaching assistantship, and a Hollywood record entrepreneur, who later lost interest, did lend me his ancient Cadillac for the final trek to do the recording on September 8, 1954. After forty years the memory of the evening itself seems an anxiety-ridden though exhilaratingly blurred phantasm compared to the events leading up to it. We had, I think, only one rehearsal but since the band had played together on jobs, I didn't think more were needed. We opened the doors to the hall, not only because it was a hot night but because we thought that people coming from the neighborhood to hear the music and dance a bit would relax the musicians and add human warmth to the sound. They did, and it did, in my view. At one point a tap dancer started performing—he can clearly be heard on one take of Sheik of Araby- but as the evening wore on there were more and other dancers of all ages and styles. Fortunately the recoded sound gives what memory can't. For me this will always be primarily the throbbing intensity of Emile Barnes' playing. Whether in quiet obbligato behind the lead of another instrumentalist or erupting glissando out of his own, he constantly surprises me with new musical inventions of heady delight. How does an under-educated mattress maker wring inexplicably complicated figures of this degree of sophistication from sometimes silly and banal pop tunes? An older, more educated and "legitimate" musician, Peter Bocage, seems the perfect foil for Barnes. To say that he lays down a solid melody line is not to say that it is without inventiveness. Like Bunk, he can seem to be playing "book" melodies note for note, but his stylish phrasing makes them swing. The rhythm section was anchored by drummer Albert Jiles, whose work I had previously had previously admired on some of the American Music sessions of the mid-40's. Bassist Eddie Dawson at seventy was the oldest musician on the date, and Homer Eugene on guitar at forty the youngest. It was probably, but not exclusively, the swing-oriented amplifications of the latter which made these sides unacceptable to commercial "Dixieland" record labels in the 1950s and 60s. A selection was finally issued in England by6 the New Orleans Jazz Society (NOJS) in the 1970's and later by NOLA Records there, and I have heard that it became something of a cult item in the UK. I am happy that it may now finally find a wider audience in this country and the world.