Degiorgio

I don't have a source for Jap CD's I'm afraid... I'm lucky enough to go over there couple of times a year so I just pick them up when I'm out there. Unicorn - which you have - is the only one I recall seeing on CD... maybe Hip Seagull too... Kirk

urmm.. yes - as in Japanese Blue Note - King Record Co. Ltd - GXF 3061 KD

actually - this is the one DUTTON re-release that I'm playing more than the others right now... it's a bit odd, but a real grower IMO. I'm a huge fan of Paul Buckmaster's string arrangements for Bowie, Elton John, The Stones, etc although he first came to my attention on Rodney Franklin's 'Felix Leo' track... beautiful strings on that. I'm finding Chitinous to be somewhat of a mixup of In A Silent Way-Bitches Brew-On the Corner with scary strings layered on top! Was a bit disappointed by Garrick's The Heart Is A Lotus... I loved Troppo... great set of re-issues... KD

really enjoying DELIGHTFULEE right now... nice to hear Morgan in an expanded line-up setting. Sunrise, Sunset - Zambia - Nite Flite are killer tunes! Can anybody tell me if TOM CAT is available anywhere on CD other than the early 90's edition? ie. has it been sonically updated since then? KD

I'd say these Japanese fusion albums from the 70's are fairly essential: KOSUKE MINE: Mine (3 Blind Mice) 1970 (In A Silent Way-ish e. piano style) TERUO NAKAMURA: Unicorn (3 Blind Mice) 1973 (Unicorn Lady is baad-ass funky fusion) SADAO WATANABE: Open Road (Sony) 1973 (ft's the beautiful modal track Echo) TERUMASA HINO: Into Eternity (Sony) 1974 (heavy!) TERUMASA HINO: Hip Seagull - (Flying Disk) 1977 (ft sought-after track This Planet Is Ours) MASARU IMADA: Remember of Love (3 Blind Mice) 1978 (for the lovely track Sea Weeds) KD

I listed my original vinyl on eBay 2 days ago planning to replace it with the RVG... wish I'd seen the new artwork first.. grrr... much prefer the King cover. KD

just checked the Gram Parsons - not my thing at all - far too country... as are some of the Pure Prairie League tracks but there are 4 or 5 on Bustin Out that are just great - especially 'Falling In and Out of Love'. Top recommendation so far though has to be the Seals & Crofts - *really* getting into their early albums...

yeah - thx... I just checked some Seals & Crofts and they sound even better! Even their album last year sounds great. Will check the Gram Parsons - don't have that... having good fun getting these off eBay - just in time for the summer :-) KD

just checked the clips on Pure Prairie League website - Bustin Out is EXACTLY what I was looking for...

all sounds promising.. thanks so much guys! I do have the Jackson Browne: For Everyman - as again it features my fave artist Joni on e.piano and David Crosby on backing vox... (Crosby for me has the voice of an angel - can't beat his harmonies...) really must check out this Pure Prairie League... I had a Kenny Loggins album once - Vox Humana (for the track 'Love Will Follow') - but not any Loggins and Messina...

thx guys... I have most of the CSNY + The Byrds material... I just got into James Taylor's 'Mud Slide Slim' and love the tracks with Carole King, Joni on backing vox so I'll check out more.. Haven't checked out The Eagles yet - and Seals & Croft sound like a great recommendation - I like a few covers of their songs so I'll go check em out. I'll pass on REM - needs to have those early 70's production values for me Anybody know Eric Anderson's albums? Joni's on a couple of em... curious.

I LOVE this kind of sound: acoustic guitars + thick vocal harmonies... but I need help finding some more songs to check out... its a specific early 70's kind of sound - perfect examples would be: America: Ventura Highway Doobie Brothers: Toulouse Street David Crosby: Traction In the Rain/Orleans (from 'If I Could Only Remember My Name') being in the UK I rarely hear this kind of stuff as it seems to be a very exclusively Amercan style. Anybody recommend similar stuff??

I just came across this on Paul Tingen's MilesBeyond website: I thought the Cellar Door box was to be the final one... looks like there may be another next year!

TONTO era Stevie covers on Blue Note: Bobbi Humphrey: I Love Every Little Thing About You (Dig This! - 1972) Ronnie Foster: Superwoman (Sweet Revival - 1972) Marlena Shaw: You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Live At Montreux - 1973) Ronnie Foster: Golden Lady (On the Avenue - 1974) Bobbi Humphrey: You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Satin Doll - 1974) Ronnie Foster: Tuesday Heartbreak (Cheshire Cat - 1975) Ronnie Laws: Tell Me Something Good (Pressure Sensitive - 1975)

based upon my own collection I would say Stevie's compositions prove a more popular choice for jazz artists than The Beatles... anybody have any particular favorites?? for starters I'll put forward: Ahmad Jamal: 'Superstition' (from 73) Freddie Hubbard: 'Black Maybe' (from High Energy) Marion Brown: 'Visions' (from Vista)

Oh -maybe I got that wrong.. I thought it didn't sell as well (certainly not as well as Innvervisions)... was Boogie On Reggae Woman one of the hits? Can't think what the other hit would be... (my fave is 'Creepin'') I agree regarding 'Where I'm Coming From'. Stevie really expands the song structure on Sunshine In Their Eyes - definitely up there in complexity with the TONTO songs... and Do Yourself A Favor & Look Around are like proto-versions of Superstition & They Won't Go When I go - but yes, it does get overlooked - maybe cos sonically most of it is still in the late 60's Stevie mould and Margouleff & Cecil aren't yet on board. There are also earlier tracks which hint at the TONTO style to come - 'I Don't Know Why' and 'Ain't No Lovin' from For Once In My Life and 'Angie Girl' from My Cherie Amour. There is also an extremely hard to find early example of Stevie trying out a Moog bassline and string lines on Smokey Robinson & The Miracles 1972 album Flying High Together - track's called 'We Had A Love So Strong' and its pure Stevie magic... The TONTO era didn't come out of a vacuum - Stevie mentions in Down Beat that he was writing these kind of complex compositions from a very young age, but in his words 'never gave them to the company cos I felt they weren't ready... I felt when I was younger it was not the time nor the place'. A proper box-set or expanded set of CD's of this period should include his compositions exclusively written for other artists up to 1974 - like the rare Smokey track... there's also songs for The Supremes (Bad Weather), The Spinners, David Ruffin (unreleased I believe), GC Cameron (who is on the Syreeta suite I mentioned earlier), The Main Ingredient, Ramsey Lewis, Rotary Connection, Rufus & Chaka Khan (Tell Me Something Good), Roberta Flack (I Can See the Sun...), Minnie Riperton, Pointer Sisters..... etc! None of these songs were commercially performed by Stevie himself... good point...

both the 2 Stevie produced Syreeta albums (Syreeta & Stevie Wonder presents Syreeta) are available on a single disc on hip-oselect: http://www.hip-oselect.com/catalogue_syreeta.asp for me they are both equally as good as the 4 classic Stevie albums of the period. The first features TONTO again - to stunning effect on Black Maybe especially... but Side Two of the 2nd album is perhaps the highlight - a suite of 5 tracks that just knock me out. How you can dig these albums and Tonto's Expanding Headband but not care for Stevie's own albums of the period is pretty baffling. They are almost identical in concept and are sonically consistant with each other. That's "I Love Every Little Thing About You" - Stevie performs it on Music Of My Mind.

to pull this back on topic again... I was further researching the unreleased Stevie material and came across a Down Beat interview from 74. The interviewer mentions some 200 songs and Stevie plays him some with comments like 'this is for Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway', etc. Stevie explains that Fulfillingness' First Finale is part 1 of a double album. The second part to be released some time later - then he wanted to take a long break before working again. (He had just survived a near-fatal car crash in the midst of recording these sessions so its not surprising if he wanted to chill for a while). Stevie also explains that the title indicates that this double album will be the final statement in the TONTO style - ie. different compositions recorded with similar instrumentation. The next project he says he wants be more 'orchestral'. So obviously 'Fulfillingness' Second Finale' for whatever reason remained unissued. I'm not sure FFF sold particularly well compared to the predecessors - that could be 1 reason why Pt.2 remained unissued. Or maybe Stevie had moved on 'conceptually/stylistically' in his head and didn't want it out and just left us with Pt.1. There is a very definite shift from the 'baroque', 'classical pop', introspective nature of FFF to the more 'ghetto', uplifting RnB of Songs In the Key... Somebody really needs to get those tapes of FFF2 out there...

that is quite bizarre as Todd R was the ONLY artist in the back of my mind that I was thinking could be compared in this way... I do think he was a little later than Stevie (don't have any of his albums close to hand to check dates) but apart from the fact that he didn't appeal across the board in quite the same way as Stevie I'd put him up there conceptually... yeah - thx for doing that... it really puts everything into perspective actually listening to that track Chuck - do you have a copy to check out??

and how many of these 'hundreds' did this before Stevie? You mention Pete Townsend - and how many others like him who invested in large modular synthesisers did so because of the possibilities first displayed by Stevie. At the time of Music Of My Mind - large Moog/ARP systems were out of fashion - ridiculed for the many cheesy 'Moog cover' albums of Bach, etc. They were used sparingly by The Beatles, The Byrds, etc, previously - but Stevie was the first to marry the technology of multitrack tape with the idea that a great keyboardist could in effect play all the guitar, string, brass, bass, and even percussion parts and build up complete tracks using this method. This is quite important - regardless of the quality of the compositions.

Why not? (not being ass-y - genuinely interested why you wouldn't cos for me S Dan really reached a level of excellence in popular music/rock. Difficult to compare what they did with the achievements of Parker & Coltrane but I have no problem putting them in the same group in my mind. I personally don't have a problem with putting rock/pop/r n b artists on an equal footing with jazz or classical artists).

with respect, I think Stevie's output is deserving of something more than just 'great'. I don't agree with you that there are 'many' other artists even 'in their own way' who have taken 'pop' to the same levels as Stevie. As I mentioned earlier - possibly Joni Mitchell and Steely Dan, in that they managed to release sophisticated, complex albums which also happened to sell millions of copies worldwide. As well as performing most of the material single-handedly, Stevie's compositions have entered the 'global songbook' and become standards covered by artists as diverse as you can imagine - from Marion Brown to Luther Vandross. If you have a copy of Music Of My Mind close-by pls take 10 minutes out to listen again to Superwoman. Analyse what's going sonically and musically and report back on your findings... for me its up there with 'Aja' and 'The Boho Dance'... a composition that sold millions of copies but is very far removed from 'pop'. It's originality is startling... again - I can't think of 'many' artists who made such 'masterpieces' from a totally fresh palette and that still managed to appeal to millions... and then its followed by Happier Than the Morning Sun, Girl Blue (what the hell is going here? check that electronic percussion - bizarre and very NOT 'pop'), Seems So Long... and that's just the first of 4 albums in this vein... by somebody in their early 20's and under pressure from a major label to be hugely popular and accessible... and remember he plays EVERYTHING.

yeah - I think its safe to say Dizzy Gillespie is a REAL player... and he blows his ass off on Stevie's 'Do I Do'

- classic... as for the rest of this thread - I repeat, I would sooner discuss the possible reasons why this material hasn't been revisited in detail rather than what defines a musical genius... if Stevie does have control over any unreleased material why wouldn't HE want it released? In interviews he has had a teasing attitude when questioned about it... he doesn't say the material is unfinished or not up to scratch - quite the opposite. He seems to have a 'maybe one day I'll let you all hear it' kind of attitude... well I hope he does in my lifetime. yes - its on Embryo/Atlantic... its been discussed quite a bit on analog synth forums... Nick Kent seems to be close to Margouleff & Cecil (Tonto's Expanding Headband) and this is a quote from his recent post to the Analog Heaven forum: "Okay - here is what I understand. Mind you I want to make it clear that it's not the current official word, it's what I heard about 4 years ago. The CD that was out there was good, at least in it's day but there was an unforeseen legal issue with the labeling that came up and that has since been dealt with but that's the reason why the CD isn't out any more. The issue I guess did not lead to an immediate re-issue Malcolm told me that he and Robert Margouleff own the rights to the recordings and I got the impression they were waiting until they got a decent deal from a legit label, you know, one that actually pays the artist. Now secondarily - and I think what is on everyone's mind that a reissue in 5.1 surround of some sort was what they would be after."