Peter Friedman

Hutch Fan, you put it perfectly.

Interesting that Dexter playing behind the beat "got on your nerves". There are a number of musicians who - play behind the beat - and I often find that very appealing. I suppose, like so many other aspects in music, we all have things we like and things we don't care for.

I have gone through a number of up's and down's on Brubeck. At present I am in an up phase. I agree with Jim that the early Quartet sessions on Fantasy were very special. I rarely play the Take Five album. The title tune has become so widely played on radio, TV, shopping malls, elevators, etc. that it has become overkill for me.. I know this will be a minority opinion, but in some ways the entrance of drummer Joe Morello to the group sometimes got in the way of my enjoyment of the group. Some tunes have lengthy drum solos to show off Morello's talent and were not really to my taste.

The concept of keeping ones music in a storage unit seems very strange to me. Doesn't it make it very awkward for listening. When you want to hear a particular recording that is not in the home don't you have to got to the storage unit to get it? Or every so often to you take a number of recordings out and put other in the storage unit in their place?

More European CD's keep coming to mind.

Here are more from my shelf.

Stitt did not have his own group. He played and recorded with a very broad number of musicians. His recordings on Muse, Cobblestone, and a a relatively few others were extremely good, but he made numerous others that while perfectly ok, seemed to lack the inspiration that made them anything special. Dexter along with Wardell Gray was perceived as the person who moved the tenor sax into the bebop realm. He was an influence on many tenor players , Coltrane being one key example. Stitt played alto far more than tenor, and Bird was already the dominant force on alto. Perhaps had he put the alto aside and played tenor 90% of the time Stitt would have gained more fame across the jazz scene.