John L

Whut????????????? This is an INCREDIBLE collection, as good as you want it to be. My advice to everybody is BUY IT NOW! MG: I don't see how anybody with your taste in music could be less than thrilled by this one.

Like many others here, I have a hard time ranking my preferences for musical genres. My favorite music is all over the place in many genres. That said, I have a special place in my heart and soul for the jazz-blues-R&B continuum. I don't look for boundaries in this continuum, just quality music.

I have this terrible repeating nightmare. I am in the front row of a Keith Jarrett solo concert, and about 15 minutes into the slow "spiritual hymn" core of the spontaneously improvised 40-minute "Part 1.". Suddenly, my throat feels very dry, and it starts to itch, and itch, and itch, and itch. My eyes swell, beads of sweat run down my face. AAAAAAAHHHHH!

If Proper had waited one more year, they could have included Bloodshot Eyes. It was 49 years old at the time of release.

Interesting. I thought that I was just strange in that respect. I travel quite a lot on planes, and have a pair of Bose headphones that I enjoy on long flights. On the other hand, I do find the noise reduction mechanism to be bothersome to my ears. I therefore still use the iPod buds in most circumtances, despite the much lower fidelity. It is a strange feeling on the ears, something like an increase in air pressure. It does create ear fatigue. After a few hours, my ears feel very tired. It kind of pisses me off that these $300 state-of-the-art Bose headphones don't even give you the option to turn the noise reduction off when you don't want to use it. I would love to use the phones in my hotel room, for example, instead of the iPod buds, if only there was a way to turn off the noise reduction.

As long as Storyville is reissuing its Copenhagen recordings, how about the Warne Marsh trio date? That one deserves to be in print, and has been impossible to find for several years now.

This is an interesting thread. I would say that "surprise" can be one of the reasons why music is interesting or compelling, but it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition. The random sound of 1000s of people screaming over the noise of drills and bulldozers might be surprising, but few of us would want to listen to it for very long. Conversely, if "suprise" was the only factor that made music compelling, we wouldn't keep listening to our favorite recordings over and over again even after the point where we can anticipate everything that is going to happen.

Nope. This one was a masterpiece even long before it became hard to get a hold of. Now, as I understand, it is relatively easy to find, and for a trivial price to boot.

Jim - I agree with a lot of what you write about the social context of Rock and Roll. I also have a much stronger general attachment to R&B, Blues, Gospel, and Country than to Rock, and consider the overall musical achievements of the former to be far greater than the latter. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that, over the course of half a century, a number of people with exceptional and individual musical talent pursued musical directions associated with Rock. The social context was the reason that they did so, but some of these people would have achieved greatness in virtually any musical direction that they pursued. Jerry Garcia is a prime example to me of an artist surrounded by rock culture and "social context" in the extreme (a virtual cult), but able to transcend all that musically. The context determined what he did, but not how he did it. I always looked upon the Dead Head scene as something that just had to be tolerated in order to hear the concerts. Today, I listen to Jerry Garcia in the same vein as I do Lester Young, Maria Callas, and (yes) Marvin Gaye. Musical genius is musical genius. It can rise to the top even in a social and cultural sesspool.

If you ask me, Chuck Berry had a very unique and original approach to music that continues to sound original and different today, even though the sociological context has changed. His multi-note guitar style is very much a part of it. Sure, he didn't invent all of it. But he put it together in a personal and compelling way. A lot of his best recordings are not the hits, many of which were directed at white teenagers and had the "maximum sociological impact." I am surprised that you think that so few rock artists created significant music that can stand on its own. Sure, the historical and sociological context is important to appreciating a lot of it. (For that matter, you could say much the same about Pops, Bird, and Coltrane.) That doesn't mean that Donna Summer is the equivalent of Jerry Garcia.

Maybe some of Burt Bacharach's stuff: Alfie, This Guy's in Love With You...

Are we going to pretend that "Rock and Roll" is this..."pure art form" that's about music first and sociology second (if at all)? C'mon.... No. But there is also no reason to also dismiss Rock and Roll as nothing but pop culture. There are a number of artists like Chuck Berry, Dylan, the Stones, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead who deserved to be enshrined somewhere for their musical contributions, in a place seperate from Donna Summer. That is the point.

You're basically making the point the most of us can agree with: Donna Summer was a genuine pop culture icon. The question is "does being a pop culture icon singer alone mean that you should be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?" If the answer is yes, then fine. But why then call it a "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?" Donna Summer didn't do any Rock and Roll that I can remember. The category of disco divas includes some pretty talented singers: Candi Staton, Thelma Houston, Gloria Gaynor. Musically, Donna Summer was nothing compared to them (IMO).

The Dave Clark Five was about the only signficant band of that era to emerge from North London. When I heard their first records, boy, was I glad I lived in West London! We had Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers, Screaming Lord Sutch & the Savages, Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds, Manfred Mann (then known as the Mann-Hugg Blues Menn), The Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones as our local bands, plus a weekly visit from Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. DC5 stunk. However, you're right about the importance of the British invasion. Apart from R&B artists, and the early surf bands like the Ventures, Beach Boys and Dick Dale & the Deltones, there really wasn't much going on in the US. Well, there were all those teen idols like Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Ricky Nelson, Bobby Rydell etc etc and their female equivlents, some of whom were at least as good looking as the teen idols (Ann-Margaret, Shelley Fabares). What was a bit of a surprise was that some of them, like Lou Christie, didn't get swept away; there must be a deep-seated need among young Americans for good looking boy singers. (All the British teen idols did get swept away, though John Leyton managed a decent career in the films.) MG I never bought into the party line of the British invasion "saving" the American popular music scene. Yeah, the teen idol thing had taken over the white rock & roll scene, but white artists had never been a major force in rock & roll even before that. I'm talking about creating good music, not selling records. The 50s had some good rockabilly cats, a few good white doo-wop groups, and Link Wray - someone far more important than Dick Dale and the Ventures - but they'd been disappeared from the scene by the 1960s. The Everly Brothers had run out of steam by 1963 - the voices were still great, but the hit records had stopped. Roy Orbison - sorry, Clem - was still doing it when the British invasion hit. (To me, Elvis was in some kind of nowhere land, and he never found his way out of that nowhere land.) "Apart from R&B artists" - that's a pretty big Apart. People like Gary U.S. Bonds, Arthur Alexander, Sam Cooke, Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, Jackie Wilson, The Drifters, Lee Dorsey, Booker T & the MGs, The Miracles, The Contours, and let's not forget Ray Charles, were all making records that hit the top 40/30/20/10 charts in the early 60s - and were making great records that still sound great today. The whole soul thing was taking shape around that time. James Brown had been making music that the white audience hadn't (or had rarely) heard, Otis was just starting to come into his own at Stax, Wilson Pickett - first with The Falcons and then on his own - was just breaking loose. All of this occurred before the British invasion, and I'll put up any of this music against any British invasion music. The British invasion was a marketing ploy to sell records to white kids - nothing more nothing less - at least IMO. I'm sure that others will disagree - and I'll admit to a liking for some of Dusty Springfield's and Ray Davies' recordings - but in general, the whole British invasion - the fact that it was given a name like that says something - was just a ploy. Interesting observations. My feeling is that the significance of the British invasion was not so much in the quality of the music that they brought, but in the impact that they had on mainstream (white) pop music. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the American music industry carried out a deliberate and organized suppression of Rock and Roll and R&B. Artists like James Brown had no chance of crossing over at that time. Sam Cooke's first attempts at crossover tell the story well: sickly sweet pop dities that could stand along side Pat Boone on the pop charts at the time. Of course, Sam could breathe magic even into songs like that, but the point stands. True, Ray Charles cut a few wild ones that dented the charts (as an exception). But even Ray was toning down the R&B that he cut for Atlantic in favor of country and softer pop ballads. Jackie Wilson suffered through a lot of bad but obligatory material during that time as well. True, this suppression of Rock and Roll and black music in America would have certainly come to an end even without the British invasion. And you are right that we can see signs of this already in 1962-1963. But the British invasion just blew a giant hole in the music industry strategy, and made the record companies and radio stations shift gears back to Rock and Roll and, by implication, R&B. I agree with Alexander that the British invasion was not at all a marketing ploy by the American music industry. On the contrary. It took them by surprise.

For the memory of Julius Hemphill, this really needs a CD release with the 20-minute "Hard Blues" as a bonus track from the same session. that would make a truly monumental package, one of the greatest jazz CDs.

Weaker than Donna Summer? I never understood the big deal about her: mediocrity personified. Madonna is a genius next to Donna Summer (IMO).

(160 * 10^9) / 2^30 = 149.011611938 Please accept that. I accept that just fine. What I don't accept is 160GB≠160GB

Thanks!

I heard that there was a dispute over the date of this recording. Has the dispute actually been resolved?

The disc that you already have is my favorite. But I think that you would probably also enjoy the few records that he made later for Riverside and Prestige.

On gripe: I am currently living far away from home, and therefore rely 100% on iPods and iTunes for my music. I had generally tried to avoid buying music on iTunes because of copy protection, but still bit the bullet when I couldn't find the music elsewhere (for example, the Verve-Impulse iTunes only reissues). My computer broke down and I bought another one. All of my iTunes files were backed up on external hard drives. So no problem... almost. When I tried to access my copy-protected iTunes files, it asked for a password to authorize my new computer to use them (keep in mind, you only get 5 chances to do this. After thant, the copy protected files will be locked away from you, even though you bought them!) But it turns out that you need to go through the iTunes Store to receive the authorization. Unfortunately, where I am living, I only have a dial-up internet connection at home that is not powerful enough to interact with the iTunes Store. So I am stuck. I bought a bunch of music at the iTunes Store that I am now denied access to.

I have LaCie and Maxtor 500 GB external drives. I like them both, but have a slight preference for the Maxtor. It is a bit faster and seems a bit better matched for a PC (the LaCie was built for Apple, I believe). They are both quiet, the Maxtor especially. Western Digital also get excellent reviews.

You mean they are going to be on the next Nessa CD?

Which one? The right one or the left one?