John L

Hey, sleep is a necessity in life. We need music like that.

Johnny Adams "Sings Doc Pomus" is also a fine album.

I think that it is very unfortunate that people associate Solieri with Mozart's death. Solieri was a real person, a real composer of some talent, and, by all historical accounts, a genuine friend of Mozart. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin began the myth with his brilliant but unfair poem.

Allen: As long as you don't mention Dex, everything is OK.

Even separate from the mass popularity question, Miles had a much strong influence within the jazz world than did Morgan or Byrd. The latter may have had a strong influence on some trumpet players. But Miles' influence was much broader, and he was consistently at the cutting edge of new developments in jazz from the mid-50s to the mid-70s. I agree, however, that Miles' relative popularity in the music world may also have a lot to do with marketing. To the world, he became the personification of "coolness" in the same sense that Diz became the personification of bebop back in the 40s. As time goes on, that source of popularity will fade. Yet a whole lot of the music will stand forever. In "On the Corner: the Sellout of Miles Davis," Stanley Crouch offers his views on the source of Miles' enormous popularity even outside of the jazz world, arguing that he played some sort of modern-day equivalent of a minstrel to white audiences as the angry black man who turns his back to the public. But I don't buy it.

Interesting, although I don't find it to be so surprising. LA in the early 50s was a very fluid situation between jazz and R&B. Lots of jazz musicians took part in R&B sessions. Even Ben Webster made a few records like that. I guess that we can add this to the list of many recordings from the early-mid 50s that Dolphy MAY be playing on.

I have always considered "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" to be one of Cannonball's great ones, and it is a as good a testimony as any to the fact that great jazz can also be popular jazz oriented toward a wide audience.

Lou Rawls was the one-two punch that set it up. Wilson Pickett is something close to the knock out punch. Something like half of soul died in the last week. Damn! RIP

Jim- My idea is to distinguish "commericialism" in the sense of spending time and effort on what sells as opposed to what the artists would ideally like to be creating (and hey, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The dream of almost any musician is to make a living by making music. For that, usually at least some compromises are necessary) ...and the desire to make music "for the people" in and of itself. In jazz, I think that this distinction is particularly important since the music itself was born as part of social functions, and it maintained that profile at least until Bebop. To say that Cannonball gave in to commericialism has the connotation that he was making artistic compromises in order to make money. Maybe that is true. But I would like to see some proof. Until I see that proof, for the case of Cannonball, I will assume that it is not true. I think that Cannonball really wanted to make music "for the people."

I am a bit uncomfortable with the word "commercialism" here. My impression (although I could be wrong) is that Cannonball was not obsessed with chasing money. On the other hand, he understood his role in jazz the old- fashioned way: not just as artist but as entertainer. He wanted to give the people what they want for partying and good times. He promoted jazz not just as art, but as a social function. He brought jazz not just to jazz fans, and he did it consciously. Still, I don't see this as any sort of sell out. I think that it was what Cannoball wanted to do, even not considering the relative financial rewards.

The Isleys' last album, Body Kiss, was a killer. No spam! It is one of my favorite albums of recent years. BTW, it can also be found on UNIVERSAL.

I've heard that Keith does not appreciate cheap jokes at his expense.

Yes. That is what I do. I am physically located across the ocean from my CD collection these days. But I already have a good part of it ripped to my hard drive. I just hook a one-pronged to two-pronged chord up from my computer to my stereo and presto! You can do the same thing with an iPod. John, what does "one-pronged to two-pronged chord" mean?? Are you talking about hooking up your mp3 music player? I think what Peter is asking is if you can hook up an external PC's hardrive directly to a stereo. I know of no way to do this. Most external hardrives hook up to the PC using USB, firewire or eSATA. I don't have a stereo that accepts any of these inputs and if it did, how would it "play" the files? Oops, I realized that fact and deleted my post just as you were posting. iPods and other MP3 players can be hooked up directly to a stereo. I imagine that it is certainly possible to manufacture a large hard drive that is also an MP3 player. Yet I know of none. "one-pronged to two-pronged chord" - can hook up either your computer or an MP3 player to a stereo.

There is a pretty good sounding boot from this 1971 tour from Belgrade. They have been planning a new Ornette studio album for some time now. Two years in a row, there was even an album title in the "upcoming jazz releases" list. But alas...

R&B is a very broad musical category. It includes a lot of adult music. On the other hand, we already loved Lou Rawls when we were kids. His music is for all ages, and for the ages themselves. You'll never find...another voice like his.

In other words, if you like your In a Silent Way LP and Coltrane at the VV is too far out for your taste, there is little question that you will be happier with the In a Silent Way box as opposed to Coltrane at the Half Note.

Interesting. Thanks, Kevin.

Yes. Come to think of it, a lot of my CDRs are well over 5 years old, and I have had very few problems. Now I am ripping them up to my external hard drive for what I hope will be permanent digital storage in one form or another. Another questions: Bearing wear would presumably be more a function of how much a hard drive is used than of the age of the hard drive itself. Right? Would this mean that a back-up hard drive that is never used should not experience bearing wear?

Thanks for that reply. That sounds a bit like the system that I want to set up. John

Yahoo carried the following news story today. I am trying to understand better the comments about the problems of hard drive storage, which relate to the wearing out of "disc bearing." What exactly does that refer to? Does worn out disc bearing actually damage the MP3 files that are stored, or does it just affect the functioning of the hard drive, thus increasing the probability of a crash and implying the need for a replacement? My plan is to back up my hard drive with another hard drive. What risks do I run in doing that? John Blau, IDG News Service Tue Jan 10, 8:00 AM ET Opinions vary on how to preserve data on digital storage media, such as optical CDs and DVDs. Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland, has his own view: If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a lifetime. ADVERTISEMENT "Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Gerecke says. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more." The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data "shifting" on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam. "Many of the cheap burnable CDs available at discount stores have a life span of around two years," Gerecke says. "Some of the better-quality discs offer a longer life span, of a maximum of five years." Distinguishing high-quality burnable CDs from low-quality discs is difficult, he says, because few vendors use life span as a selling point. Similar Limitations Hard-drive disks also have their limitations, according to Gerecke. The problem with hard drives, he says, is not so much the disk itself as it is the disk bearing, which has a positioning function similar to a ball bearing. "If the hard drive uses an inexpensive disk bearing, that bearing will wear out faster than a more expensive one," he says. His recommendation: a hard-drive disk with 7200 revolutions per minute. To overcome the preservation limitations of burnable CDs, Gerecke suggests using magnetic tapes, which, he claims, can have a life span of 30 years to 100 years, depending on their quality. "Even if magnetic tapes are also subject to degradation, they're still the superior storage media," he says. But he's quick to point out that no storage medium lasts forever and, consequently, consumers and business alike need to have a migration plan to new storage technologies. "Companies, in particular, need to be constantly looking at new storage technologies and have an archiving strategy that allows them to automatically migrate to new technologies," he says. "Otherwise, they're going to wind up in a dead-end. And for those sitting on terabytes of crucial data, that could be a colossal problem."

This place is a tremendous asset for any jazz fan or musician, and it just keeps getting better.

My iPod has been stuck in "check mark mode" a few times. Both times, it was due to a problem in disconnecting the iPod from iTunes. Every time I hit "disengage," I got a confusing message "cannot disengage because files are still in use." So I finally just existed iTunes and turned off my computer. When I powered down, the check mark came on the iPod. After that, I had to wait for the battery to die (which it did pretty quickly. Apparently check mark mode drains the battery like when the iPod is running). Once the battery died, it went out of "check mark mode" and, after a recharge, it worked fine. Do you know how it got into "check mark mode?"

Dex didn't have to steal women. Women stole him.

That is a real downer. I heard that he was fighting for his life during the last few weeks. But I was still hopeful. What a class act and fabulous voice. I read the Sam Cooke biography "Dream Boogie" not long ago. Lou Rawls was a major source of information for that book. I had forgotten that they were in a car crash together in the early 60s, and that Lou Rawls barely survived. We can be thankful that Lou stuck around for another 45 years and left us some timeless music. RIP

You've got to have Gene Ammons in the mix somewhere.