John L

That is right near the former location of Keystone Korner.

No. That's not me. I never met Hank, unfortunately.

I am probably in a huge minority, but I enjoy Tenor/Fallen Angel much more than For Alto. In fact, I very rarely listen to the latter, despite its unquestionable historical importance. I would much rather listen to other Braxton.

Yes. Sometimes I think that Ornette tried to keep the critical establishment off guard deliberately. Just when his alto playing started to become accepted, he picked up the trumpet, then the violin. When his quartets and trios became widely appreciated, he stuck Denardo in on drums. When the critical establishment became comfortable in classifying Ornette as a primitive genius of pure improvisation and melody, he started producing through-composed works for symphony orchestra. When the jazz establishment began looking to Ornette as a remaining leader of acoustic free jazz, he set up Prime Time. In the mean time, Ornette continually commented in interviews that he was completely misunderstood by the critics, even those who praised him.

Thanks for posting that, Adam. Fascinating! I wish that I could take a year off work just to explore it all.

Isn't that the same fate that befell Little Willie John in the mid 60s ? I believe that Little Willie John met his fate in a prison in Walla Walla, Washington.

I am all over this one!!!!!!!!!!!!! Finally, a Mosaic Select where I don't have to sit on the fence because I already own the majority of it. I want every note of vintage Andrew Hill, even the bad ones.

Cal Green was a great guitar player. He played on numerous classic R&B dates in L.A. in the 1950s.

You mean that they have become unhappy with their place outside of jazz?

"Overlooked" is actually a vague concept that admits various interpretations. "Not receiving as much attention as deserved" is one common interpretation. Under that interpretation, exactly who is overlooked is a matter of opinion. For example, as much attention as Ornette gets, some might feel that it is still not enough. So let's nominate Bird!

Yes!!!

No way. I was at the Club Saint-Germain on the night the proceedings were recorded. Lucky you. But did you have sing Wade in the Water so loudly during Timmons' solo?

Don't forget gospel! The tree has the same roots but many branches.

Exactly. This set is an example of terrible programming. The music is fantastic. But you need to either program your CD player or burn the music in a different sequence to hear it as it should be heard.

There are lots of portable devices on the market that hold less music in MP3 format. They are also convenient in being extremely small. You can stick one in your shirt pocket like a ballpoint pen. You might check Consumer Reports or some of the hi fi magazines on line for reviews. I understand where you are coming from. As I am away from home and my CD collection most of the time, I run my stereo through my iPod. Therefore, even 40 GB is inadquate to always have available everything that I want to hear whenever I want to hear it. When I am on the go, however, I would actually prefer to have something cheaper and smaller. From my point of view, the optimal setup would be both a larger iPod-type device that holds more music than 40 GB and a small cheap portable device that can suck a few GBs of music off of the iPod very quickly. When this format essentially replaces CDs, I imagine that this type of setup will become common.

Don't forget to ask for the one with the slow release.

I am from Berkeley, where Cray was based after he left Oregon. I used to hear him in small clubs (particularly Larry Blake's) in Berkeley all the time. Those were the days! Yes, that False Accusations album is the shit. Isn't it? That is still my favorite Cray album by far. The songs are just unbeatable. Two others to pick up are Strong Persuader (the breakthrough album that is usually cited as his strongest) and I Was Warned (a great album that probably has the best recorded examples of his guitar playing). Unfortunately, Cray's level of inspiration seems to have sold him short in recent years. I suspect that he is just not working that hard anymore.

My appologies. Of course, Clifford Brown with strings was not on Verve (or Clef or Norgran), although the project most likely received its inspiration from what Granz was doing. No?

Not to mention Charlie Christian. : Freddie Green and Walter Page did put some of those more proper string sections to shame, didn't they?

John, from what I have read, Prez was kind of dissatisfied with Granz around that time (1957/58). One of the reason is that Granz would not record him with strings. In the last months of his life, he mentioned the possibility of switching labels. I think UA was considered for that 'with strings' date. And that last date 'Lester Young in Paris' was not recorded for Verve but for Barclay. Verve later acquired the masters and released the album shortly after the death of Lester Young. This must have been an easy deal since Barclay was releasing the Verve albums in France. Yea, that makes sense. By 1957, Pres wasn't making too many recordings, period. 1956 was exceptional in that sense. Yet I wouldn't want to trade any of the 1956 Verve recordings with Teddy Wilson for a strings date.

Rivers' role has always been out of the box.

It does seem odd that Pres never recorded with strings. After all, Verve was doing string records for just about all of its star horn players of the time: Bird, Clifford, Webster, Eldridge, Hawk, Flip Phillips, etc.. Why not Pres? It would have been so natural. Maybe Pres resisted the idea for a while?

Yea, nothing like a little Gene Ammons to get us in the spirit for the new year.

Yea, that is one of the easiest questions to answer that I have seen on this forum. BUY IT!

to be one that can be, and is, being used in more malevolent minds than yours, mine , and ours (saw it on cable a few nights ago!) to create this smog over jazz that has too many players and fans alike worried about what it is and isn't and who MATTERS more than who, not on a personal level but on a "historical" level, which is all well and good, but geez, don't you miss the days when jazz was just what it was where it was when it was just because that's just what it WAS? Could this be a sign of the times? Going back to the question of Sonny Rollins and 1949, might it be that the state of jazz was such in 1949 that all young artists really needed to do was tune into the here and now. After all, Bird had most of the (relevant) past, present and future summed up in one. Since the 1970s and (especially) the 1980s, the outlook has been increasingly backward looking, toward finding something somehwere in the past that can bring back the magic of the golden age. The extreme realization of this is the artist who makes a conscious effort to embody the entire history of jazz from Jelly Roll Morton on up.