John L

Catherine Deneuve, Diana Rigg, and myself

There are times when I think Braxton deliberately tries to be outrageous and fuel the controversies around him. Perhaps the best example of this are his statements of how he wants to compose pieces for multiple orchestras to be played simulataneously by different orchestras in different countries, and hopefully one day on different planets. His says it all with a straight face. For what purpose?

I agree. Pres himself cited Tram as his main influence, and I see no reason to doubt that he was. But if he was listening to Tram, he was sure to be hearing Bix in the mix as well. It does seem like there is certain tie between them. Both Bix and Pres were somehow able to sound simultaneously strong and powerful one moment, and then delicate and fragile the next.

This came as a Christmas present for me. Very, VERY nice. There is some very powerful stuff on this collection, and in much better sound than ever before. It comes with two balls of cotton, which gives you an appreciation of just how much manual work it was back in the day to get the seeds out. The last disc in the set is sermons, very well programmed for maximum impact. It is incredible what they recorded in the wake of the success of Reverend Gates. You can really hear the roots of jazz here. If you would substitute horns for some of the simultaneous and spontaneous singing of the congregations, I swear that some of the results would be little different from low down New Orleans jazz. It makes you believe Kid Ory's claim that Buddy Bolden got a lot of his stuff from the "holy roller church."

The commercially issued discs have liner notes and complete discographical data. The packaging was rather minimal, but sufficient. I don't know about the mail order only discs. Does anyone have any of the Bird's Eyes volumes from 26-43. Is that just the reissue of the previous volumes in chronological order? The last two commerical volumes of Bird's Eyes (24 and 25) were really superb. They reissued the Open Door material for the first time. (I believe that another company has now followed in their footsteps.) There is some absolutely incredible Bird on those discs, so incredible that I had to rethink the idea that Bird may have lost a step by 1953. The discs are filled out with really fine broadcasts of Cootie Williams with Bud Powell and Cleanhead Vinson.

Maybe it is a matter of interpretation. On the one hand, "originally was to be recorded with a quintet" could mean that one horn player didn't show up for that date and they decided to go ahead anyway with Coltrane as the only horn. On the other hand, it could mean that Dameron originally intended to record with a quintet but changed his mind and decided to arrange the music for only one horn.

Dima: Thanks a million for that information. That template fetch and assign function looks like something that is important to master. ...Now if I could just find the time to place all my CDs one by one into a CD-ROM.

I don't care too much for drinking buttermilk straight, but it is great to cook with. On the other hand, there are a number of variants of buttermilk made in Russia that taste delicious straight. The dairy products are very different there, and yield very different flavors when the milk sours.

Dima: I took your advise and downloaded CATRAXX. It is certainly quite interesting and impressive. It will take me a while to get the hang of it. I am still not convinced that it will be possible for me to create a useful database with this software in a reasonable amount of time. If there are simple answers to these two questions, could you give them to me? If not, I will take it up with the Forum: 1) You wrote above that it is possible to download disc information from the CDDB without having to place each one of your discs manually into the CD-ROM drive and wait for identification. I just want to go to CDDB, place check marks by 1000s of discs, and download the data into the database. But all of the instructions given by CATRAXX for downloading information from CDDB requires manual entry of discs into the CD-ROM. That is simply not feasible for me due to time constraints. (It would also place a lot of wear and tear on my CD-ROM that already has a tired laser.) Is there an easy way to get around this? 2) How do you enter dates for session information? Jazz discs typically consist of music from several different sessions of several different dates. For the database to be valuable, it should be able to associate each track with a recording date. I could only figure out how to do this on a track-by-track basis, i.e. spend time on each track and type the session information over and over again. I have no time for this. Isn't there a function where you can only type in the session information once and then check off the tracks that were recorded on that date? John

I really don't understand this statement at all. OK, so there is a cult around Blue Note that is sometimes taken to extremes. But there is also a reality behind the legend. Blue Note was a case of business combined with genuine love for the music. It does happen every now and again. From the very beginning, Lion was interested primarily in blues music. He began recording boogie woogie and blues-based traditional jazz. So it makes sense that he always concentrated on the blues side of the modern jazz spectrum. Then there was the labor-of-love to document the work of people like Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, and Andrew Hill when there was no real strong commercial interest in the music as a justification. As Lon (Jazzbo) writes, today Blue Note is little more than a big business. Things have changed. They do sometimes.

This disc from Document records, which is in print, has them for sure: I believe that Brownie is right that the new JSP set is a superior and cheaper alternative.

I've seen Vandermark in concert quite a number of times, and tend to agree with Nate and Larry about his playing. It just doesn't seem to go anywhere special, a lot of repeated riffs and squeals. That said, I have really enjoyed some DKV concerts. What succeeds is when Vandermark just keeps time with repeated riffs and lets Drake and Kessler work in front of it.

If you want a taste of the Mosaic set, pick up the Fantasy "Bird on 52nd Street." If you want more and even better where that came from, don't hesitate to buy the set. If that kind of collection of (sometimes incomplete) Bird solos in rather rough sound doesn't do it for you, spend your money on something else. I bought the set as soon as it came out and have no regrets at all. There is so much Bird on it that, if you pull it down just a few times a year, the freshness and surprise almost makes you feel like you are there. That is in contrast to the more celebrated Dial, Savoy, and Verve material. Those of us who have been listening to it for years can now almost anticipate every note.

You all are posting as if you have already seen the content of this box. Is it just Carnegie, Lincoln Center, Antibes, Tokyo, Berlin, Seven Steps to Heaven, and Someday My Prince Will Come (without Coltrane) and no newly discovered material? If so, it will be a hard sell for me.

I love Julius Hemphill. "The Hard Blues" from Coon Bid'ness is a tremendous piece of work! Dogon A.D. is another great record. I agree with you about Blue Boye. Not long ago, Sackville released Roi Boye and the Gotham Ministerels, which also has some sublime moments. Two other favorites are "Live in New York" on Red records, which features duets with Abdul Wadud, and "Fat Man and the Hard Blues" on Black Saint. Then there are the World Saxophone Quartet discs with Julius at the helm. I really wish Julius was still around.

You beat me to it! Yes, that is it. It shouldn't be too hard to find in Zurich.

Bobby Timmons fans should be sure to hear Art Blakey live in '58 at the Club Saint Germain. You can get the whole concert on a 2-disk French release. This is one of the great recordings of modern jazz played to please the general public in the most basic and earthy way. Everybody is on, but Bobby Timmons just swings the crowd into copmplete delirium. A classic!

In his book on Bird, Lawrence Koch points out a harmonic similarity between Dewey Square and Yardbird Suite, which was a Bird original dating back to the McShann period.

Kevin: On the one hand, maybe you are right. But doesn't that just drive home Jim's emotion? We now have the tremendous luxury here at Organissimo to interact freely about jazz without a thought to conforming to what EMI is comfortable in supporting. As long as we have this, why do we need that?

Vanya, the answer to your questions is - CATRAXX http://www.fnprg.com/catraxx/catraxx.html It's all that and more. It's tremendous actually, if you don't mind spending the time with it. Spasibo, Dima! One more question. This database apparently uses CDDB. As far as I know, CDDB does not contain data on which musicians play on which albums. Does that mean that you have to enter all of that information manually?

A few questions: 1) Does this have a search function by artist that will turn up sideman apprearances as well leader dates? 2) Is there an option where you can simply identify albums that you own as opposed to going through the time consuming process of entering each one of your CDs into the disc drive to record it? 3) is there a manual override function that allows you to enter CDs that are not already in an existing databases, CDRs for example, or correct possible mistakes in discograhpical information downloaded from various databases? If the answer to the above 3 questions is yes, I am game.

That reminds me of my frustration when I first picked up Wynton's "blues trilogy" with high expectations at the time it was released. Wynton began a few blues choruses with great calls. But why couldn't he follow at least one of them up with a great (blues) response?

WELL I CAN'T

One Flight Up also contains an absolutely seminal reading of Darn that Dream.

The early Hank Mobley records are no less confusing. Two different ones are identified only as "Hank Mobley Sextet" on the back, but have front identification as "Hank Mobley with Donald Byrd and Lee Morgan" and "Hank." Then you have "Hank Mobley Quartet," "Hank Mobley Quintet," and "Hank Mobley and His All Stars." "Hank Mobley Quintet" is identified on the front as only "Hank Mobley." After all that, Hank Mobley cuts another album on Blue Note. What is it called? Again, "Hank Mobley."