John L

I'm with Jim S. "Dancing in Your Head" and "Tone Dialing" are the electric Ornette that I reach for the most. "Of Human Feelings" is also close. It took me a long time for "Dancing in Your Head" to click. But one day my head just started feeling that Watoosi coming on.

This is good music, but I've never been as excited about this one as much as I would have expected, being a solid Turrentine and Gene Harris fan. For my money, the later collaboration of Turrentine and Harris on Concord (Gene Harris Trio Plus One) is considerably more satisfying. But I am probably in a minority.

It's kind of a no-brainer for me. Although I love a lot of jazz from the entire history of the music, all of pre-bop contains much more for me (in a quatitative sense) than any other single listed period. That period is also the foundation for everything that came later, and therefore has prime "importance" for all other periods of jazz.

Double Amen and another indeed.

Jim S. Your reaction makes perfect sense to me, and I am not a jazz musician who can feel all that you do in that respect. Passing Ships is clearly a diamond in the rough, but a diamond nevertheless, and quite a brilliant one at that. I had the pleasure of listening to this the day it came out prior to seeing any of the hype here (of which I was soon the first to become guilty of!). I was expecting something deeply flawed that had been rejected for issue numerous times, but nevertheless vintage Andrew Hill. When I put it on, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. I still don't!

Somehow I don't think that one would get very far. Of course, we could somehow strike it rich and get "yes, there are many widespread misconceptions in my views, but I stick to them anyway. When I was thrown into the spotlight as a young kid, I did a lot of talking. Yes, I trashed Miles post-69. In fact, I made a statement to Down Beat in 1981 to the effect that nobody did anything of any importance in jazz in the entire decade of the 1970s. I said that we have to get back to work on the artistic plane of Armstrong and Ellington. I said a lot of other things too. Maybe I should have toned it down a bit back then. But, you understand, I can't look back now. My credibility is on the line. I have to keep doing larger and larger projects that are more and more ambitious to keep up my image, to keep the musical complexity over the critics head, to keep the debate going that maybe, just maybe I AM working on the artistic plane of Armstrong and Ellington Now that I combined a symphony orchestra, a jazz band, and world music on my last extended work (Rise Up), I am going to have to move on to a large jazz band, a chamber string quartet, an Australian Dijeridoos ensemble, and a Georgian choir. Look, I have to do it. Don't you understand? I've got no choice. There is no turning back."

The Curtis Amy Select is going to be SWEET.

I think that this is an excellent series. They are produced under license from Document Records, the European firm that has been reissuing the complete early blues discography. The choice of material is usually quite good although, somewhat frustratingly, they don't include any discographical information and sometimes seem to follow a random ordering for the tracks. The price is unbeatable. They are basically doing what the French firm Fremeaux et Associes is doing in France, although (as might be expected from Americans with regard to the blues) in a somewhat more careless and less educated way. For some reason Fremeaux also likes to stop at 18 short tracks on each of two disks. What is it about the number 18 anyway?

I sure wish I would have seen Ayler live. My father took me to a good number of rock concerts in the 60s, but no jazz. The first time I heard Ayler on record was in the mid-1970s. Some pseudo-intellectual documentary on the "counterculture" had as part of its soundtrack Ayler's "Sun Watcher." In fact, it may have only been the brief introduction to "Sun Watcher." I was blown away. I had never heard a saxophone like that in my life. I caught Ayler's name and Sun Watcher in the credits and was off to the record store. I came back with the Impusle! 2-fer "The Best of the Impulse Years." Ayler has been a favorite of mine every since. Ayler was like a modern-day Sidney Bechet. His vibrato was so extreme, yet controlled, that he could build solos not just of notes, but of sequential sound intervals.

Hey, I want to nominate you for Dad of the Year! What other Dad would let his 8-year old take his Andrew Hill Mosaic set on the road as an easel? Now that is fatherly love!

Is the title track a cover of the Robert Kline original?

I wasn't planning to buy this set, but found it at a good price and took the plunge. It is easy to be cynical about it. This music was never meant to be heard in this manner. Miles always had the tape machine going at that time so as not to miss anything special. These 5 full cds all come from a 5-month period in the studio. That said, I have to admit that I am really enjoying it! If nothing else, it is a great historical document. But it is much more. Hearing the music as it actually went down somehow gives a much deeper feeling for, and understanding of, the end result. Besides, most of the tracks are blues or blue vamps. And I can never get enough of hearing Miles play the blues. Mercifully, the wah wah only briefly surfaces toward the end.

Somebody (I think maybe Albert Murray) once said that playing Monk's music is like riding a bicycle. There is something compelling about that metaphor, although exactly what is difficult to articulate. The rhythmic drive in Monk seems somehow circular. They didn't call him Sphere for nothing.

I think that the main point is the following: Rouse devoted himself to Monk's music completely. Rollins, Coltrane, and Griffin realized their ideas in the context of Monk's music. Rouse realized Monk's ideas in the context of Monk's music. One of the greatest aspects of Monk's art is his manner of comping or hitting single-note accents behind horn players. (the very thing that Miles hated!) Sometimes Rouse's steady flowing lines sound to me like deliberate fodder for Monk's mischievous poking and bashing.

That is what I am waiting for!!!!

I have never understood why some critics dismiss the Columbia Monk recordings. Could they have been so jaded by the steady flow of brilliant new Monk compositions in the 40s and 50s that the pace in the 60s just wasn't fast enough? The Riversides and Columbias reflect very different philosophies. Keepnews constantly challenging Monk by putting him in unfamiliar and varied contexts, and by influencing directly the choice of material. Columbia gave Monk virtual complete freedom (at least until the later years) to document his music the way he wanted to in the best possible sound. In many ways, the Columbia recordings were the supreme realization of Monk's musical conception. Yet the Riverside strategy helped prevent Monk from getting lazy and just "coasting," as he sometimes was inclined to do. In retrospect, we are very lucky that we have both sets of recordings.

Yea, I agree that "Good Move" was a disappointment. I had high hopes for Stanley Turrentine's "Rough a Tumble" a few years ago. Lots of talent, few sparks (IMO). I was expected the new Charlie Rouse to be a bit more interesting.

Good question. The power of Organissimo numbers? We could all push toward the vaults at once.

How long should we give Blue Note to get this out before we go in and get it ourselves?

Coltrane apparently used to jam with Larry Young sometimes. No recordings that I know of.

I agree 100% on the contributions of Farrell to this one. I am not yet familiar with "Dance With Death" (Somebody want to burn me a copy? ), but here Farrell sounds like he might have been listening to Joe Henderson's work on Black Fire, and listening well! Lenny White keeps it solid at all times. He doesn't make the mistake that some drummers do in trying to "follow" Hill's rhythmic accents into a change of tempo. Hill plays off the rhythm here in the best of his tradition. Some of the ensemble sections may not be tight enough to satisfy some listeners, but that is of little concern to me. This is my favorite Blue Note release or reissue in a LONG TIME. It sure makes me wonder what the other Andrew Hill in the vaults sounds like. Let us hear it, Michael!

I picked this one up after work and put it on my DiskMan. Man, I didn't even want to get home. This is the shit, people. There is some brilliant music here, absolutely brilliant! How this one didn't get reissued until now makes no sense at all. That groove in Plantation Bag is not ever going to leave my short term memory. The title track is sublime. So is Noon Tide. I say that we work to get Andrew back together with Lenny White. It WORKS.

Thanks for that information, Soul Stream. I had always wondered what happened to Fred Jackson, and whether or not he was still alive. Of course, "somebody told Braith" is not quite the same as an obituary. Who knows. Maybe he will still surface?

Speaking of the eighth wonder of the world, do NOT ignore: The latter disk actually includes a live version of "There it is." But it might be the updated version of "Since You've Been Gone" with Bobby Byrd that does it to death on that album. The former disk is already done completely to death during the first 12:00 of disk 1. The rest is the hardest funk overkill this side of the Payback itself.

This is a fantastic recording. It is the same as the "At the Crossroads with Sonny Criss" session that was originally released on Savoy.