John L

Most often it's probably Lester Young, along with Monk, Pops, Miles, Coltrane, Billie, Bird, Basie, Ornette, Jug, Criss, Mingus, Hill, Pepper, Blakey...

Listening to Bill Perkins, the word "beautiful" continually comes to mind. His sound was genuinely beautiful. RIP

Jazz in Film is VERY nice! Wandering Moon had some fine moments as well. I'm looking forward to hearing the new one. Among "new lion" trumpeter/composers, Blanchard never received quite the kind of hype that Hargrove and Payton did, let alone Marsalis. Ironically, he may be amassing quietly the most impressive discography of all of them.

Actually, for me, the Prestige box runs a close second to the VV box. I listen to that one all the time and, interestingly enough, much more than the Atlantic recordings. The historic importance of the Atlantic recordings is beyond dispute. For some reason, however, I am more often in the mood for relaxed blues a la vintage Trane with the cream of hard bop/soul jazz musicians than the more ground breaking Atlantic stuff. On the other hand, ask me next year and...

Welcome, Ron! I really enjoyed interacting with you at Jazz Corner from the get go. I remember the time back then when it seemed like ever other thread was initiatied by you. You were instrumental in getting that BBS on track. ( Actually, I was one of the few registered people at Jazz Corner long before Jazz Central Station bit the dust.) This is a great site for discussing a lot of jazz topics that currently generate much less interest at JC, particularly those having to do with jazz history. Stick around. John P.S. We love Jim Pepper here too! RIP

I'm getting 4 out of the 5 that I ordered. Great disks and great prices!

I also voted for the Village Vanguard Box. That is some of my favorite music. I love the Impulse studio recordings but would never vote for that box. My problem with that box is not the incompleteness, but the programming, which just ruins the enjoyment of the music for me. For example, I don't want half of Crescent on the same disk as half of Ballads. Those correspond to two completely different moods. After buying the Impulse box and selling the individual disks, I found myself listening to the music less and less, until one day I just threw up my hands and burned myself copies of the original LPs.

Part of the problem is that a number of the listed people are probably camping out together: George Adams Tina Brooks Serge Chaloff Bill Coleman Bob Crosby Sidney DeParis Frankie Newton Peppermint Harris Wynonie Harris Erskine Hawkins Edmond Hall Pete Johnson, Baby Face Willette etc., etc. Sounds like they made a sincere effort to locate these people though. I mean, who would suspect that Carla Thomas might have her own web site or something with an E-mail contact address? It just boggles the mind.

Hey, if he can make another Tupelo Honey, I'm buying in.

I agree with Brownie as well. Part of being a "great" jazz musician means having a unique and recognizable voice. One distinction between great jazz musicans might be how quickly they can be recognized, i.e. part of the greatness of some musicians is that they can be identified right away, only after one or a few notes. It could be a unique tone, a unique approach to bending notes, or phrasing so distinctive it is always immediately apparent. In this category, we have people like Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Gene Ammons, Lockjaw Davis, Jackie McLean. I tend to love a lot of musicians who give their calling card right away. Then there are other great musicians who, while maybe not having as individual a tone or delivery of a single note, are always recognizable after a few bars on the basis of their approach to music and improvization. Charlie Parker is a good example.

I just got mine a few days ago. It's great to have all of this stuff finally on CD! Randy Weston is a living legend.

I definitely remember seeing Coleman Classics vol. 1 on CD in the States. It may have been one of the first Ornette albums available on CD, in fact, back in the 1980s. I didn't think about buying it at the time since I didn't even have a CD player yet. In a moment, it was gone.

This is superb and historic music that needs to be heard. According to Bley, there are a lot of tapes that have still never seen the light of day. Sometime, someday, maybe we will have a magnificent box set. There are at least two different Hillcrest CDs floating around with completely different selections. One (the European "America" CD) is easy to find, relatively speaking, or at least it was a few years ago. The other one was withdrawn as soon as it was issued back in the 80s and is a bitch to find. The "easy" one is called "The Fabulous Paul Bley Quintet" (America 30AM6120,500542) It has a great extended version of Klactoveesedstene that really displays Ornette's Bird roots along with I remember Harlem, the Blessing, and Free. The hard one is "Coleman Classics vol. 1" (judging from the title, they had ambitions to release more!) (Improvising Artists IAI373852) Tracks: When Will the Blues Leave, Crossroads, Ramblin, How Deep is the Ocean

Thanks!

Thanks for that interesting link, Brownie. Could it be that it was recorded in 1966 and released in 1968? The liner notes somehow neglected listing the recording date. Although the difference is only two years, they were important years.

Happy Birthday to all the L. Armstrongs!!!

It is amazing to think that he has been gone now for more than 30 years. He seems so much alive, not just his music, which will live as long as people with ears walk the earth, but the person himself. His presence and spirit are still in the air. Thank God for Louis Armstrong. RIP

Unquestionably, a lot of fine and innovative jazz was made in the 1970s. Although officially the age of fusion, acoustic jazz also sailed forward in many diverse directions. Nevertheless, I recall a feeling in the 70s that something just wasn't right, or should I say that something *might* not be right. In retrospect, given who was playing and what was produced, that may sound a bit strange. But you have to put it in context. Before the 70s came the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, all extraordinary decades that redefined the music for all times and illuminated a clear road for its future development. There were many controversies of a global nature, but they were ultimately resolved in a collective manner as part of the natural evolution of the music. By the 70s, the waters were murky. Coltrane's death may have been the breaking point. The late 60s were a lot like the 70s, a continual search and adoption of new ideas in 1000s of different directions with an uneasy feeling that maybe this isn't what we should be doing, where the music should be going... This was the context in which many people bought into the Marsalis counterrevolution in the early 80s. In his early public statements, Wynton made a point of highlighting the 70s as a dark age in jazz history. The idea was "let's get back on the same track that we were on in the 20s-60s." In retrospect, especially after two and a half more decades in the post linear period for the development of jazz, it is now much more apparent that this was never a possibility. Looking back now at jazz the 70s, we were really spoiled!

I was at the Banlieues Bleues concert. Cecil first played solo and then with the Italian Instabile Orchestra. For some reason, the orchestral part of the concert didn't really thrill me as much as I expected. I had the impression that Cecil and the orchestra were on completely different wavelengths. (For all I know, that could have been the intention!). Anyway, it will be interesting to revisit that music to see if time or repeated listenings will finally induce me to hear the magic.

I love "I Want You." I think that it is one of the most underrated of Gaye's albums. On the other hand, I'm not going to lay down some big head 20s for the expensive double deluxe shit if we are just talking re-mixes of Marvin's own mixes.

I voted for the Plugged Nickel. When that set came out, it was a revelation. As concerns the music, the first and second quintet sets are also somewhere beyond ranking, of course. The reason they didn't have the same impact on me upon release is that I had already heard it all so many times before. Off Columbia, the Prestige set is a big favorite of mine. Nothing sums up the best of the 50s in jazz like that set.

Sam Phillips left an extensive musical document of the incredibly rich blues scene around Memphis in the late 40s and early 50s. We should be very grateful to him for that. Nobody else was doing it at the time that Phillips started. RIP

No, I think the guy must have just had one too many drinks: http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/schools/takomapa.../falseads/klhw/

To do what with? For duck hunting? Well, nobody said anything about any kind of desert island. Did they?