John L

I think that Mark Myers is doing a fine service in his interviews and I think that Mark Myers does a fine job on his blog with the interviews and general promotion of jazz. I have never thought of him as a very profound thinker on American music or repository of knowledge, himself, but I don't really hold that against him. In fact, the discussion that some of his comments initiiate on the blog is sometimes deeper than the original essays.

On my CD versiion of Everybody Digs, there is a slight bit of background noise at that point, immediately after the last note of the piece. It would seem to be easy to eliminate it by just cutting the track immediately after the last note. Of course, that would deprive us of the last overtone.

According to Oxley, the gig was not very successful. There was a problem with the sound system, and he couldn't even hear what Evans was playing most of the night. He just locked into Gomez and hoped for the best. Enja released the Nardis from this concert on a compilation disc called Live at the Festival. It sounds pretty nice.

I have only one genre -classical I use the composer's last name for "artist," i.e. "Beethoven," with a few exceptions - (a) for a disc that features a performer doing the works of several composers, I will use the performer's name and keep the composer's name after track titles, (b) a disc with multiple performers and composers will either be broken up into several itunes selections or filed under "compilations." The former approach is always taken when multiple longer compositions of one or more composers are put on a CD just to fill up 79 minutes. If there is no natural reason to keep multiple compositions on a CD together, I will break them up. © For the most part, I do not make artist listings for conductors, orchestras, or dates. I list them after the album titles..

Be sure and get some of the recordings of the territory bands. I particularly like the "What Kind of Rhythm is That" compilation on Frog that has a number of fine tracks recorded in Kansas City in the 20s and the Timeless Jazz in Texas 1924-1930 compilation that has the precious five recordings of the Troy Floyd band. You can compliment the Kansas City collection by also picking up the recordings of the Bennie Moten band. No duplication.

Those clips remind of the day I first felt tranformed from boy to man. It happened in Berkeley in the summer of '69 in the front row at Zellerbach auditorium under those three mini skirts.

The Lord discography claims that Savoy issued the Swing...Not Spring! compilation on CD as Savoy SV0188 (CD). Maybe it was a Japanese only release, although that is not specified in the discography : There is another session listed for this band on Dee Gee, but with Jimmy Richardson on bass instead of Alvin Jackson. No CD release is listed for it, however. The songs are Rockaway Rock, Rainy Day Blues, Danny Boy, and the Bulldozer. Apparently two of these tracks were originally released (on 78?) as Dee Gee 4000 and the two others released as Dee Gee 4001.

RIP This December has been murder on American musicians.

The Solti Ring has a truly fabulous Das Rheingold and a powerful Gotterdammerung. I am much less fond of the Solti Die Walkurie and Siegfried. I didn't even think that I liked Siegfried very much until I heard other versions of it.

RIP. Inez Andrews was one of America's greatest singers, and certainly one of my favorites. Those Caravan tracks with Inez Andrews leads just can't be beat.

If I see a session with Ed Blackwell that I don't have, I usually try to grab it. Ed Blackwell is one of a handful of artists like that. It is pretty hard to make a bad record with Ed Blackwell on drums.

John, I agree it's hard to do so, and I did say "to me." But I'm agreeing with your points, he was in the tradition, and his was a revolutionary change, not just taking license with the forms of the day. It doesn't matter at this point, he was a titan in jazz and is still relevant. Amen to that!

Whether it is Rock 'n Roll or not, Albert King belongs in any Hall of Fame before Paul Butterfield. And I like Butterfield. Butterfield himself would say no different.

Lon - I think that it is very difficult to go back in time and listen to Ornette in the late 50s with ears from the late 50s. Yes, he was certainly deep in the tradition. But the sound was revolutionary, even on the Contemporary albums, and coming from someone who had not yet gained respect of his peers on the inside.

Yes. It wasn't only Mingus. Very few jazz giants from the 50s accepted Ornette at first. He was the really the first to break the unwritten law that required demonstrating fluency and gaining respect in the existing game before moving to new territory.

One iTunes upgrade that I would welcome would be the ability to handle FLAC files, i.e. the ability to store them in the library and create MP3s from them when they are selected for loading into the iPod.

RIP This is one of those deaths that make you think "end of an era." Brubeck was at the ground floor of the creation of modern jazz after WWII. He carved out his own terrritory in it as well. I have always enjoyed his music, the way he fools around with harmony in particular.

This sounds like a nighmare. Thanks for the warnings. I will try to hold out with the old iTunes as long as I can. Its scary how dependent we are on this software. I would be an extreme hassle to shift to something else at this point. I am always worried about "updates" because sometimes they are really a step backwards. The problem for me in the past is that iTunes does not give much consideration to very large collections when designing updates. Therefore, they can add on functions that analyze all files and cause the program to slowdown or freeze continuously for large collections. But this "update" sounds like complete shit.

A very tasteful guitar player and fine musician. RIP

If you just started listening, just wait. It gets even better, in fact a lot better (excluding the first secular tracks that should have been programmed at the end). The gospel songs from 1954 on is just heaven to me.

Why is getting the Frogs quite a nuisance? You can order them directly on their site: http://www.frog-reco...collections/all Just click on the Bessie Smith covers (there are 9) and proceed from there. They accept Visa and PayPal. In my experience current owner Paul Swinton is a nice guy and easy to deal with. Thanks for that link. I didn't even realize that Frog sells directly like that. I have been waiting patiently for Frog to issue the Bessie Smith box set, but I guess that is not in the cards. So I will start picking up the individual Frog releases. I actually find that I listen to Bessie Smith much less than before due to the fact that I don't have access to my LP collection where I am located, and the only sound source that I have is the first Columbia CDs. At that time, the overuse of noise reduction was the norm in remastering, and Bessie sounds so distant on that set.

Speaking of Monk in Paris in 1969, Amazon has MP3s for sale that are supposedly from this concert. After I bought the download, I realized that they were from the 1964 concert instead. So don't make the same costly mistake that I made.

This looks great!

I know what you mean, but some of the live shows are just mind boggling. You do need at least 5 of the best of them.

Amen to that, Lon. So you have already heard these 12 tracks?