John L

Here is an interesting one that I recently stumbled on: Harold Land and Elmo Hope is fine form and good sound from 1958 with Scott LaFaro! Nuff said. I had never heard, or heard of it, before.

Thanks for those recollections, ajay. It is interesting that they seem to be a bit at odds with the other descriptions above of Coltrane "sitting in with Monk's quartet," which would almost certainly imply that they would be playing Monk's music, particularly as Coltane had an intimate familiarity of it from his past work with Monk. Your description, on the other hand, has Monk possibly backing Coltrane on a set of late Coltrane material. Since it was also written that Alice Coltrane stepped in for Monk at some point, perhaps that is the part of the concert that you recall?

I wish that I would have read this thread before I picked up my copy in Amsterdam on Sunday ... for 44 EUROs. Even though the two-disc set probably contains the true cream of the gig (the selection was made by Getz himself), I prefer listening to the entire concerts as they are presented on this box set. The context adds much to the enjoyment of the music for me. That context includes a much fuller picture of Getz fighting valiantly against physical weakness to get this beautiful music out in the air.

The images in the scans are strikingly sharp, as if from crisp mint LP covers (in certain cases) or photo shop (in others).

Isn't he? Saga of the Outlaws sent me on Tyler binge. I hadn't listened to him in a fairly long time, and had him in the back of my mind as just a very good Ayler-wannabe. Now my appreciation has really deepened. Tyler has a beautiful and unique approach that is all his own, especially in blue pitch shadings.

I think that we should call this thread "the Jazz Lone Ranger" Who is that caped man with the trumpet? Dum DA da da da - Dum DA da da da - Dum DA da da da - Da DAAAAAAAAAA

By now, I think that most of us know about the Japanese Vintage Vanguard LP cover site. Well, here is another fantastic site that I stumbled upon the other day: This is a true virtual museum of jazz LP art, including text devoted to the various labels and artists. birkajazz

Indeed, Bird is on fire on this one. If the sound quality were better, or if more complete performances existed, I think that this concert would be cited much more often. As far as I know, the tape that you refer to is the only one that exists, and I have the philology discs.

Looks like the Definitive releaseis the only way to get this? But ... stumbled across another Definitive, "Giant Among Giants-Complete," which are live recordings from the Pershing Hotel Ballroom in Chicago in 1950, and include among the band Von Freeman. Anyone familiar? New copies from cdimports are fairly inexpensive. I believe that all of the 1948 Onyx material is on the Mosaic Benedetti box. Bird on 52nd street on Fantasy is also Onyx material. There is also an excellent earlier 1948 concert from the Three Deuces on that box. The Perishing Hotel concert from 1950 is fantastic. Part of that concert has been around for a long time as "An Evening at Home with the Bird," and later as "One Night in Chicago" on Savoy. The rest of the recordings are only heads and Bird solos, but some of them are extraordinary, and the sound quality is not bad for the vintage. I highly recommend this one. The saxophone player is most likely Claude McLin, not Von Freeman. As was discussed on another Bird thread not long ago - one of the greatest more recent discoveries of Bird is the Open Door from 1953. Those are also only heads and Bird solos, but they are just incredible.

This is a difficult topic. In a piece like A Love Supreme, Coltrane was clearing attempting to put spiritual content directly into the music. Did he succeed? I think so.

iTunes no longer has DRM. But I have a number of older iTunes files with DRM that I would like clean. Burning and ripping each one would be a time consuming pain, and would also cause the loss of digital information, as I don't want to hold them as large lossless files. Where is this Tunebite program available?

Nessa's crap is better than candy from other labels.

American Music seems to have died along with Bunk Johnson in the late 40s. But Atlantic and Good Time Jazz continued to make traditional recordings in the 50s (Paul Barbarin, Wilbur DeParis, Kid Ory, etc.) Storyville was also very active in the 50s, recording both US and European traditional bands.

I don't know what causes that greying out problem. I have had it too several times in the past. As I recall, I finally solved it by dumping my iTunes library file and reloading my iTunes music folder into a new iTunes library. I lost all my playlists in the process, as they are stored on the library file. So maybe there is a better solution. What is strange to me is that you apparently already did that. Right? You created a new library file in iTunes 9 and added the music to your folder. If you load an individual folder (as opposed to the whole library), does it do the same thing?

The sound is fine indeed. The Dorham even sounds professionally recorded - quite remarkable. If you like Dorham and Henderson, you NEED this one, despite Ronnie Mathews painful struggle with the badly out-of-tune piano. One question: The date given in the discographical information for the recording is January 15, 1963, which would make it Joe Henderson's very first. On the other hand, on page 15 of the liner notes, Bob Blumenthal would have you believe that it was recorded in mid-June, 1963, therefore after Una Mas and Page One. I wonder which date is correct?

I've been following that wise order for many years now. I came to regret it a bit yesterday, however. I bought a new Criss CD entitiled "Blues in My Heart, which looked like some 70s small group Criss that I had never heard before. It turned out to be a disguised reissue of Crisscraft and Out of Nowhere. On the other hand, for those who don't yet have those two sparkling albums, it is a very nice boot.

I agree, but it is complicated. I think there was an accepted attitude about blacks that even the most sympathetic whites let creep into their way of thinking. And we shouldn't think we're so sophisticated that we would have been wiser. Some of this was discussed in the thread about Johnny Mercer and racism. A few "probes" as Marshall McLuhan used to call them: Isn't Hoagy Carmichael sort of doing a black dialect when he writes and sings "Lazy Bones"? Apparently most black listeners didn't know Amos & Andy were played by white men until the film Check & Double Check was released. (And that movie is really weird-- white men in blackface intercut with documentary footage of Harlem and certainly worth seeing because of Duke Ellington's performance-- during which Barney Bigard and Juan Tizol wore dark make-up and when the band does 3 Little Words some of them step forward to sing but the soundtrack is Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys!) Did emcees on radio shows refer to white musicians as "boys" as often as they do to black musicians? I find Freddy Slack's version of "Further on Up the Road" (Is that the correct title?) disconcerting because it seems to be in black dialect but Amos Wilburn had no problem covering it and even including the reference to Freddy Slack that's in the lyrics. I bet I'm the only person on this forum who ever actually performed in a minstrel show. (I wasn't in blackface-- I was Mr. Interlocutor.) And perhaps more shocking, despite what Lieber and Stoller think I prefer Elvis Presley's version of Hound Dog to Big Momma Thorton's. You are right. It is more complicated. I think that Noj referred to an interesting concept in his post: "faking it." On the one hand, a white artist can play black music in a very sincere manner that is straight from the heart. That usually comes from somebody who grew up with, or has been exposed to, black music for a long time. Second, a white artist can play black music sincerely and with respect, but consciously "blacken up" when he or she is doing it, i.e. deliberately try to sound black as part of a conscious act in performance. Then there is blatant minstrelsy in which "blackening up" is done for comic racial parody. I am white, but grew up surrounded by black music. I now perform blues and R&B, although I make no conscious effort to sound black. It was fascinating for me to spend a few years playing with blues musicians in Moscow, Russia, as they often fell smack into the second category above. They love the music, but did not grow up with it, and would sometimes go to great conscious pains to try to play blues as close as possible to the "correct black manner." That may resemble minstrelsy in some sense, but it is still a very respectful attitude. Unfortunately, it often restricted their own creative energy. A lot depends on one's background. If I were to try to play a rural Country tune in the proper manner, I would have to "whiten up."

But where do you draw the line? Do you really think that every blackface performer was a racist or was inspired by nothing but contempt? Even if there was only one blackface performer who was inspired by what he regarded as a love of black music (however condescending), doesn't that effectively obscure the line? And ultimately, why should we try to make the distinction? Was minstrelsy really so bad? It was America's first mass entertainment and arguably its first major contribution to world culture (both Britain and Japan were tremendously affected by it). And the end result is the same. I don't think that there is any need to draw a distinct line. Minstrelsy was a product of the time and, as you say, some people, black and white, with sincere love and respect for black American music practiced it as the accepted medium of the time. It is still the case that demeaning racial parody was at the core of minstrelsy. That is what makes it so unpleasant. On the other hand, when Mick Jagger, Van Morrison or Amy Winehouse sing in a heavily black influenced manner, they are doing it straight from the heart in a sincere manner. To the degree that some could perceive it as parody, the joke and laughter would be on them. As I wrote, I see that as a huge qualitative difference.

I think that there is a huge difference between a white artist who is inspired by black music, and attempts to play black, or largely black, music in a sincere manner, and the comedy/parody of minstrelsy.

Evans' rushing doesn't sound "rhythmically 'free'" to me at all but "trapped" and compulsive -- in the grip of a force or forces over which he had little expressive control. I'm familar, too, with latter-day Farlow, especially in live performance, and while he might indeed have been rushing some on those nights, the dominant impression I recall is of ecstatic virtuosity -- speed of thought and execution as one, the closest thing I've ever heard to Tatum. To quote myself on latter-day Evans, though: 'There are any number of great jazz performances that could be described as driven, harried, and feverish -- Bud Powell’s “Un Poco Loco” is one obvious example. But if Powell’s “Un Poco Loco” is driven, harried, etc., it is expressively so -- the anguish, if you will, pervades every strand of the musical fabric and is mastered there, or at least exhilaratingly confronted, in the terms of Powell’s art. But the latter-day Evans often sounds like a man on the run (and not only because of his longstanding tendency to rush), strewing forth pianistic “gems” in an attempt to distract or evade pursuers.' Fair enough, in the sense that Evans did not give the impression of being consciously in control of the tempos at that point in his career. They seemed to emerge and evolve as a strange, but natural and unavoidable byproduct of his creative process at that point in time. Too me, however, the late Evans does not sound "trapped" by these tempos. On the contrary, sometime around 1974, his music takes on a new sort of purpose, a new melodic deepness, more variations in rhythmic accents around the (sometimes frantic) tempos. Perhaps that is why he felt more comfortable just letting it all come out, rushed tempos and all. He had a lot to say. I am certainly in a minority, but 1974-1980 is by far my favorite period of Bill Evans.

Evans always had a tendency to rush tempos as he gathered energy. Although cocaine may have contributed something to this in his later years, I think that it was more basically the fact that he became more extroverted as a player. Rather than discipline himself to the tempos set by bass and drums, as he often did in earlier years, he would play in a more rhythmically "free" manner and expect the bass and drums to follow him. I recall a quote somewhere from Evans to his sidemen just after he formed his last trio with Johnson and LaBarbera, "Yea, I'm rushing, I know I'm rushing, but just try to follow me." But I agree with fasstrack. That is just part of the package of Evans, particularly late period Evans. I just accept it in order to appreciate everything else that goes with it.

I've never heard it described as a low point before. It does come from what I consider to be a weaker time in his career, but this might be my favorite Evans disc from this time period - quite good.

It's a very quick read - cover to cover.

no dude, that was for real. oh, that was one of those damn Applause abominations. Thanks. You really know your LP covers.

Or this one?