John L

This is a very interesting collection. I especially like the tracks that he recorded of Hop Wilson live in a juke joint.

Strange. How does music in digital form end up unaccessible in storage? We should contact Loren Schoenberg about this. The availability of these recordings, including the ones still pending commercial release due to legal issues, has been the greatest attraction of this otherwise quite modest museum.

I was just listening through this box set again - truly magnificent!

I took a glance at their "greatest album of all time" lists - so incredibly white bread. It is as if the great 20th century musical synthesis of African and European in the New World never happened, or that only the white manifestation of this synthesis has any value.

Yes. As much as I love Art Pepper, the four CDs of music from the Maiden Voyage gig on the Galaxy box are already overkill for me.

Charlie Parker was an early key influence. Listen to the 1940s recordings he made on alto with his Navy buddies. Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt were certainly also influences. We had a discussion of Jimmy Heath and Coltrane a while back but it is a bit unclear who influenced whom in that case.

RIP

I have made it a point over the years to collect every soundbite of Lester Young that I could. "Hi Heckler" is not among them. Lester Young did not compose many songs at all outside of original heads for blues tracks. I imagine that "Hi, Heckler" is probably one of those.

It would be a very hard choice between the two Impulse! sub-periods. Good thing that we don't have to choose. I actually prefer the earlier Coltrane to the Atlantic period (if we are to exclude the 1960 Europe recordings with Miles that are very close to my heart). The Atlantic recordings were arguably a more important period for Coltrane's development. But the music feels transitional to me, not as fully realized as either what came earlier and what came later. Of course, Giant Steps was arguably fully realized, but also a sort of fascinating dead end.

I picked up a good number of Kenton releases over the years but hardly listen to any of it anymore. There is just so much other music that I enjoy a lot more.

Thanks, Chuck

I loved hearing McCoy Tyner's bands live in the 70s. I saw him many times at the Keystone Korner. The sheer percussive power of those bands could just carry you away along with everything else sublime they were doing.

The concept would seem to be, first, all of the 20s and early 30s recordings of New Orleans black jazz bands done in the city of New Orleans + early recordings by black New Orleans musicians and bands done elsewhere that avoid the most recorded/reissued artists like Morton, Oliver, and Armstrong.

That's an interesting release. I don't know how commercially successful it will be. Those who are interested in owning all of this music probably already have almost all of it. For those who are just getting acquainted with it, 20 CDs at this price spanning a huge variety of time periods and styles is probably a bit much.

I had tickets to see him on Saturday at Takoma Station in Takoma Park (DC). Instead, it ended up being a memorial concert. RIP

The original version by the composer had the right inflections. I love what Steve Cropper does with the bassline on this one and on the Albert King version.

That "Best Of" is an excellent compilation put together by his son, Femi. But it still omits some of his greatest material, including what may still be his most popular single track in Nigeria: Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake Am. All of the albums from the 70s are full of great music. The 80s albums may be a little more inconsistent, but they also contain masterpieces.

I have always really admired Wynton for not backing down from the challenge when some people were proclaiming him as a teenager to be the savior of jazz and the next coming of Louis Armstrong / Duke Ellington. To his credit, Wynton worked very hard to give it his best with increasingly ambitious projects. In the end, I agree with what seems the majority opinion here - his lasting legacy will probably end up being a collection of fine trumpet solos made in a small group context.

The album was taken from a live show at Lincoln Center to celebrate 80 years since the Hot 5s and 7s. The music is well played, and includes a few interesting new touches on the originals. I find it enjoyable to listen to. No, it does not shake any new mountains. But that was not the goal.

This is a surprise to me. I didn't know that he was sick. RIP

I guess that a pure "jazz singer" is, in a sense, potentially freed from the burden of actually delivering a song. He or she can just scat along with jazz phrasing as another instrument in the band in a manner that is quite abstracted from the song itself. Most truly great singers in all genres use their voices not simply as a sort of jazz horn with limited range, but as vehicles to deliver songs and their lyrics to the listener. Some such singers, such as Billie Holiday and Tony Bennett, can function that way effectively in a jazz context. Does that make them actual "jazz singers?" That question just strikes me as a game of semantics. They are "singers," full stop.

Yes, it starts in the middle of Dolphy's solo, which likely came after a first Coltrane solo that is not here.

Mono and Lo Fi, but with clarity of sound.

I just had a chance to hear this. It is fabulous, a very worthwhile addition to the discography. I would not say that it is just "another day at the office." Coltrane, Dolphy, and Elvin are in a somewhat different zone here than they would be later in the year at the Vanguard. Coltrane just burns it up on soprano here, so much so apparently that he made an unusual decision to stay on soprano even all the way through Impressions. On only "Africa" does he switch to tenor. If you, as I did, don't think that you need another Coltrane version of My Favorite Things, think again. Dolphy also plays some great stuff here. The microphone is close to Elvin. So not a beat is missed. GET THIS!

She also has a musical palette that goes beyond what is currently on record. She gave a performance with her (highly musical) family here in DC in December that consisted mostly of Christmas songs. Samara got deeply soulful in an astonishing way that you would not necessarily expect from her current recordings. Her best records are still ahead of her.