John L

That's the same month/year as the Monterey Pop Festival which I always thought of as the first. Magic Mountain was one week earlier: June 9-10. Of course, Monterey Pop was more high powered in terms of talent.

Allen: My take on all of this: Certainly, we can define the blues in various different ways. No definition can be right or wrong, only more or less useful for a given analytical purpose. It appears that you have put a lot of thought and research into a better understanding of the blues, which has led you to the use of a particular definition of "blues." I expect that your book will be fascinating and insightful, and I look forward very much to reading it. One question that you might think about, however, is this: is it wise to use a definition of the blues that excludes Louis Armstrong from the ranks of great blues players? This will create a lot of (perhaps needless) controversy, and not just from the direction of the Lincoln Center. For many people, including myself, who love the blues and have been listening to the blues all our lives, Louis Armstrong is unquestionably one of the all-time greats in his ability to evoke that intangible quality that we call "blues feeling." That isn't to say that you should consider abandoning the concepts or lines of reasoning that you are using in the book. The question would appear to be only one of semantics. You could choose another word for what it is that you are describing within the blues. For example, Robert Palmer used a definition of a subcategory of blues (very effectively, in my view) in his book, Deep Blues. That definition excluded Louis Armstrong, as well as many other "blues" artists like T-Bone Walker and BB King. If Palmer would have written the same book, but chose the approach to equate "deep blues" with "blues," he would have immediately rubbed many people the wrong way, and his book would have been much more poorly received. What you are trying to get at in your book sounds like a particular musical tradition or direction of development that runs through much of what we usually call "blues," but not all of it. So why not come up with another name for it?

I didn't make Woodstock, but I was at the very first big rock festival: Fantasy Fair & Magic Mountain - On Mount Tamalpais in Marin County (SF Bay Area): June, 1967. The Doors, who had just released their first record with "Light My Fire," were the top attraction of the day.

The Black Saint/Soul Note site has a lot of mistakes in the discographical information. This site has what appears to be generally reliable information: Omni

That is a unconventional view indeed, Allen, although the idea that Louis Armstrong was a great blues player certainly did not emanate from the Lincoln Center. I certainly consider Louis Armstrong to one of the greatest blues players who ever lived. The Hot Fives and Sevens would be enough to rest that case (IMO).

Given other threads on Organissimo, is seems clear that more people here listen to Hard Bop than Swing, and have accumulated large Hard Bop collections. Hard Bop is the type of jazz that often has the greatest first appeal to new listeners, who then often expand their listening beyond it. So it makes sense that more people would also get tired of Hard Bop before other styles of jazz. That said, there is something about some Bop (not just Hard Bop) that can make it more tedious than Swing. It is not that it is inherently more formulaic, but sometimes the Bop formulae can become elevated to the central focus of the music. I think that is what bothered a lot of us about the "young lions" of the 80s who it often sounded like were playing complex Bop just for Bop's sake, i.e. executing the formulae with dexterity as if that was the end goal of the music. With Swing, on the other hand, it is usually a bit different. Nobody pretends that the formula can just stand by itself. It is all in what you do with it. Of course, the commerical big band Swing often was very formulaic, and was meant to be as popular dance music.

Bored by Blue Note in the 60s, but not by other jazz labels in the 60s? That doesn't really register with me. Blue Note was all over the map in the 60s. Maybe you just don't like jazz from the 60s?

Not a bad list at all, in my view, and way above par for Rolling Stone. It should be noted that that the list pertains explicitly to the 60s and 70s (and evidently a nod to the 80s as well). So that explains the absence of Billie Holiday et al, as well as more recent singers.

Those very tight Columbia booklets are indeed a pain to read. And the discographical information is typically on some page in the middle that can never be found.

Yeah, but is it in the Definitive set? iirc it was in both the Bechet and Hodes Mosaics. Yes, the track listing for the Definitive set on allmusic.com does contain this session. (We all know that Definitive gets it set lists and remastered music from Mosaic whenever it can.)

In my opinion, the best session with Sidney Bechet and Wild Bill Davison is the one from 1945 under Art Hodes leadership. That session is not included on the Bechet/Davison Runnin' Wild CD.

Mine too. I can't even carry that box anywhere without discs sliding out onto the floor. The design looks nice, but it is not functional.

Not the equivalent, but something far more significant (IMO).

With Lennon, the reasons seem pretty clear. After the Beatles, he became a bit "lazy" about creating new music, although still dropped a masterpiece here and there. George continued to create about at the same level as he did with the Beatles (IMO), maybe even at a higher level. But what the hell happened to Paul? He made so many fantastic songs with the Beatles and continued working hard in music (it would appear) after the Beatles. Yet I find virtually his entire solo output to be an utter bore.

I think they were way ahead of people like the Stones and their blues based peers. They recorded the proto-techno "Tomorrow Never Knows" April of 1966 and look what was in pop music afterwards. You really want to appreciate how far ahead of their time the Beatles were in Pop Music? Play some of the other stuff that was being released in, say, late 1966. When you've heard Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" (Billboard #2 June 25, 1966), The Happenings' "See You In September" (#4 Sept. 10 1966), Johnny Rivers' "Poor Side of Town" (#3 Nov. 5, 1966), The New Vaudeville Band's "Winchester Cathedral" (#1 Dec. 3 1966), and countless others a few times, and then you listen to, say, "Strawberry Fields Forever" (recorded in late '66, released February 13, 1967), you realize you're dealing with a group in another talent-dimension altogether. Now that's what I called a seriously stacked deck. In 66-67, we also had on the charts James Brown (I Feel Good, Its a Man's World, Cold Sweat), Rolling Stones (Mothers Little Helper, 19 Nervous Breakdown), Lovin' Spoonful (Summer in the City), Beach Boys (Good Vibrations), Percy Sledge (When a Man Loves a Woman), Procol Harum (A Whiter Shade of Pale), Sam & Dave (Hold On, I'm Comin'), Janis Joplin (Piece of My Heart, Ball and Chain), Jimi Hendrix (Purple Haze, Foxy Lady), Bob Dylan (Like a Rolling Stone, Just Like a Woman, Rainy Day Women). Not to take anything away from the Beatles, but let's get real.

Does that mean that Elmore James' "Madison Blues" was a flop in Chicago?

The iTunes folder that holds MP3 files is called (by default) "iTunes Music." Thus, it could be "iTunes MusicDAMAGED." Alternatively, it could be that some of the individual MP3 folders inside iTunes Music are damaged. "iTunes Library" is the name that is given to a single document that holds the information about the library (including created playlists).

Wow. That sounds like a computer problem that could go beyond iTunes. Good luck.

Did you actually lose your MP3 files? An iTunes bug that destroys MP3 files is scary. That would be another reason to back everything up. I actually had one incident where an MP3 folder got lost or destroyed due to an iTunes bug. So it is possible. If it is just the iTunes library file that is corrupted, then the problem is not a huge one. That has happened to me before as well. The easiest solution is just to discard the file and create a new one. With the new blank iTunes library, select "Add folder to library" and then select all your entire iTunes Music folder. That should replicate the library that you had.

Johnny Guitar Watson had so much raw talent that it is scary. He could do anything he wanted and make it sound good.

I agree. I think that Mingus and Friends is a fine album. It is not one of Mingus' great creative statements, but it wasn't meant to be. It is a whole lot of great musicians getting together and paying tribute to Mingus through Mingus' music during the latter's own lifetime. The arrangements are mostly done by Sy Johnson, and I find them quite tasteful, myself. And yes, there is some very nice Jug on this one. Rather than pay a pretty penny for a CD version, you might consider downloading it from Amazon for under $17.

I'm very sorry for Mark, and wish him all the best.

Thanks, Jim. Those are interesting thoughts. As we get older, we seem to have a tendency to look back more often, and that makes sense as an ever larger part of our life and identity starts to lie back there. Very old people often do nothing but think about the past. You seem to be combatting that process actively, and that is probably a good way of keeping yourself fresh and relevant. On the other hand, the past can offer a lot of satisfaction as well. I indulge in that satisfaction quite often, and without guilt or fear of losing touch with the present.

Jim: Can't there be a value in understanding better the origins and nature of the blues separate from any desire to "take personal ownership of the past to better take ownership of the present?" In fact, I would say that questions about the origins of the blues and the relationship between blues and classic jazz are becoming increasing irrelevant for understanding what is going on in music today. On the other hand, for those of us who believe that the 20th musical century was the "blue century," a better understanding of the blues seems highly worthwhile in and of itself: a better understanding of the past for more meaningful appreciation of the past.

Maybe you can say that Bird was both vertical and horizontal in that sense. He certainly played brilliant melodic blues lines that can stand on their own, and took plenty of liberties with rhythm.