John L

Miles was in Billy Eckstine's band in late 46 until it broke up in January 47. It makes sense that Miles might have done some work in Diz's band after that time, before Bird came back to New York in the Spring and set up his classic quintet. But I don't know of any recordings. Miles apparently is present in Diz's big band during the private recordings from 1948 that also include Bird. But only Bird solos and heads were recorded on this date, and in extremely bad sound.

Yes, I agree. I just heard it for the first time. It is startlingly good, much better than I expected. This may be the single greatest modern day Dylan collection, even better than any one of the single albums (although Love and Theft is pretty hard to top)

Yea, "Blackstone Legacy" and "Song of Songs" are pretty wild hit-and-miss kind of albums that have their early-70s vintage written all over them. But I still enjoy listening to them a lot more than some of Woody's later more straight ahead albums, for example, "The Time is Right" or" Lotus Flower." Those two albums lack a certain spark (IMO), despite the fine quintet with Turre, Miller, James, and Reedus.

Oh yeah, I want the music, I just don't know the history about the original release of this material, which I find interesting. The two albums released from these sessions at the time were Lester Bowie" Numbers 1 & 2 and Roscoe Mitchell's Conglipitous. More music was released in the 70s on Roscoe Mitchell's Old/Quartet.

At a minimum, it was more than five nights. Just the recordings from the Hi De Ho are from more nights than that. Most likely, there are a lot of tapes that Benedetti made that haven't surfaced for one reason or another. I think that I remember hearing somewhere that he would commonly record new Bird solos over old Bird tapes that he had already absorbed. Other tapes probably just didn't survive. On the other hand, the Ross Russell book, which did much to support the Benedetti myth, often appears to mix fact and fiction in a sensationalist kind of way.

Well, the most essential discographic and other information is here.

Destination Out has posted a couple of nice tracks for free download from The Complete Braxton, which will not be on the Arista box.

Same here. I saw the Fatha once in concert in the 70s, and it was really memorable. What a great great musician and artist!

The CD box is also quite different than the LP box. Other than the more celebrated recordings, which are duplicated on both boxes, they made a deliberate attempt to create a CD box that would interest people who already had the LP box. The use different songs or different takes in many cases. There is also more music. That said, the LP box is probably better. There was a reason why they made the choice of music that they did in the first place.

I bought one in Paris for $30 about 10 years ago. As I recall, there were legal problems and Charly withdrew the CD set from the market shortly after it was released. Somehow, about 100 of them turned up in Virgin Megastore in Paris for $30 a pop. I am now kicking myself that I didn't buy several of them. I don't want to part with mine, but if there are some specific tracks that you need from the set in MP3 form, I might be able to help.

JSP was once a great legit label that did superior remasterings of classic recordings, and also made new recordings. Now they are pirate label, and one of the worst. They ripped off the remasters of the Mosaic Bunny Berigan set and Revenant Charlie Patton set only months after they were released. Those sets required significant investments by Mosaic and Revenant, which were, in effect, stolen by JSP. Lonehill may be a bad label, but they sure have made available a good number of long lost older recordings that the companies with copyright never had any plans to release. So I have mixed feelings about Lonehill.

That could set Wynton up for a great snappy answer about where your albums might be.

When you first came on the scene, you went on record as saying that nobody in jazz had done anything of any significance in the 1970s. Do you still believe that?

Another argument in favor of the single disc route: there are additional alternate takes that didn't make it to the "complete" Blue Note box, but can be found on the essential RVG The Amazing Bud Powell Volume 1.

Yes, but catatonia isn't evidence of "creative decline". And it's the term "creative decline" that's I think is the issue. The catatonic state is more likely to be evidence of decline in Monk's general well-being though. Does that sound reasonable? That sounds to me like games with semantics. Maybe Monk's creative juices kept flowing strong within his body and soul. But if he became physically and mentally unable to realize that creativity in his piano playing or writing, we generally tend to call that "creative decline." On the other hand, some of what he played on the later Black Lion and Giants of Jazz recordings was pretty nice. By the mid-1970s, however, those who heard him recognized unmistakable decline. Apparently, his mental illness reached an acute state around that time. He would just sit in his room and not communicate with anybody.

I am not sure what criterion we can use to distinguish between "legit," "gray," and "illegit" European labels of that sort. Myself, I don't distinguish between labels, but between reissues. If something is available that I want from a label that pays copyright, I will generally try to buy it from that source. If something that I want is only available on a label like Gambit, I will usually go ahead and buy it.

I've listened to the 4th many times, but I have never been able to warm to it. Neither did Stalin. Stalin never actually got chance to hear it. It was withheld by Shostakovich for over 20 years. That is not true. Shostakovich took it on the chin for the 4th Symphony, as well as for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk District. He was subject to harsh official criticism, and submitted his more retro inside 5th symphony as a "response of an artist to just criticism." Given that sequence of events, it would be nice love to the 4th symphony and hate the 5th. But it is just the opposite for me. I do really like Lady Macbeth, however, especially after seeing it performed live several times in Moscow.

I've listened to the 4th many times, but I have never been able to warm to it. Neither did Stalin.

Well, I have... uh .... uh.... ...yes, you are right. Those of us hip enough to listen to Frankie Newton would never make such an idiotic mistake... I mean, most of us don't have Alzheimer's disease or anything like that...

Well, maybe not according to the definition of "swing" that some people use. When it comes to rhythm, Braxton walks to his own drummer. It took me a while to get used his approach. But he most certainly has it going.

You can download the Evans Verve set on Amazon for $160. But that is still quite a difference. This pricing appears to be an obvious careless mistake. They must have a program that gives a 9.99 price as a default to every "album" unless specified otherwise. Box sets are defined as one album, and nobody took the time to make sure that they received appropriate prices in every format. Thus, the deal might not last long. I finally succeeded in downloading the Evans. Those licenses for WMA files are a royal pain. I wanted to only download the material that I didn't already have on albums, but when I did that, the WMA files came without licenses. So I couldn't use them. Thus, I had to use their primitive download manager to download the whole thing (the download manager offers no controls to pick and choose which files to download). To sort the files out, I made separate folders for the music that I didn't already have. But after I did that, Windows Media could no longer recognize where the licenses were, and gave me a message that I need to go back to the online store to "renew" the licenses in order to use the files. I seem to have a system figured out now that works. But hell, it would have probably been worth paying Amazon the extra money so as not to waste so much time and effort on this stupid shit.

Ask Alice. I think she knows.

Storyville has been making their stuff available at download sites (emusic, Amazon, iTunes). So it might be possible to download the bonus tracks if you already have the individual releases.