Hot Ptah

I have a good friend who grew up in Grafton, Wisconsin, and indeed, there seemed to be absolutely no hint of the city's rich blues heritage whenever I visited. I understand that a blues festival has been held there in recent years, building on the Paramount history, but the townspeople have not seem infused with blues knowledge and enthusiasm.

Get the Yazoo instead, it has the same tracks and much better sound; it has more hiss etc. but doesn't sound as dead as the Columbia. Amazon I don't agree. I think that the Yazoo is overwhelmed with hiss. I don't find the Columbia to sound dead. I was thankful when the Columbia CD came out, because my Yazoo was just so noisy that it distracted me too much. I realize that this type of opinion would get me laughed off of the Steve Hoffman forum, to pick one example, but that's the way I hear it.

I know (or at least used to know) two or maybe three of the guys on this release (including the main ringleader), and I'm not the only one on this board who can say that. The main ringleader is saxophonist Dwight Frizzell, a leading player on the Kansas City avant garde scene for decades now. When I saw Sun Ra at Parody Hall in Kansas City in 1985, June Tyson and other members of the Arkestra came out and talked warmly to Dwight, walking down from the bandstand. So I always give him the benefit of the doubt. Having said that, his albums, including this one, rank high on the barely listenable scale, to me.

I would start here, if I was going to buy just one CD. This is music which is very accessible to listen to, if you are just starting out with earlier country blues.

The first ten selections on Richard Davis' "Reminisces", both classical and jazz pieces for solo bass.

Yes, I was going to post that Josh Berman's "Old Idea" belongs on the Best of 2009 list.

He is one of our local sports columnists in the Kansas City Star. This column is no worse than many I have read by him, over the years.

I have heard from the guy who produces a national jazz concert series for a local theater that Sonny's price for a concert outside New York is now something like $40,000, and that he just takes a few of them a year. He said that he wants to book Sonny for his subscription series but the price is too high. So you may have been very fortunate to be able to see him at all!

Reading this thread, and thinking of MG, I am getting all choked up.

He has always been one of my favorites on the boards he has posted on. A lot of knowledge and a nice guy.

PM sent on the Dollar Brand.

This is true, but ... I find the place useful, even though I've only posted there a couple of times. I use it as a reference tool, much the same as allmusic. Hard to feel at home in a joint where politics, sport, religion and food et al are either rare or verboten. But if you want a discussion for 450 posts of every Fleetwood Mac album and single since their first recording, it's the place to go.

I found this funny on some level. I saw Sun Ra and his Arkestra at Parody Hall in Kansas City in 1985. In the middle of the concert, a young man stood up near us. He had a look of great anxiety on his face. He let out an anguished non-verbal snort, and shouted ,"there's something wrong with this music! there's something wrong with this music!" and ran out of the club as fast as he could.

I agree. Listen to "On The Corner." If this is supposed to be a funk album, what's with that one percussionist resolutely playing off time? What's with the mix, not only being murky but bringing exactly the wrong instruments to the fore? Hell, where are the words? "Ooh, baby, I want to funk with you," etc. It was when I heard "The Man With The Horn": "He's the man, he's the man, he's the man, he's the man with the horrrrrrnnn..." that I went "uh oh." Yeah, "The Man With The Horn" had the screechy electric guitars and funky bass lines, but much less Africa in the music.

Our son's name is Jim.

If you don't already have the Lester Young material, it is essential. Agreed. You can't compare Lester Young and Count Basie's 1930s recordings and their 1950s stuff. As was said elsewhere on this board months ago it's apples and oranges. His 1930s recordings are really, really good apples. I enjoy Lester Young's 1950s recordings. His 1930s recordings are compelling, great, monumental.

If you don't already have the Lester Young material, it is essential.

I think that more than $1 each is being sent, for the most part.

The background on the cover is Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin. It often looked just like that as I walked around the University of Wisconsin campus as an undergrad. The campus goes right up to its shores.

I am smiling thinking of my birthday and Father's Day gifts (they are a few days apart)--four Nessa CDs ordered by my brothers, and 3 Mosaic boxes. Heck, I'm almost laughing out loud, with glee, thinking about them.

My experience may not be typical. I heard the electric Miles as it was being released and liked some of it, and found some of it to be rather dull. I thought he needed an editor. Funky bass lines with screechy electric guitars did not particularly impress me at the time. It was not an overwhelming listening experience. My reaction when a new Miles 2 LP set came out in the early to mid-1970s was "oh my, another one of those really long Miles Davis albums that is hard to listen to and has a lot of dead spots. He has released so many of them recently." When I started reading amazon.com customer reviews of this music around 1999, I was quite surprised that these albums were considered masterpieces by some people. I became acquainted with the idea proposed by others, that these early to mid-1970s Miles electric albums were groundbreaking funk triumphs which were years ahead of their time. That had never occurred to me as I heard them as they were being released. Of course, I did not know then that they would seem to be "ahead of their time" in the future. For all I knew in 1971-75, they were going to be a unique dead end, a kind of music never heard from again. When I hear Henry Kaiser and Leo Smith playing their Yo Miles stuff, I think that it is not as good as the original, and that the original was only sometimes successful to begin with. Unless they are taking the ideas from the Miles albums and moving beyond and creating something new, I don't really see the point of it.