Hot Ptah

Yeah, I listened to the whole thing. Every second of it. It was a few years ago, so I don't remember exactly how long it took to do it (a month maybe?). And yes, I did go crazy by the end of it... like I said, it turned me off of the Beatles for a bit! Still, I'm glad I did it! If I had the time and the inclination (and I don't!), I'd cull that 83 CD set down to maybe 15 CDs of just the highlights. Cheers, Shane And I thought that the 5 CD set of Bob Dylan's "The Basement Tapes" was a lot to wade through!

"Mystery of Love" from that one was the piece that first got me into Weston. I was already a Harper fan from his work on the 'Lee Morgan' album, especially "Capra Black", and from his Strata-East 'Capra Black' album. I like the early stuff, but have always been more drawn to his material from the mid-60's on, which was much more Afro-centric. At the Jazz Showcase engagement in the spring of 1978, Weston, Richard Davis and Don Moye ended each set with "Mystery of Love", almost like a theme song.

I got mine for $12.65. Thanks for the tip.

I was there every night of the engagement (3?). The final night I shared a table with Joseph Jarman. This wonderful gig was recorded and I explored the possibility of a record but Randy was unhappy with the piano. One set was broadcast on NPR. I was there on Saturday and Sunday. I taped the NPR broadcast onto a cassette tape, which I still have. I thought that the broadcast made the sound seem thinner than it was in person. I was taking Richard Davis' jazz history class at the University of Wisconsin at the time. He mentioned it to the students several times, and urged us all to try to go to it. I rode along from Madison with his student assistant to the Saturday performance. Since his student assistant was there, Richard took us backstage between sets. This opened my eyes to the fact that going backstage is not really that exciting a thing to do. Don Moye was quite rightly not that receptive to having some fawning young people bothering him. I remember that Richard Davis asked us backstage if we had any requests for the next set, and I said that I would like to hear "Little Niles". He said that they were planning to play it (and they did). On Sunday afternoon, back in Madison at our dumpy student apartment, I described how great the music had been to a friend of mine. By the time I was finished with my description, we were walking to the car to drive to Chicago again. Richard Davis saw me walk into the club for the second day in a row, and he looked thunderstruck with surprise. That is when I first got to know him, more than as a student sitting in a large lecture hall. I remember that Don Moye played with uncommon intensity during Sunday's performance. I don't think I have ever witnessed a performance by him after that, which rose to that level of energy.

Some people like cilantro and others cannot stand it when it is added to food. So it is with jazz artists. I immediately liked Randy Weston's albums when I encountered them early in my jazz conversion. I have always thought he added a "good time" vibe to them to make them especially accessible. That's what I hear, anyway. I immediately connected with them and have liked all of them ever since, except for the three "Portraits" albums which he released in the 1990s. Those did not do much for me. "Little Niles", "Uhuru Afrika", "African Cookbook", "Tanjah", "Berkshire Blues", "Carnival" and several others, are among the albums I still play quite often. I saw Randy Weston with Richard Davis and Don Moye at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago in the spring of 1978. It is still one of the more memorable concerts I have ever seen.

Is "Whaaauw Ooooohh" close enough to "Uhhhh..."?

I think the main problem for me was that Armstrong (and early jazz in general) was stylistically so far from what I was listening to. I associated Armstrong with 'Hello Dolly' and 'What a Wonderful World' (nice enough but mum and dad music) and the sound of the 20s-30s with either British Trad (which was well past its fashionable stage by the 70s) or 'The Big Bands are Back' nostagia. When I did experiment with a Hot Fives LP in the early 80s it sounded so distant I couldn't really hear anything. I think the two things that made me go back were Humphrey Lyttleton's 'Best of Jazz' book where he made such a compelling case for the music, and hearing on the radio some of the sonic improvements that started to appear in the 80s - the Robert Parker series springs to mind (probably not approved by audiophiles but suddenly the music sounded in the room to my inexpert ears). This is really interesting to me, because Bev and I seem to have been listening to the same rock at about the same time, then got into jazz at about the same time. During my early immersion into jazz, coming over from prog rock, I found a used copy of the Columbia LP "Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines", Volume 3 in the Columbia Louis LP series. This is the album with "Weather Bird". The entire album hit me hard immediately. I was stunned and loved it, although I had been listening to Yes and Zappa and Weather Report a year earlier. Everyone's journey is different.

Karl, There would be wide interest in what you are proposing to post. I hope you do.

Excellent points. Just because you don't "get" someone, it doesn't mean that there is nothing there to "get". “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

I can imagine it now, as the History channel draws links between Jesus and Captain Beefheart, with overly dramatic narration and inappropriately excited music, with little actual content but many overheated teasers before and after the innumerable commercials.

I think that you will find that the music on this particular Armstrong Mosaic is not of the Dixieland style.

Beefheart. I'm not very familiar with the Gospel, but a phrase like that has to be more than ancient. I had read that phrase on the back of a Beefheart album--is it "Doc at the Radar Station"?. Years later, while a Gospel was read at church, I jolted up out of my relaxed attitude, as I heard it there. In the translation read at my church, the wording was much closer to "if you have ears, you must listen."

Two words. ear wax. By the way, do you know the original source of your quotation at the bottom of your post, "If you got ears, you gotta listen?" I know that it is in the Gospel of Mark, 4:9, spoken by Jesus. Is there an earlier source for it?

I like all of them, and can "get into" all of them. I "got into" Brubeck last, because I had believed all of the negative stereotypes I had read or heard about him, and never listened to his music until about ten years ago. Once I did, I was surprised at how much I liked it.

Happy Birthday!

A few years ago I suggested a Hal McKusick Select, and received a nice email back from Mosaic, stating that it was a good idea. Nothing has been announced about it as of yet. I suggested a Complete Duke Ellington recordings from the 1968-74 period. Mosaic emailed back that the music is great, but that the many record labels would surely never cooperate. I suggested various Sun Ra ideas. Mosaic emailed back that Sun Ra is too inconsistent and that they would not consider him for any project.

One of the more unusual dates that Philly Joe Jones played on is the 1983 Sun Ra All Stars European tour, issued last year as a 5 CD set. The band was Lester Bowie, Don Cherry, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Richard Davis, Philly Joe Jones, Clifford Jarvis and Don Moye.

Allen, if no other friend will tell you, I will tell you. Your delightfully zany posts are crossing the line into something else, something not good. If you are writing with no filter, I would put the filter back in. You have a lot to contribute, but you are going too far into an unappealing place.

I sent an email to them about two years before the Chu Berry set was announced, requesting a Chu Berry set. I have no idea if it made any impact.

When I took jazz history from Richard Davis, he commented on those who criticized Louis Armstrong's smiling persona. He said, "it's real easy to criticize someone when you're sitting on a couch. It's totally different when you're out there for many years actually performing in front of people, connecting with live audiences every night for years and years."

If you heard these recordings, you would probably feel differently about Armstrong.