Hot Ptah

Mike Mercer Booth Lusteg Dale Livingston

On the other hand, he is better than nothing. The Kansas City public radio station has eliminated its jazz programming, either by local d.j. or syndicated. That station used to have several hours a night of local d.j. jazz programming, plus many of the more famous syndicated shows. Now--all gone. The Lawrence, Kansas public radio station, which can be heard inconsistently in the Kansas City area, has a local d.j. who plays jazz for several hours each evening. Then late in the evening, Bob Parlocha comes on after the local guy. It's better to hear Bob than no jazz at all, as on the Kansas City station.

I really like the Miles Davis/John Coltrane version from the 1950s.

In my opinion, and except for the Mardi Gras disc (a very poor epitaph), every track in their albums WAS a potential hit. I hear the later tracks on each LP side of their albums very differently, except for Cosmos Factory. That's O.K. We don't have to agree.

I listened to all of the CCR albums with my son a few years ago. Except for Cosmos Factory, I thought that their albums were inconsistent, with the hits, a few other good songs, and a bunch of filler that was not all that good. I liked "It Came Out Of The Sky" and "Don't Look Now" the best of all.

44

I think I have all of Martino's other Prestige albums, but not El Hombre. Definitely one for me to pick up soon. I like his "Exit", released on Muse in the 1970s.

Jim Roland Jim Kaat Jim "Mudcat" Grant

In his autobiography, Earl Palmer describes a session held at Lowell George's home studio, which would have been fun for reasons unrelated to the music.

I found that an assisted living center for low income people was delighted to get over 100 cassette tapes from me this year. The staff member literally had tears in her eyes as she said that they would set them out next to the boombox in their break room, which is the only source of music for their residents. Maybe something like that would work for VHS tapes.

I went to a one day sale of a vinyl collection owned by a local woman who used to own one of the city's top used music stores. She needed to raise money for a trip she wants to take. These were $5 each: Specs Powell & Co.--Movin' In (Roulette, 1958 release) Dewey Redman--Musics (Galaxy, 1979) Cal Tjader--Warm Wave (arranged by Claus Ogerman) Betty Roche--Take the A Train Johnny Dyani/Okay Temiz/Mongezi Feza--Music for Xaba Vi Redd--Birdcall Johnny Hodges--The Eleventh Hour Derf Reklaw--From the Nile Michael Mantler--Live (Watt 18) Milt Jackson--That's The Way It Is (Impulse AS-9189) Jimmy Owens/Kenny Barron Quintet--You Had Better Listen (Atlantic, 1967) (with Bennie Maupin) Kenny Drew--Morning Klaus Dolinger Quartet--Blues Happening Bobby Pierce--New York Happiness is Piano Red (King 1117) Phil Woods--Greek Cooking (Impulse A-9143) Bud Shank--Girl In Love --Magical Mystery --I Hear Music --California Dreamin' --and the Sax Section (arranged by Bob Florence) Warne Marsh/Lew Tabackin--Tenor Gladness Butch Morris--Current Trends in Racism in Modern America (A Work in Progress) Stephane Grappelli/Joe Venuti--Venupelli Blues Quincy Jones--Go West Man Duke Jordan--Jordu (Prestige, recordings from 1949-54) Paulinho Da Costa--Happy People (Pablo, 1979)

Perhaps we could assign a number, such as #44, to the entire controversy which can be summarized as "I like Oscar Peterson's playing/oh, but he's an empty technician who didn't deserve as much fame as he got/wait a minute, I like his music a lot/you don't understand, he was never really that good/oh yes he was/oh no he wasn't". Then whenever someone wants to have that discussion, they can just type in "44". Everyone responding to the first post can also type in "44". That will save a lot of heartburn and anguish for all.

Eugene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb Al "Bubba" Baker David "Deacon" Jones

I have a John Zorn album, Absinthe, in which he seems to play the same one soft note for the entire length of the CD.

I saw Freddie several times in the 1970s. The most unusual was at Bunky's, a club in Madison, Wisconsin, which had national jazz acts in the 1977-80 period. Freddie had just recorded one of his most commercialized albums, and most of the concert was a precursor to smooth jazz. He played flugelhorn, very simply, on some rudimentary light funk ditties, as he danced around half-heartedly onstage. Some people liked it--they probably spent their weekends at the disco. However, from the first song on, loud requests for songs from his Blue Note and Atlantic albums rained down from the increasingly unhappy majority of the audience. Freddie said between songs, "hey, I have to play this stuff, my record company says I have to." Finally, toward the end of the evening, he played an uptempo "Impressions". His rhythm section burned and Freddie was in his full glory, soloing in spectacular fashion. The audience erupted with loud clapping and screaming during and after the performance. Freddie looked puzzled, and said "everybody wants to hear bebop" as he shook his head. Then it was back to the simple light funk for the rest of the evening. Another time I saw him in a concert hall setting, as he followed Johnny Griffin and Dexter Gordon. The audience had loved the tenor sax players. Freddie came out with a fusion group, which was not one of the genre's real winners. The audience was vocal in its disapproval at first. Freddie said, "hey, Dexter Gordon and Johnny Griffin live in Europe! I have to live here in America!" By the end of the set, Freddie's solos had won the crowd over. I do remember a member of Freddie's band, a small, thin, heavily bearded guy playing some annoying electric bass solos in that set, which struck me as fusion at its obnoxious worst--fast playing with little emotional connection to anything. I fervently hoped to never hear him again. I was surprised to later read that he had married Joni Mitchell and was producing her albums--Larry Klein. I saw Freddie at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach in 1980, and from the first note it was incredible. He was really "on" that night, and I have rarely heard such spectacular playing by anyone over two sets. He was really something when he had the musical context right and was motivated to play consistently well. I also saw him with VSOP (Hubbard, Shorter, Hancock, Carter, Tony Williams) in 1977. We were all struck by how Shorter, Hancock and Carter seemed to be disinterested in what they were doing, while Hubbard and Tony Williams were on fire for the entire evening. Having heard Hargrove, Blanchard, Roney, Douglas, Pelt, in the past two years, I have to say that in live performance, none of them hit the heights that Freddie hit when he was really "on", in live performance in the 1970s and early 1980s.

That worked for me for about 15 years, then it didn't any more. She got tired of it, finally.

Sunny Jim Bottomley Son House Sun Ra

Jim Wynn Rusty Staub John Bateman

For another unsolicited suggestion, the early recordings of Henry Townsend deserve consideration.

Maynard Ferguson Joe Ferguson Howie Ferguson

Les Moss Dick Tracewski Sparky Anderson

Jason Adasiewicz--Roll Down will be in any Top 10 I eventually catch up to, and list for this year.

Free For All, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers Out to Lunch, Eric Dolphy Open Sesame and many others....

I witnessed some truly excellent live performances by Freddie in the 1970s. By today's standards of what qualifies as a good live trumpet performance, they were off the charts spectacular. His talent should never be forgotten as other things are brought up.