Hot Ptah

Happy Birthday!

It was the last released album, but it was actually recorded before Abbey Road. I didn't know that. Shows how much notice I was taking then. MG I "was taking notice" of the Beatles then and did not know it. 1969-70 was not like now. There was very little pop entertainment news in American mass media and few alternative media outlets for rock music news either. A detail like the recordings dates of an album compared to its release date was not something that the average American could find out about.

Oi! Wossis? Never heard of Ammons working with Mingus. Early seventies? Montreux or somewhere in Europe? More info pliz. MG Gene Ammons is a guest artist on Mingus' large group concert at Philharmonic Hall. I forget the exact year, but maybe 1972 or so. The album is on Columbia, originally a two LP set. An expanded CD reissue is better than the original issue, especially for omitting an opening track featuring Bill Cosby. Ammons is featured on a couple of tracks (Mingus Blues and Jump Monk, I believe), and these are probably the two best tracks on the record. Overall, a somewhat disappointing record, not measuring up to the other contemporaneous great Mingus release on Columbia, Let My Children Hear Music, but still pretty good, especially the Ammons features. This one? A bit bleedin' expensive! Still it is two discs. And it DOES have Jug on it. MG MG, I would not necessarily buy this album if I were you. The Gene Ammons content is small overall. He plays a short feature solo piece, Mingus Blues, on which he plays a souful solo, and appears on one other song, but it is not a "great Gene Ammons album" that every Ammons fan has to have. A lot of the album consists of sprawling pieces for too-large ensembles, which are not that well liked by even Mingus enthusiasts. I think that most Mingus fans think of it as one of his worst albums.

Oi! Wossis? Never heard of Ammons working with Mingus. Early seventies? Montreux or somewhere in Europe? More info pliz. MG Gene Ammons is a guest artist on Mingus' large group concert at Philharmonic Hall. I forget the exact year, but maybe 1972 or so. The album is on Columbia, originally a two LP set. An expanded CD reissue is better than the original issue, especially for omitting an opening track featuring Bill Cosby. Ammons is featured on a couple of tracks (Mingus Blues and Jump Monk, I believe), and these are probably the two best tracks on the record. Overall, a somewhat disappointing record, not measuring up to the other contemporaneous great Mingus release on Columbia, Let My Children Hear Music, but still pretty good, especially the Ammons features. I agree that it is disappointing, but I have always liked the swinging "Us Is Two" on that album, in addition to the Gene Ammons features.

"The world of Hank Crawford". MG "Minnie The Moocher's Wedding Day", by Horace Henderson (members of the group include Henry "Red" Allen and Coleman Hawkins) I thought so. Can we now move on from Beatle bashing? I am not bashing the Beatles with my Horace Henderson remark. I owned all of their albums as they were coming out and played them a bazillion times. They were huge in my life when I was young. They were huge to everyone, as I remember. I still like their music and think that they were really good. When I listen to their albums now, I am struck by the attention to detail and high quality throughout. I just think that Abbey Road is only one of thousands of recordings that is fine and mature.

"The world of Hank Crawford". MG "Minnie The Moocher's Wedding Day", by Horace Henderson (members of the group include Henry "Red" Allen and Coleman Hawkins)

I have it. I bought it when it first came out. I have always liked it. It works better than I thought it might. Lionel Hampton fits in well, I think. The tunes are treated more as blowing vehicles, instead of brooding masterpieces, but the album is very appealing to me--a good listen.

Those two albums were reissued on a Prestige "two-fer" in the mid- 1970s, as "Reincarnation of a Lovebird." It had a silver cover. Here is the best online image I can find of it: It may seem unbelievable now, but it was not that easy to buy older jazz sessions in the 1970s. Not everything was in print, or reissued, by a long shot. So I was buying most of the Prestige "two-fers" as they came out, and bought that Mingus set. I always liked it a lot, too.

I join them in wishing you a Happy Birthday!

The Beatles were curious about many other types of music, and about trying out unusual ideas. Not that many rock groups which came before or after them were like that, especially after a certain point in time.

PM sent.

That is an excellent album in its original vinyl configuration.

I own the set. What do you want to know?

Muhal Richard Abrams--The Hearinga Suite --Blues Forever --Mama and Daddy --Blu Blu Blu Blu Blu

That is a really good album, in my opinion.

I disagree. It is actually pretty good. Larry Coryell sounds terrific throughout. It suffers by comparison to the preceding several records but it is worthy, in my opinion. I like "Three or Four Shades of Blue". I don't like the bellowing vocals on "Better Git It In Your Soul", but otherwise I think it is a well played, soulful album, with good solos by Ricky Ford, Bob Neloms, Jimmy Rowles, George Coleman, Larry Coryell and Sonny Fortune. It is not as great as his very best albums, but it is a good album. I am not that fond of John Scofield's playing on the album, but Coryell and Phillip Catherine are appealing on it.

I think "it just works out that way" for creative artists, who are pursuing their vision. For imitators trying to make a buck by copying what has come before, that's different. I may be missing an entire vibrant creative scene currently out there, but it seems to me that it used to be a common situation that artists in different genres of music would release creative albums which were nothing like what had come before. It seemed natural that this would be happening. Then at some point, many recording artists starting going for the deliberate ripoff of what had come before, and then that seemed like the norm. When you get to that point, then it does seem unusual that a musical artist had created albums which differed from what had come before. But it did not always seem so unusual.