Hot Ptah

That Milli Vanilli playlist.....yeah it's a guilty pleasure....but can't you just play the CD in the car when you have to hear them?

Could have been. Then it would be the most outward display of religious fervor I have seen in any jazz club.

Otherwise, a very interesting post. It makes me think of a time when I was in a famous jazz club in a large Midwestern city. A short, fat, Italian-looking man in a black suit came in with an entourage of large, rough Italian-looking men, all in black suits, in the middle of a set by a jazz legend. Immediately the owner and nearly all of the staff ran over, literally bumping into each other, to force the paying patrons aggressively away from the front tables and to clean up everything as fast as humanly possible to make the best place ready for the great man. I mean their arms were flying over the table tops with spray bottles of cleaner and rags. Their pace of work was about 1000 times faster than I had ever observed before in the club. Did I inquire of the staff about the nature of the new visitor? Did I mull over the possibilities that something could have been amiss, from a moral standpoint? But then again, maybe nothing was amiss. I didn't want to be guility of offensive cultural stereotyping. Was I so troubled by the possibilities that I could not enjoy the music? No, I just stayed and dug it, and went back to the club after that.

Thanks for that information. I have wanted to get a more complete set of this material--I have some but not all of the MCA 1980 Louis Armstrong reissues.

Yeah, all right! Most of this discussion has been focused on the noble but ultimately luxury task of determining how we're going to let ourselves feel about listening to music, often by some dead folks, years after it's been made, and yeah, we've somehow allowed ourselves the conceit that somehow that matters, which outside of our own self-contained universe, it doesn't, Michael Jackson, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jim Keltner, et al notwithstanding. Dead folks have done did what they do, ya' know? Where it really matters, and where the ambiguity reaches you-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it levels is when you actually have to decide whether or not to work for and/or with some of these "characters", whether or not you're gonna hire somebody because what they bring to the gig is worth more to you than what they may or may not do before and afterwards, and the same for taking somebody else's money, somebody who's a borderline fascist and whose mere presence on Earth makes you queasy, but the cat's got a gig paying the money that you need right now, so what then? Or what about taking money from a club that's an obvious mob front, or maybe even less than a front, where crackheads come in with all kinds of illicit goods (including produce!) and leave with a rock, that's pretty slimy right there, but again, that club got the money you need right now and nobody else is offering it that night, maybe even that week, so if you listen to a really badass Miles side on the way to that gig, what, are you double dooming your soul to eternal damnation that way? Those of you who can spend more than a quick minute worrying over whether enjoying records good music made by bad - but often dead! - people will forevermore affect your karma to the point of permanent taintation of the soul,, hey, I envy you. Or maybe not. Jim Keltner? Did you mean Jim Gordon (who was convicted of murdering his mother, as I recall).

What is George Duke's "Muir Woods Suite" album like? It has been in the bins forever at a used music store here. I have looked it over and put it back, not sure about it. It looks like Duke with a large string section, from what I can tell from the liner notes.

Allen, your post made me pull out this LP last night. The liner notes on my copies from this 1980 MCA reissue series of Armstrong LPs are by Alain Gerber. Are we thinking about the same album? In any event, the music is superb. I just wonder if this era of Armstrong was reissued in another form, (maybe a better form), with notes by Morgenstern?

Yes, much like Louis Armstrong, comparing Sonny's 1950s releases is to me like saying, Rembrandt is not quite as good as Raphael as a painter. (Here "Way Out West" is Rembrandt). They are all way, way up there by any standard, to me.

That's a really interesting take on it.

Avishai Cohen the bassist is really good too!

I am not disagreeing with you--I just don't understand. Where do you hear what sounds like children forced to sing in a pure ethnic voice? Do you mean that this is what all of Zawinul's music sounds like to you, or are you referring to a particular song or album?

I have those. I like "Mudfoot" a lot. The first song is so rousing.

The Dukey Stick made its appearance toward the end of his set at the Kansas City festival this past weekend.

Didn't Nina Simone have a big hit single in the late 1980s because of a TV commercial?

Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch Walter "No Neck" Williams

I know what you mean about Zawinul/Duke on keyboard sounds. However, my opinion is that Zawinul used some interesting, and at times even warm, keyboard sounds on the "Black Market" album. I don't think he achieved that again, on record.

Yikes! I never thought of that! I have not made anything close to an exhaustive search, but have not found the contents of the MCA album "Swing That Music" on a readily available CD. Does anyone know of a CD reissue?

I saw George Duke in concert two nights ago, at an outdoor festival, and he is still a happy guy, a chubby jolly guy who likes to play around with his synths. In fact, that is a really good description of the concert.

Good point Allen. I was thinking that in relation to the Hot 5's and Hot 7's, which to me rocked the foundations of all of music, this MCA album is not quite as essential. But it's way up there in quality, certainly. I wanted to have certain major artists listed, but it was difficult to draw the line at essential/non-essential. I couldn't think of any Eric Dolphy albums which were non-essential, for example.

Interesting point. Are Fathers Day and Mothers Day even holidays outside of the U.S.? My parents, now close to 80 years old, gruffly announce each year that they will not be getting each other a gift on Mothers Day and Fathers Day because they are not each other's father and mother. They are seen as a bit eccentric by their friends and family, because it seems to have become a tradition that each spouse will get the other a gift on these days. In fact, I feel a lot of pressure to make Mothers Day memorable enough. Candy, flowers, special dinner out, jewelry and at least one other thoughtful gift seem to barely allow me to get through the day unscathed. But I still came out ahead this year, because she got me the five CD set of Sun Ra and his All Stars live in Europe, 1983 (Don Cherry, Lester Bowie, Archie Shepp, John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, Sun Ra, Richard Davis, Philly Joe Jones, Don Moye and Clifford Jarvis).

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MG, I know that your selections will be so much to my liking, so PM sent.

The historical Ellington which you mention is this album, a 1956 release on Bethlehem: It features mostly recreations of Ellington compositions of the past, although "U.M.M.G." has its debut here. I really like the feeling of the session, and there are many excellent solos by Johnny Hodges, Clark Terry, Willie Cook, Ray Nance, and others. I became aware of the album in 1978 when Richard Davis, my jazz history professor, told our class that the album contains his favorite version of "Black and Tan Fantasy." I had to check that out.

I think that more musicians have some offensive conduct or flaw than we can imagine--as is the case with people in all walks of life. I have by chance learned about a jazz giant who is very verbally abusive and manipulative, as in the classic profile of an abuser, to the point where one of his sidemen sought therapy for depression. The jazz giant is generally very well thought of by the jazz public, I believe. Where do we draw the line if we do curtail our listening of an artist because of behavior--at physical violence? at racism? at support of violent governments? at treating others in a miserable fashion generally? What about a male musician who cheats on his wife and lies about it? Many Americans thought at one time that this could qualify as a "high crime and misdemeanor", an impeachable offense. How many albums could any of us play if that was the standard? But why should the poor wife be dismissed as unworthy of our moral support?