Hot Ptah

I saw McCoy two years ago with Charnett Moffett and Eric Gravatt. I thought it was his best playing in many years, and that he was generally quite inspired. It may depend on the specific concert you see, and perhaps the listener's expectations.

Compare the lineup for the Montreal festivel with this summer's Kansas City festival: Friday, June 13, 2008: 3 to 3:45 PM Diverse 4 to 5 PM Lonnie Ray Blues Band 5:20 to 6:20 PM Gray Matter 6:40 to 7:40 PM Louis Neal Big Band 8 to 9 PM Blues Notions featuring Myra Taylor 9:30 to 11 PM Double Exposure (a local Kansas City group) 5 to 6:15 PM Ida McBeth 6:30 to 8 PM Fourplay featuring Larry Carlton, Bob James, Nathan East & Harvey Mason 9 to 11 PM Angie Stone Saturday, June 14, 2008: 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM Rhythm and Ribs Jazz Institute Ensembles 1 to 2 PM Elderstatesmen of Jazz 2:30 to 3:30 PM American Jazz Museum All-Stars featuring Lisa Henry 4 to 5 PM Max Groove 5:30 to 6:30 PM Lester "Duck" Warner featuring: Joe Cartwright Trio 7 to 8 PM Linda Shell and Her Blues Thang Saturday Night Salsa 8:30 to 9:30 PM Trio Aztlan 10 to 11 PM Makusa Noon to 1 PM Alaadeen & Group 21 featuring Luqman Hamza 1:15 to 2:30 PM Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Adderley Legacy Band 3:30 to 4:45 PM Oleta Adams 5:30 to 6:45 PM Robert Cray Band 7:30 to 8:30 PM Patti Austin 9:30 to 11 PM George Duke *All entertainment is subject to change

Now there's a Ra album that's worth reissuing. Omniverse Saturn 91379 Side A: The Place of Five Points West End Side of Magic City Dark Lights in a White Forest Side B: Omniverse Visitant of the Ninth Ultimate Ra-p; Michael Ray-tp; Marshall Allen-as; John Gilmore-ts; Danny Ray Thompson-bs; Richard Williams-b; Luqman Ali-d. West End Cafe, New York - September 13th, 1979 Would like to see that one too! An underrated session. This would also be a welcome reissue, Sun Ra's other album on Philly Jazz beside the classic "Lanquidity": Of Mythic Worlds http://www.the-temple.net/sunradisco/ofmythic.html The back cover of the "Of Mythic Worlds" LP has a photo of Sun Ra's entrance at the 1978 Ann Arbor Jazz Festival. He is seen strumming a metal sculpture. The actual event was more dramatic than the photo indicates, as he surprisingly emerged slowly out of the floor, on a theatrical stage lift, strumming the sculpture, as the Arkestra blasted at peak volume for several minutes before and during his ascension. Many in the sold-out audience of 2000 at Hill Auditorium were spontaneously screaming at the spectacle.

Did you intend to link to the photos? I can't access anything from your post.

Jazz listeners in most cities would be in heaven if their city presented a music festival with this lineup. Kansas City, for instance.

You are just a barrel of fun, a real life of the party! I heard Sun Ra's gradual decline throughout the 1980s, and witnessed it live. Still, there was much worthy music produced, in my most humble opinion. While his 1980s output is generally not at the level of his 1970s output, it is still quite good, and by no means pro-forma, again, to my ears only. If you feel differently, more power to you. I think that some of these recent reissues are quite good, and some are not so good. So it is with most things in life, musical and otherwise.

I am having trouble deciding which of the Blue Note CD reissues of the Sounds Of the Chicken Crossing The Road to buy. The 1987 CD had terrible sound. It sounds like it was recorded underwater. The 1994 reissue was somewhat better, but is probably no match for the current reissues. Does anyone have an opinion on the merits and downsides of the 20 bit remaster version, the 24 bit remaster version, the RVG reissue, and the SACD reissue? I should probably just get all four, but I am getting tired of buying multiple copies of the same sounds!

There is a 14 CD set of the sounds of the chicken crossing the road, available on Lonehill for $9.99. Some Puritan is going to start a flame war about how Lonehill's reissues rip off the jazz musician, but there are complex issues involving the difference between U.S. and European copyright laws here, and anyway...LOOSEN UP!...I just want to hear the sounds! Plus, if Lonehill doesn't put this out, the sounds will be lost to us forever, or available only on hard to find, scratchy old vinyl which no one carries anymore anyway. You can also download the highlights of the 14 CD set on www.chickensalad.com Now, someone will complain that these downloads take money out of the hands of the legitimate record company owners. I say, get with it! This is 2008, man, not 1972 anymore! That boat has sailed! If the record companies don't embrace the downloading revolution, they have only their own sorry asses to blame for sinking into well-deserved oblivion. There is also an 86 CD set of these same chicken sounds, with added outtakes, now available on ebay, on the Hurtling Violet label. For completists only.

I attended concerts by Dizzy Gillespie and Randy Weston at the Jazz Showcase in the spring of 1978 and Joe Segal often urged us to attend his upcoming events. Johnny Griffin, Arnett Cobb, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago are the ones I now remember. He said that for Arnett Cobb, "we won't need any microphones."

I have seen Doug Carn live twice in recent years, playing as a sideman on piano only. I have enjoyed the performances. He plays well in a supporting role. He has had an immense amount of hair tied back from his head. I mean, it looks like a log from a mature tree back there. I saw Jean Carn sing in a package concert two years ago with other 1970s commercialized pop/jazz stars. She sang none of the material from the earlier days with Doug. She sang only her commercial material. She acted very goofy onstage. She was either inebriated or has quite a strange personality.

Frank "Home Run" Baker Eugene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb Dick "Night Train" Lane

This type of material has been out there, available on ebay and other sources, for years. It's not authorized. It has not been all that rare or hard to find. For example, in the early days of ebay, about a decade ago now (!), I bought a nine CD set of the "Let It Be" sessions for my son. It's not that interesting a set, though. Anyone want to buy it for $10,000?

We get it.

I wish he had recorded with Chico Freeman, Arthur Blythe, James Newton, Don Pullen and George Adams--it would mean that he would have lived much longer. It also would have been interesting to hear him with each of them.

This sort of thing never seems to happen very often at jazz concerts.

Johnny Griffin was very gracious to me and my then-girlfriend when she wanted to interview him for a university newspaper after a concert in the spring of 1979. He spent a lot of time answering her questions, which were rather basic as I recall. She was not difficult to look at. At one point she asked him the song title of a blues which he had played that evening. He said, "I Just Want to Touch You Tonight, Baby." Later that year, on Galaxy Records, the album "NYC Underground" was released, with a similar sounding blues, which bore the title, "Let Me Touch It."

Vern Rapp Jack Krol Ken Boyer

The George Butler thread made me think. We have several members here who were actively involved in the jazz industry in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and saw what happened first hand, as opposed to others who write about those years with no first hand experience. I am wondering if the members who have first hand experience of what happened in jazz, both musically and in the industry from the 1950s to 1980s, would comment on who and what influenced the state of jazz today, either positively or negatively.

I missed Rachael Price's concert at the Folly Theater in Kansas City due to illness. Has anyone seen her live, and what are your impressions of her as a jazz vocalist?

MG, I don't think it is the case that Hopkins is "too rural". He may be too much of something for some listeners, but it is not a "ruralness", to my ears. He has never hit me as one of my favorites. I have not heard anywhere near all of his vast recorded output--I only have one lifetime and many others to listen to, but I have heard a lot of Hopkins. To me, he is just not that interesting on some of his output. I agree that the early electric recordings are his best.

I saw Sun Ra several times in that period, including a Halloween night performance at the Detroit Art Museum that fall. This 28 CD set is fairly representative of what his shows were like in that period. However, I will say that across the 28 CDs, there is more percussion soloing and extended chanting by Sun Ra and the band than I ever remembered in any one show. Perhaps when they were scheduled to play more than one set a night, for a solid week, they paced themselves a bit with percussion interludes and more extended chanting than usual. I can think back to what Sun Ra and the band looked like onstage during those chants, and that helps keep them engaging to me. I can imagine that if you never saw Sun Ra live, that the extended chants might become a bit wearisome at about CD #20. When the Arkestra comes together and plays music on these 28 discs, it is often very memorable.

Claude "Fiddler" Williams Johnny "Guitar" Watson "Washboard" Sam

Moon Unit Zappa Big Unit J.J. Johnson

Has anyone else heard "Kete Kuf" by Ahava Raba? The cover art:

I am offended by the biased emphasis on Patriots throwback hats, to the exclusion of other throwback hats. To begin to rectify this exclusionary situation: