Hot Ptah

She is a 30s-something African American journalist. She is a regular columnist for the Kansas City daily newspaper. She writes a column on cultural matters.

In a Gabe Kotter kind of way. This particular cover is very close to the original vinyl album cover. The CD cover is tinted browner than the original. Some of the worst covers in my opinion were original "artwork", in which the LP cover was not used.

Here is a column in the Kansas City Star newspaper which equates jazz with a lack of fun: JENEÉ OSTERHELDT JOSTERHELDT@KCSTAR.COM Office party is a real party I usually associate corporate holiday festivities with finger food, jazz music and co-workers mingling over drinks and office gossip. But maybe I have it all wrong. It’s clear that some people, even at company parties, like to get a little wild. I found that out last weekend when I crashed a downtown advertising firm’s holiday party. We could hear the music bump from a block away. And when we pressed the button to get in the secured building, all we had to say was hello and the door buzzed open. We went up the stairs half expecting a lame office shindig, but what we got was more of a frat party. First, there were the two elves gone wild. They welcomed us into the loft with bright smiles and bare midriffs. One posed next to us, and the other snapped a Polaroid before they added it to the collection on the wall. Next stop: DJ room. My friend knew the guy spinning records, so we went over to say hello, and he directed us to the drinks. We walked through the mingling room to the kitchen, where the refrigerator was stocked with Red Bull, and a keg stood at the entrance. And forget about name tags; that’s what your cup was for. A note over the keg reminded drinkers to sign their cup. My can of Red Bull protected my anonymity. The crowd, all late 20s and early 30s, was dressed more for the club than the office. A lot of the men sported blazers and T-shirts, and the ladies favored stilettos and leggings. It started to feel like we were at a hip-hop house party when we went back over to the DJ room and sat on the couch. Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” played, and everyone rushed the floor singing all the words. Then came a slew of bad boy songs, from Biggie to Mase, and by the time the seventh person told us to get off the couch and dance, we finally did. Forget the polite side-to-side two-step. These people were partying like it was a sport. One cute couple — at least we hoped they were a couple — were a modern-day Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. They kept the dance floor exciting with moves straight out of “Dirty Dancing.” And then, there was that guy. You know that guy at every dance party who goes crazy on the floor, pumping wild like MC Hammer and jumping around. He burst into the crowd at least three times, and people gathered around him, ushering it on. Two hours later we were still dancing. We met a small circle of girls we traded dance moves with. The DJ kept playing the soundtrack of our adolescence, songs from high school and college that were bringing out the wild child in us all — Jay-Z, Tupac, A Tribe Called Quest. Had it not been for the few Christmas sweaters we saw sprinkled throughout the crowd, I would have forgotten it was a holiday party. As we left, a few of the girls asked us to stay. We were no longer party crashers. We were a part of the party. And if that’s how they get down at your office party, maybe we’ll see you next year.

Give it time--and repeated listens. It'll really grow on you. I distinctly remember when Goober appeared on a late night talk show to plug this album, when it was newly released. It must have been either Joey Bishop or Dick Cavett, as in our rural setting, we did not get NBC and thus could not watch the Tonight Show. It was probably Joey Bishop. This doesn't seem much like Cavett material.

One of my favs. Especially the Sergeant Carter sessions. Yes! And Goober was a nice surprise as a sideman on those. Dude, Goober isn't even on those sessions--he's on the Mayberry sessions. It was a mistake to buy this Mosaic Single:

Or how about the phony pose of so many rock and pop singers that they are rebels outside "the system", bad boys to whom "the rules" do not apply (as they drive away from the concert in their block long limo to their private jet, so that they can be whisked away to their mansion in the most exclusive suburbs or their castle in England).

To me, Flanagan is a highly skilled craftsman who sometimes raised his performance to a higher level of artistry. Ellington is God.

I find the term "cocktail pianist" to be one of those terms that is so vague and subjective as to be useless. I have read on another major jazz forum that McCoy Tyner and Chick Corea are cocktail pianists, in the poster's firm opinion. It seems to me that whenever a poster does not like a pianist who plays with any amount of lyricism, the dreaded "cocktail pianist" insult is trotted out. I tend to agree that Duke Ellington explored areas of music which were far more ambitious than those explored by a great number of other pianists, and that some of the areas that Duke explored were more dissonant and dark than those explored by many other pianists. However, that does not make all of the other pianists "cocktail pianists." This strikes me as a well known logical fallacy. "Duke Ellington is dissonant. Cocktail pianists are not dissonant. Therefore any pianist who is not dissonant is a cocktail pianist." That is like "Dogs are mammals. Birds are not mammals. Therefore any animal which is not a mammal is a bird."

Tommy Flanagan's "Jazz Poet" album is on a much higher level of artistry than you are giving him credit for, in my humble opinion.

No. It is hurtful to my wife.

I plan to buy over 1000 jazz CDs in the coming year and listen to at least 50 of them by the end of the year.

Buddy Bell Gus Bell Gus Hall

Black Peter Jack Straw Tennessee Jed

Pepper Adams made a major contribution to Mingus' "Blues and Roots", in my opinion. It would have been much less bluesy and rootsy without him. That opening line on "Moanin'" is notable to me.

I got maybe some 25 CDs, plus the complete RCA box. These are the most glaring omissions I think I have in my collection. I would suggest that the following would be ahead of the albums on this list: New Orleans Suite Jazz Party Historically Speaking The Jaywalker 70th Birthday Concert Do you have all of those?

Do you have a great deal of Ellington already? This is somewhat of an unusual list, including some albums that are probably in a lower tier of necessity for an Ellington music lover. I can think of 25 albums easily which I would get before any of these. "Masterpieces by Ellington" would be my choice from this list.

In his autobiography, Mel states that his long time manager affectionately referred to him as Mel Torment. Mel states that he knew when something was seriously wrong because his manager would call him something other than Mel Torment.

I would like to hear more about the Ellington-Gonsalves relationship in the later years. I knew a woman who was a steady girlfriend of one of the Ellington band members then and travelled with the band at times. She told me that from about 1970 on, Gonsalves was abusing hallucinogenic drugs rather severely, and that someone had to basically care for him on the road, keeping him safe and arranging for his laundry to be done and the like. I wonder if this is true. She had no particular reason to lie to me, but I wonder. If it is true, then Duke's loyalty to Gonsalves was notable.

I read a news article recently about newly discovered evidence that the Incas ritually sacrificed children by getting them drunk on alcoholic beverages and leaving them to die in the cold of exposure. The alcohol would be easy to arrange, and Wisconsin is cold and close to Chicago.... However, a drunken person passed out on the ground in Wisconsin in the middle of winter would just be considered a good ol' boy there. The main question that the police would have is, where did this guy's snowmobile go to.

Mel didn't sing in it. I can't remember if he said one line, or none at all. I seem to recall that Mel wore a black leather jacket, and looked into the camera as if he was a cool dude. There was grunge-type music in the background as I remember it. At the very end, one of the rough looking skateboarders said something like "Mel!" (in a voice in which one would expect a skateboarder to say du-u-u-u-de, as Mel drank the Mountain Dew). Does anyone have a stronger memory of Mel Torme's Mountain Dew commercials? I just looked on youtube, but they do not have any of them on file.

I totally missed that... Details please! After his burst of fame from "Night Court", and before he became ill, he was featured in some Mountain Dew TV commercials, with young skateboarding dudes. The point of the commercials was that the skateboarders, who were meant to be rugged, "cool" young guys, were highly impressed with white haired Mel because he drank Mountain Dew.

I picked up Torme's autobiography, "It Wasn't All Velvet", on the $1 table at a bookstore. Few have ever suffered so much, and been treated so unfairly, as Mel, according to Mel. His extended rant in this book, about the unsatisfactory nature of the U.S. civil court process, should be required reading for anyone thinking that they would like to get involved in a lawsuit. So I did not like him very much after reading the book. And what was that selling his soul to Mountain Dew late in life all about? Some of his recordings could still sound good, though. I appreciate the recommendations in this thread. They saved me from spending too much money on hit and miss experiements.

Thanks! I have liked Marty Paich's charts on other projects. I will check this one out.