Hot Ptah

Thank you for this.

Tickets to see Herbie were not especially expensive in the 1,500 seat classical concert hall in Kansas City. You could get a ticket for under $40.

I listened to this Blindfold Test some more. It is really enjoyable. Track 8 is very intriguing. Whoever this is, i want to hear more. This is really satisfying music!

It would be more like a combination of Sextant and the Headhunters album. Sextant is more aggressive than Crossings or the other Mwandishi group albums. It really reminded me of a combination of Miles Davis' Agharta album mixed with Sextant and Headhunters. The electronically altered, screeching extended guitar solos, and the relentlessly pounding wall of rhythm drumming, was more like Agharta than anything Herbie has recorded himself.

It will be interesting to hear Herbie's upcoming album. His recent concert was not especially hip hop oriented.

True. My mother, a retired Registered Nurse, volunteers at a hospice center. In most cases the patients are there because they are near death and the hospice centers can give them more painkilling drugs to make their last hours more tolerable, compared to what a more regulated hospital can do.

This is very sad. Valerie and I exchanged several private messages several years ago. She is a very nice person. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, I commented to her that I wished that I had a Jazz for Obama campaign button, but that they seemed to be scarce and that I could not find one. She said that she was getting some for other people and would mail one to me. A few days later her envelope arrived with the button inside. She wrote that she had obtained three buttons and had given them to her friends Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter.....and me. There was a thread on some online music board, it may have been a board other than Organissimo, about whether or not you can play your favorite music at work. I posted that as an attorney, there is no written rule in my office stating that I cannot play music at work, but that it is just unthinkable that I would, that music is simply never played in a law office. Valerie contacted me privately and said that she had been working for years as a legal secretary for a successful partner of a Los Angeles law firm, and that my comments were exactly right. She said that it is just impossible to imagine playing music during a work day in a law office. She also commented that the attorney she worked with was very conservative politically, with views opposite of her own, but that he was also personally very nice, and had treated her very well over the years. We had some nice exchanges about what it is like to work in a law firm. I had just sent her a Facebook friend request, about ten days ago, because I realized that I had not seen any posts by her on any online boards, and I missed reading her thoughts.

I saw Herbie Hancock live in Kansas City on August 12, 2017. With Herbie were Lionel Loueke--guitar (mostly highly altered with electronics); James Genus--electric bass; Terrace Martin--alto saxophone, synthesizers, electronically altered vocals; Vinnie Colaiuta--drums. Herbie played some acoustic piano, a lot of synthesizers and other electronic keyboards, and electronically altered vocals. It was a wild, scorching concert, an all-out intensity blast. I never got to see the Miles Davis electric band of the mid-1970s, the band that recorded "Agharta" and "Pangea". This is about as close to that as I am likely to ever get. It was without a doubt highly successful for what they were trying to do. There was literally no lyricism or swing. It was an electronic jamming explosion, from start to finish. Herbie is not retreating to a rocking chair in his old age, that is for sure. He is getting more intense and abrasive in his music. About eleven years ago I saw Herbie live with Michael Brecker, Roy Hargrove, Scott Colley and Terri Lyne Carrington. At the time I thought that the concert was energetic and innovative in its use of electronics. Now it seems quaint and restrained, compared to this year's tour.

I have heard Watson play the title track live. He has introduced it by saying, "this song is called The Inventor. It is dedicated to my father who is a great inventor. I am one of his greatest inventions."

1. Duke Ellington's "Moon Maiden" from The Intimate Ellington album. I bought that album when it was first released on Pablo in 1977, at Discount Records on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. That Discount Records store had an extensive jazz selection and carried a lot of Pablo albums. Chuck Nessa was the manager of that Discount Records store earlier in the 1970s. 2. I do not know the album but I clearly recognize Michael Gregory Jackson as the guitarist. He was prominent in the indie label avant garde jazz scene in the mid to late 1970s. My friends and I listened to him often. An anecdote which shows how prominent he was in those circles: At the 1979 Ann Arbor Jazz Festival, a duet concert by Joseph Jarman and Don Moye was presented on Saturday afternoon in a small auditorium. After the concert, a member of the student volunteer organization, Eclipse Jazz, came out and spoke. He said that Eclipse would be presenting a series of avant garde jazz concerts on campus in small venues. He said that Eclipse would be asking for written suggestions for artists to be presented, so that they could compile the written results and get an idea of who might draw a good audience. While he had stressed that these suggestions would be written, immediately members of the audience shouted out suggestions. From around the room people shouted "Braxton!" "Muhal!" "Sam Rivers!" "Cecil!" "Michael Gregory Jackson! Michael Gregory Jackson!" At that moment, my friend, who had driven over from Wisconsin to Ann Arbor for the festival, screamed "Al Hirt! Al Hirt! Al Hirt solo trumpet! Al Hirt!" A strikingly beautiful woman near us laughed so hard that she literally doubled over. I can still picture her very pretty face. 3. I have no idea who this is, but I like it. I like the elements of it and the performance. I want to learn who it is! 4. This is African music which I am not familiar with. I find it very appealing. 5. This is from McCoy Tyner's Asante album on Blue Note. I have always wondered at the difference between Tyner's Blue Note output and his Milestone output starting a few years later. To me, the Blue Note recordings sound more cerebral. The Milestones are more direct, elemental, powerful. Tyner's Milestone albums really hit me in my first period of loving jazz. I wonder if Tyner deliberately took a different path as the 1970s progressed because he felt that way about music, if he wanted to explore a different area of music, or if the Milestone producers and engineering had a lot to do with the difference from his earlier Blue Notes. 6. This is Thelonious Monk, "Carolina Moon." I first heard it on the Blue Note album with the red cover, Genius of Modern Music Vol. 2. I hung out often at the great record stores Discount Records and Record World in the 600 block of State Street in Madison, Wisconsin, in the 1970s and early 1980s. The stores were one block from campus and easy for me to just slip over to. One day in the late 1970s, a rather noisy group of punk rockers were gathered in Discount Records, talking loudly about which punk groups they loved. The staff put this Thelonious Monk album on the store's sound system. By the third or fourth song, the punkers were all silent. They were listening. 7. This is Shostakovich. I generally recognize the sound of his music from a memory device I used to pass the classical music appreciation class I took at the University of Wisconsin in the mid-1970s. I do not know the work or the performers. This is compelling music to me. 8. I have no idea who this is, but I like it a lot. That sounds like a cello, which should narrow the possibilities for me but really does not. I am looking forward to the Reveal on this one. 9. I have no idea who this soulful vocalist is. Good stuff. 10. Beautiful piano music. I like it. I have no idea who it is. 11. I bought a lot of Evan Parker from a seller on ebay about ten years ago. I think it is Evan Parker, although I cannot place the album. 12. I bought this 2 LP set when it was released in 1976, during my first wave of jazz love. This album had the lead review spot in Rolling Stone magazine (which was somewhat more credible then, compared to what it became). I just about wore the grooves off of these two records. This is "Meandering." 13. Very appealing soul vocal. I like the song, the singer, the arrangement. I would buy this. I am looking forward to the Reveal on this. 14. I can't quite place this vocalist. I have heard him before. I am drawing a blank. 15. That is Terence Trent D'Arby. I like this. I am struck by how much his singing sounds like early Rod Stewart, on Rod's musically credible Mercury albums. The phrasing is often very similar, down to the little "ha" that both Rod and Trent would use at the end of a line sometimes. 16. A compelling classical piece which I like and cannot identify at all. 17. Abbey Lincoln. Her voice is so unique. I was fortunate to see her live, She was very compelling as a performer. This is a great track. Thank you for a most enjoyable Blindfold Test!

I have played the Albert Ammons/Meade Lux Lewis set many times. I have also played the Thad and Mel set very often. I have played many other Mosaic sets often.

I bought a Parker set this summer after comsidering it for decades. My order must have been the tipping point which caused them to announce it is running low.

Interesting that this was your childhood music. I heard it in college not too long after it was released. Now I feel old. I know Burrage as the drummer with Richard Davis and Friends. I did not know about this recording. Very interesting. Oh I have this album and have always enjoyed it, but just could not place it. It is a great album. Wow, so that is who that was! I was way, way off with my perception that it was a self-conscious jazz repertory group. It goes to show how a Blindfold Test can reveal how far off base one can get. Thanks so much for a truly great Blindfold Test!

Oh my God! how could I not know John Hicks? it is interesting that no one could identify drummer Vernell Fournier That is a really interesting story, of how you came to hear this music and record it.

Me too!

So do we get to read your father's answers? It is almost the end of the month!

I like the use of electronics in jazz if used well. Electronics can be very interesting.

I still find quirk for my collecting. There seems to be a quirky place or two in every city, down from five or six at one time, but eccentricity marches on. I found a lot of quirk on the internet for music collecting from the late 1990s at least until 2012 or so. There is not as much now but it can still be found.

That is very interesting!

Randy, I have sent you a Private Message. You are scheduled to present the August, 2017, Blindfold Test. If you could read my message and reply, I would appreciate it.--Bill

What strikes me is that the great majority of the listening public has wholeheartedly embraced streaming, even in niche genres such as Latin music ---except for jazz and classical.

The New Wave of Streaming Is On Impulse!

I am glad that you have that experience. I wonder if it is part of current German culture, as opposed to American? I don't know about that, I am just wondering. I do not experience any increased interest in jazz from the people I know between 30 and 45 at all. Virtually all of the people I know who have any interest in jazz are over 50 years old.

As I have lived in Kansas City since the early 1980s, I had a chance to see Claude Williams live more than 20 times. He was always a delight to hear. I heard him in concert halls, clubs, on outdoor festival stages, and very memorably, in a small tent during a Blues and Jazz Festival. I am very glad I was able to enjoy so much of his work. I had similar opportunities to see Jay McShann live a great many times, too.

I probably have over 10,000 albums like that. I have been pondering since I started using streaming, whether I would have put together such a huge music collection if streaming had been available from the 1970s on. Probably not. My ex-wife once angrily commented, "you don't know that you will love that CD--you are just buying it to find out what it sounds like!" My reply was, "so?" But I could have just listened to a lot of the albums in my collection once or twice on streaming and been happy with that for the rest of my life, if it had been available. Now my 21 year old daughter, my only heir, absolutely dreads the thought of having to deal with my music collection when I die. She does not like music, does not have the most rudimentary idea of what might be valuable in the collection, and sees it as a giant headache.