Hot Ptah

Same feelings about O'Neal Porch. Sounds too pedestrian to warrant repeated listenings. IMO Parker's best group is In Order To Survive. Peach Orchard might as well be his Magnum Opus. O'Neal's Porch is the only Parker album to really blow me away. Different strokes....

Along those lines I was surprised at how unengaging I found the John Zorn tribute projects, the two "News for Lulu" albums and the Sonny Clark Memorial album.

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Thanks. My interest does not really extend that far. Maybe someone else is interested. Also, I wonder if these arrangements are available to student bands. I could see them as quite appealing in high school programs.

I have now listened to the first album you have listed here. It has a truly good version of "King Porter Stomp". Conte Candoli and Snooky Young take brief solos before joining Doc in genuinely exciting trading of twos. The rest of it is much like Chuck Nessa said. It's "nice". It swings, it's well played, very tight. There is a certain sameness to it, it's all one bright cheery color. It's not a bad album, not a great one.

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The group Kansas? Huh?

Herbie Mann was also exploring some interesting territory right before he died, with his "Eastern European Roots" album, and similar material being played in concert. I saw him live shortly before he died, and he talked about his interest in exploring his Eastern European Jewish heritage. He said that in his career, he had played about every style of music he could think of, except the music of his own family. Both live and on the CD, I found this music to be among the most interesting of his career.

"Soulville." And I agree, was disappointed when I got it at the time it came out. Just compare it to the way Webster sounds on Harry Edison's "Sweets," from about the same time. Uh oh... I am planning to order Soulville and Meets Oscar Peterson from yourmusic -- should I avoid? Guy Meets OP is the better date and I wouldn't avoid either. I find it very interesting how the time when different listeners came to jazz has an impact on their reaction to certain albums. For example, I did not come to jazz until the early to mid-1970s. When I first heard "Soulville" some time in the early 1980s, I loved it. I did not have the experience of hearing it when it first came out, in relation to the Ben Webster which had just come before. By the same token, John McLaughlin's 1978 "Electric Dreams" was a watershed moment for me, when I realized that the electric fusion of the early 1970s would not be sustained with any type of quality. To others, it is no doubt a meaningless album in terms of personal impact.

Then I agree that it was an uninspiring period. To me, the originators of fusion were still around and playing then, but were not putting out much of interest.

Do you mean "Belo Horizonte"? I liked it when it came out. I was not blown away by it, but I found it appealing, which by then was something for McLaughlin.

Actually, I think that the 1978--82 period was a great period for jazz recordings, but not for electric fusion jazz. But those were the great days when there were regular new releases by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Arthur Blythe, Air, Chico Freeman, James Newton, Sun Ra, and many others, together with vital work by mainstream musicians including Johnny Griffin, Dexter Gordon, McCoy Tyner and many others. I thought it was an exciting time overall, but again, not for electic fusion.

Have you tried The Marciac Suite? IMO, that's the best album Wynton ever put out. The Village Vanguard set is also very well played. Marciac is my favorite album of his in recent years.

I must add that Al Hirt's series of solo, unaccompanied trumpet recordings never moved me. His attempt to cover the AACM songbook, while interesting in conception, just never really came off for me. The volumes of his Ornette interpretations were somewhat better, but to me, not as great as everyone seems to think. When he went on for 47 1/2 minutes with his variations on the head of Miles Davis' "Jean Pierre", he lost me.

I was also disappointed in Wynton Marsalis' "Standard Time, Volume 1". Up to that point I was still hoping that Wynton would be a consistently interesting player. I had liked his work in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers when I saw them live, and thought that his 1982 gigs with his own first quintet were promising. I listened to the first several solo albums, giving him the benefit of the doubt, finding virtues in some cuts off "Black Codes" and the others. But then "Standard Time, Volume 1" came out in 1986 and it was so dull. I remember that my wife and I both felt that it was a real dud upon the first listen.

I was disappointed by John McLaughlin's "Electric Dreams" in 1978. The last Mahavishnu Orchestra albums had been disappointing, culminating in "Inner Worlds", and McLaughlin seemed most interested in the acoustic Shakti group. Then the news came that John had put together a new electric band, called the One Truth Band. Would the group and album be great? Would it be a return to the quality of "Inner Mounting Flame" and "Birds of Fire"? Would John cut loose and really play the electric guitar at the peak of his powers? No.

If not the most horrible, way up there near the top of the list, for me.

Al Foster also played with the fall 1978 touring ensemble the Milestone Jazz Stars--a quartet comprised of Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter and Al. Unfortunately, both in the live performance I witnessed, and on the album, the group did not come together all that well, and Al's drumming seemed to me to have been a factor. He did not establish a groove with Ron Carter, and the music seemed disappointingly disjointed. Jack DeJohnette played on many ECM albums as the 1970s progressed, more than I can think of quickly. His ECM albums as a leader were uniformly excellent, to me. Live, he was tremendous.

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In high school I played trumpet, badly, in the school band, marching band, pep band, and "stage band"--what was supposed to be a swing big band. As it was populated mostly by kids listening to Jethro Tull and the Allman Brothers, with no feeling for the music we were playing, I doubt that we were very good. One of my friends, another trumpet player in the various bands, bucked the prevailing trends by listening only to Doc Severinsen albums in his spare time. He would bring cassettes of Doc Severinsen albums on the bus when the pep band went to another school to play at a basketball game. The Grand Funk Railroad and Deep Purple fans on the bus would ridicule him, but he kept on with his fervent love of Doc's music. By chance I met him recently, after not seeing him for about 30 years, and he still loves Doc's albums. It made me think, did Doc Severinsen make some credible jazz recordings? Does anyone have favorite Doc Severinsen performances or albums?

I love DeJohnette's playing on his ECM albums "Tin Can Alley" and "Inflation Blues". Al Foster played on McCoy Tyner's "4x4". Ndugu plays well on a 1990 live Buddy Collette big band album on the Bridge label.

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I actually found Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus to be very disappointing. Of course, I bought it when I was heavily into the live Antibes album. And I don't think anything could have stacked up favorably to that one. The only Mingus album that disappointed me was Three or Four Shades of Blues, which was because Changes One and Two were so good, and there was such a long wait for this lesser record to come out. Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and Mingus ... are both great recordings, in my opinion. I also found Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus to be disappointing. It is certainly good, but I had read that Mingus thought that his music was finally recorded properly on that album for the first time, and I expected so much. Three or Four Shades of Blues....I bought it the day it came out. The man at the counter at Discount Records in Madison, Wisconsin, most likely a Chuck Nessa-trained guy, tried so hard to talk me out of buying it. He told me that it was so terrible, that when I finally heard it, I thought it was great by comparison to the expectations he had created. Now, I like the title track and think that the rest is O.K.

Joe Zawinul--Dialects (first post-Weather Report solo album) Chick Corea--The Leprechaun, My Spanish Heart, Music Magic (I began to realize that he wasn't going to put out consistently high quality albums) Miles Davis--The Man With The Horn (after years of waiting, THIS is it?)