Hot Ptah

... to give him wider circulation? The Duke Ellington stamp came out years earlier than the other stamps, when the U.S. first class postage rate was less. Duke's stamp was not issued as part of a group. He received his own individual stamp, earlier than the others. So actually Duke was the most honored by the post office.

Red Green Ernie Green Leroy Kelly

Funk & Wagnalls Simon & Schuster Carly Simon Edward Simon Terrell Stafford Bobby Watson

The Pats are annoying today for the same reason the Cowboys were annoying back in the 70s. Cold, mechanical, soul-less (but not as bad as the CBoyss were - nobody could be that soul-less!) robots who just win win win. And win. They annoy the shit outta me (Brady in particular, who makes Staubach seem like Namath in terms of "personality"), but I give'em full props. They're a disciplined focused team, and they deserved to beat SD today. The Chargers were anything but disciplined and focused. What was up w/that bullshit unsportsmanlike thing that kept the Pats drive alive? And the fumble on the punt return? Your guys don't do shit like that, and when the other team does, they invariably find a way to capitalize on it. That's the mark of a true champion. I just wish they were more...fun. Hell, even the Boys gave us momentary freakshows like Duane "If It's The Ultimate Game, Why Do They Play It Next Year?: Thomas and Hollywood "Things Go Better With Coke" Henderson to break the monotony. But they do win, and that's the ultimate object of the game, isn't it. Can't fault that. I just like a little more, uh, "human interest" with my sports. Boring efficiency I get enough of the other six days of the week. That's probably the way a lot of other people feel too, I suspect, and that's probably why the vibe. But as far as your history w/the team goes, hey, I was just pulling your leg on that. Really, I was. Apologies if I led you to believe otherwise. Although, if you want to have some fun, go back and check out the old AFL, of which the Boston Patriots were a part. Talk about characters, hell, the whole league was one giant character! But there were some great players in that mix, including a personal favorite, Lance Alworth (long-time Charger, finished up as a Cowboy), who still remains the singlemost graceful wide receiver I've ever seen. They called him "Bambi", and it was not a dig. The cat was an artist. What prime Ozzie Smith was to shortstops, Lance Alworth was to wide recievers. Closest I've seen on a consistent basis since has been prime Wayne Chrebet, but even he doesn't top Alworth in my book. People who aren't old enough to remember the AFL don't know what they missed, much less understand what a big deal the first 5 or so super bowls really were. When Namath's Jets beat the Colts in SB III, it was more than a little upsetting, truly upsetting, to a helluva lot of people (and when the Colts were designated to become AFC once the merger became official, a lot of people were both distraught and livid!). The AFL was to the NFL what RFK was to Nixon, and in the climate of the times, people took that shit seriously! Everybody thought for sure that Joe Kapp & the Vikings would right the grievious wrong against the Chiefs in SB IV, but Hank Stram had a new little twist called "bump & run" that made it clear that the NFL was waaaay behind the curve, and that the AFL was the future. Two years in a row - the world was coming to an end! And then the merger took full effect, things settled down, and here we are. Today it's just NFC vs AFC. Not the same thing. Not even the same thing. As a Packers fan in the 1960s as a child, I distinctly remember the AFL and the first Super Bowl. It was thought of as a life and death struggle in Wisconsin. The Packers simply could not lose to the AFL, which was thought of as a minor league at best. It would have been an incredible humiliation. The Packers won the first two Super Bowls, and when the Jets beat the Colts in the third one, it was clearly viewed as a historic moment, something which had been unthinkable only a few years earlier. We collected AFL football cards in 1965 and 1966 together with NFL cards, just because they were on sale next to each other at the drug store. We always thought that the AFL cards were "lesser cards", and that the records listed on the back were not legitimate. Even as 9 and 10 year old boys, everyone felt that way--it was simply "true."

Steven Bernstein--Diaspora Blues William Parker--O'Neal's Porch Toufic Farroukh--Drab Zeen Flanger--Outer Space/Inner Space Benny Goodman--On The Air 1937-38 James P. Johnson--The Original James P. Johnson 1942-45

My thoughts on Michael Brecker, the musician, were changed for the better by his performance with the Herbie Hancock group in March, 2005. Also in the group were Roy Hargrove, Scott Colley and Terri Lyne Carrington. Michael's tenor sax solos were consistently exciting and inspired. He played way beyond routine, safe solos--as I heard him the phrase "blasting into the stratosphere" kept coming to mind. It was one of the best live performances I have seen in over 30 years of jazz concert-going. He played one song on the EWI and it was interesting and engaging. He turned it into a one man big band performance. A little of the EWI goes a long way for me, but I had to admit that I liked it. As a result of that performance, I will always think of him as one of the giants. It is sad to think of what more he could have done in music.

I found this compiliation, still in its shrinkwrap, for $1.00 at Half Price Books. It made me go back to Half Price Books many times.

I picked up "The Jaywalker" recently because of this thread, and it is indeed amazing. I am struck by the fact that several of the songs were released in live versions on "Yale Concert", which made its first appearance on vinyl in the mid-1970s. Why were live versions released instead of these studio versions? In most cases there are small differences between the live and studio versions. Both are excellent in their own way. It raises the entire questions of why were these "Jaywalker" studio sessions buried until the late 1990s, when many of the songs were deemed worthy of live release in the 1970s, and there were some lesser studio outtake collections issued in the mid-1970s, such as "The Intimate Ellington" and "Up In Duke's Workshop."

Gerald Wilson is not dead. You have to be dead to be on a stamp. You have to be dead to be on a U.S. stamp issued by the Post Office.

Tom, How can we buy advance tickets? I would like to support the concert even if it turns out that I can't attend in person.

Gerald Wilson is not dead. You have to be dead to be on a stamp.

I have wondered why Miles, Dizzy, Art Tatum, Ben Webster, and other jazz greats have not been honored with stamps. I thought that Art Tatum's omission from the 1994 set was especially unfortunate. I read the Post Office website on how to nominate someone for a stamp, and the scope of the problem became clear. It appears that it is a long, tortuous process to get someone on a stamp, with a lot of luck and subjective decision making involved.

I still have quite a few of those stamps, and a different design was ultimately used for the John Coltrane stamp.

So if a group of Sealand citizens decide to leave Sealand and emigrate to another island, and start their own nation there, would they call it New Sealand?

Of the Pablos, I think that "Hawthorne Nights" and "Passion Flower" are also excellent.

The deal being offered to the Penguins is rather generous: KC delivers pitch for Penguins KC makes tempting offer to team officials, who say they will have an answer within 30 days. By RANDY COVITZ The Kansas City Star Kansas City and the Sprint Center made their best sales pitch to the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins ownership on Thursday. The Penguins officials said they will give their answer within 30 days. After receiving a tempting offer for a brand-new, cost-free downtown arena from Anschutz Entertainment Group, which will operate the Sprint Center, Penguins owners Ron Burkle and Mario Lemieux and president Ken Sawyer returned to Pittsburgh and met with government officials about a plan for a new arena in Pittsburgh. Here’s what Pittsburgh will have to come up with to meet or exceed Kansas City’s turnkey offer. No rent. No up-front fees. No construction costs. A 50-50 partnership with AEG to derive profits from all revenue streams (suites, club seats, ticket sales, advertising, concessions, parking, signage and naming-rights fees). “Should Pittsburgh and the state of Pennsylvania not be able to work out what is deemed to be a proper arrangement in the eyes of the Penguins and the NHL, we believe the best opportunity for the Penguins is Kansas City,” AEG president Tim Leiweke said at a news conference after he met with the Penguins executives on Wednesday night and Thursday morning and showed them around downtown Kansas City and the Sprint Center site. “They have told us they will make a decision within 30 days, and we will know whether they are going to work out their issues in Pittsburgh and get an arena built or whether they will ask the NHL for permission to move to Kansas City.” After meeting with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato on Thursday night, Lemieux said: “We had two great meetings, one obviously in Kansas City and one (Thursday) night. I’m very pleased with both meetings. We have to evaluate all of our options. That’s why we went to Kansas City and had a look at what they had to offer. “I’m optimistic with the meeting with the politicians (in Pittsburgh) who were willing to step up and talk about some issues that were a big concern for us going back seven years.” Before meeting with the Penguins officials on Wednesday night, Leiweke said the hockey team would have to put up $27 million to buy into the 50-50 partnership with AEG, which invested $54 million as part of its 35-year management contract with the arena. Sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the two sides negotiated an agreement in which there would be no up-front costs for the Penguins. But if that was the cost of business, Leiweke said it would be worth it to land the Penguins, who feature some of the NHL’s brightest stars, including 19-year-old center Sidney Crosby, the league’s scoring leader; and high-scoring left winger Evgeni Malkin, who is just 20 years old. “If you sat down and wrote a book and you looked at the final chapter on how you go out and create a spec arena and then get an anchor tenant to fill it,” Leiweke said, “the last chapter is going to be titled ‘The Pittsburgh Penguins.’ This is the team you would dream to get.” The Pittsburgh executives did not attend the news conference, but Leiweke said: “The building blew them away. They were fascinated with the tightness of the building, how close the last row of seats in the upper bowl is to the ice, and they were extremely excited we have our suites sold and are about to market premier seats. “Overall, whatever impressions they had of Kansas City, those impressions grew dramatically.” Perhaps the biggest impression was made at a breakfast with leaders of the business community who pledged corporate support in the areas of ticket sales and sponsorships. Attorney Herb Kohn was one of about 10 Kansas City business leaders who attended the breakfast, along with executives from Sprint, Farmland Industries and UMB Bank and the Hall family. “I think they were very impressed with Kansas City, and I think they were blown away by the arena,” Kohn said. “They were impressed with the people they met and the support they would get from the business community.” Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes also telephoned Burkle and said the city is ready to work with the franchise. “They were impressed with everyone they talked with, certainly the arena, the cinergy of the entertainment district with the arena and everything else going on downtown,” Barnes said from Washington, D.C., where she attended the swearing-in of Sen. Claire McCaskill and had other business. “I believe we put our best foot forward and hopefully advanced our cause.” Leiweke, governor of the Los Angeles Kings and member of the NHL’s executive committee, did not view this as the Penguins using Kansas City for leverage to get a better deal in Pittsburgh, where their lease at antiquated Mellon Arena expires in June. “If this was about leverage, they’d be visiting other cities,” Leiweke said. “To the best of my knowledge, they’re not taking any other visits, Will they make a deal in Pittsburgh if ultimately they can make the right deal? Yes. I don’t think they want to move that team. But they have owned that team since 1999. Eight years later, they have yet to make a deal. “We’re not being used here. There is a decent shot they cannot get a deal done in Pittsburgh, and that will result in the team moving to Kansas City.” ------------------------------------------------------------------

I think that it is safe to retire the "everything's up to date in Kansas City" phrase. That phrase is decades old, and in the ensuing decades, Kansas City fell woefully behind in many areas, saw its downtown reduced to a pathetic, abandoned wreck, and now relies on generous tax credits and benefits to lure developers into building anything in the central city. The Sprint Arena and surrounding development is the latest huge tax writeoff for the developers, and resulted in many downtown blocks being literally destroyed, bulldozed down to the ground, and new buildings and an arena being put up on the huge vacant space. Nothing remotely up to date here--just trying to keep the central city from imploding completely in favor of the massively sprawled out suburbs. The "everything's up to date" phrase has become ridiculously inappropriate, much like calling New England a witch burning area or Atlanta a city burned by Sherman on his march to the sea.

For the record, I like Ms. Giambarini's vocals. I hadn't noticed that she was packing anything. What do you mean?

Billy Hitchcock Bobby Bragan Lum Harris

My first Mosaic was the Thelonious Monk Mosaic. My first jazz box was "The Bass"--an Impulse set. I had also purchased Beethoven's nine Symphonies by Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra before Mosaic came into being.

I know (or think I know) what you're saying here, but let's not forget (per FWIW the argument/account I strung together in the introductory chapter of my book) that fairly early on jazz did develop a collective sense of "self" -- that is, "an identity of which it was conscious and that shaped its sense of what it could and should do next" -- and that this sense of identity, while neither unthreatened nor perhap an unmixed blessing, did for the most part have a very stimulating effect on the music. Lord knows I don't have anything Marsalis-ian mind here -- some status-mongering, "Jazz is America's classical music, so where's my damn subsidy/concert hall" kind of thing -- but that sense of jazz's identity, however loose-woven it might have been at times, was not just some cockamamie "construct," let alone an ideology, but the recognition of a spontaneously arising social-aesthetic fact that was quite evident to a whole lot of people. That identity may or may not have crumbled or be crumbling, but while there's certainly nothing wrong in liking any music that pleases you, I wouldn't be so quick to sing the praises of sheer porousness -- as though the presence of stupid, or self-serving, or self-righteousness stylistic rule-makers meant in turn that in no music of definite strength and integrity could that strength and integrity be to some significant degree the result of a semi-familial, self-reflective recognition of the kind of thing it is. There's both life and logic in that, I think. While jazz's collective sense of self was at its strongest (probably 1920s to 1959, as I view it-others may differ) the "mainstream" jazz artists incorporated music from Broadway shows and other pop culture compositions, the Afro-Cuban sounds, and other experiments, without losing the identity of the music. Why couldn't that happen now? I think that in the future, jazz can retain its "identity of which it is conscious and which shapes its sense of what it could and should do next" while being open to other music--but without abandoning the "semi-familial, self-reflective recognition of the kind of thing it is." I just don't see the situation as being as apocalyptic as others on this thread. I don't see the jazz scene of today as being quite as tired and dull as others apparently do. I do think that there are many jazz artists performing and recording who set the bar too low for themselves. Perhaps because of the influence of academic training, they seem to think that rote renditions of standards, played with a lilting bounce, is good enough. There is not enough emphasis on laying one's heart and soul and guts out on the table, of going deep for personal expression. To me, that will improve jazz more than any openness to other musical styles.

I have sent an email today for the purchase of Vols. 3 and 4. From the track list, they look fantastic.

One of these days I will start this topic ' How does your sons react to your hobby/obsession?' My ten year old daughter hates all of the jazz that I play-mainstream or any other style of jazz. It's "weird" and "embarassing". She has let me know that if any of it is playing in our parked car when her friends come close to the car, it will be the ultimate social disaster for her.

I'd add his appearance on Chico Freeman's Destiny's Dance to that list. (Hard to imagine him keeping that kind of company these days) When I interviewed Wynton in April, 1982, he said that "Destiny's Dance" was a very poor experience for him because Chico Freeman did not know the changes to his own songs, and that he would not be getting involved in any projects with musicians like that again.