Hot Ptah

I liked my gateway music, and still listen to it sometimes. I think it has real value. I actually like Kamasi Washington's "The Epic." To me, it is a good mainstream jazz album, with some solid piano and trumpet solos, with choral and string backgrounds which are not essential to me, and also not offensive to me. I find Kamasi himself to be the least impressive soloist on the album. He reminds me of Cab Calloway, except that he does not sing (to my knowledge). I mean that he is a charismatic front man who gets the popular attention, while the stronger soloists are among the sidemen. One thing that I think is interesting about "The Epic." It is very melodic and appealing to the untrained ear on first listen. It is appealing to people who have not listened a lot to Charles Ives, Albert Ayler or Cecil Taylor. There are many people who have not stretched their ears to include 20th century classical music and avant garde jazz in their listening. When I was first listening to jazz in the 1970s, there was a lot of jazz as melodic and conventionally easy on the ears. One of the characteristics of the academic jazz artists of the past 20 years is that they seem to be nearly allergic to conventionally pleasant melody. I do not view "The Epic" as a masterpiece. I also do not view it as an abomination. It strikes me as a nice, solid album. If there was not all the media hype around it, we might file it under, "play a few times, enjoyable, only some of it sticks to the ears." We all got to a good place by different routes. I am not going to put down people who came to jazz from disco or punk, which I did not do. If they are sitting next to me at a Wayne Shorter concert, I don't really care how they got there.

I think that one can state that from a jazz history perspective, Kamasi is a minor figure, not nearly on an artistic level with the giants of the past or present, while also celebrating that he is a gateway drug to the harder, more addicting stuff. Not all of his users will move on to Pharoah, John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, and then to Allen Lowe, David S. Ware, Jaki Byard. But some will, while none of the fans of Blake Shelton, Jay Z and Father John Misty will. There has not been a gateway to jazz in a long time. I needed a gateway to jazz when I was a teenager. If it had not been for the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever (Corea, Clarke, DiMeola, White), Weather Report, and Jeff Beck's "Blow by Blow", I would not have been buying Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, Eric Dolphy and Mary Lou Williams three years later.

After a divorce, I have hung out in bars a lot with many different groups of people between the ages of 30 to 55. This is necessarily an anecdotal account, as I have done no statistical study and cannot be everywhere at once, to sample everyone in every city. What I have found though, is a complete absence of any awareness of jazz, or interest in jazz, among all people I have met under 55.. This includes educated people who view themselves as being "into the arts." As a necessary component of a complete lack of any interest in jazz, or any knowledge of jazz, these many people also have zero knowledge of the history of jazz. I can tell you from first hand experience that they absolutely do not want to be told about the history of jazz, for even a few seconds. I see Kamasi Washington as a near miracle, a younger musician who has broken through somehow to younger people. I have no idea how he has managed to chip through the nearly impenetrable rock wall which has separated nearly all people from jazz for so long now. I am quite confident that 99.99999999999999999 per cent of all people who like Kamasi Washington's music have zero knowledge of where he fits into jazz history, and that probably 98 per cent of them would have zero interest in learning where he fits into jazz history. Apart from our little group of jazz lovers, which has become about as marginalized in contemporary American society as a group devoted to a love of early colonial American metalworking, no one knows or cares where Kamasi Washington fits into the spectrum of jazz styles or jazz history. I am just grateful, and amazed, that literally anyone wants to listen to any jazz at all. Only good things can come from it, for all of jazz. Some interest and exposure to jazz among many people has to be better than zero interest and exposure to jazz. To say that when the masses finally discover any jazz at all, it has to be the jazz that we think is aesthetically worthy, or nothing, strikes me as an unrealistic perspective.

Thanks for the idea. I think I found a business that will do it at $15 per LP. I am going to go that route.

I have a small number of LPs which I would really like to have in digital form too. These albums have never been issued on CD. Due to a divorce, I am without a home computer. Does anyone in the Kansas City area know of a business which does a good job of converting LPs into a digital format, and which does not charge an arm and a leg? Or would any Kansas City members be willing to do this for me, for pay?

We do not have any Blindfold Test presenters scheduled for March, May and June, 2016. Would anyone like to present a Blindfold Test in those months? March is the most immediate need, obviously.

Apart from the identifications, I wanted to comment that this is a superb Blindfold Test. It is filled with very enjoyable and distinctive tracks, which I have never heard before. As I have put together Blindfold Tests myself, I know that it is not so easy to achieve what has been done here.

I'm in. One can never have too much Allen Lowe. I can see that slogan on billboards from coast to coast, next to a photo of Allen breaking out into a very cheery grin. Perhaps a silhouette of the State of Maine, faintly in the background: ONE CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH ALLEN LOWE

Wow, I have never even heard of that one before. It does not sound like the Herb Geller albums in my collection, at all.

I will be very interested in the recommendations here, because I have never heard a Residents album that I really wanted to listen to. To me, the idea of their music is interesting, but actually listening to their music is not enjoyable. However, I may not have heard the albums that I would like.

Oh, that is interesting. It seems to be that Joseph Bowie was involved with some funk type bands in New York in the 1980s. I saw Joseph perform with Defunkt, and it was a combination of jazz and funk. It was quite good, and Joseph soloed well.

I have always wondered, did Lester get a big payday for that album, or was he paid a session musician's scale? Do you know, Chuck? Unfortunately that has to be one of Bowie's least memorable albums overall, not because of Lester Bowie's contributions.

I have the CD and remembered it.

Track 4 sounds like Gil Evans to me. The vocalist on Track 12 is Mark Murphy, but this is like no Murpjy album I have ever heard.

Track 14 is "Love Come Take Me Again" from Hank Jones' 1963 album, 'Here's Love." With Hank are Kenny Burrell, Milt Hinton and Elvin Jones.

No.

http://www3.forbes.com/lifestyle/the-worlds-30-highest-paid-musicians-2/31/ Oddly enough, there are no jazz musicians on this list.

I need to pick up that Shirley Scott album!

This was a very enjoyable Blindfold Test, with many surprises. Thanks for planning out such a good one.

Regarding Track 5, I saw Bennie Maupin at the Blue Room in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2007, and there is indeed much more to him. That was an all-acoustic avant garde concert, with inspired, uncompromising soloing by Maupin on tenor saxophone and some huge bass woodwind instrument, the largest woodwind instrument I have ever seen. It was supported on a stand as it was too large to hold.

My mother bought this James P. Johnson set for me for Christmas. She had to tell me that I would be receiving it after the first of the year. I really don't mind! I am just happy to be getting it.

I like how this BFT allowed for identifications, although many were not easy. It makes it fun for me.