Hot Ptah

That Big Brother and the Holding Company album on Mainstream contIns the studio versions of Janis Joplin's vocal numbers "Down on Me" and "Bye Bye Baby." I imagine that it was their best selling album by a wide margin.

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING. It is in fact Lucky Peterson. Then it must be from the album "The Music Is the Magic" which I have not heard but which I have just ordered. I read your DING DING DING while standing in a long line at Chipotle and I almost fell down from shock, that I actually guessed someone. In concert, I have enjoyed Lucky's organ playing, but thought he was much more extraordinary as a guitarist. But this is some excellent organ playing for a blues artist, I think.

Now on to Disc 2. I am really not going to be able to add a lot of information or guesses here, but here goes... 2-1. So from Thom Keith we learn who this is, and the song title. I had never heard of this artist, but I like this a lot and now want to hear more. 2-2. From The Magnificent Goldberg we learn that this is Don Ludwig. I am not familiar with him, but want to hear more. I thought when I heard it that the organist had uncommon chops, but it did not sound like Jimmy Smith to me. 2-3. Monk's "Well You Needn't" done by a modern blues or crossover band, with a jazz drummer. That has me more stumped than ever. Lucky Peterson could pull something like this off. I am trying to think of other contemporary blues bands who could play this. 2-4. The leader has a fairly prominent non-jazz gig. Okay, that really puzzles me. I like this a lot. It is more exciting than the Adderley tribute band I saw live, led by Louis Hayes. I want to hear more of this album--actually, all of it. 2-5. This sounds like the style of some 1970s hard bop bands, but the very steady beat by the drummer and something about the feel of it, makes me think it is a younger, more recent band reviving that era. I like it and find it interesting. 2-6. This is very appealing, and sounds very familiar. I keep thinking I should know who the players are, and where this track came from. I think it is in my collection. But I just can't put my finger on it. 2-7. Gene Harris talking. I enjoyed this very much. 2-8. "Summertime". The player has more blues feeling than many jazz pianists, and more chops than most blues pianists. It sounds like it could be a fairly recent recording. Very enjoyable! 2-9. 'Ballin' That Jack." This could be a 1940s or early 1950s recording, of a pianist with a lot of blues feeling. I like it a great deal. 2-10. 'Smack Dab in the Middle". I would guess it is recorded after 1990. I have no idea who it is, but I like it a lot. 2-11. Only from what I have read here, am I really sure that this is Gene Harris. This is another very appealing track. I love all of this disc, and will play it often for enjoyment in the future.

I listened to this BFT several times earlier in the month, but while I really like it all, I did not have much in the way of illuminating comments or correct guesses. So I admit, I have peeked and looked at the comments made by other members. 1. Is this Junior Cook from the "Good Cookin'" album? If so, then it is Mario Rivera on baritone sax. I saw Mario Rivera live once, with the Brian Lynch/Conrad Herwig Latin jazz band, and Rivera was the highlight of the band by far. That would explain why I like the baritone sax so much on this song. I love the feel of this song, and just everything about it. 2. A guitar player from the Concord label. That does not narrow it down enough for me. I can't identify this, but I do like it a lot. 3. This is very interesting. For what it is, a sort of free flowing lyrical solo piano exploration, of the type that became more common after Keith Jarrett, this is a good one. It has more variety, different styles, and interesting ideas than others of this genre which I have heard. I feel like I should be able to place who it is, but I can't. I heard Richard Beirach do something like this in concert. 4. Arnett Cobb on Jumpin' at the Woodside. He had such a huge, soulful tone, but to be honest, I could not identify him on my own. This is a treat to hear. 5. Harold Ashby, from an album which also contains "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". So would that be "Harold Ashby Quartet" on Progressive, recorded in 1978 and released in 2014? It is good to have more Harold Ashby. I was at the last concert that Ashby ever played, at the Folly Theater in Kansas City. I was sitting in my seat in the front row after the concert. Ashby was still sitting in his chair onstage, looking tired. A young man jumped onstage and yelled in his face, "HEY! What kind of saxophone did Johnny Hodges play?" Ashby looked noticeably shocked and stricken. I was about ten feet away and saw all of this. Shortly after that it was in the news that he had been rushed from the Folly Theater to a local hospital and was in intensive care with complications from a heart attack. He never recovered and never played live again. I have often wondered if that guy yelling unexpectedly in his face triggered some health crisis which was maybe already looming. 6. From the comments of others I have learned that this is Plas Johnson. It is a much more rough, wild and fun Plas than other Plas I have heard. I saw him live with Jay McShann once and he never played like this! 7. From the comments of others, I know that this is Phil Upchurch. Now that is a shock to me. I have heard a fair amount of Phil on recordings, and saw him live with Jimmy Smith, and have never heard him play with that guitar tone or with so much blues style. I like this a lot, and am glad to have learned about it. When I saw Phil with Jimmy Smith, it was a hot afternoon at a Kansas City outdoor festival in July. It was close to 100 degrees and it was undeniably hot. But Jimmy Smith was the only performer all day and night to react to it by sitting most of his set out, after complaining onstage that it was too hot. So his guitarist, Phil Upchurch, played several solo guitar pieces, which were excellent. It did not sound anything like this track. 8, 9, It is in fact surprising to find out who the vocalists are on these songs, which are a lot of fun! 10. This sure sounds like Horace Silver and his group performing "Sister Sadie" live, but I can't find this performance anywhere. I will be very interested in finding out where it is from. My feelings about the tracks on this disc range from "like a lot" to "love". I will have comments on Disc 2 soon. Let me add that I am once again surprised at how Page can identify very obscure recordings!

Now that I have actually watched the video I am struck by how he did not get his message across very clearly, no matter what the message may have been.

I have seen members of online music boards provide strong opinions about music they admit they've never heard, but this is a first, to guess music you have not heard.

One thing not correct about the release is that the Power Center in Ann Arbor is at the University of Michigan, not Michigan State University. The two schools are noted rivals. I saw the Cecil Taylor Unit in October, 1978, at the Power Center in Ann Arbor. It was a great and memorable concert . One odd detail I remember-Jimmy Lyons smoked cigarettes continually onstage, stopping only when he put the mouthpiece into his mouth. There was quite a cloud of smoke above him at all times.

We should continue to comment on Dan Gould's excellent BFT 133. I am among those who will be adding my comments before the end of the month. Daniel A was scheduled to present BFT 134 but asked if he could do it later in the year. I have had a BFT ready, prepared by me, in case this happened. So let the signup for BFT 134 begin. Thom Keith is preparing the download from a CD which I mailed to him. We will make the download available in the first days of May. BFT 134 is one CD long, with 13 songs, many of them under five minutes long. My emphasis is on variety and enjoyment with this BFT.

Dan, I have listened to all of this once. You have really outdone yourself. Like a musical artist coming out with a breakthrough album which is better than anything they ever did before, this BFT is on another level. It is a whole lot of fun, too! I am going to use it in years to come for long distance driving music.

Regarding your comment about seeing Alan Dawson live, I saw Alan Dawson live in a club in Boston in 1979. He played with a group of local Boston musicians and also made quite an impression on me. They were opening for Big Joe Turner.

When I took jazz history classes from Richard Davis at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he often spoke warmly of Captain Dyett. By the way, Richard Davis played live with Sun Ra in the late 1940s, and recorded with him on the live Sun Ra All Stars albums from the 1980s (with Don Cherry, Lester Bowie, Archie Shepp, John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, Philly Joe Jones, Don Moye and Clifford Jarvis), so he should have an asterisk by his name too.

I watched this HBO documentary last night. Very powerful stuff. I wondered why the filmmakers stopped Tom Cruise's story before his marriage to Katie Holmes and the birth of their daughter Suri. They focused on how his marriage to Nicole Kidman was supposedly destroyed by the Scientologists, but there was no mention at all of the more recent marriage to Katie Holmes. Also, I wondered why there was no mention of the film starring John Travolta, "Battlefield Earth", based on Hubbard's novel. It is supposed to be one of the worst films of all time. There is no mention of Chick Corea or any other musician in the film. I found it interesting that the membership numbers have declined significantly for Scientology in recent years, while the assets of Scientology have greatly increased at the same time.

He does. Also, since the Blindfold Tests began, we have always had a Blindfold Test coordinator, a go-to person for all questions. When Jeffcrom stepped down, that job was split into two jobs. I am the go-to person for scheduling, and Thom is the go-to person for all technical matters.

I'm in.

Hardbopjazz, have you sent Thom Keith a private message? And Thom, if you are reading this, can you reach out to Hardbopjazz and offer your assistance?

I actually think that people in the U.S. are widely exposed to jazz and other forms of non-contemporary pop music. It's playing in the background at Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, restaurants and bars. Anyone can access jazz, blues, folk, classical on Spotify, Pandora, etc. I don't think that exposure is the issue. It is interesting to me that a thread which started with an article about jazz's sales figures has become a thread about what some view as a declining standard of musical worth, and others view as a population which just doesn't care, for whatever reason.

That is not the case all over the U.S. The majority of that kind of programming occurs on not-for-profit, very small community radio stations, which barely exist on a shoestring thanks to listener contributions and volunteer DJs, or not-for-profit college radio stations, or not-for-profit public radio stations. In large metro areas and college towns, you may come across this type of programming. In parts of the U.S., you would not get much or any of it.

Certainly true, overall, but the non-presence of jazz (which again invariably raises the question "WHICH STYLE OF JAZZ are we talking about"?) in the awareness of the music-listening public AT LARGE to a certain degree is of the own making of the jazz "in-crowd" (the self-professed "true jazz fans"). Small wonder many occasional listeners would not venture into jazz places if the only jazz foisted unto them was "far-out weird noises" that they could not relate to at first listening. You cannot expect people to embrace music (which ALWAYS is a matter of very personal TASTE) if you confront them with something radically different they have never been exposed to before instead of EASING them into it and providing them with opportunities to gradually find their way into the music and then let them decide for themselves. Expecting people to expand their cultural horizons when it is just about a night out in a bar is maybe not the best approach for hardcore jazz zealots to make converts. In the 90s certain styles of jazz (yes, Neo-Swing or "Retro Swing" or whatever you would like to call it) was indeed comparatively big and had its following (and some of it is still going on today). And of course the keepers of (self-professed, again) "true" jazz faith had nothing better to do but to blast everything from that corner - too diluted, too much watered-down, not enough art in it, musically dissatisfying, pale imitations, etc. etc. And all this without even bothering to distinguish between what's good (there were/are good bands with quite some originality) and bad (yes, there were/are weak bands, just like eversywhere else - I'd bet avantgarde has its share of "emperor's clothes" cases too if you look closer). OTOH, even if hardcore jazz fans would fault many of these bands for the above in one swipe (which I still feel is unfounded if you do not differentiate) they'd have to admit a lot of what has been played by these bands (and still is, in certain places) is much closer to jazz than a lot of really non-jazz pop music that the general public is exposed to everywhere today. And those who went to live gigs by these bands (and not all of them had been diehard jazz fans before - far from it) certainly knew what a trumpet looked like and would have been able to tell a trumpet, a trombone and the various saxes apart (as well as their sounds). Regardless of whether you'd loathe these bands because, for example, they combined (oh horror!) punk rock influences with big band sax sections and lounge vocals. After all, where's the fundamental difference betwen the influences these band sworked under and the influences from non-jazz at work in some of those "world-music-cum-jazz" projects? One man's meat is another man's poison. Everywhere, all the time ... And at least over here, those neo-swing bands spawned a subculture of fans, listeners, dancers and bands that do keep playing their own variations on a SWING theme. They do listen to the old masters and just as much to current bands playing in that idiom. Can't find much wrong with that. There are MUCH worse stepping stones into other (maybe more advanced) styles of jazz. But if jazz cannot or won't reach out to the straw that might help to keep jazz above water, then ... well ... Overall I do not agree with this post, as to the U.S. I think that most people in the U.S. find anything which is not contemporary pop, country or hip hop to be way too strange for them to even contemplate trying to listen to. Blues, folk, jazz, traditional ethnic music from anywhere, classical--none of it is going to be easier to get into than any of the rest of it. And is doesn't matter if it Delta blues, acoustic blues, Chicago 1950s blues, current white guitar blues, swing jazz, bop jazz, fusion jazz, avant garde jazz, vocal jazz, traditional folk, 1960s folk, contemporary folk, string quartets, Baroque classical, Romantic classical, 20th century classical, symphonies, music from any nation--it just doesn't matter. If it is not Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Lil Wayne, Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, or JayZ, forget it, people in the U.S. are not even going to try to listen to any of it and you can't force them to. I am not saying this in a spirit of snobbishness at all. I think it is just the way it is. At times jazz has had more of a niche popularity than now, to a somewhat greater (but still small) extent in the U.S.

It appears that the Neo-Swing movement may have had more of an impact, and more of a lasting one in Germany compared to the U.S.

Certainly true, overall, but the non-presence of jazz (which again invariably raises the question "WHICH STYLE OF JAZZ are we talking about"?) in the awareness of the music-listening public AT LARGE to a certain degree is of the own making of the jazz "in-crowd" (the self-professed "true jazz fans"). Small wonder many occasional listeners would not venture into jazz places if the only jazz foisted unto them was "far-out weird noises" that they could not relate to at first listening. You cannot expect people to embrace music (which ALWAYS is a matter of very personal TASTE) if you confront them with something radically different they have never been exposed to before instead of EASING them into it and providing them with opportunities to gradually find their way into the music and then let them decide for themselves. Expecting people to expand their cultural horizons when it is just about a night out in a bar is maybe not the best approach for hardcore jazz zealots to make converts. In the 90s certain styles of jazz (yes, Neo-Swing or "Retro Swing" or whatever you would like to call it) was indeed comparatively big and had its following (and some of it is still going on today). And of course the keepers of (self-professed, again) "true" jazz faith had nothing better to do but to blast everything from that corner - too diluted, too much watered-down, not enough art in it, musically dissatisfying, pale imitations, etc. etc. And all this without even bothering to distinguish between what's good (there were/are good bands with quite some originality) and bad (yes, there were/are weak bands, just like eversywhere else - I'd bet avantgarde has its share of "emperor's clothes" cases too if you look closer). OTOH, even if hardcore jazz fans would fault many of these bands for the above in one swipe (which I still feel is unfounded if you do not differentiate) they'd have to admit a lot of what has been played by these bands (and still is, in certain places) is much closer to jazz than a lot of really non-jazz pop music that the general public is exposed to everywhere today. And those who went to live gigs by these bands (and not all of them had been diehard jazz fans before - far from it) certainly knew what a trumpet looked like and would have been able to tell a trumpet, a trombone and the various saxes apart (as well as their sounds). Regardless of whether you'd loathe these bands because, for example, they combined (oh horror!) punk rock influences with big band sax sections and lounge vocals. After all, where's the fundamental difference betwen the influences these band sworked under and the influences from non-jazz at work in some of those "world-music-cum-jazz" projects? One man's meat is another man's poison. Everywhere, all the time ... And at least over here, those neo-swing bands spawned a subculture of fans, listeners, dancers and bands that do keep playing their own variations on a SWING theme. They do listen to the old masters and just as much to current bands playing in that idiom. Can't find much wrong with that. There are MUCH worse stepping stones into other (maybe more advanced) styles of jazz. But if jazz cannot or won't reach out to the straw that might help to keep jazz above water, then ... well ... Got nothing against Neo-Swing or "Retro Swing" for what it is, but let's be clear about what it is/was and is/was not. Given that that trend, or what you will, emerged in the '90s, one would think that if it had then the potential to draw its fans to any related form of jazz, we would have been aware (or would have been made aware) of that. I'm still waiting. Rather -- and again no blame here, provided one had no such expectations -- it was an arguably fun phenomenon for a while, and then it more or less wound down of its own accord, as such phenomena do -- not, in this case, because the jazz world didn't embrace/acted snotty toward it. If you're going to tell me that what happened or didn't happen to Neo-Swing or "Retro Swing" was significantly a matter of jazz's not being able or willing "to reach out to the straw that might help to keep jazz above water," I see no evidence that that straw ever existed. That is, again, Neo-Swing or "Retro Swing" was just the fun and mostly social phenomenon it was; what evidence is there that anyone or anything in or around it was a straw for jazz to reach out to -- other than it gave some players some more or less enjoyable gigs that they otherwise would not have gotten? I agree with Larry here. I think that we have actually seen this phenomena before and after the Neo Swing bands, and it is always short lived, when the swing era music gets a brief moment in the pop sun. I am thinking of the Nat King Cole/Natalle Cole duet, Bette Midler's hit with "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", Tony Bennett's moments of general popularity. To me, these are much like Hugh Masekela's hit with "Grazing in the Grass", or Malo's hit with "Suavecito". The pop world sometimes embraces a different element for a very brief time and gives it some unexpected popularity, but it is not sustaining.

And this kind of statement plays right into the uppity attitude that too many people associate with Jazz. How do you know their cultural experience and pursuits don't outpace yours 2 to 1? Just because they have no interest in Jazz doesn't make them a bunch of troglodytes picking fleas off of each other. Also, who cares what their frame of reference is for Pop music?It's their frame of reference, not yours. Nobody should have to clear their frame of reference for anything with anyone else. Nor should they be judged on it. I don't hunt for my own food, but many folks I live around do. Are they to stand aghast because I'd rather go to the grocery store than learn how to hunt and fish? We all choose different paths in this world. It's time Jazz fans get a fucking grip. Oh, you misunderstood me. I am not saying that it is a bad thing that these people like later pop, country and hip hop, and have no interest in jazz. I think that there is much worthy music in those genres. They seem happy listening to what they like. Live and let live, I say. I was just commenting that it is unrealistic that adults with no interest in jazz could develop such interests if only.....if only they heard swing instead of avant garde........if only there was more jazz radio......if only something else. No, I think it is not realistic that they will ever like jazz no matter what. I don't have a problem with that. I was making the observation that some of the discussion on this thread seems to assume that more people have more of a knowledge and interest in jazz, or could have such an interest, than is realistic.

This does not surprise me at all. I have to socialize with a lot of adults, ages 21 to 65, for my business, from different types of work and different areas of the U.S. Many are highly educated, and some are blue collar workers. Virtually none of them know what a trumpet sounds like as opposed to a saxophone, but what surprised me a little is that virtually none of them know whether they are looking at a trumpet, trombone, or saxophone when they see one in person. I don't think it matters at all whether swing music is presented to these adults as opposed to bop or avant garde. They will not be receptive to any of it. My experience with this large number of adults in the past few years is that virtually no one knows anything about jazz, no one ever thinks about jazz, and if jazz is brought up in passing, they react very negatively, as a knee jerk reaction. If someone suggests going to a bar where live jazz is playing, a common reaction is that the group would rather be dipped in hot oil than have to enter a room where jazz is playing. I was surprised at the lack of awareness of jazz and the negativity toward jazz. Basically it seems to me that these adults like catchy songs with singing (pop, country and hip hop, for the most part), and do not think about expanding their cultural horizons. Also, adults in their 30s and 40s seem to have a different frame of reference for pop music than the "classic rock" of the 1960s/70s/80s. a whole other world of pop music which came later and which they think is just great. We are in a cocoon here on this board, not representative of the general public. I hasten to add that it is a cocoon I am very glad to be part of.

Thom Keith is the co-coordinator of the Blindfold Tests this year with me. Thom is handling any and all technical issues. I suggest that you send Thom a Private Message, Hardbopjazz. I have found Thom to be very responsive and helpful to all of the Blindfold Test presenters this year. I have actually read about this before. Computers pick up the exact length of the songs and can identify an album by the exact sequence of songs with particular timings. So an album with songs of the lengths 2:21, 3:04, 4:34. 2:19, 3:45, 3:32, 2:58, 6:44 could mean John Coltrane's Giant Steps to the computer. I just made that up, those are obviously not the correct song times for that album.

That is a quote from one of those responding to the article. Just what the hell does the sentence I bolded mean? That it's not enough to go and listen to the music. If so, that's a commentary on the people of today who feel they need to be involved in the experience. What I took the sentence "Jazz has become more about 'doing jazz' and not providing or provoking any musical experience the audience could possibly have" to mean is that some musicians now perform a technical kind of jazz, in which complicated time signatures and harmonies are negotiated competently as an end in themselves, but which has no direct emotional contact with the audience. I have witnessed concerts like that in recent years.

Well, things like that take time... I didn't know you were on this forum, great article! I look forward to reading "There's a Mingus Among Us". As someone who was writing for DB, John, what do you think were the reasons for DB going from a great jazz magazine back then, to what it is today? In part I wrote about this in my article on 21st-Century Jazz, see http://www.goodbaitbooks.com/events.htm- also relevant is Hot Ptah's link to http://thejazzline.c...ar-music-genre/ More directly to your question about Down Beat: In the 1970s originals like Mingus, Ornette, the Art Ensemble, Braxton, Blakey, HInes, Eldridge, Pepper, Stitt, Elvin Jones, Gil Evans, Breuker, Bailey, Sarah, Ella, Cecil Taylor, on and on and on were very active. It was interesting to read and write about them. Precious few similarly original artists are active today - plenty of wonderful musicians, probably, but not as colorful. One reason Down Beat doesn't interest me so much any more is that there's a lack of interest in the history of jazz among present Down Beat editors. Sometimes you get the idea that any idiom that originated before LPs were invented simply did not ever exist. The family that owns Down Beat are printing company heirs, not basically jazz people, which has affected their editorial hires. BTW to my knowledge, this magazine about an originally African-American art form has had just one black editor in the 50+ years I've been reading it. (And Down Beat editors sure do come and go.) Thank you for your link to your article, which I find very interesting. The situation which you described in 2008 has not changed in the seven years which have followed. William Lenihan has provided this comment, in response to the article which I posted, and which you mentioned: