Hot Ptah

The Horseshoe Tavern discs are interesting to me because I saw the Arkestra on the night after the September, 1978, performances in that set, and they sounded quite different than they had the night before at the Horseshoe Tavern. I have a tape of the performance on the night after, which I taped off the radio, and have confirmed this difference. The Arkestra could be quite versatile.

There is now a Wikipedia article on Operation Delego, which has in its footnotes a link to the indictment against blackbart2010. The indictment describes specific instances of files which blackbart2010 added to the offensive board. The indictment pleading in general provides more detail about what this offensive board was all about.

To each their own. I really like the Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington covers. I think that the best recorded versions are on "Unity", which is unfortunately on the Horo label. In concert, I found that swing material to be very exciting. There were many Sun Ra 1970s recordings which did not involve noisy freak out material. Cosmos, Lanquidity, the two solo piano albums on IAI, the three Horo albums, and several others, had a lot of focused, melodic material.

I must comment that I do not think that Sun Ra's 1980s recordings are at all part of any trend or style common to 1980s music generally. He was always unique, apart from any time he was working in.

I have never quite understand comments about how some decade of Sun Ra's recordings is not as good as earlier decades. To me, he recorded much fine music in every decade, up to his death. My personal opinion is that his 1960s recordings are the most inconsistent in terms of sheerly enjoyable listening.

Golden Circle Vol. 1

Well deserved! Quick, delete the negative comments from the liner note booklet of your latest album!

In "Music Is My Mistress", Duke speaks of going around as a youth with his friends to see the established pianists, naming Willie "The Lion" Smith, James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. At the beginning of a chapter entitled "The Big Apple", Duke says that he and his friends had come to know Fats Waller quite well, and that they had a "chummy exchange" in which Fats gave Duke information about a gig. The next section of the chapter describes Duke's mishaps with that gig. There is too little written about Waller in these passages to come to any conclusion. I have found "Music Is My Mistress" to be more poetic than coldly factual. It is difficult to draw conclusions from what Duke says about a person in that book. Maybe if the reader knew Duke well, the reader could fill in the blanks of what Duke is really saying

I agree that there is a massive amount of Sun Ra recordings out there, not all of the highest quality, but there is a lot more than 10-15 quality albums. His live shows were very theatrical and visually dramatic, sometimes stunning. This does not translate well to portions of some of his live recordings. When I hear five minutes of chanting, hand clapping and saxophone squealing, I think, oh, this must be the part of the show when the Arkestra danced in the aisles of the theater, or when Sun Ra was coming out of the stage floor on a slowing moving riser, dressed in a bizarre getup, strumming a large work of art--which I saw once. If you never attended a Sun Ra concert, you do not have these memories to think about. Even if you do have these memories to think about, some portions of the live albums are not as interesting as one would hope. Some of the studio albums feature long avant garde pieces which, depending on your mood and your level of interest in the avant garde, could be endurance contests to listen to, especially repeatedly. BUT! then there will be the gem of a recorded song, something that is one of the best things you have heard in a long time by anyone. Sun Ra's recorded highs are high indeed. It is the quest for more and more of those high points which may keep the Sun Ra fan buying more albums, searching out new releases. Some of these high points are contained on albums that are otherwise of lesser interest. So the Sun Ra fan keeps on in the endless quest. I think that Grateful Dead fans/fanatics know this phenonmenon all too well.

I have never heard the Newport broadcast of world music. When I heard her live, she played straight ahead jazz.

I would start with the following: Jazz in Silhouette Supersonic Jazz Angels and Demons at Play Nubians of Plutonia Fate in a Pleasant Mood Cosmos Lanquidity Mayan Temples St. Louis Blues Unity (on Horo, if you can find it)

We don't know how Regina Carter got her Mac Arthur grant, just as we don't know how young ragtime pianist, and Delmark recording artist, Reginald Robinson, got his, or how Jason Moran recently got his. In my opinion, the receipt of a Mac Arthur grant should not color an evaluation of an artist's merit, but I thought that there was some mention of it in the first post in this thread, so I mentioned it too.

From the MacArthur Foundation website: "How Fellows are Chosen Each year, the MacArthur Fellows Program invites new nominators on the basis of their expertise, accomplishments, and breadth of experience. They are encouraged to nominate the most creative people they know within their field and beyond. Nominators are chosen from as broad a range of fields and areas of interest as possible. At any given time, there are usually more than one hundred active nominators. Nominations are evaluated by an independent Selection Committee composed of about a dozen leaders in the arts, sciences, humanities professions, and for-profit and nonprofit communities. Each nomination is considered with respect to the program's selection criteria, based on the nomination letter along with original works of the nominee and evaluations from other experts collected by the program staff. After a thorough, multi-step review, the Selection Committee makes its recommendations to the President and board of directors of the MacArthur Foundation. Announcement of the annual list is usually made in September. While there are no quotas or limits, typically 20 to 30 Fellows are selected each year. Between June of 1981 and September of 2010, 828 Fellows have been named. Nominators, evaluators, and selectors all serve anonymously and their correspondence is kept confidential. This policy enables participants to provide their honest impressions independent of outside influence. The Fellows Program does not accept applications or unsolicited nominations."

Well, that should be a sure cure for insomnia for most of the agents.

Don Was did lead a jazz album which is pretty good. http://cover7.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/070/79954.jpg All songs written by Don Was. Personnel: David McMurry (flute, saxophone); Terence Blanchard (trumpet); Eric Reed (piano);Mark Goldenberg (guitar); Don Was (acoustic bass); Arthur Marbury (drums); Luis Conte (percussion).

I don't know that I would be as negative as to call her a journeyman musician. I have seen her lead small acoustic jazz groups in concert which I found engaging and at times exciting. Her solos on those evenings ranged from enjoyable to exciting. She has a modest, self-effacing, friendly, appealing stage personality, which makes her easy to present in a jazz subscription series out there in America somewhere. There have been other musicians who reaped a career benefit from their stage personality, in terms of getting more gigs than more gifted musicians who were negative and gloomy toward the audience. That is not new with Regina Carter. I think that she does some genuinely fine recorded work on her "Rhythms of the Heart" and "Motor City Moments" albums, on the "Freefall" album which she co-led with Kenny Barron, and on James Carter's "Chasin' the Gypsy". I remember that when I was first getting into jazz, I was quite impressed with the playing of Joe Farrell on albums led by Elvin Jones, Jaki Byard, and others. Then I got two of his CTI albums under his own name and concluded that he should not be a leader. The truth is probably not that simple--nor is it with Regina Carter. Now if Joe Farrell in 1972 had been given a windfall huge sum of money by a foundation, which he did not solicit, would many have hated him, because it should have gone to Dexter Gordon or Harry Carney or some other, more worthy saxophonist?

The drums really did not bother me as I listened. I could tell that they sounded somewhat different, but I have been too caught up in the compositions and performances to care that much about the drum sound. I agree that it is a fascinating release.

You had confidence in it? Why? Regina Carter is not the most questionable recipient of a MacArthur grant. I have found her to be an engaging enough soloist, pleasant and sometimes exciting. She is not a font of creative inspiration, not a wellspring of original jazz conception. She is one of those jazz musicians who might be better off as a sideman to a leader with a strong vision--IF there were any leaders like that still performing and recording on an ongoing basis, so that a soloist could make a living supporting them. In the absence of a scene like that, what is a soloist to do? Sit at home with blankets over their head, pining for the days when there were more varied opportunities for a violin soloist? My first exposure to her was memorable, in a Blindfold Test kind of way. She was an unannounced member of the Steve Turre group at an outdoor festival in Kansas City. Midway through her first extended solo, I was thinking, "wow! who IS this?" Her solo was genuinely exciting, and really good. I have seen her lead groups in concert, but not for a few years. Those concerts were more memorable to me than some of her albums. She doesn't always make the best albums. I don't think that she is worthy of scorn. She is at a certain level of jazz performance, and you either like it or not. She does not talk in an obnoxious fashion about how great she is, or how wise her opinions about jazz are--there is none of that with her. She can't help it if a foundation decided to give her a bunch of money--who wouldn't take it if it fell in their lap?

That Mingus two-fer, Better Get It In Your Soul, with Ah Um and Dynasty, was in the first group of acoustic jazz recordings I ever bought, on the advice of a great store clerk at Discount Records on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. It had a lot to do with my interest in jazz taking off. Chuck Nessa was the manager of that store a few years earlier.

Thanks. I did not know about him. I have to check this out.

Happy Birthday! This image is titled Birthday Parties Austin, Texas. I don't know why!

The Gil Evans/Gary McFarland two-fer was titled "The Great Arrangers: Dedication Series Vol. IX", on Impulse. One record was Gil Evans' "Out of the Cool" album, with a bonus cut of a version of Horace Silver's "Sister Sadie". The other record was Gary McFarland's "Profiles", a live big band album.

The Gil Evans/Gary McFarland vinyl two-fer is an Impulse "Dedications" series two-fer. It the only time that Gary McFarland's Impulse album "Profiles" has ever been reissued, to this day, to my knowledge. "Profiles" has never come out on CD and has had no other vinyl reissue.

I remember that the Savoy two-fer for Bird was the lead record review in Rolling Stone magazine, with a full page art collage of Bird. That was when Rolling Stone still meant something. I went out and got it based on that review, and it was a revelation. I had been unable to find much Bird on record before that, it just wasn't easily available.

In the mid-1970s, to my knowledge it was the only way to hear the great albums on Riverside and/or Prestige of Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and many more. I remember that the liner notes would say that five of six songs of one album,three of six songs of another album, and two other songs, made up the two-fer. I always wondered what the rest of the albums sounded like. Still, a whole world of music was opened up to me by the two-fers. The covers were cool, too. They were not the original covers. They had the artist's name in big letters. They were a trendy thing for college students to own and carry around, at the universities I was at.