Hot Ptah

It's like a George Washington letter with Warren G. Harding's autograph across it.

That is an interesting point, Dan. There is a real art form in making a BFT which contains music which will stump the panel of experts in an intriguing way, while still making it something that is listenable more than once, or a few times. I have had the same experience, thinking that a particular song would really fool everyone in a surprising way, but realizing that it was just not very enjoyable to listen to. I think that each BFT preparer resolves this situation in their own way, emphasizing one priority over the other.

Dan, I admire your ability to create such an enjoyable BFT around a theme. This one is staying in my car for the sheer listening pleasure it provides.

I really like this music. I thought at the time that Wayne's compositions for Weather Report remained interesting up to the end. I like his solo album "Atlantis" a lot. I think it is completely successful. It has plenty of his energetic soloing on it. It was one of my favorite new albums of the time period for me when it came out. The other Columbia solo albums are very interesting, at the very least. I am surprised at the negative reactions on this thread. Weather Report meant a lot to me in the 1970s and 1980s. Their live shows were consistently memorable to me. I was, and am, a big fan of Wayne's work in this Columbia era.

Thom, I really enjoy this BFT. It has some of the styles of jazz which I like best. It also seems to feature some recent recordings, which is something I am interested in learning about. Also, it is a great BFT in that sometimes I think I know who is playing, but cannot find any recording by them which is like the song you picked. So either you are fooling me about the artist, or have found a recording more obscure than what I know about. I am not good at all at identifying musicians on these BFTs, but here are my initial reactions anyway. 1. A jazz waltz, with an excellent tenor saxophonist, who knows his Stan Getz. But it just can't be Getz, not with some of the lower register passages here. 2. A great group. It sounds like a mainstream recording from the 1990--2011 period to me. The trumpet player has a really nice tone. Excellent bass solo. Really interesting piano solo. I have no idea who they are, but I want to know, and I want to buy this album. 3. What an exciting trumpet player! Who plays those plunger mute effects any more? And who plays only through a mouthpiece, as the trumpet player does at the end? Is this "St. James Infirmary"? I heard at least a hint of it at one point. This is a swinging, bluesy song. The drummer keeps up the swing but plays with a lot of appealing variety too. The bass player has a nice, rich, big tone. I love this. I think it is from some time in the last 20 years, which qualifies as the "recent era" to me. 4. I like this--the flute and guitar solos are appealing. The electric keyboard and drummer combine for some rather odd rhythms, choppy feeling. I really have no idea who would do this. 5. This is either McCoy Tyner or someone who sleeps with his records. It sounds like a 1970s album to me. The tenor saxophonist is very Coltrane influenced. But I thought I knew literally all of McCoy's solo output, and a lot of his recordings as a sideman, and I cannot find this in my collection anywhere. It is a real mystery to me. At first I thought it was Azar Lawrence on tenor saxophone, but when I played "Enlightenment" and "Atlantis" I was immediately struck by how Azar's tone is very different than the tenor saxophonist here. I give up, and am dying to know what this is. 6. A perky Latin tune, with a nice flute solo. At first I thought it might be Monty Alexander. Then the piano solo made me think it was Don Pullen. I checked all of my Don Pullen albums, and while some of them have flute players and some have Latin rhythms, this song is not on any of them. Again, I give up, and would really like to know who this is! 7. This is a real oddity to me. I do not know who the vocalists are. Who would combine music that leans to the avant garde with vocals like this? I have no idea. This is extremely interesting. 8. At first I thought that this was too close to a dirge, that the disc was coming to a dreary halt. But the song built and built into a very beautiful piece, just wonderful. The trombone player and tenor saxophonist both play quite beautiful solos. 9. This strikes me as a "recent" (again, to me that means 1990 or later) recording of a very hot small group. The trumpet player has a big tone, very distinctive, and is probably the group leader. Really good. I want to buy this, once I find out who it is. 10. I think that this is Pharoah Sanders, but cannot find an album with a vibes/piano/bass/drums group with him. The drummer sounds like he knows his Elvin Jones. This is either a mid to late 1960s recording on which Pharoah Sanders plays, or a group which is trying to achieve that type of sound, with success. I love this. 11. A beautiful ballad. The tenor saxophone solo is beautiful, and notable. The trombone solo is very nice. This is a compelling slower piece. 12. Who has ever played baritone saxophone so fast, so fluidly, with such an exhibition of chops? I wonder if it is James Carter. He would do something like this. I kept up with his albums for a while, but have fallen behind as he releases more and more under his name. 13. A compelling piece, with trumpet, a squeezebox type of instrument, and a bass player I really like. The bass player has that big, rich tone that used to be more common--I love the bass player's tone. The squeezebox does not sound like an accordian. I wonder if it is one of the South American instruments, such as the one used in Argentine tangos. 14. A rousing finish. These guys got A's in their Art Blakey classes at the university. A powerful swinging song, just great. So I know almost no one on this test, and hopefully others can fill in with correct guesses. I wanted to let you know Thom, how much I love this BFT.

It works now. The Threadgill interview (link in the comments) is also interesting.

I could not view his initial essay with that link.

Ah, those long awaited Horo reissues. I predict that in 2050, those of us still alive will be discussing Horo and when will the Horo albums see their first official reissue.

medjuck, I have read on another forum that two of its members thought that this album reminded them of Henry Threadgill. What do you think of that?

I agree that Herring is not an innovator and has not developed a creative stylistic breakthrough. He is a capable craftsman, and releases more listenable albums than some other capable craftsmen who are not particularly creative. Jazz has always had the solid sidemen, in every era. If you are OK with that, you may like Herring's albums for what they are. I don't think he deserves scorn, any more than many other regularly recorded saxophonists of the past 60 years who were not innovators. But if you come to his music with the thought that Coltrane/Hodges/Rollins/Ornette is the only standard to use when listening to a saxophone album, then he will surely fall very short. But then we would have about ten recorded jazz artists in every decade, if that was the standard.

I have his Folklore, Evidence, Dawnbird, American Experience, and Secret Love. All are quite good. They are all high quality mainstream albums with solid soloing and excellent groups.

I am in. I will need a disc. I am looking forward to this!

This topic was discussed at great length when Oscar Peterson passed away, and the discussion became unpleasant. A long time, well regarded member decided to leave the forum because of that discussion, and has never returned. I am specifically not going to participate in this thread because of that prior discussion.

I love Lewis' playing on this album: and on this one: I saw George Lewis live, in an unaccompanied solo performance, in the fall of 1978 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Eclipse Jazz was the student jazz organization. They had a series called Bright Moments, for avant garde jazz musicians, held in smaller spaces. (They also had a big name jazz musician series in the 2000 seat Hill Auditorium, and an annual multi-day jazz festival with big name jazz artists. It was really quite impressive to think back on). George Lewis was the first artist in the Bright Moments series for the 1978-79 school year. I remember that he mostly played synthesizers, in a minimalist fashion, laying his hands on them with a solemn look on his face. After a lot of that, he said, "oh my. I find that I feel like......swinging." He picked up his trombone and played an amazing solo trombone piece, which did, in fact, swing. Other artists who I saw in the Bright Moments series, in small rooms, included Dave Holland (solo bass); Old and New Dreams (Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell); James Newton and Anthony Davis; Roscoe Mitchell, solo alto saxophone; Jaki Byard, solo piano.

Dan, I am enjoying your mainstream jazz BFT very much. My utter lack of ability to recognize specific players has reared its ugly head, and I am not familiar with a single cut from my album collection--at least not that I can remember now. My lack of guessing is not due to a lack of enjoyment of your BFT. I realize that when someone puts an odd combination on a BFT, such as a ska/jazz combination with a distorted electric guitar solo in the middle, I can ramble on about the various styles involved which are not jazz, and players I know in them. I am still not guessing the jazz artists involved, but I can fill up space with uninformed blathering. It's more difficult to do that with an all mainstream BFT--I can't very well say, "oh, there's an alto saxophone, I don't know who's playing it, but Charlie Parker played the alto saxophone!" That seems too dumb to put forward. I will keep listening and if anything comes to me, I will post some guesses.

This is one great album, a very significant jazz release.

Aretha Franklin on "Live at Fillmore West" has lots of them for Ray Charles when he joins her onstage for "Spirit in the Dark." My favorite is "don't DO this to me, get down Ray!" Ray Charles, on his 1950s Atlantic recording, "Mess Around", shouts out exclamations in a fervent voice. Before his piano solo he shouts "Now let me have it there boy!" Before and during the tenor sax solo, he shouts, "Now you got it boy!.....YEAH!......Oh mess around!.......Go on mess around!......Mess around boy!" His tone of voice for these exclamations is great.

Bob Wills' interjections often dominated the songs. I love them. One of my favorites is on "Bubbles in My Beer." The vocalist describes how the rest of the crowd in the bar is dancing and having a good time, while he sits alone thinking of his lost love, nursing a beer. After one particularly depressing line, Bob chimes in with a very compassionate "Oh, that's too bad!" Also, when one of his saxophonists would play a solo, Bob would introduce them by commenting on their "golden saxophone". It was always a "golden saxophone". Wills went out of his way to state his sideman's name before virtually every solo, from "take it away, Leon!" to more elaborate statements such as "Haaawwwwwww! Now we'll hear from the big boy on guitar, Junior Barnard! Get it up high, Junior, then take it down low! Dirty, dirty! Haaawwwwwww!" His sidemen could not have been unknown to his audience.

It is fun to see Creed Bratton of The Office performing with the Grass Roots here.

The lack of mention of the Butterfield Blues Band's album on this To Tell the Truth show reminds me of something I read online about Michael Bloomfield. It was in one of the major music online forums, perhaps Blindman's Blues Forum. A member posted that he had worked at a factory owned by Michael Bloomfield's father during the 1960s. This was after Bloomfield had been in the Butterfield Blues Band, had played on Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" and was otherwise a rock legend. The member said that at the factory, the workers referred to Michael Bloomfield as "the kid with a combo". What we now see as so legendary was not always viewed as such, when it was happening.

According to the online site OVGuide, this show aired March 28, 1966, in season 9 of To Tell the Truth. Other musician contestants that year included Buffy St. Marie and Willie Ruff.

Chuck Nessa, If you are reading this thread, would you care to comment on something I have wondered about? Did Phillip Wilson see his time with the Butterfield Blues Band as strictly a money arrangement, or did he find anything musically satisfying about it?

That was my reaction. By the time I was buying albums, the Butterfield Blues Band was history, but he was a prominent enough figure throughout the 1970s and early 1980s that I think most poeple into music knew about him. For example, he was in The Band's "The Last Waltz" film as a featured performer, in 1978, and I remember that he was quite well received in the theaters in which I saw the film. He had the Better Days band in the mid-1970s which got written up favorably and often in Rolling Stone magazine. Based on the Rolling Stone reviews I went out and got the two Better Days albums as soon as they came out. There was the "Golden Butter" two record set on Elecktra, the best of the Butterfield Blues Band, which I saw in many college dorm rooms in the mid to late 1970s. And the Butterfield Blues Band had a long song on the Woodstock album (composed by drummer Phillip Wilson, as I recall). I can see that if you got into music in the 1980s as your entry point, that he may have been more of a historic figure by then. I am surprised that Orson Bean did not recognize Buttefield on sight. Orson Bean was hip. He knew jazz, and was a friend to jazz musicians. I wonder about the date when the show was aired. If it was aired before the first Butterfield Blues Band album was released, then even the musically aware probably would not have recognized him.

This type of Paul Butterfield appearance would never happen today, or for many years going back--a credible musician in a non-pop form would never be the subject of a popular network TV show, nor would "squares" from a previous generation give such a musician respect.

I wish that Down Beat would put out one of those Cover to Cover CD sets, with all of the content from all of the issues in digital form, like the ones for The New Yorker and Rolling Stone magazines. Then I could get rid of the 35 years of old issues I have in my basement. Jazz Times, the same thing.