Hot Ptah

That was just great. Thanks, Larry.

My secretary at work, who is over age 65, refuses to believe that email addresses are not case-sensitive, even though several people have told her that. I can hear her from my desk laboriously spelling out email addresses to people on the telephone, making a huge point of which letters are capital and which are small. There is no way to stop her believing this.

Bob's son is involved in the business. Is there any reason to think that he will not continue it?

In case you can't see it well, the title of the album is "Eighteen Pounds of Unclean Chitlins and Other Greasy Blues Specialties"

McCoy Tyner played a limited amount of harpsichord, and celeste, on his "Trident" album (a trio date with Ron Carter and Elvin Jones). It all sounded good to me.

You can still do it through their free monthly magazine/catalog.

Well, no wonder I could not identify anything, although I have the albums for #7 and 8. I have not listened to them in a while though. There are many albums new to me here which I want to go out and get now. The Leo Smith/Blackwell album contains some of my favorite Leo Smith playing ever, already, just from the one cut you provided for us. I can't believe that I was so confident that one of the two tenor saxophonists on #9 was Dexter Gordon, from the thrown-in quote, but then neither one of them is Dexter Gordon! What you did with #1 was great, to pull it from a non-album source. Thanks for a very intriguing test.

As there was some discussion back and forth on the Goldberg Variations recordings by Gould and Perahia, I thought it might be of some interest how they are rated in the 2011 edition of the Gramophone Classical Music Guide book. Many different performer's versions of the Goldberg Variations are rated, and the two with the very highest ratings are the Perahia and Gould. In fact, both Perahia's recording and Gould's recording are among the few recordings of any work by any performer of any composer, to get the Gramophone "super-duper symbol" (I forget what it is, exactly), which means that they are above even the highest number of diamonds which Gramophone awards, and that Gramophone considers it to be an incredibly great recording. The narrative descriptions for both the Perahia and the Gould recordings contain praise so great that it approaches hyperbole for both. So, perhaps one can dismiss Gramophone, but I thought it might be interesting that a commonly used guide to classical music rated both recordings so highly.

The times that I saw Grappelli live, he was always quite compelling as a soloist, I thought. I really like this album: I think that Grappelli fits in well with Eddy Louiss' organ and Kenny Clarke's drumming on this album. I also like this album, and it may be a surprise to some as to how well Grappelli holds his own with Ponty. This is a blowing session, not a fusion excursion:

I need a disc. I will send you a PM. I am really looking forward to your BFT, Dan!

Acker Bilk ?!? Hopefully it was 'Blue Acker' and 'Horn of Plenty' (both collaborations with Stan Tracey) and not 'Stranger On The Shore'. I like 'Stranger on the Shore'. One of my most treasured non-commercial tapes is a 45 minute jam between Jimi and Acker on that very tune. Apparently Jimi expressed a desire to move towards Trad just before he died. He was seen eyeing up banjos on Denmark Street. Many have speculated on what direction Hendrix would have taken, if he had lived. This prediction is as valid as any I have read.

“Jimi would buy records out of curiosity,” Kathy said. “Often he’d go through the record racks, look at something for a moment, and buy it. Then he’d listen to it once and never play it again.” Too bad Hendrix didn't live until this era of online music forums--he would have fit right in.

I find it remarkable that Sonny Rollins had never heard the recording of Coleman Hawkins' "Picasso" in its entirety.

One of the greatest used music stores in Kansas City history was Recycled Sounds. The staff cut out perfectly, these illustrations of Billy Cobham and George Duke from the album cover, including the hands, and glued them to the cash register. You had to look at them with every purchase, for years.

I have not read any of the discussion yet, so here are my uninformed thoughts on this Blindfold Test. This has been a very enjoyable Blindfold Test for me. Almost all of the songs rank high on the sheer enjoyment scale. I know none of this music, and can't identify any of the musicians. It will be very interesting to read the Reveal and find out who recorded these enjoyable cuts. 1. This sounds like an older recording, from the 1940s perhaps. The drummer is playing what would have been an unusual, distinctive rhythm for that time. How did they get his drums to sound like that? The pianist is unique and distinctive for the 1940s. I have no idea who it is, but it is a very enjoyable cut to listen to. 2. I can't identify the musicians, but it sounds like they could be associated with the AACM. At one moment I thought that this could be the Art Ensemble of Chicago, but by the end of the song I no longer thought so. I enjoyed this very much. 3. As I was listening, I was thinking, this is not Don Cherry, as the trumpet player does not have his distinctive sound, but this music could not have existed without Don Cherry's contributions to the Ornette Coleman group in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I really like the trumpet player a great deal, and want to find out who he is. The drummer has a strong personal voice. I am miserable at identifying musicians, and can't do so once again here. 4. At first I thought that this might be very early Sun Ra. The beginning of this song has that feel to it, from the somewhat low tech sound to the arrangement. But I have found other music from the 1950s which had that feeling, that "color" to it, which was not Sun Ra. It's as if there was something in the air which distinctive minded composers and arrangers were picking up on back then. The piano solo does not sound like 1950s Sun Ra. So I have no idea who it is, but this is very interesting to me. 5. Wow, I have no idea at all on this one. The head is so unusual, so start/stop, jerky. The solos are distinctive, but I don't know the players. Very interesting. 6. Another intriguing song. Who would combine the funky drumming with such a unique reed solo, and an attractive head? I have no idea, but I want to know. 7. Here is where your Blindfold Test seems to start featuring low toned reed players, which I like. I have no idea who this is, but the reed player and the pianist both play quite beautifully. 8. The low reed player sounds like David Murray to me, but I don't know this recording. It is either David Murray or someone who either influenced him or was influenced by him. The bassist is excellent, but I can't place him by his sound. 9. This one has me stumped. As this is a Blindfold Test, this should be tricky in some way, so the obvious choices like Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, or Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, can't be right. Toward the end one of the tenor sax players threw in a quote, out of the blue, in the way that Dexter Gordon used to do. So I think one of the players is Dexter. However, I can't find this song on any of my 1940s Dexter albums. This is such wonderful stuff, just great! 10. Another low reed player. It reminds me of James Carter at times, such as a 1996 live appearance by him which I enjoyed. The guitarist started out sounding like Jim Hall, but stretched out in a way that Hall wouldn't do. 11. This one is fascinating to me. I like jazz compositions which are a little more ambitious, where the song is more unusual than the ordinary song forms. The soloists are also very distinctive. I have no idea, but I want to know. 12. The vibes player has such a lyrical quality to his tone. I don't know who that is. The tenor sax player is very enjoyable too, and I can't identify him. 13. Very lyrical piano. I do not know this pianist's personal voice. He or she is not familar to me. This is beautiful.

Sun Ra

You say that one reason for leaving is that you have nothing new to say about jazz. Well, if that was the guiding criterion for everyone, there would be very few members left. The board would probably shut down for lack of participants. Don't sell yourself short, is what I am trying to say.

Shawn, I am sorry to read about your personal situation, and hope that you can find a solution. I also hope that despite your post today, that you feel comfortable coming back any time, including soon, to post again. I stopped posting here for a while once, but found it was "in my blood", and that I felt like doing it again after a time. I am sure that no one would find it odd if you suddenly just started posting again despite your announcement, and that they would only be welcoming.

It was a really nice lunch. Ann is a super nice person, and easily the spouse with the most patience for arcane jazz discussions, of any spouses I have ever met. It was very interesting to hear her stories of how she took photos for Nessa Records album covers. I was amazed to find out during the lunch that Chuck and I were both sitting in the same room at Mills Hall in the Humanities Building at the University of Wisconsin in 1981 for a Roscoe Mitchell performance. I wish that we could all sit in your basement and listen to gems from your collection too, Chuck! Lucky for Ann that you are physically far enough away that this is not going to occur on a several times a week basis. I hope that you and Ann come to Kansas City again, so that we can get together again.

Thanks for the photo of Harold "Geezil" Minerve, a player who deserves greater recognition. I always wondered if the woman in Richard Davis' jazz history class was really Minerve's girlfriend, until one evening when she was with us at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago, to see Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy came up to our table between sets and told her that he had Harold's pipe, that Harold had left it behind when they were playing chess.

Thanks for this story, Chuck! Harold Minerve's girlfriend was in Richard Davis' jazz history class with us during Richard's first year in Madison, and she told us about the extent to which Paul Gonsalves was prone to missing concerts and other things in those early 1970s years--so your story is especially interesting to me.

Now I really am offended! Would you feel better if I think of you as "a seemingly above average, if not obviously great, mind"?

I think it's the kind that Bob Feller threw.

I regret very much that I did not arrive in Madison until two years later! Why the quote marks around master classes?

Was that during his two week stay in Madison in the spring of 1972?