Hot Ptah

For my mind, this is the ultimate version of that tune, and maybe the ultimate statement of Palmieri removing any doubt that might have remained that he was now his own man, free to be who and do whatever he damn well pleased. I still remember hearing Side One of this album for the first time (in either 75 or 76, and this was the last cut on that side) and feeling like I had no choice but to sit dawn, shut up, stay down, and just absorb this unbounded mass of LIFE that wasn't going anywhere except onward and upward stronger and faster, surer and truer than anything I had even thought about, real or imagined. And I'm told that Lalo Rodriguez was just a kid the, not even 20, and singing like that. It's enough to fuck up our head and make you a fan, both for life. And use the REAL Cover! I have merely listened to the 2 CD retrospective of Eddie Palmieri's career which was released a few years ago on Fania, and I realize that there is a whole world of releases by Palmieri which are essential and must be heard. I hope to be able to find copies. How did his earlier work pass me by for so long? I have heard several of his albums after 1990, and have seen him live in the past 10 years, but his albums from the 1960s through 1980s need to be investigated!

That is it. You found it! We hardly need a Reveal at the end of this thread, although I will provide one. I think that there are only two songs not identified, and the song title for the Johnny Otis song has not been stated.

I must confess that I had not anticipated that the Discussion Thread would take this turn, when I chose the song selections for this Blindfold Test.

By the way, #15 has been identified as Carla Bley--Ad Infinitum, from her album "Dinner Music". Spontooneous guessed in the first post on the thread that Roswell Rudd was the trombone soloist. I have always liked his mighty solo on this song.

It is not Arturo Sandoval on piano.

Glad you liked Track 10. Your guesses were not correct for it. It is one of my favorites on this BFT too. It is not Glenn Ferris on trombone on #15. You are the second person to know it was Eddie Palmieri on Track #13. Noj knew the song title.

The Carla Bley cut is from "Dinner Music". I thought that many people had that album, that it was a very common album to own, and that it would be immediately identified. I have always loved this photo on the back cover of the album: I too did not think that they were saying "Johnny Otis" at the end of that cut. I thought it was "oh de own ee", like a bebop nonsense thing. Only after the download link was posted did I hear "Johnny" for the first time and thought ooops, that one will be too easy. I agree with you about Newton. I wish he was putting out a new jazz album every year now, like he did in the 1980s. I miss his regular contributions.

It is from "On the Air 1937-38", in the Columbia Jazz Masterpieces CD series.

Thanks for those links!

WAY TO GO, NOJ!!!! THAT IS CORRECT!!! This is the one song that I thought that no one would identify. It is written by the Cuban trumpeter Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros, who plays the trumpet solo. Eddie Palmieri plays the piano solo. I first heard it on the recent Eddie Palmieri career retrospective anthology on Fania. The liner notes are interesting as they state that Eddie Palmieri would from time to time leave salsa music for the much less interesting genre of Latin jazz, before coming back to the real music, salsa. It is not said quite that bluntly, but almost. The notes state that within the Latin jazz genre, "Chocolate Ice Cream" is one of his best recordings. Noj, you have surprisingly wide tastes, rap, now this! A good friend of mine has connections with the Fania label, and he gave me a whole bunch of 'em so I was on a salsa/latin jazz kick for a bit. "Chocolate Ice Cream" is just sublime by my tastes, and has been in my Overall Favorites playlist for about a year. So good. I was useless at identifying any of the other tracks, so I read everyone's posts. I knew I'd heard #2 before, and I have this mountainous Sun Ra collection including the album this song is from that I haven't been able to spend all that much time with yet. Very enjoyable compilation, Hot Ptah. Thanks for putting it together. Noj - great, great move!!! I *should* have recognized it, or at least, I should have nailed chocolate's playing. (Guess I was right in saying it wasn't contemporary... but it doesn't have all the hallmarks of an NY tune - if you listen to Ray Barretto's from the same time period, for example, you'll hear something different.) I feel like this is "What's My Line?" or "To Tell the Truth." a terrific BFT so far, and a great panel. seeline, I have the Ray Barretto career anthology on Fania too. I think his music is grittier that Palmieri's, for lack of a better term. How would you describe the differences between them, and why "Chocolate Ice Cream" is not a typical New York tune of the time? Thanks for the nice comments about my Blindfold Test.

WAY TO GO, NOJ!!!! THAT IS CORRECT!!! This is the one song that I thought that no one would identify. It is written by the Cuban trumpeter Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros, who plays the trumpet solo. Eddie Palmieri plays the piano solo. I first heard it on the recent Eddie Palmieri career retrospective anthology on Fania. The liner notes are interesting as they state that Eddie Palmieri would from time to time leave salsa music for the much less interesting genre of Latin jazz, before coming back to the real music, salsa. It is not said quite that bluntly, but almost. The notes state that within the Latin jazz genre, "Chocolate Ice Cream" is one of his best recordings. Noj, you have surprisingly wide tastes, rap, now this!

It appears that we still have no clear identification of Tracks 3, 8, 10, 13 and 15. On track 4, we don't have a song title.

The John Kirby CD which I used for this cut is an ASV Living Era release, dated 1999. The address of the label is 1 Lochaline Street, London W6 9SJ.

I'm very surprised. And now that I know who it is, I can't let my statement stand - I can't bring myself to say that Ran Blake doesn't understand Monk's music. His essay on the Blue Note recordings alone proves otherwise. But I will say that, in my opinion, he made some unfortunate choices here. Among other things, he rhythmically decimated Monk's piece. I love Ran Blake, but I don't like this. Ran Blake's playing here is interesting to me too, because I read in Robin Kelley's Monk biography about how he was personally rather close to Monk and his family, and used to babysit daughter Barbara. He had an opportunity to learn more about Monk's music than just about any other pianist, and yet, this result is not entirely satisfying. I remember a thread on Ran Blake here at Organissimo where the general consensus was that he was a near deity, and I thought at the time that a more detailed discussion of his music might be in order, with dissenting opinions possible. ____________________________________________________________________________________ "5. Anitra's Dance, after an intro that threw me. It's a John Kirby sextet, or someone who copped the instrumentation and attitude. DING DING DING!!! WE HAVE A WINNER! CORRECT SONG TITLE AND ARTIST!!! It is interesting that you mentioned "or someone who copped the instrumentation and attitude" because Don Byron recorded a note for note rendition of this Kirby arrangement on his "Bug Music" album, over 50 years after the original recording. But this is the original, not the Byron." I posted this comment in response to Spontooneous' identification of this song. I played Bug Music this morning and to my surprise, Anitra's Dance is not on the album. I could have sworn that it was. I could hear Byron's version as I listened to the Kirby original. But I was wrong. Bug Music does have some songs by Kirby's group, played note for note, but not Anitra's Dance.

All other guesses are not correct.

No and no. We have had an answer to Prelude...

What about #13, seeline?

I am glad that you liked it so much, Allan. You got John Kirby right. Mabern is an interesting guess for #8, but is not correct. I have to say, all of your other guesses were not correct, just as my guesses never are correct in any BFT. You might want to go back and look at the other members' posts now, as some songs have been identified. You may be surprised at who is playing the "bloody lot of piano" on #7. You may have liked your first Sun Ra cut with #2! I am glad that you like #13. I do too. No one has come close to identifying it yet. Where's seeline, I bet she would know! The cutoff on #14 is explained in the posts above--it is the artist's own idea of how to present a series of live cuts. I have never liked it that way.

I have this track on Mos' Scocious: The Dr. John Anthology on Rhino. They say it's Lee Allen. I knew that, and that is why I emailed Louisiana Music Factory, because the musician credits for the song on Mos' Scocious do not look correct to me. Those credits omit the trumpet and conga players, for example. Also, there is that credit on the back of the Ace Records Story LP for Alvin "Red" Tyler. The sax breaks on "Sahara" do not sound like the Lee Allen solos I know from so many other New Orleans R&B songs. It could be Allen, but I find it not obvious. I'll compare it to some other Red Tyler tenor solos from that period and see what I think. I have also emailed Offbeat magazine this morning. I don't know if anyone will respond, but I think that if they felt motivated to find the answer, they could. I reminded them of my many years of subscribing by mail, so we will see if they respond. You are correct as to both albums. James Newton's "If Love" could, at one time, often be found in cut out bins, but it is an excellent album. It is his most mainstream jazz album. I wondered if anyone would identify this version of "Stolen Moments" as having been recorded by Frank Zappa's 1988 big band. "Broadway The Hard Way" is my least favorite of the three live albums released from that tour. I like "Make a Jazz Noise Here" the best, followed by "The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life". What you and another member have referred to as the abrupt transitions at the beginning and end of the song is unfortunately something that Zappa did a lot of with his live recordings in his later years, running them all together with no moment of silence between them, not even letting the last note fade before the next song began. This also occurs on his "You Can't Do That Onstage Anymore" series. I never liked that. I rank "Broadway The Hard Way" as my third favorite live album from the 1988 Zappa big band tour, because it is mostly topical vocal songs, about political matters which were current at the time. The other two albums have a good deal of improvisation and instrumental songs. So who is the trumpet soloist on Zappa's version of "Stolen Moments?" My copy of "If Love" came from a Half Price Books store in Indianapolis, about eight years before Half Price Books came to Kansas City. Really a lovely record. Michael Cain was on a lot of good sessions for a while, but he's fallen off my radar since. The disc was brought to us by the same company that flooded the market with all those cheap discs on the Laserlight label. Zappa's trumpetist was Walt Fowler, brother Bruce on trombone. Only five horns, but the band sounds bigger. Yes, you are correct. The trumpet player on the Zappa cut is Walt Fowler.

I have this track on Mos' Scocious: The Dr. John Anthology on Rhino. They say it's Lee Allen. I knew that, and that is why I emailed Louisiana Music Factory, because the musician credits for the song on Mos' Scocious do not look correct to me. Those credits omit the trumpet and conga players, for example. Also, there is that credit on the back of the Ace Records Story LP for Alvin "Red" Tyler. The sax breaks on "Sahara" do not sound like the Lee Allen solos I know from so many other New Orleans R&B songs. It could be Allen, but I find it not obvious.

Elvin Jones/Richard Davis--"Heavy Sounds" (Impulse)

You are correct as to both albums. James Newton's "If Love" could, at one time, often be found in cut out bins, but it is an excellent album. It is his most mainstream jazz album. I wondered if anyone would identify this version of "Stolen Moments" as having been recorded by Frank Zappa's 1988 big band. "Broadway The Hard Way" is my least favorite of the three live albums released from that tour. I like "Make a Jazz Noise Here" the best, followed by "The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life". What you and another member have referred to as the abrupt transitions at the beginning and end of the song is unfortunately something that Zappa did a lot of with his live recordings in his later years, running them all together with no moment of silence between them, not even letting the last note fade before the next song began. This also occurs on his "You Can't Do That Onstage Anymore" series. I never liked that. I rank "Broadway The Hard Way" as my third favorite live album from the 1988 Zappa big band tour, because it is mostly topical vocal songs, about political matters which were current at the time. The other two albums have a good deal of improvisation and instrumental songs. So who is the trumpet soloist on Zappa's version of "Stolen Moments?"

Your ability to identify obscure cuts is amazing to me.

Really perceptive comments on some of the songs where you did not make a specific guess!

I like your comments, very perceptive. You correctly identified the song titles of 8, 11, 12, 14 and 16. You are right that #5 has hints, actually more than hints, of classical music. I love your comment about #6, the sailors dancing with women. I think that you, and some others, will be surprised at who is playing "Stolen Moments" here.