felser

Baltin: Who are those artists for you that really best exemplify collaboration? Lesh: The basic inspiration for The Grateful Dead was the Miles Quartet with Coltrane or Trane's quintet from the early Sixties. So that was pretty much the inspiration for the way we approach our music. It was the careful exuberant freedom that they had, the way they listen to one another and how everybody is improvising all at the same time, there's nothing that's fixed. I heard a performance of Trane's Quintet in '62, in San Francisco. It totally transformed my life and my view of music, because it just kept evolving. It just kept changing and evolving and yet you always were aware wherever you were coming from. It was the finest thing I'd ever heard [chuckle]. And I grew up in the classic music scene, so I hadn't known how deeply improvised music could go and how powerful it could be and that really opened my eyes, my ears, my heart. Baltin: You're doing this festival in Chicago with Wilco. Do you see how that early inspiration from listening to the Trane Quintet or the Miles Quartet still influences you today? Lesh: Absolutely, it's like a fundamental building block of how I approach the music that I make. That was the transformative experience. And I've kind of tried to live up to that.

His albums after CTI aren't too hot either. They seem designed to feed his ego. I do like "Uptown Conversations" on Embryo, his first solo album, but prefer his CTI's to his Milestones, and his Blue Notes I find insufferably prissy.

'HIgh Energy' sounds good to me at this late date, and 'Gleam' is a really good live double LP.

I'm one of the exceptions. What I don't have is a large number of, say, Anthony Braxton or Lester Young albums on shelves. I don't get them either. And I wanted to get them, tried a few times decades apart.

1 – I like it and sounds like something I already own. Early 60’s with that calypso beat? 2 – Well done, but older style and more polite than what I really dig. 3 – “Milestones”. Nice trio version, hard to go wrong with that song! Sounds like Tommy Flanagan to me? Subsequent research says that if I’m right, it’s from this: https://www.discogs.com/release/11650362-The-Master-Trio-Featuring-Tommy-Flanagan-Ron-Carter-Tony-Williams-Milestones- which seems reasonable to me, especially in the case of the bass player. 4 – “Where or When” done by someone who listened to a whole lot of Coleman Hawkins. Lovely, but not something I’d seek out. 5 – Wow, I like this, especially the string arrangement! Looking forward to the reveal! Would love to add this to my shelves if I don’t have it there already. 6 – I like this. No ideas on who it is. 7 – Second “must have” for me. This is a killer track. Love the tenor player! Sounds like Pharoah Sanders, though I don’t think it’s him. 8 – Very interesting cut. Curious to know who it is, and what else he/they has/have done. Would like to have this on my shelves, and playing it for my grandson in a few years (he’s four now). This could end up being an expensive BFT for me! 9 – “Afro Blue” by someone who took Kenny Burrell’s style and extended it. Add this to the “must have” pile. Man, what a BFT! Loving the drums, really, loving all three instruments. 10 – Doesn’t work for me. I just don’t get into the “gospelish” styles of music, even though I do have strong Christian faith. Certainly well done for what it is. 11 – Yet another great track! Is it a Chico Hamilton cut from that late 50’s era? More research required. I would bet I already have this on the shelves, if not, yet another one to add! 12 – Nice cut, breezy. Likely a very well-known pianist leading the date. Joe Henderson on tenor? 13 – Lost on me. Pretty, though. 14 – Well outside my range. Incredible BFT, so well put together, thanks! Looking forward to the reveals, especially #’s 5,7,8,9,11. Thanks again!

I liked their initial design with the black & white photos, but when they moved off that, the covers didn't work.

Strange, I pre-ordered the CD from Amazon a long time ago, and just got shipping notice on it (delivery tomorrow). My pre-order price was/is $12.98.

Those Laws Atlantic's are strange albums, as are so many of the Atlantic jazz albums from the Joel Dorn era. Certainly "interesting", but not really successful. Though I do understand the desire to try something different at that poin. Much of the Atlantic Laws material was dreadfully over-produced (bad at it where CTI was good), and the quartet stuff had some poor choices of material. I do like this cut a lot (indeed, have never heard a bad version of this Corea classic), but IMO nothing else on those three albums comes close to it.

Love that cut! Originally on 'The Sugar Man', a CTI leftovers LP released as he was headed to Fantasy.

Favorites of mine for 50+ years. Miller Anderson rules!

+1

You and WebbCity need to grab slots!

I've been doing December for years, willing to stay with that if desired.

+1

If you're still not sure, ask Barry Mann.

I had AR speakers for about 20 years, then bought a pair of Klipsch Tangent 100 bookshelf speakers which I've had for 25 years, and have always been very happy with them. I have been using Sennheiser headphones for several decades (several iterations, I wear them out from constant use), consistently happy with them, and definitely notice the difference between them and other brands. I'm not an audiophile, and have 67 year old ears and a middle class financial base, but what I have sounds great to me.

No doubt Morris Levy did something criminal with it.

Events like that are sad. I saw Andrew Hill solo at the Walnut St. Theatre in Philly in the 70's, and less than 20 people showed up. Tragic and insulting. Juju at the Ethical Society in the 70's was also very sparsely attended from memory. Both times, the music was magnificent.

You're probably right. I'm in Philly, but haven't listened to commercial radio much in decades, and based my observation on the music I hear piped into stores and restaurants when I am shopping and eating, and on what I hear on Sirius/XM. Yeah, they didn't play the Ian song in Huntsville either. I lived in Cincinnati when the Dion song came out, and it was huge there.

May be that your local A.M. station chose not to play it, and the Friends of Distinction version made the Masakela version instantly obsolete for golden oldies formats. I didn't hear "Eve of Destruction" until a few years later, as my family lived in Alabama in 1965, and it seemingly got banned there, likely for the line "You talk of all the hate there is in red China, but turn around and look at Selma, Alabama". Not that it wasn't true... Agreed in retrospect, had no knowledge of him at the time apart from the song. That scenario actually seems to perfectly fit the criteria TTK set in the first post. As far as Jankowski in the USA, that cut is the only time he was ever on the radar of much of anyone in the USA pop or jazz worlds.

I LOVE the vocal version by the Friends of Distinction which went top 5 in 1969. They also had two other great hit singles, "Going in Circles" in '69 and "Love or Let Me Be Lonely" in '70. A more daring Fifth Dimension (and I like both groups a lot, I realize YMMV on both counts).

I can't verify, but this is on his Wikipedia page. Pretty decent company for a 10 year old, eh?: At the age of 10, DeFrancesco joined a band in Philadelphia that included jazz musicians Hank Mobley and Philly Joe Jones.

This went to #1 on the pop charts in 1968: This was huge and still sounds great almost 50 years later: And of course...

I love that Martino album.