felser

PM sent on Kenny Barron Trio - Green Chimneys (Criss Cross) $7 Kenny Barron Quartet - Invitation (Criss Cross) $7 John Hicks - Nightwind. An Erroll Garner Songbook (High Note) $5 Junko Onishi - Baroque (Verve) $4

Be sure to grab the "Louis Hayes - The Real Thing" CD, a 1977 Muse recording by the Shaw/Hayes group with Rene McLean, Ronnie Mathews, Stafford James, and Slide Hampton. A gem, and not included on the Mosaic, though it easily would have fit.

We're all crazy here, but musically and soundwise, the Columbia totally obsoletes the Mosaic. Packaging and sentimental value are a different matter. BTW, is everyone hip to the 1977 Muse/32jazz album Louis Hayes - The Real Thing? That's a Woody Shaw album in all but name (he and Hayes co-led that group, with Rene McLean, Ronnie Mathews, and Stafford James, the same core group as the Berliner Jazztage concert and even has Slide Hampton guesting), and a gem. Could have easily been fit onto the Mosaic, but wasn't. A shame.

I just picked this up to complete an order from jazzmessengers.com (they're the real dirty bastids, with the free shipping on 60eu orders), and am blown away by it. Expected to like it, but not like this. As enjoyable to me as any trio set I have ever heard, and I never even thought of myself as a huge Cables guy. His writing on this is outstanding. Highly recommended.

But I don't see their Muse recordings as highlights of either of their careers. Something like a Steeplechase Walton would be mighty to behold. I generally have preferred Barron as a sideman, though "Sunset to Dawn" on Muse is pretty great, but "Peruvian Blue" is nothing special, and "Lucifer" is pretty awful.

Charles Earland, though it will never happen. Carlos Garnett would make a nice Select if they still were doing those. The aforementioned Jordan/Walton, though the Jordan sets were frustratingly inconsistent, in some cases because of overreach - Muse albums often sounded underrehearsed when they wer trying to accomplish something big. OTOH, Muse put out a lot of stuff in the 70's and early 80's that maybe never would have seen the light of day otherwise.

Yes, was gonna comment on the same. The pre-Columbia stuff is invigorating, but I find the post-Columbia Muse stuff to be pretty "by-the-numbers" and the most disappointing of Shaw's career. Not that it's bad, but it's not compelling. I own it all, but never pull it out to listen to any more (the only Shaw that is true of for me). The Elektra-Musician dates do a lot more for me, as does the posthumous live stuff on High Note. I also agree with Rooster Ties on how magnificent the Berliner Jazztage material is, my favorite of his.

That's a GREAT album. No, it is not typical of the BNLA series.

It was one thing in the early days when the sets were until then unavailable on CD Blue Notes, such as the Jackie McLean, Andrew Hill, etc. It's another thing when the sets are things I would not have considered essential to my listening joy. They can still pump up the excitement in me when the material is right, like with the Mingus set, but most of what they come out with these days isn't anything I was dreaming of.

DL, thanks! And I like your guidelines. I have wooden ears, but lots of opinions!

What does Sonny Fortune sound like on that one?

PM sent on Howard McGhee - Dusty Blue (Betlehem) remastered 1999 reissue, a few scratches & nicks, mostly outside the playing area $5 William Parker & The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra - Raincoat in the River (Eremite) digipak $6

I eventually was able to get a new Clifford Brown set for just under $10/disc. Still looking for the right deal on the Montgomery and now this Vaughan.

I have the first couple of seasons at home. They have held up remarkably well, brilliant stuff.

PM sent on Ray Bryant - Ray Bryant Trio (Prestige/OJC) 2010 reissue with 1993 remastering, $3 Oliver Nelson/King Curtis/Jimmy Forrest - Soul Battle (Prestige/OJC) $6

Sounds very cool. Best of luck on the project, and please let us know how it comes along.

Workig my way through the big "Jazz on Vogue" box, and ran into Buzz Gardner's bop trumpet playing on the Rene Thomas set (and other places in the box, I believe). Wondered if it was the same Buzz Gardner who played (along with his brother Bunk) with Frank Zappa in the late 60's and on Tim Buckley's unhinged "Starsailor" album (talk about your artistic suicide) . Sure enough. That's quite a well-rounded discography for a trumpeter.

Me too. My college library had the 3 LP set "the Great Jazz Concert of Charles Mingus", and I had never heard anything like that, and I became enamored of Dolphy and Jordan right then. I was 18, a freshman in college. That is still a magical recording for me, and I was thrilled when it finally came out on CD a few years ago.

I have a few CD's by her I have stumbled into over the years, and she is really good.

I have a more limited window of love on Jordan. To my ears, he really found his voice playing with Mingus in 64-65. And perfected it in the Magic Triangle group with Walton/Jones/Higgins. I really like both of the Strata-East albums, especially 'Glass Bead Games", and the Steeplechase albums, whether under his name or Walton's. The Muse albums (except for the live one) sound very underrehearsed to me, as so many on that label do. And I found his playing to be very inconsistent after the mid-70's. But I will always have room for and greatly appreciate his peak mid-60's to mid-70's work, and do own the albums he did before that, though I have not kept the ones he did after that.

Montreux may be my favorite of his also.

DL for ol' Wooden Ears.

I like it. I like almost everything Hutcherson did on Blue Note during that period, and I can't say that about any other artists signed to the label during that time. The Horace Silver ("Silver 'n" series), Lou Donaldson, and of course Donald Byrd stuff from then I find dreadful.

I own and am very pleased with the Abrams, Freeman - Morning Prayer, Sullivan, Bonner, Curson and both Dickerson titles. I'm also familiar with the Barron and Fortune, and they are also pretty good.

curious as to what that means. he was still in his 40s and playing his butt off! I haven't heard his Black Jazz recordings in a number of years, did revisit the Muse recordings recently, and they were underwhelming. I remember the Black Jazz sides being much better, but I don't remember them giving me any additional insights into Bishop - that's what I mean by late in the game - he was already pretty well-defined by his earlier recordings. By all means, if you really like Bishop's playing, go for the Black Jazz sides (indeed, every record ever released by that label has merit, and I owned every one of them at one point thanks to Third Street Jazz selling many of them as 99 cent cutouts). But they weren't landmarks the way those three Doug & Jean Carn albums were. I go under the assumption that people have a limited amount of $ to spend, and can't own every worthy album, especially at Japanese import prices. I know I can't.