felser

...and I'll take it next, even if I don't intend to keep it either. Then who's next after me?? Maybe we should just chip in and have an Organissimo board lending library!

Email sent on the Dennis Wilson, which I would like to hear even if I don't keep it.

We're trying to make a linear progression of Benson's work in the 60's-70', starting at point A and ending at point B or C (depending on if you think point A is jazz or pop), but the reality isn't so simple, either in terms of genre or quality. The Prestige and the Columbia's are pleasant enough genre exercises, but not that big a deal. I think he'd be pretty forgotten by now if that was it. The Verve's to me were poorly planned and executed sell-out's, far inferior to the early Warner Brothers sides. The CTI's contained some work which was the highlight of his career. To me, 'Beyond The Blue Horizon' is the greatest jazz guitar album ever made. By anyone. 'White Rabbit' and some of the other titles are also pretty terrific. But the CTI stuff started poorly as an extension of the Verve stuff, and ended poorly with 'Good King Bad' and Taylor's disastrous decision to overdub the Carnegie Hall stuff. 'Breezin' was a breath of fresh air, and only has two vocal cuts, less than the Verve's did, I think. Even as late as 'Live in L.A', there was still plenty of enjoyable music and plenty of fine guitar solos, although they weren't as fine as on his primo CTI titles. After that, it went bad. But something as late as "The World is a Ghetto" on 'In Flight' brings me a lot more enjoyment than anything as early as the Columbia's, which have always sounded awfully generic to me (and I've never "gotten" Lonnie Smith). Benson being true to himself doesn't neatly categorize, and that's fine with me (or was through the end of the 70's. His recordings since have been pretty useless to my ears).

PM sent on Vandermark 5 - Alchemia (12 disc box set, like new condition) -- $75

It is indeed! I was listening to it a week or so ago. Fabuloso! And just fits onto a single CD. The only complaint I have with the album is the LP packaging, which is dire, as well as being horrid. I suspect I'd welcome a CD, simply to not have to fiddle with the packaging. MG I'll give a third on the Masekela, which was indeed a double album. Contains what I remember being the definitive version of Larry Willis's great "Inner Crisis". I've been waiting for this one to come to CD. Getz's 'Sweet Rain', as mentioned in other threads, is great. My favorite Getz album of all time, period.

When teamed w/Stepney, oh hell yeah. The shit's all over the map, from psychedelic doo-wop to borderline wack vocal jazz to deep grit South((ern) (Side)) Soul to Power Funk, but its always got them voices, and them voices is good. This is what them that only know their music as Popular & Soulful nowadays call "grown folks music" in the best possible way. Yeah, Marvin Junior could deliver the goods! They even made "Love is Blue" soulful and heartfelt and cutting edge!

When teamed w/Stepney, oh hell yeah. The shit's all over the map, from psychedelic doo-wop to borderline wack vocal jazz to deep grit South((ern) (Side)) Soul to Power Funk, but its always got them voices, and them voices is good. This is what them that only know their music as Popular & Soulful nowadays call "grown folks music" in the best possible way. This seems like the right place to put in a plug for the three early 70's Terry Callier Cadet albums with Stepney - "Occasional Rain", "What Color Is Love", and "I Just Can't Help Myself". "Dancing Girl" from "What Color Is Love" (or most any of the best of's) is as stunning a piece of music as you will come across, and defies non-hyphenated categorization, as does most of Callier's music (is "folk-jazz-soul" helpful?). "Ordinary Joe", from "Occasional Rain" is a great anthem. Just a little bit freer than I indeed! Stepney also did some really interesting work with the Rotary Connection (Minnie Riperton was a member) prior to his work with Callier and at roughly the same time as his work with the Dells, though it didn't hit the amazing highs of the Callier work, which at it's best is a landmark in music.

The albums that sparked this thread, 'Soul Call' and 'The Tender Gender' were recorded in '64 and '66 respectively, and have a different feel to them than his 50's work. That's what caught me by surprise when I heard them. I find Burrell's 50's and ealry 60's work to be solid and dependable (many of the sessions were very "by the book", though admittedly it's a great book), but not overly exciting. I find much of his work since the late 70's to be pretty boring, though some of it holds up very well. But for me, he hit a peak in the mid 60's and produced his most rewarding sessions as a leader, both conceptually and playing-wise. Much of it stretched into areas his earlier and later playing never dared to (at least to my ears).

"Tender Gender" along with one other album was released on CD as "Soulero", which I think is also OOP, but sometimes shows up on eBay. Actually, 'Soulero' is 'Tender Gender' with only half of another album, the bad (non title-suite) half of 'Ode to 52nd St.'. Running time is like 54 minutes. Another one of those strange, screwed-up MCA reissues of some classic jazz stuff that were inflicted on us in the early-mid 90's.

I give an additional strong on both Soul Call and Tender Gender. Both proved to be well beyond what I expected of them based on the personnel, and rank as two of my favorite Burrell's. Mid 60's was definitely a peak period for Burrell.

I have the 1994 Blue Note CD of Bob Brookmeyer/Bill Evans - The Ivory Hunters. The CD has the booklet, but not the tray card. If someone would be willing to send me a scan of the traycard (john.felser@verizon.net), it would be much appreciated! thx

Up with additions and edits.

Organissimo is of course one of a kind as a community, but is anyone aware of anything vaguely similar which discusses, trades CD's etc. for 60's/70's rock? Any recommendations? Thx.

PM sent on Jackson/Brown/Roker/Pass ALL TOO SOON: THE ELLINGTON ALBUM (Pablo/OJC) Jackson/Brown/Roker/Pass QUADRANT (Pablo/OJC) Somebody needs to grab that Sonny Criss title - it's spectacular, written and arranged by Horace Tapscott.

If she is a real individual, rather than a staff of customer service reps hiding behind one name to create the illusion of a cozy mom 'n' pop operation, then I hope she has good benefits. They're moving 400,000 pieces a year just through Amazon, so if she's one person handling all of that, I want to hire her! Caiman remains one of my top choices on Amazon Marketplace, along with ImportCDs. I find both utterly dependable for anything in print, and have not had any delivery failures from either in a long time (over a year). And I order a LOT of CD's from them.

Well, I guess that's one take on it - certainly not mine. It's deader than a doornail and has been for at least 20 years if not 30. When I see someone like Nick Cave being offered up as proof that rock is alive and vital, all I can do is cover my ears and think "huh?". I think I agree with the 50 years answer, and with the one that says something truly new and innovative needs to come along, and that it may or may not be called "rock".

Must be nice to have 1 - a brick and mortar to buy them at 2 - a lunch break

Well that's a pretty snotty response! As far as digging deep, I actually own and have heard more rock albums/CD's than jazz albums/CD's. How deep do you want to go late 60's/early 70's? H.P. Lovecraft deep? Hampton Grease Band deep? Frumious Bandersnatch deep? I can keep up with you. As far as digging that deep today, my experiences are that it isn't anywhere near worth it, and I defer to the younger generation, will stay at the Beth Orton level and see what catches my ear from the radio. Not meant to be hostile, but hopefully to recast your view on this somewhat.

Not sure about that. It's been 44 years since the Beatles hit in 1964. 44 years before that was 1920. Don't know that our parents/grandparents looked back as fiercely on Al Jolson or Bing Crosby or whatever as my generation does on the classic rock era. I agree with the comment that rock music has been in a 35 year decline. Some touchstones: 1 - the death of 60's idealism (think Charles Manson and Altamont) and the ascendancy of Cocaine in the rock world, which destroyed the populist aspects of the rock experience. Granted, much of the 60's idealism was a fairy tale, but it was a fairy tale with an awesome soundtrack. 2 - the firing of Clive Davis by Columbia. They were a very daring company in the late 60's, as was Warner/Reprise. A lot of great albums got made then by those companies which would not be today 3 - the ascendancy of the singer/songwriters and country rock groups on one hand and the hard rock/heavy metal groups on the other, which polarized rock music and made other styles a niche. 4 - The AOR format, which eliminated the free-form FM format on one hand and trivialized AM top 40 playlists on the other hand. 5 - The elimination of the ability of independant labels to break new music regionally and have it go national based on merit. 6 - Punk and Disco, which seemed at the time to immediately turn everything before it into dinasours. Granted, a lot of it had become fossilized prior to that, opening the doors for Punk and Disco. 7 - MTV was damaging on one hand, because the visuals became more important than the music in a lot of ways, and because it made it even more impossible for niche/local music to ascend to national status. On the other hand, there was a return to a focus on individual songs rather than albums for a brief time, and I would argue that the early-mid 80's were by far the strongest pop period of the last 35 years, even though much of the production sounds dated now. The writing was stronger than it had been in some time, and much much stronger than it has been since then. But MTV eventually led to the Britney's and Xtina's, via Madonna. Madonna had much musical merit at time, but that seems but a small part of her legacy, and much of the rest of that legacy has been pretty damaging on a lot of levels. 8 - Rap, while some has merit, further dumbed down a lot of musical values in many cases. I have to smile here, as my parents would say the same about rock, but there it is. 9 - There is still some good music to be heard on adult alternative rock stations (we have one of the best in the country, WXPN, here in Philly. David Dye's World Cafe originates from WXPN), but even there, the format is more rigid than we might wish, though a lot looser than on "for profit" commercial stations. 10 - When's that last time there was really something "new" of great value in music to draw the masses? Also, when's the last time a group seemed to grab the spirit of the populace the way groups like U2 or Big Country did in the 80's, and so many did in the 60's? Just some ramblings from a 53 year old on his lunch break, this is by necessity overly simplistic, but maybe will raise some good discussion points.

Can anyone comment on the Klaus Doldinger? How good is it?

PM sent on: Chris Potter Song for Anyone Sunny Murray We are not at the Opera(Duet with Sabir Mateen) Tony Williams Neptune

PM sent on the Alexander/Herring, Rich Perry, and the Trio of Doom. My last trade with Fab ended up going very well.

Well that's a first!

I believe I have 17, and I count another five that I have had at one time or another but have sent on to new homes. The Getz Dynasty session is great, and I'm really glad to see it on there. Rene Thomas, Eddie Louiss, a drummer named Bernard Lubat, wonderful stuff and totally unlike anything else in his catalog. This set, I think from a Woolworth's cutout bin when I was in college, was my introduction to Louiss and Thomas, and the first Getz I ever actually owned. Louiss is the star of the show in many ways, though Getz and Thomas both shine.

Hi Actually I'm not to keen on The Muir Woods CD. I play it very seldom. For me it's not really GD but more like an experiment.... /Shaft Could you give us a little more detail? Does George improvise on Muir Woods? Are the strings used in an ambitious way, or more just for background color? What is is about Muir Woods that does not work in your view? Hi again, Strings are used very ambitious way. It is in parts almost "classical" music - kind of "Arty". Some parts are more piano-driven and more jazzy, but I like GD when it swings and make me wanna move, tap my foot etc. When I want to hear classical I put on Beethoven. Here is a link to Amazon. It can be optained for under $3 so if interested please don't hesitate. Muir Woods on Amazon /Shaft Thanks for the information. 1 - I Like Muir Woods a LOT, but don't think funky GD - it isn't. But it does show his chops as a pianist and is a good listen start to finish. 2 - I agree with the Zawinul criticisms. From Black Market on, I found him largely unlistenable, and I understand the childre singing in native tongue reference and especially don't like that sound. 3 - Jim A., the Duke box is available through Caiman on Amazon Marketplace for a lot less than what Dusty Groove is charging, if I remember correctly. I ordered it earlier today for $41.85 + $2.98 shipping. 4 - Jim S., these Duke albums have a rich harmonic palate and are rife with colorful keyboard textures. Whatever Zappa influence that is there is the "Waka Jawaka" and "Grand Wazoo" jazzy good-Frank, not the punk bad-Frank you wanted to send to his room. 5 - Hello "Helen". I recognized you by your drummer discussion. Always fussing about drummers! You're spot on about Zawinul. 6 - I don't find Duke from the period in question really comparable to Zawinul or Hancock, rather into something very different altogether, and quite well done and valuable, even 35 years later.