felser

Ruth Naomi Floyd and Renewal at Cheyney State University in West Chester, PA, Dudley Center for the Arts, 7:30 PM. See Doug Ramsey's review of her latest album below her website URL. http://www.contourrecords.com/Default.asp? Ruth Naomi Floyd, Root to the Fruit (Contour). Ms. Floyd is a Philadelphia singer whose jazz connections and finely tuned musicianship are as organic to her art as are her Christian convictions. In her fifth album, she leads ten musicians including saxophonist Gary Thomas, drummer Ralph Peterson, bassist Tyrone Brown and the incredible flutist James Newton. Songs like "Mere Breath" and "The Bottle of Tears" disclose her as a solid composer and lyricist whose work holds up well in the company of pieces by Randy Weston, Mary Lou Williams and Antonín Dvoøák. The control, phrasing and inflections of her creamy mezzo-soprano voice make Ms. Floyd one of the most compelling singers of the day, regardless of idiom. ---By Doug Ramsey, November 22, 2006 for http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/. Mr. Ramsey is the author of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmondand Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He has written regularly for Jazz Times since 1975.

The Shepp was pretty useless, though, since the major cuts were available as bonus cuts on 'The Way Ahead' CD. Better if it would have been 'Things Have Got to Change' (impossible to find on CD now), or at least 'For Losers' or 'The Magic of Ju-Ju' (both pricey imports, which I did shell out for). The couple of short stray tracks from Kwanza could have been placed as bonus cuts on these.

And there are excellent remasters of them on the "Essential" 2CD set which came out several months ago.

Check out deepdiscount on some of those Hip-oSelect releases. Available much cheaper than from the official website, and free shipping. I got the David Ruffin Vol. 1, Eddie Kendricks Vol. 1, Four Tops Lost and Found, and the Martha and the Vandella's Lost and Found sets for $32.78 total each, they're $39.95 + shipping from the official Hip-oSelect web site. Wish I had waited and bought the Motown singles sets that way, would have about $150 extra in my pocket right now.

I've never even heard of this! Sounds awesome. Please be sure to let us know when/where it's available.

Me too.

Good luck there, too. the small print in their Sunday ad said "minimum two per store", so unless you're one of the first two, you won't see that price either. Circuit City is even worse on that particular ploy. DeepDiscount and Amazon are both very expensive relative to list price on this one, so I may be waiting for awhile on this. CDUniverse is the only tempting price ($49.34).

The site claims they don't have $40 sets in stock. I'd be willing to pay $40.

Me too. I'm going to go to Better Business Bureay if they don't do something good. I'm willing to pay the $39.99, but not willing to be just jerked around and shut out.

Boy is that dumb. Why wouldn't they put them as bonus cuts on 'Stand'? Guess I'll need to keep my 'Essential' set.

The cooperative jazz-gospel group Renewal will be performing in a free show at Cheyney State University in West Chester on Friday, April 13, at 7:30 PM, at the Dudley Center for the Performing Arts. The members of the group include pianist Bill Edgar and singer Ruth Naomi Floyd. Ruth has five CD's out on Contour Records (www.contourrecords.com) and has performed in concert in the past at the Painted Bride Art Center and the Ethical Society. Personnel on her latest CD include James Weidman (her musical director), Gary Thomas, James Newton, Tyrone Brown, Ralph Peterson, and others. Past personnel on her CD's and live groups have also included Julian Joseph, Bryan Carrott (the best vibes player in the world IMO, never properly captured on CD), Bobby Zankel, T.K. Blue, Terri Lyne Carrington, Craig Handy, Uri Caine, and Charles Fambrough. She is an amazing singer, the best out there to me. She is also, incidentally, my wife's old roomate from when we were dating, so I come with serious biases, but also trust my ears. Scott Yanow is as enomored of Ruth's singing as I am (see his review in AMG). In the spirit of full disclosure, I will let you know that there will no doubt be a strong faith element in the show, in case you consider that a bad thing (I'm thankful for it - find it incredibly uplifting), but the music will no doubt be outstanding. Ruth and her producer, Keith McKinley, turned down a contract offer from Polygram and interest from DIW in the early 90's to retain artistic control over Ruth's music - Polygram and DIW loved the music, wanted the lyrics watered down for mass consumption. Felser and Mrs. Felser (and hopefully our daughter Zakiyyah) will definitely be there. Let me know if you have any interest in attending. Hope to see some of you. We could also meet for dinner beforehand if interested in that.

OK, I'll start a potential firestorm here. If anyone owns the Grant Green/Sonny Clark Mosaic box (sold mine off many years ago when the 2CD set came out on Blue Note proper), do the math and you'll see that it all would have easily fit onto three CD's instead of being maxed out to four. I noticed the Jarrett being able to fit onto one disc back when I got it, but I guess Columbia wanted to pocket a little extra coin on it, and the set was so well done in the reissue and so inexpensive that I never really worried about it.

I'm reminded of Zoot Sims' quote about Getz: "Stan's a great bunch of guys."

The first Jarrett I ever heard and ever owned. I had so little money back then as a college kid, and the Columbia 2 LP sets for the price of one were very attractive to me. Very well rounded set, you sort of get all the Keith Jarrett's in one on this. Definitely worth owning. From memory, the 2-CD reissue sounds great.

Very good music, but very bad theology. PM sent inquiring details on the Lorez Alexandria.

Allen, what's THAT all about? Hope it's only because you have remastered individual CD's of all the sessions and wanted this to read the book, or something. Some of the greatest music in the history of the planet is in this box!

Email sent on John Fahey CD.

PM sent on these: Don Braden, The Open Road (Doubletime) $8 Joe Cohn, Two Funky People (Doubletime) $6 Kenny Drew, Solo-Duo (Storyville) $9 Kenny Drew, At The Brewhouse (Storyville) $9 Billy Pierce, Give and Take (Sunnyside) $6 Billy Pierce, Equilateral (Sunnyside) $6

PM sent on the following: Eric Alexander Quintet featuring Cecil Payne, Two of a Kind (Criss Cross) $8 Jimmy Bruno Trio with Bobby Watson, Live at Birdland (Concord) $7 Jazz Crusaders, Freedom Sound (Pacific Jazz) $6 Harold Johnson, House on Elm Street $7

I have Six on now and it sounds great - the live stuff especially is night and day from the previous releases of this. Will play Seven next. Deep Discount CD messed up and didn't send me 5, so I won't get it for awhile, but will report through how it sounds when I do. BTW, re: Six - has there ever been a more purely exciting piece of music than "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album"? (rhetorical question, folks) Seven sounds pretty great too, big upgrade. Four is the most stunning to me, though.

I have Six on now and it sounds great - the live stuff especially is night and day from the previous releases of this. Will play Seven next. Deep Discount CD messed up and didn't send me 5, so I won't get it for awhile, but will report through how it sounds when I do. BTW, re: Six - has there ever been a more purely exciting piece of music than "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album"? (rhetorical question, folks)

'Third' still sounds really bad, and the bonus CD of BBC cuts (originally available as a separate CD. 'Live at the Proms') sound even worse. On the other hand, you get 3 LP's worth of great music, plus wonderful notes and photos for $10.

Agreed Colletables is often maddening (the bizarre pairings of unrelated Atlantic albums come to mind - the Jack Wilson album paired with the Frances Wayne album is my "favorite"), yet I'll give them some props for putting some of this stuff out at all, rockwise as well as jazzwise. And their sound has gotten a lot better over the years. I'm very thankful indeed for the Sugarloaf twofer, the Pacific Gas and Electric twofer, the first New York Rock 'n' Roll Ensemble album, the John Lewis twofers, the Charles Lloyd reissues, etc.

This 1998 session on ENJA is one of the few of the last 25 years I consider truly great. Burton to me is criminally underregarded, and his playing here is on fire even more than usual. I will sign out with the AMG review by Michael Nastos, which expresses thoughts on this CD more eloquently than I could (I don't have phrases like "bituminous strokes of swing" in my arsenal. Calling my friend Nate Dorward!): Intensity, pride, and passion are the earmarks for the modern mainstream jazz quartet co-led by tenor saxophnist Burton and drummer McPherson. They display a fervor that is consistently buoyed by the insistent pianistics of James Hurt, while bassist Yosuke Inoue stokes the fire with bituminous strokes of swing and steadying brute force. Each of these six compositions allow each member to stretch out and dig in, and they have a definite center from which to draw upon. Many will be reminded of the classic John Coltrane quartet from their Impulse recordings: slightly on the edge, forever moving forward. "Nebulai" is set up by a probing ostinato bass sets, Hurt's roaring piano, and Burton's bridge workout, which reflects Coltrane's energy, but sports Burton's voice. In 6/8, the title track over is 16 minutes and uses a repeated modal piano line and a bowed bass solo, churning tick-tock drumming, and a four note bassline, setting up extended tenor and piano excursions, and a hard bop second half where Burton and Hurt bubble over. That same crescendoing capsized boil also crops up on the lithe Afro-Cuban danza "Punta Lullaby." There's also a spirit ballad for "Dad," with Burton far from tame or languid, a hip, modern bossa "Forbidden Fruit" in beats of seven, and the most consistently hard swinger "The Last Laugh." If concentrated doses of highly motivated, nitro fueled expressiveness appeals to you, this album and band should more than adequately fill the bill, as Burton, McPherson, and Hurt emerge as individualists and powerful purveyors of this thoroughly modern milleu.

I just got them, have only listened all the way through on Fourth, which sounds wonderful, a stunning upgrade. I took a quick listen on Third, and it still doesn't sound very good.