felser

I don't think the Joyride session is on the Mosaic. Any comments on the Mobley? The Turrentine is not on the Mosaic, which is smaller groups. That being said, Joyride is basically Blue Note's approximation of what Jimmy Smith was doing with the Oliver Nelsn big band arrangements on Verve, not essential at all to my ears. Mobley's Workout, on the other hand, belongs in the collection of every Organissimo member, one of his career highlights.

Or how about the spam, beans, spam, Isley Brothers, and spam. That one hasn't got much spam in it. Or on second thought I guess it does. At least the Isley Brothers have great relevance to a bunch of hard bop lovers, eh?

I agree with you about "Warriors" making no sense in the context, and I almost always skip over it when I play this set. It is the original running order, to my knowledge.

Baritone player is definitely not Pepper Adams. If Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck played like that they probably wouldn't have gotten so popular. I thought of another agile bari player it could be - Nick Brignola. Mike, glad I can provide you and the board with so much entertainment!

Yes, they sounded great with Silver! We saw Webber and Jones in Philly as the rhythm section for Eric Alexander/Harold Mabern, and they were excellent. I got to talk with Jones for awhile afterwards, very gracious guy.

Of course I have that one! Just a brain burp on my part! I'm still thinking Sonny Fortune at that point. Thanks.

1-1 - certainly is Horace Silver on Blue Note. Great writing, great playing, great execution all around. Not a wasted note. The Blue Note Sound in a nutshell. 1-2 - Writing not too interesting (the modulations are kind of annoying), the drummer was a little cute at first, then burned. The trupeter was Clifford-Brown influenced and quite good (Bill Hardman?). Alto player sounds like a young Jackie McLean, and solos well. Piano solo was out there, kind of weird. 1-3- Hammond B-3 rules! Well-writtne song. I don't normally like bass players on organ cuts, but I do here. Drummer cooks. Guitar and B-3 in the groove. Great stuff. 1-4 - Hate the trombone multiphonics gimmick. Whole performance is so dated, as so much 70's stuff is. Sounds like the theme from the big chase scene in 'Shaft Offs Superfly' or whatever. The drummer is a monster, but to what purpose? Pretty good electric piano solo. 51- - I don't enjoy this sort of heavy latin percussion, as I find it makes the rhythm very static, and this cut suffers from that.The tenor player is excellent, sounds like Joe Henderson. The trumpet player is a latin guy, I'm guessing Luis Gasca. Plays his butt off. I liek both the trumpet and the tenor solos. The writing is very good, I just don't like the arrangement with the percussion, and the bass player doesn't sound like a jazz guy. 1-6 - Later organ side (you can tell by the guitar sound). Love the tenor player's sound. I'd guess Eric Alexander before he really found his voice. I love hearing him play anything, even warmup scales ( and that's from real experience with him). Trumpet player also does good job. The whole group SOUNDS great, good composition, which makes the performance thoroughly enjoyalbe even though it isn't particularly memorable. Drummer pushes the group along nicely. 1-7 Tenor player and drummer are both MONSTERS, each obviously giants - you don't miss the other instruments at all. 1-8 They certainly have the hard bop concept down, yet I find the playing on this to be incredibl sloppy. The sax player is painfully bad, the trumpet only a little better. The drummer is at least spirited if not particularly tight. Suspect the recording was on a small label and underrehearsed. 1-9 This is why I listen to jazz. Beautiful and moving. Every instrument perfect in its role. Great writing, great playing. Fabulous drummer. I know this piece but can't place it. 1-10 The writing and arranging are fabulous, but the solos weren't very good, which makes me think the piece must not be a good one to improvise on. The soprano solo was really tedious. A lot of guys who are good tenor/alto players have no conception on soprano, and it was unfortunate that everyone picked up that instrument in the 70's. Very few played it well to my ears. Joe Farrell was one who did. 1-11 Trombone and Hammond B-3 aren't my idea of a great combination, but this is really good. Can't wait to find out what it is,and get it. I really like how the B-3 player comps behind the soloists. He's great. Very nice guitar solo. Trombone player is one of the best I've heard. Very few on that instrument I like (JJ, Curitis Fuller, Moncur, Conrad Herwig), but I'll add this guy to the list. Love the tenor and organ solos. Great, great track.

2-1 Really interesting stuff. 60's new thing with roots in hard bop. I really enjoyed it, talented players being stretched. 2-2 Also really liked this, more of a 70's feel to the rhythm section. great bass player, love the trumpet also. A Coltrane-inspired trumpeter. Hannibal Marvin Peterson or Woody Shaw? Even the soprano solo isnt' bad. Drummer kicks butt behind the soloists, rhythm section is fabulous overall. I'm gonna guess that it's the Woody Shaw/Louis Hayes group with Rene McLean, Stafford James, Ronnie Mathews. 2-3 Very well played for the most part (although I can't stand the alto solo), but has a sort of "routine, by the book" flavor, like it's been doen too many times before. I found that a lot in some of the late 60's Blue Note (especially the Lee Morgan dates from that period) until some of those players found new routes to explore (like Morgan on 'Live at the Lighthouse' and 'Lee Morgan'). 2-4 What really jumps out at me is how good the baritone player is. Has to be Pepper Adams, as no one else has ever had such agility on the instrumemt. Loved his playing - he is missed. The rest is very good, but not terribly inspired. 2-5 70's rhythm selction with a nice, loping beat. Another fine, Coltrane-influenced trumpeter, sounds like Hannibal Marvin Peterson to me. Tenor solo (George Adams?) didn't do much for me. 2-6 Herbie Mann. He really could play the flute well when given a proper context, which this is. This must be from the 50's. I enjoyed the drummer a lot. Mann's ability yet his tendency toward commercialism made him both overrated and underrated at the same time, a good trick. 2-7 Brubeck and Desmond. When I came up in the early 70's, they were considered uncool, so I didn't really check them out. But I love their stuff now that I know it, so I'm glad that now it's OK to like them. 2-8 Hate the trombone multiphonics, and really the trombone in general on this. Love the rhythm section, who has that 70's Strata-East thing DOWN. 2-9 Really nice sparse latin groove. trumpet, bass, drums all kick butt on this. 2-10 Nice enough 70's modal piece, except the tuba is really annoying! Liked the trumpet player, but overall the performance is nothing special. 2-11 Nice funky cut, well played all-around by tight ensemble, good solos. 2-12 Crassly commercial 60's soul jazz, of the Atlantic variety. Nothing to sink your teeth into. Hank Crawford? Fathead Newman? 2-13 Gabor Szabo, who sounded like no one else. I could listen to him play anything, and enjoy it. What unique tuning on the guitar. The fluke songwriting royalties on 'Gypsy Queen' must have surprised and pleased him.

I'm done listening. Fascinating stuff. Should I go ahead and post my comments, or do we wait for a certain date to do that? I'm new to this. thx.

Would love to hear the Tyner set! Do you have the personnel on that? Most if not all of the rest did come out on record and CD.

A list of the "great" post '70s recordings would be appreciated. Have to agree with Chuck on this one. List of "real good" post-70's Tyner recordings would be quite long, but in my book, only one "great" one, 1991's 'Remembering John'.

I agree, excellent album and worthy of a wide audience. Edwards was a player's player.

Gary Bartz - I've Known Rivers (click here to buy) It was July 7, 1973. The possibilities for jazz still seemed endless, even thought it would all come crashing down shortly. A couple years before this, no one embodied these possibilities of a new and exciting music better than Gary Bartz, but we weren't prepared for what he unleashed that night at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Bartz was Juilliard trained, and had served underrecorded apprenticeships with Charles Mingus and Art Blakey. He then worked with Max Roach, making major contributions to the magnificent 'Members, Don't Get Weary', funked along with Miles Davis in the Live-Evil era, and participated on the great McCoy Tyner albums 'Expansions' and 'Extensions'. Along the way, he recorded five albums as a leader for Milestone, the first three being forward looking hard bop outings, and the next two mixing his own musical gumbo out of jazz,blues,soul,funk,and folk influences, with Andy Bey and Bartz adding vocals. The two Harlem Bush Music albums ('Taifa' and 'Uhuru"), recorded for Milestone in 1970 and 1971, are unique achievements that to this day sound like nothing else, but were fairly inconsistent. This was followed by a move to Prestige records and a mainstreaming Bartz's eclecticism. The two albums recorded for Prestige in 1972 and in June of 1973, 'Juju Street Songs' and 'Follow, the Medicine Man', combined socially consicious lyrics on Bartz originals reflecting prevailing musical trends, with some popular music of the period such as "I Wanna Be Where You Are" (actually done in an amazing instrumental version), "Black Maybe", and "Betcha By Golly Wow". The promise of the Harlem Bush Music sessions seemed to have faded away. But on this night, the 32 year old Bartz and his young band (Hubert Eaves on keyboards, the wonderful Stafford James on bass, and 17 year old Howard King bashing on drums) took the stage and created a statement for the ages. To understand the context of this music, consider the words of Bob Blumenthal (edited here) on the back cover of the CD reissue of this 2LP set: "...'I've Known Rivers' flows from the confluence of four major streams of late-20th century African-American music/culture: the spiritualism and modality strongly associated with John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme'; the spectrum of electric sounds and bristling funk-rock rhythms of Miles Davis's 'Bitches Brew'; the new funk directions of Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone,and James Brown; and the dramatically expanding Afrocentric consciousness during the Vietnam War era." The concert begins and ends with musical pleas for peace and love ("Nommo" and "Peace and Love"). In between are excellent instrumental songs such as "Sifa Zote" and "Bertha Baptist", presenting the unique Bartz confluence of styles, and truly memorable vocal/instrumental cuts such as "Jujuman", "Uhuru Sasa" and the title track (based on a poem by Langston Hughes) , which pay homage to 'A Love Supreme', the struggles of life, and the dignity of the American black man. The album and the band are both cases of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. A magnificent concert. Unfortunately, the wheels came off almost immediately afterwards. Bartz was soon hooked up with the dreaded Larry Mizell. I saw him live at the Tower Theatre in the mid-late 70's, and he had two chick singers on stage singing "Macaro-o-ni". By that point, fusion had rightly become a four letter word, McCoy Tyner was being teamed with Phyllis Hyman and Carlos Santana on cuts, Jackie McLean had recorded a disco album for RCA, Chick Corea was seeing leprechauns and Gayle Moran, Stanley Clarke was funking it up, Chuck Mangione was feeling so good chasing the clouds away, and it took the return of Dexter Gordon from Europe to gain any media notice for the real music. But in '73, the promise was still in the air, not yet having betrayed those of us who believed, or at least hoped.

I agree that his Blue Notes are a stronger, more consistent body of work overall, and even with the variety, Tyner still seemed to repeat himself with diminishing returns some on Milestone. But some of the early albums on the label,'Sahara', 'Echoes of a Friend', 'Song for My Lady','Enlightenment','Sama Layuca','Atlantis',and some of the later trio and solo stuff on the label like 'Supertrios' , were magnificent. As were many of the later Blue Notes, like 'Expansions' and 'Extensions'.

Received the discs and will start listening, thanks.

updated list.

The live Tristano stuff that made up half an album on Atlantic - has the rest of those sessions ever been released anywhere except on the Mosaic box? Is it in print anywhere today?

Also my favorite Morgan album, just one more "me too" to add to the conversation so that anyone who doesn't have this great album will get it at their first opportunity.

I'd love to see a Columbia Chico Hamilton/Charles Lloyd set. Can't believe that stuff has never come out on CD.

I contacted Mosaic a couple years ago suggesting a cross-label Hutcherson/Land set, with the Hutcherson Blue Notes and the Land Cadet and Mainstream albums. They told me at the time they were actually working on the licensing for just such a set, but I've never heard any more on it.

sent email on Hall, Hill, and Raney. thx.

Updated list.

Jazzmatazz for the wealth of info, Jazz Corner and AAJ for people selling or trading discs who don't list here, Dusty Groove, Mosaic, Amazon, Half, Ebay, Deep Discount CD and CD Universe to buy, and Nate's writing is fabulous, well worth checking out.

Agreed, awesome!

updated list.