danasgoodstuff

"Some big trees there..." That's what they all say...

Chris, If Led Zep was the poor man's Yardbirds, what does that make the first Jeff Beck Group? I mean, other than most excellent and why did Jeff have a prob with Micky Waller's wonderful drumming which is the main reason that Rod's solo albums are NOT just faces records under another name, and another thing is why isn't there a jazz equivalent for the Rock Book of Trees with all those complicated diagrams of personnel changes, I mean Miles, the Messenger and Horace Silver's bands would just about fill it on their own...[done in lower case so you won't mistake me for aric]

Iron Butterfly predate Led Zeplin, or was that your point?

As far as I'm concerned stax mono 45's are pretty much the ideal sound...different strokes, eh?

STYX did suck, as you would expect of a band made up of former engineering students, BUT I saw Dennis DeYoung doing the schill thing on PBS in connection with some orcastrated renditions of their tunes and he was a hoot!

PM'd you, twice just to be sure...

Jeez, half the stuffs you guys picked isn't really that bad sounding at all to my ears, e.g. the Hot 5s & 7s sound just fine the way(s) they are IMHO. Now the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band with Louis and Dodds could definitely stand a miracle upgrade, as could just about all the blues (Patton, House, etc.) on Paramount from the '20s-'30s, and there's this Howlin' Wolf boot from Cambridge in '66 that I love in spite of it's not even good for a boot sound...

sjarrell, Yes i meant the 'poor man's Who' jibe re the v. early 'mod R&B band' Small Faces, the Immediate period being more a psych-ed up Kinks, kinda 'Music Hall on acid'. Re the Kinks and the Who (who I see as having many similarities and/or parallels), perhaps the Kinks realized before most that staying with the (relatively, for then) heaviness of "Really Got Me", etc. would only lead to inadvertant silliness so they decided to short-circuit the process and go straight for overt silliness...? This 'poor man's' thing works for jazz too: the Charles Lloyd band with Jarrett and DeJohntte always struck me as 'the poor man's Coltrane Quatrtet', except the rhythm section consistantly outplayed the leader...

"There's trouble in the forrest..." Need I say more?! I thought the Small Faces were the poor man's Who, and anyway I actually prefer the Guess Who's version of "Summertime Blues"...

this really is the stuff, isn't it? If I want to really praise a set of recordings I say 'As good/important in its way as the Hot 5s & 7s'...and I don't say that about much.

Oh, and I forgot the bobby Hutcherson session (1970?) where he plays current hits: unissued at the time but two tunes have been on UK samplers and the one I've heard ("Family Affair") was pretty good...

For what it's worth, according to the-faces.com (where most of the posters do bad imitations of Rod's anecdotalese), AMG has given it 5 stars and is threatening to put it at the top of their (forthcoming?) best boxes list.

Turning Point and On Broadway are both pretty good, if not quite great, albums--certainly deserving of an issue on domestic CD. There's also so pretty good McGriff (and maybe they could figure out who plays on the uncredited date(s)). Lou Donaldson's Say It Loud is at least as good as some of the stuff that's been reissued, and he has some completely unissued dates as well. Grant Green's Visions was his biggest seller (actually made the charts) and it's never been on a US CD. It's not Idle Moments, but Rudy did a great job of making his tone just glow and who wouldn't want to hear Grant play Mozart? It could be doubled up with a slightly earlier unissued studio session with Claude Bartee and Egregious Muhammad ("acid Green" or is it "Green Acid" is the lone original on that one). There's also a live GG date from the Club Mozambique with Houston Person and tunes he didn't do elsewhere. stanley T's Always Something There & Look of Love (both heavily orchestrated) woulkd probably fit on one CD. But I'd rather have the five 'little big band' dates from '67-68 that remain partially issued, sorry I don't have the BN discog with me but the material ranges from "Ain't No Mt. Hi enuff" to Jobim and most include McCoy and other notables with Duke P arrangments, i.e. the're interestingly transitional. Let's see, what else? I'm sure someone wants Blue Mitchell's Bantu Village and Collision In Black and they'd probably fit both on one CD.

ASK THE AGES - must be played at lease losing volumn so you can hear how many times Laswell everdubbed(sic) Sharrock and so you get the full effect of Pharogh clearing his throat thru his horn. And Elvin! I would add that I rarely play anything v. lound any more and that I don't find most jazz particularly suited to any volume above 'loud enuff to hear everything'. It's both a matter of the engineering/recording and the music its self.

Hi school and after in Saskatoon? Hung with an odd collection of bright kids and juvenile delinquints united by beer and dope: drinking in the bars (drinking age was 18 and v. loosely enforced, I can remember being in a bar where I estimated the average age to be well under 18), parties at people's houses I didn't even know, walking home for miles in way sub zero tempatures, mostly standard issue Rock and a little blues (at least until I went to Reed College 'in the States'). I'm sure I was a trial to my parents, I think they were actually relieved when I started driving cab all night at 18. I'm 49 and saw some of the people I've known for 30 yr at a wedding in S'toon recently... Saskatchewan would be a good place to raise my 2yr olf in many ways, but staying out of trouble wouldn't be one of them (it's as much a drinking town as ever as far as I can tell). At least gun crime is less common there than here in Portland.

Hey, if it saves a kid's life then more power to GM for this at least... You wouldn't think that people'd need to be told but apparently they do.

My understanding is that this has been set back yet again, this time to July...

I don't know jack 'bout African music, jazz or otherwise, and I'm not sure how I ended up with several of his albums, BUT I'm sure glad I did 'cause IMHO Johnny Dyani is the real deal, fluid imaginative yet never forgetting that it's a base (sic) which he plays with a great big huge bottomless sound...

NPR had stuf on the centenial all last week, but I managed to miss most of it. However there will probably be something up on their website for awhile...

Just so happens that the only hamilton i own (I think, sometimes I forget just what I own) is the abovementioned Duke R. Swing album. Since posting above i pulled it out just to make sure and, to not mix metaphors, I found it reasonably fluent in that particulart proto-R&B idiom, if not quite native speaker fluent, but I didn't find that he had anything particularly interesting to say. I'll have to find some Eric Alexander to check out and get back to y'all. There is, of course, nothing at all srong with a jazz player coming out of R&B (of any era), and there are plenty of guys out there who show those roots off 'in a good way' in a jazz context. But there definately is a certain strain of jazz fan/critic/promoter for whom that would be v. much a bad thing--downbeat from back in the day is full of condecending jibes re 'honkers & screamers'. There's a shole world of possible legit expression twixt Warne Marsh and Jay McNeely; Red Holloway is one guy who straddles that particular fence without getting hung up on it (and we all know how painful that can be)...

How good is it? How deep is the ocean/how wide is the sky?

To me, bass is a role not an instrument. So, Adrian Rollini (bass sax) and Howard Johnson (tuba) are bass players but Scott LaFaro (acoustic bass viol) and Jaco Patorious (electric bass guitar) are not, as a general rule at least. Not that Jaco and Scotty weren't great, but most of what they did wasn't really much of a base(sic), IMHO.

Welcome Gary, good work Dan!

Far be it from me to sidetrack a thread, BUT I've long thought that although generation to generation misunderstanding obviously has a down side, that in practical terms it also has an up side, i.e. that misunderstanding what the peoples before you were doing is the engine driving stylistic change. to lokk at it through the other end of the telescope, in order to understand the 'old folks' stuff perfectly you'd have to be them and you ain't, so...

First, I'm glad I waited a day to post again:the temperture's come down a bit to where a more productive exchange of ideas can take place. For me this isn't really about Eric Alexander or Scott Hamilton, nor is it about whether players should use elements of past styles or be influenced by them. Everyone does that, to a greater or lesser degree, even armstrong, Lester and Bird. I don't think anyone here (Dan, Kevin, etc.) would make a straw man argument on purpose and I guess I can see how if they felt their personal taste were being attacked they might react as they did. Not to speak for anyone (Larry, Jim, etc.), but for me what this is about is this: Of course everyone should play in whatever style (from whatever era) speaks to them, but (like so much in life) there's a right and a wrong way(s) to do it. To try a different analogy: the right way would be like someone who peppers their speach with Biblical and Shakespearean allusions, but who makes their own points in their own style; the wrong way would be more like high schoolers who launch into their favorite bits of Monty Python whether the've really got anything to do with the conversation or not. To give examples: I think Osby has something real and personal going on, but I find J. Redman and J. Carter only intermittantly convincing. Or, to go further afield, I think Merle Hagard is one soulful mofo despite having Lefty Frizell's imprint all over his vocal chords, but I am largely unmoved by Prince's appropriation of Sly's thang. And I find W. Houston and what's-her-name (that Glitter girl)'s (over)use of melisma just grotesque, but I still love Sam Cooke and Clyde Mcphatter and Arron Neville (who draws heavily on both). Larry: I can see why you dropped the 'spread your legs' bit, it was likely to distract more than enlighten but I kinda liked it, perhaps because it's exactly the sort of thing I would have said/written when I was younger. In that spirit, I decided to drop the metaphor I was gonna use about how some peoples' playing reminds me of certain preachers who jump up and down yelling "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" without being v. Christlike... Hope I've added more light than heat here.