The Magnificent Goldberg

Is this a Blue Note session, or United Artists, Liberty or what label? MG

Is this something you picked up in Nigeria a short while back? I see Sterns are out of stock of all 10 of his albums they reckon to have sometimes. What's the music like? MG

Cliff Bennett The Rebel Rousers Duane Eddy

Gene Barr Steve Weakly Funk Inc

Yes, I agree, but they don't exist in the same respected circle; they exist in different circles. Often it happens that those circles don't respect one another. MG

The Knights of Malta Maltesers Forrest Mars Sr

No; I've explored various aspects of black popular music when I've happened to come across them as a result of random wanderings. I don't think that means that artist X led me to artist Y. Both are present in the aspect on which I'm particularly focusing on at a point in time. I didn't get interested in Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey BECAUSE I liked Osadebe or E T Mensah or I K Dairo MBE. These people were around and very popular, therefore I picked up on them. Hm... I tend to like stuff BECAUSE it's popular, because popular music that's genuinely created for its specific audience is culturally more important to me than good music created for a minority. (I exclude from this general rule white pop music since the mid sixties. Before that, the white pop singles emanating from Philly were different from those coming from Nashville, LA or even New York. They were usually (except in Nashville) made by locally based indies and tended to have a common approach which had to have been geared to the local audiences. When the majors really started to get to grips with the industry, it became much less interesting. Not that it was ever TERRIBLY interesting, but there is a marginal interest in the differences between Bobby Rydell and Ricky Nelson, for example.) So, since I'm not looking for art in music, or even particularly quality, what I get reflects the taste and concerns of specific local communities and this helps me understand my own a bit better - though it doesn't make me LIKE it any better - but it does make me ask myself questions like 'why are 97% of Senegalese popular songs about politics and zero are love songs and why are (probably) 97% of western popular songs about love and some tiny percentage about politics?' MG Music as a form of sociological information, no? The resulting information certainly can be interesting, but there's a whole lot more than that going on when music has been/is being made IMO. In my view too, but understanding a foreign culture - and America is foreign to me, don't forget - is a not unimportant part of getting the music and getting the music is a not unimportant part of getting the culture. Of course, one has to read history etc etc, as well. But society's like woven cloth and all hangs together. Music that's NOT relevant to society is of no interest to me. If it's relevant, then it's likely to be, or have been, popular, somewhere. The best selling black recording artist of 1930 was Rev J M Gates. MG

Oh, I bet that's nice. Dexter Johnson was a very important (though not all that great) saxophonist from Nigeria who made his name in Senegal at the time when the music scene was not quite as developed as it later became. He wanted to hip the Senegalese to Highlife but the Senegalese at the time were very hooked on Latin American stuff and didn't want to know about Highlife. So he played Latin stuff with Guinea Jazz, which eventually morphed into the various incarnations of Star Band (and into Youssou Ndour's Super Etoiles de Dakar) and played one of the key roles in the development of mbalax. But this isn't mbalax; this is Latin stuff. Usual vocalist was the great Laba Sosseh, who was a Gambian and didn't speak Spanish. It's said, somewhere, that he learned all the songs phonetically and they all came out of his mouth as rubbish, but no one cared, because he sang so nicely MG

Wow! I thought he'd given up music as he's now Senegal's Minister of Tourism and Culture. He lights up the stage. Have a good time. MG

So why bring the word "progress" into the conversation? That's essentially saying discovering new artists/genres by way of other artists is essentially meaningless. Or at the very least, fruitless.And I simply cannot agree with that. Explained the thing with progress above. But in every kind of music there are thousands or tens of thousands of practitioners and no one can get into them all. So you get into what you find, however you find it, but there's no particular validity to any one trail of artists any more than to another trail. We're all people to whom things happen (even if sometimes we make things happen ourselves) and those things are essentially random, whether they're opportunities knocking or hints about a musician or a reliable and competent plumber. To attribute 'meaningfulness' to a random series of events that happen to one seems rather self-centred to me.As far as I can see, there's no meaning to life. If you can enjoy it, that's good. But don't kid yourself that there's something meaningful about it. And don't try kidding the kids that some path is better than another. They'll soon come to realise that, seven days a week, they're assailed by random events and also realise that 'THE PATH' is a con.MG Well, all I can tell you is that throughout my life I have often been introduced to new artists and genres by ones I was listening to at the time. Or, by a mutual fan of an artist that said, "then you'll probably this as well." Nothing random about that at all. Matter of fact, off the top of my head I can't think of a single artist or genre that I just randomly fell back asswards into appreciating. That's what random events happening in a person's life are. They're not quite as random as picking a random number from a table because none of us knows every person in the world. We only know a few hundred people, maybe a thousand or two. But within the scope of a life, all of these events that are 'A' might equally have been 'B'. If one event is as likely as another, the eventual outcome is random. Looks like you're easily led by friends or by artists you like. When I was getting into R&B in '59, knowing nothing about it, I bought records because they had been recorded by Atlantic, ordered them before I'd heard them (because I knew it was reasonably sure I wouldn't hear them or find out anything about them over here) and much of the music I bought I DID fall into ass backwards. Same when I started getting into Soul Jazz - I bought anything I'd never heard of on Prestige. Same with gospel music, mbalax, djeliya and so on - I followed record labels. Of course, all this stuff was deadly difficult to get hold of over here; maybe if I'd lived in America, I'd have done the same as you. MG

No; I've explored various aspects of black popular music when I've happened to come across them as a result of random wanderings. I don't think that means that artist X led me to artist Y. Both are present in the aspect on which I'm particularly focusing on at a point in time. I didn't get interested in Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey BECAUSE I liked Osadebe or E T Mensah or I K Dairo MBE. These people were around and very popular, therefore I picked up on them. Hm... I tend to like stuff BECAUSE it's popular, because popular music that's genuinely created for its specific audience is culturally more important to me than good music created for a minority. (I exclude from this general rule white pop music since the mid sixties. Before that, the white pop singles emanating from Philly were different from those coming from Nashville, LA or even New York. They were usually (except in Nashville) made by locally based indies and tended to have a common approach which had to have been geared to the local audiences. When the majors really started to get to grips with the industry, it became much less interesting. Not that it was ever TERRIBLY interesting, but there is a marginal interest in the differences between Bobby Rydell and Ricky Nelson, for example.) So, since I'm not looking for art in music, or even particularly quality, what I get reflects the taste and concerns of specific local communities and this helps me understand my own a bit better - though it doesn't make me LIKE it any better - but it does make me ask myself questions like 'why are 97% of Senegalese popular songs about politics and zero are love songs and why are (probably) 97% of western popular songs about love and some tiny percentage about politics?' MG An interesting and honest post. I have to say that I've tended to like stuff that's not or wasn't popular. Even when I did listen more to popular music, I eventually found myself questioning why I was listening to it. Was it because it was in the public eye and ear and found its way to my ears and eyes? Was it because it was part of "the time"? Over time, I found that the reasons I listened to popular music were more invalid than valid, and that the music meant less and less to me. That said, I do listen to some popular music - usually older - a sign that I'm older, I'm sure. I've always had a distrust of popularity and "the people", and that too has increased as I've gotten older. I do understand. The stuff I like isn't popular here and now. But it all was popular sometime and somewhere. And that, I think, goes for most of the music you like, too, Paul. I agree that distrust of pop music has, rightly, increased. The globalisation of pop music is to blame and has got worse as the number of major music companies has shrunk. Worse is to come, no doubt. MG

So why bring the word "progress" into the conversation? That's essentially saying discovering new artists/genres by way of other artists is essentially meaningless. Or at the very least, fruitless. And I simply cannot agree with that. Explained the thing with progress above. But in every kind of music there are thousands or tens of thousands of practitioners and no one can get into them all. So you get into what you find, however you find it, but there's no particular validity to any one trail of artists any more than to another trail. We're all people to whom things happen (even if sometimes we make things happen ourselves) and those things are essentially random, whether they're opportunities knocking or hints about a musician or a reliable and competent plumber. To attribute 'meaningfulness' to a random series of events that happen to one seems rather self-centred to me. As far as I can see, there's no meaning to life. If you can enjoy it, that's good. But don't kid yourself that there's something meaningful about it. And don't try kidding the kids that some path is better than another. They'll soon come to realise that, seven days a week, they're assailed by random events and also realise that 'THE PATH' is a con. MG

Yes, you're quite right, Scott. I seemed to me from what you wrote that this was what you meant. And because you didn't say anything like 'Hey, that's not what I meant', I thought it WAS what you meant. And so... MG

Mothers of Invention Muthafuckas MC5

Oh, by the way, I bought 'Kind of blue' in 1970 and flogged it soon afterwards Not what I wanted. MG

No; I've explored various aspects of black popular music when I've happened to come across them as a result of random wanderings. I don't think that means that artist X led me to artist Y. Both are present in the aspect on which I'm particularly focusing on at a point in time. I didn't get interested in Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey BECAUSE I liked Osadebe or E T Mensah or I K Dairo MBE. These people were around and very popular, therefore I picked up on them. Hm... I tend to like stuff BECAUSE it's popular, because popular music that's genuinely created for its specific audience is culturally more important to me than good music created for a minority. (I exclude from this general rule white pop music since the mid sixties. Before that, the white pop singles emanating from Philly were different from those coming from Nashville, LA or even New York. They were usually (except in Nashville) made by locally based indies and tended to have a common approach which had to have been geared to the local audiences. When the majors really started to get to grips with the industry, it became much less interesting. Not that it was ever TERRIBLY interesting, but there is a marginal interest in the differences between Bobby Rydell and Ricky Nelson, for example.) So, since I'm not looking for art in music, or even particularly quality, what I get reflects the taste and concerns of specific local communities and this helps me understand my own a bit better - though it doesn't make me LIKE it any better - but it does make me ask myself questions like 'why are 97% of Senegalese popular songs about politics and zero are love songs and why are (probably) 97% of western popular songs about love and some tiny percentage about politics?' MG

YEAHHHH!!!!! Cab Calloway Blanche Calloway Chalky White

Explain to me how discovering music/musicians you'd never heard of before as not being progress? If you discover a new artist that you like, is that regression? No, it's just something different. I discovered Willis Jackson and John Coltrane in the sixties; Fela Kuti in the seventies; Youssou Ndour and The Florida Mass Choir in the eighties; Ouza and Sekouba Bambino in the nineties; Gnonnas Pedro and Concha Buika in the noughts; and Fred Anderson, Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe and The Original Super 5 of Africa in the tens. Sorry, regarding this as movement in ANY direction is beyond me :)MG Sorry, but any time you discover something new that also leads you into discovering something else that is always a good thing. Period. If it wasn't, why would you bother? I don't see how discovering the Florida Mass Choir led me to discover Fred Anderson. Or Youssou Ndour. I've found these people (and lots of others of course) simply by looking in different places. I do agree that looking in different places and learning about new stuff is a good thing. But it's kind of accidental or random that I happened to look in those places, so I can't regard my career of random wanderings as progress or regression; it's just what happened sometimes. Progression and regression imply a purpose or an objective. I just don't have one related to anything other than getting enough money to live on and feed my addiction to popular black music. Objectives are for the middle classes, who are generally what they do for a living. My mother used to criticise me because I always treated a job as a means to an end, not as a career. But around here, in the ex-mining valleys, people aren't what they do for a living; they're what they do for themselves - sing in a choir, play rugby, keep ferrets or racing pigeons or whatever. MG

Explain to me how discovering music/musicians you'd never heard of before as not being progress? If you discover a new artist that you like, is that regression? No, it's just something different. I discovered Willis Jackson and John Coltrane in the sixties; Fela Kuti in the seventies; Youssou Ndour and The Florida Mass Choir in the eighties; Ouza and Sekouba Bambino in the nineties; Gnonnas Pedro and Concha Buika in the noughts; and Fred Anderson, Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe and The Original Super 5 of Africa in the tens. Sorry, regarding this as movement in ANY direction is beyond me MG

You're definitely wrong there, Guy. Lots of jazz albums got onto the Billboard pop or R&B charts in the eighties. I've got a list of 388 by 131 artists... MG Interesting list, which suggests my claim was somewhat hyperbolic. But if you were to construct similar lists for other decades, my suspicion is there has been a decrease post-1980 (and I would guess the 1990s and 2000s totals are even lower than the 1980s you compiled. Jazz these days is much less relevant to popular culture than it was 50 years ago. Fifty years takes us back to Love Supreme (and the Beatles). I think you need to go further back than that to find significant relevance of jazz to popular culture. But 50 years also take you back to Getz' 'Jazz samba' and well past George Benson's 'Breezin', both of which were #1 on the US pop album charts. OK, if you go back to the thirties, jazz and jazz-ish material was most of what you'd have heard. And quite a lot in the forties. It hasn't been the same since. Well... Must be Charlie Parker's fault, then. MG

You're definitely wrong there, Guy. Lots of jazz albums got onto the Billboard pop or R&B charts in the eighties. I've got a list of 388 by 131 artists... MG Interesting list, which suggests my claim was somewhat hyperbolic. But if you were to construct similar lists for other decades, my suspicion is there has been a decrease post-1980 (and I would guess the 1990s and 2000s totals are even lower than the 1980s you compiled. Jazz these days is much less relevant to popular culture than it was 50 years ago. Definitely. I said in my post that there were fewer jazz albums on the charts in the 90s (though still quite a good number. But yes, the number has been coming down since 1979 (which I think was the peak year since 1955 - though the charts have more records on them now ) It occurred to me the other day that, back in the fifties and sixties, there were loads of pop instrumentals on the singles charts - not just by jazz musicians like Bill Doggett, Johnny Dankworth (!), Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff - but by pure pop or R&B musicians like Duane Eddy, the Ventures, Johnny & the Hurricanes, The Mar-Keys, Booker T & the MGs, the Shadows, Sandy Nelson, Bent Fabric, the Surfaris, the Tornadoes and a host of others. I don't know whether instrumental pop singles still make the charts but I very much doubt it and it seems to me that the decline of the pop instrumental has actually got something to do with the decline in young people's interest in jazz. If people don't hear instrumental music (good, bad and indifferent) as a regular and natural part of their cultural diet, jazz isn't going to mean much. MG

I'm not quite sure why you appear to regard (and may do in reality) someone's moving from Snarky Puppy to Thelonious Monk as progress. I'm sure most Snarky Puppy fans wouldn't regard that as progress, any more than I regarded my buying a handful of Thelonious Monk albums as "progress" from Willis Jackson. I don't think people's minds work like that. MG

A whole lot of vintage (and popular)Tommy Dorsey recordings weren't "watered down" anything. As for Glenn Miller, if there was a "watered down" aspect to his band, that wasn't the main reason it was widely popular. There were lots of semi-polite but non-"sweet" bands around at that time; the Miller band was hugely popular because of its distinctive sound, the quality of its execution, and its large number of catchy originals. A latter-day partial comparison might be to the Brubeck-Desmond recording of "Take Five." It wasn't/isn't popular because it's "watered down," it was and is popular because it's catchy/infectious and, for those who care/notice, has a very nice Desmond solo. Well, I reckon those bands were watered down in comparison to Cab Calloway. But OK, where do we see the present day jazz bands with a distinctive sound, quality execution and a large number of catchy originals? Maybe that's nearer to Kenny G than to Vijay Iyer (though I've heard neither). MG I don't see present day jazz bands with a large number of catchy originals. Some of the present day jazz bands have a distinctive sound and quality execution, but not catchy originals. Would it kill these present day musicians to write something like "Song For My Father" or "Watermelon Man"? Apparently you think that writing 'something like "Song For My Father" or "Watermelon Man"' is essentially a matter of will or intent. I think there are plenty of people who would like to write pieces that had that kind of effect on audiences if they could, but it ain't easy -- in particular, it's not a matter of simply putting aside one's supposedly snotty-complex "high art" habits of music-making.I'm not sure I believe that. Most jazz musicians can write melodies when they're soloing. Solos are mostly melody. MG Aside from Chu Berry's solos, I'd much rather listen to a swatch of T. Dorsey recordings than a swatch of C. Calloway recordings. Though there are exceptions, by and large Calloway's band -- both in terms of material and execution -- could be rather scrappy/woeful at times. Now if we're talking about Hines, or Basie, or Lunceford, or Ellington or Chick Webb, not to mention Goodman, Shaw or Bob Crosby.... See, I vastly prefer Cab Calloway to any of those other bands you mentioned. I guess it's because I'm a fan of black popular music, rather than a jazz fan per se. MG

A whole lot of vintage (and popular)Tommy Dorsey recordings weren't "watered down" anything. As for Glenn Miller, if there was a "watered down" aspect to his band, that wasn't the main reason it was widely popular. There were lots of semi-polite but non-"sweet" bands around at that time; the Miller band was hugely popular because of its distinctive sound, the quality of its execution, and its large number of catchy originals. A latter-day partial comparison might be to the Brubeck-Desmond recording of "Take Five." It wasn't/isn't popular because it's "watered down," it was and is popular because it's catchy/infectious and, for those who care/notice, has a very nice Desmond solo. Well, I reckon those bands were watered down in comparison to Cab Calloway. But OK, where do we see the present day jazz bands with a distinctive sound, quality execution and a large number of catchy originals? Maybe that's nearer to Kenny G than to Vijay Iyer (though I've heard neither). MG

I see Kenny G is still getting albums on the pop charts this year. Must be that the 40-50 year olds are having a nostalgia attack. Jazz doesn't have to be creative to be jazz. It doesn't have to be good music, either. And it's allowed to be watered down, too. The Dorsey Brothers were watered down. Glenn Miller was VERY watered down. People liked it like that. And still do. The 'jazz community's' insistence on quality is the curse of jazz. MG