The Magnificent Goldberg

Muttley Dastardly Da Barstids

In stock at Amazon UK. Thought I'd better push the button on it, if it's out of stock in many places. MG

Henry Hall Alf Hall Arthur Askey (who always responded 'I'll catch you')

Oh, I hadn't noticed this new limit. That effin' Chancellor has put me into a marginal tax rate of 40% 2013-14 and now this on top!!!! MG

Fela Kuti Wole Soyinke (his cousin, would you believe?) The Kalakuta Republic

I paid £2.25 for mine, back in the day MG

Cat Woman Della Reese James Reece Europe

His birthday's 6 October, same as mine. Do you mean 2014? MG

You're too honest for your own good, Allen There is a sense in which Coltrane DID scare off the audiences and ruin the business (though whether that would have happened anyway is a question I can't guess at). I recently read Val WIlmer's 'As serious as your life' and was really pissed off at the whingeing from lots of the people she wrote about to the effect that the animosity towards them was because they were black - but the same people were proudly aware that their music was NOT the sort that one would enjoy going out of an evening and enjoying a convivial time boozing with one's mates, thus maintaining the profit levels of the venues. (The only people who didn't complain were the members of the Arkestra, possibly because Sun Ra created his own venues.) In each generation, there are really only a handful of people, and Coltrane was one of them, (also Rahsaan, Mingus, Cecil Taylor) whose music captures the audience willy-nilly. The others, good as they often are, great even, the audience has to meet a lot more than halfway. MG

Caesar Frazier Cesar Romero Chan Romero

Thanks. £14-50 for Reuben Wilson CDs I've already got on vinyl is a mite expensive. I'd go for the 'Date with Jimmy Smiff' albums, if they come out. Mr Mobley's on them; strange that there aren't 48 different remasterings of those LPs all over the place. MG

Lee Otis Bass III George Hamilton IV Henry of Monmouth

One or two Reuben Wilson albums I've only got on LP coming next year, it seems. A definite maybe. Has anyone in Britain bought any of these CDs yet? How much do they come over at inc postage, in proper money? I haven't got 'A date with Jimmy Smiff' at all. I'd have welcomed a sight of that pair. Oh well... MG

Bumble Bee Slim Guitar Slim Almost Slim

Maid Marion Thomas Love Peacock Reginald de Koven

I didn't know he made an album for Bluesway. Indeed, I didn't know he was still active in the 70s. Who's on this? How does it compare with his early material? MG

Thanks to Moms for bumping this. I bought 'New York jazz' in '70, didn't like it, flogged it and never looked back. It wasn't the first Stitt I bought - those were 'top brass' and 'Soul people' - and it sure wasn't the last - I've got 83 now, I see, and do agree with Moms that "more than enough is much better than that." But that's only about half his albums. But Sonny was a bit unreliable - he'd sometimes be late for gigs, or pissed as a fart, I understand. But what he did (and Jug and Stanley T) was get out into the sticks and play in little towns that never saw a first rate jazzman from one year to the next. And he'd come back to Chicago (occasionally) or New York (usually) and go round the record labels (he didn't have a contract) and want to make a record. And everyone said yes (but BN only once), because Stitt albums were cheap to make and you could sell them. But he'd usually want to make the album with his friends, and who could blame him, working with local rhythm sections out the back? Bob Porter told me that the trick with Sonny was not to let him record with his friends but with other people, who would put him in a rather more combative mood. So 'Soul electricity' has Billy Butler on guitar (a player Porter greatly admired), 'Turn me on' and most of 'Black vibrations' have the Mod Squad - Spencer, Sparks & Idris. One of his best is 'So doggone good', with Hampton Hawes. Some very straight bebop here but the title track (actually '(Your love is) so doggone good') is a great R&B ballad, previously done by The Whispers and at about the same time, by Ray Charles. Sonny never sounded better to me than on this number (or on 'My buddy', his tribute to Jug). Sonny never really had a sound as good as Jug (well, who did?), but on these recordings he nearly got there. He'd stopped using the varitone by then. I understand that Jug told him off about it during the 'You talk that talk' session. But I understand - because I've got 'Just the way it was - live at the Left Bank' - that it was absolutely necessary and marvellous for Sonny when he was playing with an organist. I've never heard a more exciting live jazz album than that one. MG

John James Sainsbury John James (guitarist) James John (café in Oregon )

I do agree. I had to pay some customs dues on a bunch of records from the US a while back. These are collected by the post office and they say you can pay by credit card on line. So I tried and found that I couldn't proceed past entering my details because I didn't put my mobile phone number in - I haven't got one. So I found a phone number and complained bitterly and at length and the lady I spoke to eventually put me through to someone who could take my credit card details over the blower. Complaining bitterly sometimes works - when it happened again a couple of weeks ago, the post office site didn't have that field as mandatory, so all was easy. OK, to answer the question When you go onto Spotify and it asks you to register through Facebook, it's not obvious that, a bit below that part of the screen, there's an alternative way to sign up. I can't remember exactly what it says, but if you read carefully below the Facebook bit, you'll find it. Of course, any normal person would see the word Facebook and back out immediately - so they're obviously not interested in normal people MG

To see how this works, I've created a little playlist of half a dozen cuts from 5 different albums by Sekouba Bambino. It's called 'MG's Sekouba Bambino favourites'. MG

White Fang Average White Band The Band

I'm not sure what you mean. I've seen that there's a Chief Osdebe album with the title '51Lex Presents Ogom Egbunem' . Is that leading me in the right direction. Wouldn't mind doing that, if I understood it PM me, if you like. MG

Smokey Hogg Miss Piggy Lee Peggy Lee

Pleasant here today. MG

Billy Strayhorn The Strays Chicks on a Hot Tin Ashtray