The Magnificent Goldberg

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

This morning, a nice 1963 Calypso LP Stan Seymour - Everybody loves Bermuda - Edmar (Complete with songs about Christine Keeler, the Cuban missile crisis and the Clay/Liston fight ) MG

Well, I've had a good butchers round Spotify and it's pretty poor stuff. I picked a few female vocalists to search for - not obscurities; singers with hits and long careers - Della Reese, Chris Connor and Dakota Staton. Della has actually got a whole album on there - Della cha cha cha - unsurprisingly, as 'Come on-a my house' is featured in a nice TV advert, a few tracks from several albums (one of them, astoundingly, from the 70s) and a compilation or two. Chris Connor has 3/4 of 'Witchcraft' on there, a few compilations, and a handful of tracks from a number of Atlantic albums. Apparently nothing more recent. Dakota has a whole album there - 'In the night', with George Shearing, a few compilations from her Capitol period and some odd cuts from various artists albums. Who on earth can think this is progress towards a time when, according to the boss, people will be able to listen to everything? On the plus side - yeah, there IS a plus side - there are a fair number of albums by Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey and Dr Orlando Owoh. But the Mali, Guinea and Senegal scenes are poorly represented. On the jazz side, there are a few albums by Fred Anderson (though not the Nessa one or the Thrill Jockeys, surprise surprise, which I've got anyway) as well. And about 2% of Sun Ra's recordings Oh well, it's free. I'd be really rather miffed if I had to pay for this. MG

Yes, just found that out. Their FAQ section addresses this but says they're all flagged. I didn't see any flags, but that was because the screen wasn't wide enough because of the adverts. Well, there we are... MG

Whoa! I've been doing some more searching on Spotify. It looks to me like they've somehow accessed my hard drive and got loads of material off it: a whole raft of Willis Jacksons: the two LPs Les McCann recorded with Teddy Edwards and Clifford Scott; the twofer I made up of Jimmy McGriff's 'Black pearl' and McGriff/Parker's 'Chicken fried soul'; and so on and so on. One very interesting thing they've got is a pair of sermons by Rev Johnny Lee 'Hurricane' Jones, which were recorded on 5 Nov 2011 and 3 Dec 2011 off the radio by Paul Secor, sent to JeffCrom, and thence to me. Again, I know it's my copy they've got because of the block capitals and the lengths included in the titles. The real clincher though is that I put together a Gene Ammons twofer of 'Night lights' (the LP with Wynton Kelly, only some of which has appeared on cd) and an album that never was issued, but which appeared on a number of different LPs and CDs, and which was his complete session with Mal Waldron - which I called 'THE MAL WALDRON SESSION - 36-40'. And they're both there on Spotify. I KNOW ABSOLUTELY THAT I'VE NEVER SENT THIS TO ANYONE. I just did it to be able to listen to all the tracks of these albums together. So, a couple of questions arise: 1 to whom do I complain? 2 Spotify say they pay people through the record companies, but these albums are not authorised by the record companies; they're mostly vinyl rips of stuff that never appeared on CD. Indeed, the Johnny Lee Jones is just a radio broadcast. MG

If "Seytane" is a track, the answer is yes. If it's an album, then the answer is no. "Seytane" is given as a track on Coumba Gawlo's album, Live in Dakar Vol 1. Six other albums by Coumba Gawlo are available. 'Seytane' is the title track of the album. It's the same song, but the original 1990 version of the live album done in 2004. So the answer is no. I managed to work out how to register without Facebook and I found something VERY disturbing. After a few searches of African artists, in which I found nothing I hadn't already got, I tried a search on Jackie Ivory. I suspected they wouldn't have his Atco LP 'Soul discovery'. However they did. THEY HAD THE COPY I RIPPED TO MY HARD DRIVE A FEW YEARS AGO!!!! I know it's mine because, quite eccentrically, I include the duration of the album in the album title - and always use block capitals for the titles. So how the fuck did they get that? I'm pretty certain I never sent it to anyone. Who would want it? MG

Sir Richard DImbleby Jonathan Dimbleby David Dimbleby

Chet Baker (played with the Mariachi Brass) Chet Faker Chet Atkins

Well, I thought, let's see if they've got one of Coumba Gawlo's early K7s - 'Seytane' on Spotify. So I got the website up, hit the 'Get Spotify' button and was invited to join Facebook. But the article said it didn't do that any more, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to even do that. So, any of you Spotify types know if Coumba Gawlo's second K7 is on Spotify? MG

Chico O'Farrill Dizzy Gillespie Machito