The Magnificent Goldberg

A bunch of Freddie McCoy albums on CD would go down nicely in my house MG

Dennis Mackrel Julian Bream Edgar Codd

We're not disagreeing; we're in agreement here, no? Yes, Fats is highly recognizable, and that's because in part "he put a good deal of individual/personal spice into his music." In any case, I was responding to your "So what about Fats Domino?" Seems I misunderstood what you meant by that, but then what did you mean by it? I thought you meant that Fats's music, while obviously of value, operated in ways that had little or nothing to do what the ways of making music I was talking about. Sure, there are differences, because Fats' music is essentially functional/social and not made for contemplation, so to speak, but to my mind its quality and individuality tell me that it was fueled to a considerable degree by a personal vision. No, It's I who misunderstood you, Larry. I thought you were saying that he didn't. Missed the question mark. Fats' work is obviously grounded in previous New Orleans music - most of which is as functional/social as Fats' is - but is obviously different from his predecessors and his successors, which to me makes him a (charming and joyful) part of a continuing movement forward, neither conservative nor radical. MG Agreed. I caught Fats once or twice in a Chicago-area supper club in a hotel near O'Hare Airport. He tore it up. Ah, never saw Fats live. Saw Jerry Lee Lewis in '63 and he was expletive deleted!!!! MG

When did this box come out? MG

Aside from Goffin/King, I think the answer to your question is something different. Cos look, 'Bo Diddley' swings like mad, and the number of jazz musicians who use that 'Bo Diddley' rhythm shows that they weren't/aren't immune. But in the Rock & Roll days, virtually the only jazz that was selling big was west coast jazz. Can you imagine Chet Baker or Gerry Mulligan playing something with that rhythm? Or Lennie Tristano, to move the discussion eastwards? They just weren't doing that sort of thing. MG I think that jazzers did not listen to that music. I read that Chick Corea first listened to the Beatles albums just a few years ago, for example. I have heard New York studio vets, the first line guys, talk about doing sessions in the 1960s and their hearts sinking when they opened the sheet music for their jingle session and saw the rock and roll triplets. To those guys, rock was just simple, dumb music. They never listened to the best rock albums, never understood the vision or sensibility of the rock musicians. To me, that is why some attempts to play rock material by jazz musicians sounds like Dean Martin on the Hollywood Palace TV show singing "The Times They Are A Changin'". He can get the notes right, and the words correct, but has zero feel for the material. You're probably right there, but some did. I'll do a bit of looking through my collection and see what it looks like. Because the studio guys you're talking about may very well have been a completely different bunch of people from the jazz musicians I listen to. MG Some of them are exactly the same guys! It is difficult to generalize, though. I agree that many soul musicians, and jazz musicians playing soul jazz, came up with worthy interpretations of rock songs. Wilson Pickett's "Hey Jude" for example, is much more credible as a piece of music than Bing Crosby's "Hey Jude", to me. Yeah! But also, those early Rock N Roll records swung and because, largely I feel, of the jazz musicians employed on them. Records like The Drifters' 'Such a night' and 'Money honey' and Joe Turner's 'Shake rattle & roll' (all written by Jesse Stone, who ran a big band in KC and Omaha in the twenties and thirties) had great jazzmen on them and swang terrifically. Connie Kay was a regular in the Atlantic studios with Jesse on those sessions. Other jazzmen who appeared with great regularity were Willis Jackson, Lloyd Trotman, Sam 'The Man' Taylor and Panama Francis. Same was true of King's recordings, often the same people. One thing I think happened was that those guys couldn't get recording contracts in the fifties and, when they did, as far as the black community was concerned, the thing was Soul, not R&R or R&B. So you got a lot of those musicians recording soul songs, plus a few classic R&B/R&R songs like 'High heel sneakers', 'Charlie Brown', 'Blue Monday' and so on. MG

Aside from Goffin/King, I think the answer to your question is something different. Cos look, 'Bo Diddley' swings like mad, and the number of jazz musicians who use that 'Bo Diddley' rhythm shows that they weren't/aren't immune. But in the Rock & Roll days, virtually the only jazz that was selling big was west coast jazz. Can you imagine Chet Baker or Gerry Mulligan playing something with that rhythm? Or Lennie Tristano, to move the discussion eastwards? They just weren't doing that sort of thing. MG I think that jazzers did not listen to that music. I read that Chick Corea first listened to the Beatles albums just a few years ago, for example. I have heard New York studio vets, the first line guys, talk about doing sessions in the 1960s and their hearts sinking when they opened the sheet music for their jingle session and saw the rock and roll triplets. To those guys, rock was just simple, dumb music. They never listened to the best rock albums, never understood the vision or sensibility of the rock musicians. To me, that is why some attempts to play rock material by jazz musicians sounds like Dean Martin on the Hollywood Palace TV show singing "The Times They Are A Changin'". He can get the notes right, and the words correct, but has zero feel for the material. You're probably right there, but some did. I'll do a bit of looking through my collection and see what it looks like. Because the studio guys you're talking about may very well have been a completely different bunch of people from the jazz musicians I listen to. MG

I've got a few jazz recordings of Goffin/King songs. Off the top of my head: Natural woman Go away little girl (2 or 3, maybe more) Will you still love me tomorrow Hey girl MG

Don't like their Rockabilly covers then MG? Their Arthur Alexander covers are good too. Soldier Of Love. They did great takes on the Motown girl groups too. Please Mr Postman etc. I had the originals of all that stuff (well, not the Rockabilly), which I greatly preferred. To me, for example, no one needs to ask whether Barrett Strong's version of 'Money' is better than the Beatles or not; it self-evidently is.

Yes, it is. MG

Me too! MG

That's better. OK, you're right. So the earliest Hot Fives are protected for 142 years!!!! MG

We're not disagreeing; we're in agreement here, no? Yes, Fats is highly recognizable, and that's because in part "he put a good deal of individual/personal spice into his music." In any case, I was responding to your "So what about Fats Domino?" Seems I misunderstood what you meant by that, but then what did you mean by it? I thought you meant that Fats's music, while obviously of value, operated in ways that had little or nothing to do what the ways of making music I was talking about. Sure, there are differences, because Fats' music is essentially functional/social and not made for contemplation, so to speak, but to my mind its quality and individuality tell me that it was fueled to a considerable degree by a personal vision. No, It's I who misunderstood you, Larry. I thought you were saying that he didn't. Missed the question mark. Fats' work is obviously grounded in previous New Orleans music - most of which is as functional/social as Fats' is - but is obviously different from his predecessors and his successors, which to me makes him a (charming and joyful) part of a continuing movement forward, neither conservative nor radical. MG

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html Kind of unhelpful. Thanks US Copyright Office for clearing things up so neatly MG

Gotta say that I never liked the Beatles much. The only recordings I liked were 'Love me do' and 'She's a woman'. MG

Public-domain CDs like the Frémeaux Armstrong sets are legit in Europe, but not in the United States if I'm not mistaken. That can't be right, Hans - even in the US anything over 70 years old is public domain. MG

Well, having spent nine months with Fats' complete Imperial singles set, I think I'd disagree with you on that, Larry. Fats is one of the most recognisable artists in any genre. You could pick him out of a line up, were there anyone to line him up with. MG

Mr Percy Bony Moroni Henry Jones (who didn't eat no meat)

I don't think there's a difference in principle. In practice, there are differences between the specific jazz musicians and their specific approaches for the specific songs - as well as, perhaps, their reasons for playing those specific songs (referring to what Paul Secor said, which I don't disagree with but think there are probably a lot of exceptions). But, even if we know musician X recorded Beatles song Y for purely commercial reasons, don't we also know that musician A recorded Rodgers & Hart song B for purely commercial reasons? I think we know that must have happened at least as frequently. MG

For me, the question, or the issue, aside from sheer talent or lack of same, is the composer's attitude toward his material. Take, for one example, Ravel, who certainly had very strong feelings/ideas/what have you about prior musical/social epochs and specific musical events from the past but who transmuted them into striking, highly individual works (e.g. Le Tombeau de Couperin, La Valse). The same might be said, up to a point, about Richard Strauss, though I'm less temperamentally attuned to the ways his undoubtedly major compositional skills/gifts trafficked with aspects of the musical/social past from "Rosenkavalier" on. Not that it's determinative in itself, or can be detected with infallible accuracy, but things get bothersome for me in this general area when I feel that a composer has a semi-predetermined notion of "What audiences already like' and/or "What, based on what audiences have liked in the past, they are likely to like in the future" and then proceeds to try to give that to audiences anew (or "anew") by re-combining elements of those, so to speak, audience-tested, audience-verified musical gestures. Here, by contrast, a figure like Robert Simpson comes to mind, often immersed in various aspects of the musical past but as inner-directed (and to my mind, often inspired) a composer as one could imagine. But when Simpson was immersed in Beethoven, for example, it was I think the workings of Beethoven's music, not that music's popularity or social prestige, that in part drove him to create what he then created. So what about Fats Domino? MG

Shakin' Stevens Gorky's Zygotic Mynci Catatonia

That (and vol 2) are what's always been missing from my Jimmy Smith collection. How lackadaisical can one get? MG

Well no, that's on the LP I think it's a comment, not a contribution to our knowledge MG

Oh well, it's ordered. I have some Hot 5s and 7s already. I was thinking this would be an improvement because what I've got is a real cheapo 1 CD set MG

Pretty good price. I think I'll ask my wife for this for Christmas. Thanks for bringing it up. Didn't know about it. MG Well, I asked her and she said she'd get it for my birthday in a couple of weeks!!!! (She's already got me a nice CD.)

Yeah, I wondered about that, too MG