The Magnificent Goldberg

Cor, his is a name one KEEPS seeing all the time. MG

Thanks Dan. Yeah, if it's really all on sport... I didn't know he had a bad tooth. Damn. Glad I saw him in 2010. MG

Can't get this in Europe. Any chance of you posting the text, Brad? MG

Yeah! MG

Breakfast this morning with Abdoulaye Diabate & Koutiala Orchestre - Samory (This is NOT the Abdoulaye Diabate on #11 of BFT176) Various Artists - Discotheque '73 - Syliphone And two Moodsvilles to relax with after the excitement Al Casey - The Al Casey quartet Coleman Hawkins - The Hawk relaxes MG

Perhaps she liked girls - same as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey MG

Odd sleeve that, for Medina. Looks more like Peru. MG

Ah, that's Zimbabwe. Not into music from Zim. But NOT Turks & Caicos, because I can recognise Ripsaw music (One day that will be big. One day, maybe...) OK, it's Haiti. I'm gonna have another listen. MG Flippin' 'eck, Tucker, it's Jackie Mitto! Can't think of the title and I have so much Mitto I can't listen to it all. MG

Oh Goodness! Botswana or Namibia then. I only have three Namibian albums (two are reggae) and zero from Botswana. This DOES come from an arid area, doesn't it? MG Am I right in thinking Greater Antilles means EVERY island in the Caribbean? MG

Much though I love Baby Face Willette, and play all his albums a great deal, AND idolise Fred Jackson, his Blue Notes aren't as good as the two he made for Argo. There's nowt better than 'Behind the eight ball' in my view. Have a listen to 'Song of the universe'. MG

Ah! A clue, by cracky! As you're French, I'd expect Antilles to mean Martinique, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Martin... or Guadeloupe & its dependencies. There's a sax player from Guadeloupe who was pretty popular in France, name of Al Lirvat. Am I on the wrong island? MG

Just to be clear, it's Abdoulaye Diabate the pianist from Mali, NOT Abdoulaye Diabate the great Malian singer, arranger and bandleader. MG PS " It's further South and it's a Bantu language! " So if it's East Africa somewhere - Kenya or Tanzania I'd guess - it's RIGHT off my map. MG

BFT176 Keeping on looking for Christmas prezzies, so I’ve been lax on this one. Thanks to Hot Ptah for reminding me. So here we go. 01 St Thomas. I’ve always liked this number. I don’t think I know this geezer’s style, though at times it reminds me a bit of Ray Bryant. But I really don’t think it’s Ray. Dunno, but nice. 02 Another pianner player. Don’t know this tune. Pooh gosh, what an entry from the tenor player! I think it’s one of the slightly older players who heard Joe Henderson and thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. Someone like Frank Foster. And damn, that trumpet player’s nice. He has a Blue Mitchell sound and hearing it again when he plays the tune out I’ll guess that it IS Blue. Nice one 03 Nice rhythm to all three of these and this one is super nice. Jesus I SHOULD know that drummer! Well, the pianner player, too. Well, I’m going to guess at… No I’m not. I’ll just guess at the guy on Braith’s ‘Two souls in one’ on drums. Ah, Donald Bailey. 04 Oh, this is a bit too much like a hard bop take on da blooze for me to know much about it. Gonna slip out for a cough & drag. 05 All this stuff has nice rhythms. This is pretty nice – lovely drummer. 06 Ditto on rhythms. I think you’re a good picker of drummers. Dunno who the vibes player is; nice though. Ditto to the pianist. Tune’s a bit familiar, but not quite. 07 Intro sounds like a guitarist from Mali. Don’t know what kind of instrument is playing the melody line but I can’t say I find the sound very attractive. Anyway, the guitarist is soloing now and he’s NOT from Mali. I think they have a bit more taste. In fact this is the first cut on this BFT I haven’t liked. On to… 08 Back to the original approach of the BFT. More nice stuff I like but don’t quite know about. Oh, I think I know who this is – Abdoulaye Diabate. He IS from Mali. I haven’t got this, though. 09 Something from around the Sahara, maybe the north of Mali. Can’t say I ever really dug the music of the various Berber peoples, which this sounds like. No, I think the guy is singing in one of the Mande languages, which puts it into Mali proper. 10 Oh I’ve got this. It’s a track from Assagai’s first album, the one with the upside down map of part of Zaire on the cover. Without checking, I think this is the track called ‘Akasa’. Nice. I’d have enjoyed ‘Beka’, which has Dudu wailing his arse off, more, but this is nice. And it’s probably less obvious. 11 Don’t like the guitar riff on this. It sounds like another South African thing; one of the Township bands that no one outside the townships ever knew about. Did it jump or something at a few seconds over two minutes? Or are the second two minutes repeats of the first two? No the guitarist is doing more in part 2. But I think it’s two ides of a 45 joined together. 12 Bloomin’ awful rhythm section. Off to make a cuppa tea. 13 Oh, this tune is a bit familiar. I’d like it to be Milt Buckner, but it won’t be. No it isn’t – he’s a bit looser rhythmically than Milt. The record seems too recent or modern for the guitarist to be playing like that. Well, there’s definitely something anachronistic about this. 14 Oh, I’ve got this one, too. A big favourite by Charles Williams, the title track from ‘Trees and grass and things’. Lovely band, with Bubba Brooks, Bill Curtis, later the drummer with the Fatback Band, Cornell Dupree, Jimmy Lewis, Don Pullen and Montego Joe. 15 Here’s ‘Idaho’ an oldie – well, from the forties, I guess. Perhaps even the thirties. A nice tunr by the composer of ‘Shake rattle & roll’, whose name escapes me at present. 16 Another nice track. Oh, I must be oriented to Blue Mitchell today, because I think this is him, too. Oh, and ANOTHER older guy who thought Joe Henderson was god. No, it must be my brain stuck somewhere off the Virgin Islands. Pianist sounds a bit like McCoy Tyner or Cedar Walton to me. 17 Seems to me this is a bunch of musicians playing not very nice music as if it WERE very nice. Funny stuff, really; I don’t get it. Hope it made money for them. 18 ‘Eternally’, a song from the fifties – my memory’s telling me it was from a Charlie Chaplin film. I wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t from the soundtrack of it. Who the bleedin’ ‘ell is playing that cinema organ? Well, I like the guitarist’s sound. 19 ‘I wish you love’ by someone I nearly know. That pedal point accompaniment is putting me off as it doesn’t seem right for what the tenor player is doing. Don’t think I could listen to it more than once. Well, on to Bobby Bland now. That was mostly a real nice BFT. Thanks very much Aparxa. I’m curious to find out about a lot of it. MG

Breakfast this morning with Empire Bakuba - Adieu Dr Nico Tshala Muana - Biduaya Don Drummond - The best of Don Drummond MG

I think the crowd scene sleeves were a French idea. Here's the sleeve of Ray Charles a Newport - which was the one I got in '59 from Harrods (where I got staff discount). French photos MAY explain why the crowds are all white. MG

Depends on your idea of what jazz is. It ALL swings a HELL of a lot more than this Golson album So I seldom view Golson as an authority for me to take a lot of notice of. MG

Breakfast with Afrique dance avec mpongo love Etubom Rex Williams & his Nigerian Artistes - Ubok aka inua Junior Mance - Softly as in a morning sunrise MG

Funny, but that's the only Presley stuff I've got. I quite like it. OK, I mainly like it because it was the start which seems in retrospect insane. But I always liked the Sun tracks that appeared on some early Presley LPs. MG I suppose the real difference between the early history of R&R as opposed to jazz may be that one lot knew what to do with their instruments and the other lot seems not to have.

Well, it's not just that Road Runner only means records by Bo Diddley and Jr Walker to me, but I didn't get the WHOLE of what you wrote. MG

Looks like London. Were you listening to Laurie London? Breakfast with Bill Doggett featuring Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis & Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson Georgia Mass Choir I'm free Orchestre Lipua-Lipua - Mombasa MG

Sorry, that one went right by me. MG Yes. I didn't hear it because it was easy for a twelve year old who liked going out on his bike into the countryside to miss stuff if it wasn't on 'Family favourites' Sunday lunchtimes. Weekday evenings there was Dan Dare on Radio Luxembourg for me and whatever radio programmes my mother and stepfather liked to listen to - Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were ones they liked and some other US radio shows that were repeated here. Was there a Perry Como radio show? My mother was nuts about him, so if there was, that would have been on. We only had one radio at home and neither TV nor record player. MG

Several things that look interesting to me. Anyone who hasn't got 'The one and only Herman Foster' (not Forster ) needs a copy. MG

Well, Lou is just a lovable guy, whether playing with his brain turned off or fully engaged. MG

Yeah. When I was a kid we had all this stuff that, even at that age, and knowing the songs, I thought was complete rubbish on the radio - 'Bimbo' by Jim Reeves; "Zing" by some well known folk group; hundreds of Guy Mitchell records, or so it seemed. In 1956, I heard Fats Domino's 'I'm in love again' and it was a revelation - even though THAT was a complete rubbishy song, too. Well, the MUSIC wasn't. That BAND! Zowie! But the fact that I heard that real swinging music before I heard Presley or Bill Haley made a hell of a difference to my taste. Rock & Roll to me meant Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Larry Williams, Bo Diddley, the Coasters and the Platters (who I saw live in Bradford). Although I could appreciate Presley, the only one of them white boys I absolutely loved was Jerry Lee Lewis. Of course, there WAS other good stuff around. Perez Prado's records were very popular and "Cherry pink' was #1 in the US and UK in '55. 'Skokiaan' was on the radio a lot the hear before. Much though I liked that stuff (and still do) it was from somewhere else. Historically, of course, Presley had the influential position. White Rock & Roll all stemmed from his Sun material and the amazing thing was that those records were made by a band with two guitarists (Presley & Moore) and one bass player (Black). Just a trio with no drums. Looking back at those records from the sixty-odd years later it seems impossible for that music to have been created by a trio with no goddamn drummer. MG Did you ever go to the Ealing R&B club on any Saturday evening in 1961-62? Stuff started there, sure 'nuff. Usually there'd be the Alexis Korner band with all sorts of guests sitting in and, if you never saw Mick Jagger and Long John Baldry duetting on 'I got a woman', well, sorry, you missed it. It was in that place that the Rolling Stones got together and took over the gig from Korner when he got a better paying one in the West End. They'd only just been formed and they were real crap - I recall Jagger coughing up his guts after trying to sing Jessie Hill's 'Ooh poo pah doo'. MG

I got an oldie a few days ago - Marvin Gaye's greatest hits and heard this one for the first time ever I recall this song from a visit my parents took me on to Hamley's Toy Shop in Regent Street London, to select a birthday present for Christmas 1954. It was just a little pop song, not really meaningful. But Marvin's is truly knockout. He's PLEADING! Lord, he's somehow transmuted it into a REAL song. MG