The Magnificent Goldberg

I think there were 3 LPs PM sings PM, which I've got and lurve Blues, & then some, which I used to have but it got fucked up and also lurved PM is a blues master, which I never heard but my friend said was great. Dan, is this available now? I'll get one if it is. MG

Norman Simmons' very slow version of 'Caravan' is delicious. You can see those weary camels plodding through the Sahara. I don't mind what people play, so long as it comes out right for me. MG

I dunno when you guys find the time to upload all your CDs. I've got a 160 GB ipod and it's about a third or half full. It takes aeons to upload a CD and to make sure all the tags are consistent; eg if you spell Latin LATIN the ipod thinks it's a different genre and when you're scrolling through the gentres, you get forty-seven occurrences of Latin and LATIN, because it changes every time the tag changes. Ditto for artists. And having to have the internet connected while doing this is one helluvan easy way to get the PC to hang. I never play stuff on shuffle. I play stuff I want to listen to. MG

This is what ASCAP does. Back in the thirties, distribution of radio industry payments to ASCAP to composers was determined by a concept called 'availability', which basically meant that, if your name was Porter, Gershwin, Carmichael, Rodgers and a few dozen others, you got a huge payout every year, because more of your songs were 'available' than for writers of a few songs, which may have been big hits. This was eventually settled when BMI started and attracted lots of ASCAP songwriters by proising to pay in relation to radio plays of their material. But ASCAP is a society and the biggest members who determine policy are the richest. And so... MG

My wife likes Bruce Springsteen. 'Nuff sed. MG

Not to me; the most important thing to me about him, and most other artists, is that they worked exclusively for the ruling classes, the only people who could afford to support them, and therefore had to adhere to their ideals. This continues to the modern age and applies equally to Duke Ellington. But not to Jimmy Forrest; “Hey Mrs Jones, How’s Mr Jones? Hey Mrs Jones, How’s Mr Jones? And by the way, Are you alone?” And that ain't the standard I measure music by. I measure it by the way it REPRESENTS the culture that it derived from. So that Jimmy Forrest is more important to me than Duke Ellington. Which, to avoid confusion, is not to say that I think that Forrest is BETTER. Such concepts as quality are invalid to me; they are, in the end, constructs of the ruling classes - which makes the rules, among which are the rules that say what's supposed to be good, bad or indifferent, in art, which is at the service of the ruling classes. (Since the French and Industrial Revolutions, the job of the ruling classes has been taken over by the middle class, it shouldn't be necessary for me to point out.) MG

I know I'm nitpicking here, but this dessert wine is not technically a sherry - it's a Pedro Ximenez made near Cordoba. Although the grapes used and winemaking process may be very similar to sweet sherries in this case, by law, "sherry" can only be made in Sanlucar de Barrameda, El Puerto de Santa Maria, or Jerez de la Frontera, which are 200 km away from this winery. Thank you very much. I didn't know that. I'll show my daughter this next time she visits. Still bloody lovely, though. MG

I've got the music selected for one, so I could go in whenever it's convenient, Jeff. Another rather odd one halfway through the drawing board stage. Some time next year, I guess. MG

My breakfast listening this morving, but on CD, with 2 nice binus cuts. I can't play LPs in the dining room, cos there's no turntable here. Anyway, I haven't got this on LP MG Typed one handed, cos I was rolling a ciggy with the other! Not going to correct the mistakes though.

Come back Clem, all are forgived. GM

Hey! I found a photo of Houston Person live somewhere inside an LP a few years ago. It wasn't a Houston Person LP, strangely enough. Nice photos, Jeff. MG

Yeah - I put one of their cuts in one of my BFTs. Fabulous band. I only have the Frogs, not the Classics. MG

I'll have a download please, Fleurin. MG

This morning's vinyl included Ramsey Lewis - Goin' Latin - Cadet (Chess UK) Wild Bill Davis - One more time - Coral (Coral UK) Clarence Wheeler & the Enforcers - Burn for Bern - Straight ahead MG

Late post, from UK Mail, not Royal Mail, just brought this. Sam Theard was a comedian of the twenties and thirties. You'll have heard of him as the writer of 'You rascal you' and 'Let the good times roll' and 'You can't get that no more', for Louis Jordan, and Ruth Brown's 'Teardrops from my eyes'. As a comedian he was known as 'Spo-dee-o-dee', from which Sticks McGhee got the solution to a substitute word for his song, 'Drinking wine, motherfucker'. Born 1904, died 1982. He apeared in some well known films, as well as making records and writing songs. He was in the TV series 'Sanford & son' and 'Little house on the prairie' and in the films, 'Norman is that you' with Redd Foxx, and with Richard Pryor in 'Which way is up'. Haven't heard it yet. It literally arrived a few minutes ago. MG

I have a twofer LP of Charlie Parker live at the ROckland Palace on Charlie Parker records. Nice stuff from '52 or '53, I seem to remember. It's upstairs and I can't be asked to go and look at present. MG

In the interview section at the end of Nat Adderley's Chiaroscuro Floating Jazz Fest album, he talks about 'Work song' as his favourite song, becaause it was used for a TV ad in Japan (Toyota I think). Throughout John Broven's book 'Record makers and breakers' he's continually on about the value of song copyrights. And those copyrights last until 50 years after the composer's death, so they provide for kids and grandkids, too. MG

I didn't know he was dead. I'm sorry. RIP. MG

No - they cook the same stuff, but horribly! MG

A cup of tea! I rarely drink booze, but my daughter got me a special reserve sherry for Christmas. This one. If any Brits want to try the best shery I've ever tasted - actually, the best DRINK I've ever had, here's a link to Slurp.co.uk, where you can get it. http://www.slurp.co.uk/fortified-wines/sherry/18848-toro-albala-don-pedro-ximenez-gran-reserva-1985-37.5cl-/ It's twenty quid (for 375ml) there. My daughter got me the same size bottle for fifteen. I liked it so much, I asked her to get me another bottle, which she did so, when she came over for Mothers' Day yesterday, we had a tiny glass each. Absolute Ambrosia! MG

Well, if you'd eaten in restaurants in Senegal and The Gambia, you'd realise that it was true. The French taught the Senegalese to cook, the Brits taught the Gambians. MG S'right. I don't know about the story. Steve and Paul both make good points and Hope COULD have done it. Anyway, it's a wonderful bit of very committed writing and I think illustrated Amiri's views on being revolutionary in the day. MG

Two superb blues albums came yesterday. McCracklin probably had a bad rep among blues fans because of his soul style hits in the sixties. hese two ACE CDs cover 1949-50 and 1954-55 and are great down home blues. MG

Hm. "The workers will only be freed by their own efforts" (Anarcho-syndicalism motto) But I do agree about the dumbass liberals. (And we're two on the left, Allan ) Oh well, anyway, I spent most of my time on the board on Wednesday reading this thread. Pretty nice thread, to start off with. So to get back to Amiri Baraka, I came across his writing first in the sleeve notes for Willis Jackson's 'Thunderbird'. Much nostalgia from Leroi there about the time of the honkers. And I always had the feeling that these were the first revolutionaries - who totally disregrded the 'white' rules of taste and playing 'properly' - who were his heroes. And not just musical heroes. Soon after I read the 'Thunderbird' notes, I came across a short story of his in an anthology of new American writing. The story was called 'The screamers'. The anthology was all, as far as I know, fiction and I thought 'The screamers' was fiction, too, because it was about a honking Chicago tenor player I'd never heard of - Lynn Hope. But when I found out Hope was a real person - and a Muslim back in the day - I had second thoughts, though I still don't know if the story - of Hope coming to Newark to play and walking the band right out of the dancehall ionto the streets and inciting a riot in the city was an account of a real event or something Amiri would have liked to have happened. MG

I'm not sure that prejudice - religious, gender, colour - doesn't play any more. But what you do about it, I don't know. MG

I got it for pence and kept it MG