The Magnificent Goldberg

Yeah! And things to put on your hair. And we have a full wardrobe that takes up the whole length of the main bedroom but contains NONE of my clothes, which are in a little wardrobe in a spare bedroom. And my grandsons obsess about Warhammer. MG

Oh, I must change my avatar! MG

The Gator Tail Jackson is a blast! Well, the second LP on it is; it's "Thunderbird" with Freddie Roach on organ and is effin' WILD! MG

Adrian Rollini? That's the man! MG

Well, I've got the single click thing going. When I'm in Windows explorer, it highlights each item in a folder, and selects it if I hover over it - good. And even better, I can fire it up just by hitting enter, so no clicks at all. Same goes for icons on my desktop. But not when I have a window open (I have all my windows, including browser windows, small enough to click on programmes or whatever on my desktop without minimising the window). I still have to do one click to tell the machine that, for a moment, I'm interested in the desktop, not the window I'm looking at. Obvious really. But I can't get this to happen at all on the internet. Links here don't get selected when I hover over them. Am I missing some option here? I've got my internet options set to highlight links when I hover over them, but it's not happening here or in my mailbox. Any advice on this folks? Is this something that Firefox would do for me? MG

I agree with Steve. The only real jazz album of 78s I've seen was owned by my landlord in the sixties. It was a collection of 78s by Fred Elizalde, a British bandleader, whose band featured that Chicago musician, whose name I can never remember, but who's well known for playing baritone sax, clarinet and hot fountain pen. Some Italian-sounding name, I think. MG

This pretty much sums it up for me too. I'd also add that "most people" have never had discerning ear or tastes, they just want something that "sounds like" what they want/need to hear at any given moment becuase let's face it - "most people" have more pressing issues in their lives than mulling over whether Eric Clapton is a real player, an erratic marginality, or pretty much worthless. They just ain't got time to go there, if you know what I mean. And really, why should they? Between raising a family (really raising it, not just being in the house & showing up at certain events), paying bills, keeping your relationship together, not getting fucked over on your job, fighting various illnesses, etc etc etc, why the fuck should anybody feel a mandate to figure out Eric Clapton's rightful place in the world? The literal downsizing of the players & and of the media itself is in perfect sync with what "most people" like to use music for - a lifestyle accessory. Nothing more, nothing less. For people like "us", well, that's hard to fathom, but...we do it too. It's just that our lifestyle hings more on digging deeper. I know a lot of people say that they'd rather be dead than live without their music, but....really? I'd like to see that put to a real-life test and see how many people blink at the last minute...I bet we'd see a whole lot of players getting carted off to the graveyard and a whole lot of fans crying as they watch them go. And you know what, when it's all said and done, that's probably how it should be. I agree with almost all of this except... what if you went deaf? MG

I'm most grateful. Will get onto the single click thing later this evening. MG

Fela Kuti & Roy Ayers - Music of many colours - Phonodisk International (Nigeria) now Johnny "Hammond" Smith - Here it is - Prestige (Musidisc) next Johnny Otis - Back to jazz - Jazz World MG

Me please, Guv. PM on the way. (I guess the shipping is going to be more than a fin. MG

Ah! So what, I wonder, were they doing in Detroit? I always wondered if there was an H P Lovecraft connection. Thanks for doing my research, Jim MG

So you have your mouse set for single-click functionality? If not, you should. I mean, seriously - 50% fewer clicks during the course of a day is 50% less wear on both you and your mouse. The latter is no big deal, but the former kinda is... Sorry Jim, I don't understand that - but it sounds very helpful. MG

A couple more before bed Johnny "Hammond" Smith - The prophet - Kudu Clarence Wheeler - The new Chicago blues - Atlantic MG

Thanks. I think you missed the point I was trying to make. I don't think there are two opposites, but more likely half as dozen, perhaps even more. That made me think of this: You get that in West Africa still; in popular contemporary music as well as traditional. MG

There's so much we don't know about this. A musician has to make do with whatever instrument he/she can get, whenever. And sometimes may borrow a bit of equipment from someone else. Or find it at a gig. How many times have we heard about pianists who get to the gig and find a crap piano? But they get around whatever problems there are and play effective music as best they can under the circumstances. Trane used to say that the musician who understood saxes better than anyone else was Earl Bostic. I bet that's reliable evidence. And it means that Hawk, Prez, Bird, Rollins, Stitt, Jug, Ornette and Trane himself were working with a less than perfect understanding of their instrument. So it doesn't matter. MG

Glad to be back! It's been dreadfully boring. I gave myself an RSI and the whole of my right forearm hurt, from my elbow to the back of my hand. But I mowed the lawn yesterday and am not paying for it today, so I reckon I'm pretty nearly better. As you get older, stuff like this takes forever to heal. Gotta remember to go easy on the mouse buttons. MG

Many happy returns, Ken. MG

I agree with you, Allen, but I think that reducing the issue to a dialectic between art and entertainment is unhelpfully over-simplifying. It may be shorthand, but most people wouldn't understand it as standing for a large number of different aspects, all with their individual range of separate purposes. So, who is Lawrence Levine? Would you please post the details of the book you're recommending? Yes, I agree, though it's quite possible that Hemphill was a square peg in a round hole in that band. I can also imagine that there would have been many sax players who wouldn't have been bored. But I can also see why one might have been, since the accent in that band was not greatly on sax solos and saxes were a (very) basic horn section. Quite right, but did that have something to contribute to the baby boom? I can definitely get with that, Allen. Please expand. MG

Time to set out what recordings he's done. These are, as far as I know, Genes recordings as a leader or co-leader Singles Mr Fink La Vere 210 (1960) Sticks & stones pts 1 & 2 Atlantic 5034 (9/1963) The vamp - (label unknown) (1965) Soul mountain - (label unknown) (1966) Mother blues/Blue flame JoCida 303 (1967) The street preacher - (label unknown) (1987) (in addition, there are 10 unissued tracks made for Atlantic between September 1963 and May 1964 probably lost forever) Albums Hot organ Time 2199 (10/1964) Educated sounds Travis 707 (mid 1960s) This is Gene Ludwig Gelu 1415 (1967) Nows the time - Muse 5164 (10&11/1979) Back on the track - Loose Leaf 9804 (c1998) Soul serenade - Loose Leaf 9810 (5-7/1999) The groove organization - Blues Leaf 9818 (9/2001) Double exposure (with Cecil Brooks III) Savant 2072 (8/2002) * Gene Ludwig in Las Vegas - Blues Leaf 9831 (9/2002) Hands on - Blues Leaf 9826 (8/2003) Duffs blues 18th & Vine 1056 (2008?) His albums as a sideman appear to be Sonny Stitt Night letter Prestige 7759 (10/1969) Randy Caldwell Front Loose Leaf 9803 (c1998) Billy Price Danger zone Corona 70621 (1999) Shawnee Lake - Diamonds and sausage - Shawnee Lake no # (1999) Plas Johnson & Red Holloway Keep that groove goin Milestone 9319 (4/2001) Hosea Taylor - Walking the walk - (label unknown) (2000) Jimmy Ponder Whats new HighNote 7100 (8/2002) Bob DeVos DeVos groove guitar Blues Leaf 9822 (11/2002) Leslie West Blues to die for Blues Bureau International 2047 (2003) Hosea Taylor - Indubitably quintessential - (label unknown) (2003) Jonathan Settel & the Jerusalem Gospel Singers Gospel from Jerusalem Hataklit 9405 (2006) (also Bob DeVos. Prod by Jack Kreisberg) Jared Wilson Worry no more Tva 3341 (2-3/2007) Scott Hamilton Across the tracks Concord 30388 (2008) * note on dating: the sleeve notes give July 2000 but say Double exposure was recorded in a spare couple of hours after Ponders album Whats new, which was recorded in August 2002. Ponders July 2000 album was Thumbs up, but Gene didnt appear on that one. I always thought Gene was as good an organist as Sonny Phillips or Reuben Wilson. Always dynamic. Apart from the period since 1998, dreadfully under-recorded. Good though, that he got heard eventually. RIP Gene. MG

I'm sure it's true. Bird took string & rhythm sections out on a tour of dance halls in 1952 with Willis Jackson. I have the gig at Rockland Palace Dance Hall, Harlem on LP and it's good dancing music. Bish, Max, Mundell Lowe, Kotick were the rhythm section. Not bad MG

I used to buy the NME on occasions - but not as much as MM and the jazz content was distinctly less. I remember NME from that crazy cartoon strip ('The Lone Groover'?) and young upstarts like Julie Burchill writing for it. Some of the articles in Melody Maker I would definitely like to see again. Like Steve Lake (or was it Richard Williams?) on Miles Davis Japanese import releases (Dark Magus/Black Beauaty/Pangaea - then rare in the UK) and a great essay on Basil Kirchin's 'Worlds Within Worlds'. I don't remember ANY jazz in the NME from the late fifties/early sixties, before I gave it up and took to the Record Mirror, where there was good coverage of R&B. The best thing about the Melody Maker, as far as I was concerned, was that sometimes (slow news weeks?) they published a US gospel LP top 10. I remember one week, every LP on the chart was on Savoy! MG

My earliest memory is singing along with my Mum to "Open the door, Richard", when I was a 3 year old. The first music I really HEARD was Fats Domino's. I always maintain that I love R&B because I encountered Fats before Presley. Nuff sed. MG

I got a cheap boxed set of CDs by Machito early this year. There’s a lot of great Bebop in there. A lot of ordinary stuff, too, but live broadcasts with Brew Moore, Milt Jackson and Howard McGhee in the band, as well as a long suite with Charlie Parker. So the question that hit me was, if you could turn on your radio and hear this, how come it wasn’t more popular than it was? Well, they said you couldn’t dance to it. Amiri Baraka’s response – YOU can’t dance to it – was unsatisfactory. How anyone couldn’t dance to that music, I simply can’t understand. It’s tremendously exciting dance music. And so was a lot of Bebop. But… Dancing fulfils lots of different needs; it’s not a generalised activity. Dancing may be religious, callisthenic, sexual or many other things. In the ghetto, there’s been a tradition of very athletic dancing forever, it seems; a tradition that continues, of course. And Bebop played into that tradition admirably. The kind of dancing that Bebop wasn’t very good for is where you hug your partner, put your tongue in his/her mouth, squeeze his/her bum and grind your hips together to a slow/medium rocking and rolling rhythm that is a kind of vertical sex, or stand still, swaying to a sultry ballad by Charles Brown or Nat Cole. Sure, there were Bebop recordings that were ideal for this kind of dancing; “Bird of paradise”, “Moody’s mood for love” and “Parker’s mood” all qualify. And there were others. But the predominant tempo for bop was UP – breakneck UP in many cases. On the other hand, the music of Roy Milton, Joe Liggins, Amos Milburn, as well as blues ballad singers, was replete with such tempos. And people wanted to dance at these easy rocking tempos, and for reasons that should be obvious. The most significant social trend of the day was a baby boom. So, in picking fast tempos, Beboppers were turning their backs on the most life-affirming element in contemporary black social behaviour. Discuss. MG

Yeah, tell it like it is! MG

Looks like he did.... Never heard of this 45. Doubt if Bell would have issued an LP. Just checked their album list - they didn't. Very interesting, though. Dunwich was the firm for which Jackie Ivory recorded his classic album "Soul discovery" which was issued on Atco in 1966. It was Detroit firm, not a Chicago firm. But I see the arranger was Richard Evans, so a Chicago date organised by a Detroit firm? MG