The Magnificent Goldberg

Who's Alastair? How do you get him and get stuff from him please? MG

I was waiting for someone to forget T-Bone MG

I, too, would like to know. I note that is says "approximate address". Must be what Mosaic are using for shipping their parcels nowadays MG

Curious to know what the postage is on a haul like that? Must be a small fortune... When the sets finally reach Belgium, the buyer probably also will have to fork out a small fortune on tax/duty and fees. He'll probably have to fork out for the stuff he DIDN'T order, too MG

Don't remember the French releasing that one.. Shouldn't it be Pissin' Off? Surely not! The LP would have had to have been called "Goin'" - as in Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis' "Pissin' off to the meetin'", to which (coincidentally) I've just been listening (on CD). MG

Nice, ain't it? I don't listen to music when I'm hoovering. Or showering. Or gardening. Or even just sitting out in it - my neighbours cured me of that by blasting out heavy metal when I had a bunch of 1926 sermons by Rev Gates on once - OUCH! Or in a record shop MG

This one's on my radar - possibly late next month. MG

Les McCann - Yours is my heart alone; from Comment - Atlantic. I've had this album for a long time. I think it's the best vocal album Les made. The title track is a splendid civil rights anthem - "If all men were born to be free; what about you? what about me?" And that gets me every time. But what REALLY got me today was the last track, "Yours is my heart alone" (the Franz Lehar song). It's sung very, very slowly, and heavy with passion, but calm and completely NOT like a jazz record. MG

Yes - Joe had a market and hit it well. Not sure that, in the late seventies, he wasn't at least in part aiming at the Soul Jazz crowd. Just think of the sleeves of those Houston Person, Groove Holmes, etc albums with sexy black ladies on them (see Sexiest album covers thread ) Oh, definitely. He was aiming for that crowd, holding on to them as they aged, instead of following the more "current" trends...you can find a few "funky" Muse albums w/"keyboards" and funk rhythms, but mostly their output in that realm seemed to be aimed at the same people who would buy Houston Person albums since there weren't going to be any new Gene Ammons ones...that's an exaggeration, but... Actually, not a great deal of an exaggeration, I think. I can't offhand think of another tenor player who embodied so well what Jug was, musically and in the community, but was always himself, not anywhere near a clone. And Joe still ain't doin' too bad with Highnote/Savant. (Though Fedora seems to have fallen by the wayside.) MG

A vinyl evening Jimmy Ponder - While my guitar gently weeps - Cadet Freddie McCoy - Funk drops - Prestige (mono) Gene Ammons - Blue Gene - Prestige (OJC) now Coleman Hawkins & Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis - Night Hawk - Swingville (Transatlantic Xtra stereo) next Dexter Gordon - Piss off - BN DMM MG

Initial sales - those albums were available for years. In '69 I went into a shop in Harrow, suburban NW London - not the jazz centre of Britain. Found it remarkable that the guy had a copy of Fred Jackson's "Hooting in Tooting", so I remarked on it, to be told that he usually sold half a dozen copies of it a year!!! MG

Sonny Stitt - Burnin' - Argo mono And it bloody is! MG

Yes - Joe had a market and hit it well. Not sure that, in the late seventies, he wasn't at least in part aiming at the Soul Jazz crowd. Just think of the sleeves of those Houston Person, Groove Holmes, etc albums with sexy black ladies on them (see Sexiest album covers thread ) I have one or two Schlitten jobs done at RVG's (can't name them, though). Apparently he preferred to use Richard Alderson because he let Don smoke spliffs. MG

MG

Oh right, Niko - I hadn't noticed that. Thanks. MG

Well, all the tracks are listed a bit shorter on the CD sleeve than on the LP sleeve. The only one that's a lot shorter is "Morgan" - so the others are probably the same on both LP and CD. Could have done with ditching "Kharma", rather than cutting 4 and a bit mins off "Morgan" I always thought. But it's the title track and, although it's the weakest track on the LP, it's also the most interesting, because it points out the direction Earland was going to head when he signed up with Mercury. I always thought "Kharma" had a very thin sound, compared to the Lighthouse gig, which is hot, sweaty, thick, deep and LOUD and is altogether a blistering album. MG

I think there may be some other cuts on the "Kharma" album. Anyone want to post a tracklist and times so we can check? MG Stupid fool - I have the LP and the CD. Back later.

I think GG did rather well in the ghetto in the early days. Albums like "Grant's first stand", "Green Street", "Grantstand", "Sunday mornin'" and "Latin bit" - his first 5 releases - are all pretty good party material and would have fared correspondingly well in the scratched to fuck stakes. Note that all this stuff was recorded under the oversight/supervision of Ike Quebec. After his death, Duke Pearson took over and the music is much less party-oriented (and much more like jazz ) I'd love to see sales figures for BN LPs - I have a strong suspicion that sales of GG albums fell off after Pearson took over. But GG was a junkie and one of Alfred's favourite musicians - and always into Alf for dosh. He recorded more for BN than any other musician in the period 1961-65. So Alfred was recording a musician he liked a great deal, but making records he didn't think he could sell enough of (even though break-even point was 2,500 copies). And when he and Francis flogged BN to Liberty, there was scant chance of this stuff being issued (though "Street of dreams", which wasn't too old, and "Goin' west", which was quite old, were issued by Liberty). So most of it didn't get issued until Michael Cuscuna began to get them out in Japan and on the Rainbow series in 1979/80. I bet it's equally hard to find good copies from the "Carryin' on" - "Lighthouse" period, too. More great party music, which sold very well in the ghetto. So there are probably lots of shitty copies of the early albums around, but fewer (but maybe better preserved) copies of the later sixties ones. And the Jap and Rainbow issues probably didn't sell a lot before EMI bought UA and shut BN down in 1980. MG

Does that mean they're 7x7 inches? Pain in the arse to file. MG

Thanks Niko - perhaps I'll try one of those sessions first. Looking again, and noting that there are no personnel details given on the web pages, it occurs to me that the .txt file may contain some useful info. MG

A little gloss on "Idle moments". Records are made under constraints - financial, time and technical. In order to get their music out there (and to get paid), musicians consent to be fettered and agree to work within that discipline. Thus, the originally issued take of "Idle moments" was a failure because the musicians accidentally freed themselves from the constraints. If it's a professional failure, the musicians ought to have objected to their poorly-disciplined music being issued. ? MG

Yes, I've known a good few of these. The guy I buy organic nuts and stuff from - who turned me on to New Orleans jazz a few years ago, listens to nothing but that and swing bands; in his shop, which is nice. He has a little untidy pile of CDs and K7s there - perhaps 50-100, I never counted. I have NEVER known anyone like this. And I DON'T need to get out more MG Many of the people I knew at college in the mid to late 1970s were like that. They listened to a lot of Yes, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Frank Zappa, Allman Brothers Band, and other popular rock groups of the time. They had hundreds of rock albums, and about 20--30 jazz albums, and that was the way they liked it. They also had about five reggae albums, ten classical albums, maybe 20 blues albums--they didn't mind dabbling just a little bit in other styles, but the rock music of the time was definitely what they were mostly interested in. They enjoyed the 1970s fusion groups like Mahavishnu Orchestra, Larry Coryell and the Eleventh House, Weather Report, because these fusion groups reminded them of the most instrumentally oriented rock groups. They did not want to venture into any acoustic mainstream jazz--except that they also thought that ECM was "all right to admit liking"--they had a few Keith Jarrett, Ralph Towner, Gary Burton and Chick Corea albums on ECM. A lot of it was cultural and generational with them--the fusion and ECM were "young people's music" in their minds. They could not identify with older mainstream jazz artists, and the avant garde did not interest them. To them, buying a Dexter Gordon album would have been like buying a Dean Martin album, just a hopelessly square, old fogey thing to do. They could not bring themselves to do it. I have made contact with some of them online in recent years, and they seem to have the same musical collections and tastes as they did back then, or else they don't really care anymore about music at all. Yes, I'm sure you're right - and the same in Britain. But, being a little older than you, I managed to avoid all these geezers. (Mops brow.) Though actually, some of them, like you and Bev, are probably OK MG

Benjamin Franklin was never the President. He was too old by the time that the Presidency was instituted. Ho! Is that oo it iz then? I thought all the pix on your money were Presidents. MG

There are rip-offs all over the music business. All over every business. Sorry. The alternative takes that really meant something to me were the ones for "Idle moments". Not just the 13 minute version of "Django" and the longer version of "Jean de fleur". I should have liked to have heard the failed shorter version(s) of the title track, to see what they made of it. There have been a few other alterative takes that I've found interesting in that they do show the musician recomposing his/her solos, but generally I can only identify this happening if I already know the original pretty well. Otherwise, well... MG