The Magnificent Goldberg

I've done a quick search in an old Lord discog and it looks like they were all reissued on CD. Here's what it says. Gerald Wilson [W7241-4] "Lomelin": Gerald Wilson Orchestra of the 80's: Bobby Bryant, Rick Baptist, Snooky Young, Oscar Brashear (tp,flhrn) Jimmy Cleveland, Garnett Brown, Thurman Green (tb) Maurice Spears (b-tb) Jerome Richardson (fl,pic,as,sop,ts) Buddy Collette, Henry de Vega, Roger Hogan (as,fl,pic) Ernie Watts, Harold Land (ts,fl) Jack Nimitz (bar) Mike Wofford (p) Harold Land, Jr. (el-p) Robert Conti, Shuggie Otis (g) Johnny Williams (b) Paul Humphrey (d,perc) Gerald Wilson (arr,cond) Los Angeles, March 13 & 14, 1981 Lomelin Discovery DS833, DSCD947 [CD] Ay-ee-en [Anthony Eric Nichols] - - See you later - - You know - - Triple chase - - Blues for Zubin - - Note: Discovery DSCD947 [CD] titled "Gerald Wilson - Orchestra of the '80's - Love You Madly"; see flwg session for more titles; this CD lists Anthony Ortega instead of Buddy Collette. *********** Gerald Wilson [W7242-4] Jessica: Gerald Wilson Orchestra of the 80's: Gerald Wilson, Bobby Bryant, Rick Baptist, Snooky Young, Hal Espinosa, Oscar Brashear (tp) Jimmy Cleveland, Garnett Brown, Thurman Green (tb) Maurice Spears (b-tb) Anthony Ortega, Jerome Richardson, Henry de Vega (as) Ernie Watts, Harold Land, Roger Hogan (ts) Jack Nimitz (bar) Gerald Wiggins (p) Harold Land, Jr. (el-p) Milcho Leviev (keyboards) Johnny Williams (b,el-b) Clayton Cameron (d) Los Angeles, November 29 & December 6, 1982 Jessica Trend TR-531, TRCD-537 [CD] Love you madly - , Discovery DSCD947 [CD] Blues, bones and Bobby - , TRCD-537 [CD] Getaway - , Discovery DSCD947 [CD] Sophisticated lady - - Don't get around much anymore - - Note: Trend TRCD-537 [CD] titled "Calafia"; see November 29 & 30, 1984 for rest of CD. ********* Gerald Wilson [W7243-4] Calafia: Gerald Wilson's Orchestra of the 80's: Al Aarons, Rick Baptist, Oscar Brashear, Snooky Young (tp) Garnett Brown, Buster Cooper, Thurman Green, Maurice Spears (tb) Red Callender (tu) Anthony Ortega, Ernie Watts, Roger Hogan, Harold Land, John Stephens, Henry de Vega (reeds) Milcho Leviev (p) Stanley Gilbert (b) Paul Humphrey (d) Gerald Wilson (arr,cond) Glendale, CA, November 29 & 30, 1984 Calafia Trend TR-537, TRCD-537 [CD] Eloy - - The Redd Foxx - - Polygon - - 3/4 for Mayor Tom - - Prince Albert - - Viva Tirado '85 - - *********** Gerald Wilson [W7245-4] Jenna: Gerald Wilson's Orchestra of the 90's: Snooky Young (tp,vcl) Raymond Brown, Bob Clark, Rick Baptist, Ron Barrows, Oscar Brashear (tp) Thurman Green, Luis Bonilla, Charlie Loper (tb) Maurice Spears (b-tb) Danny House, John Stephens (as) Louis Taylor, Carl Randall (ts) Randall Willis (bar,as) Michael Cain (p) Anthony Wilson (g) Stanley Gilbert (b) Mel Lee (d) Gerald Wilson (arr,vcl,dir) Hollywood, CA, June 27 & 28, 1989 Love for sale Discovery DSCD964 [CD] Jenna - Carlos - Back to the roots - The wailer - Blues for Yna Yna - B-bop and the song - Couldn't love, couldn't cry - Yard dog Mazurka - 48 years later - Lunceford special - Margie (sy,gw vcl) - Flying home - ********* Sorry about the format. MG

Well, here's one, though it doesn't lok like it says much about GW's CDs. http://jazzlabels.klacto.net/discovery.html MG

Avery Parrish (pianist & composer of "After hours") born Birmingham, AL, 1917 Time to dig out those Erskine Hawkins records Jimmy Forrest, St Louis, MO, 1920 MG

That's the one I have, but on CD. Oval was Charlie Gillette's company. He still has a World Music programme on the BBC World Service. Back in the sixties, he used to write very good pieces on R&B for the Record Mirror. Funny sleeve, that - it's a pic of a Dogon village, nowt to do with Mandinke music. The Dogon have been in the region a lot longer than the Mandinke and speak a Voltaic language, not a Mande language. I dunno about you, but I find that sort of thing very irritating - though it's not as bad as having Von Freeman's face on the sleeve of a Willis Jackson CD, or Red Nichols' on a Red Allan CD MG

Never been to Bamako or Conakry, I'm afraid. They were hellishly expensive to get to, compared with Banjul (very cheap flights from here) and Dakar. And there was often some disturbance in the area that put me off. Do go - and don't wait until it becomes too much of an effort. MG

Thanks, I'd had seen that and not looked carefully enough to recognize it as the right one. Trouble is, the cover's in French and I'd done my listing in English. Very hard to search in the wrong language MG

James Von Streeter Billy Root The Highway QCs

1 Please post a pic - my wife loves Staffies and wants to get one. I think they're more intelligent than you think. 2 Neither of our dogs (both deceased) wrapepd themselves in a blanket - we never gave them one 3 My stepfather's stepfather's dog used to do this - a mongrel. But he gave him a blanket. MG

Frank Sinatra Nancy Sinatra Frank Sinatra Jr

Ah well, Rose was a mate, not someone one just has a kiss and a fondle in the dark with. Although she was as nuts as I was about R&B, she had a lot of weird stuff, too, including this Capitol EP, which was just the sort of thing the hip young things were listening to in the early fifties. Goodness knows where she got that stuff from, 'cos she was younger than me (18/19). I recall the name of Carisi from "Birth of the cool" (just to prove I did once have Miles Davis albums ) MG

Django Reinhardt Django Bates Master Bates

I must get that Rail Band set. I assume you mean the kora players. Amazon UK used £9.78 and worth double. I'm serious about this album. It's "Kind of blue" and "A love supreme" in this field. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mali-Ancient-strings-Various-Artists/dp/B00004XQFY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1264279149&sr=1-2 Toumani Diabate's first - beautiful music. I really don't care if it's neo-colonial when I'm listening to it. £4.70 used. Or you can get a DL for £2.99. What more could you ask? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kaira-Toumani-Diabate/dp/B00000061L/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1264279279&sr=1-8 Amadu Bansang Jobarte was in his early seventies when he recorded this. £14.95 at Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tabara-Amadu-Bansang-Jobarteh/dp/B000003ISQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1264279626&sr=1-1 Only recording of Sidikiba Diabate - and not strictly a kora album, but fabulous. (Also pricey £17.49) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lepopee-Mandingue-Kouyate-Sory-Kandia/dp/B000X74RS6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1264279972&sr=1-4 Well, you can get this, but it's £38.50 used at Amazon. Shove it in your wish list and watch to see if the price comes down. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Yasimika-Jali-Musa-Jawara/dp/B00000061R/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1264280283&sr=1-1 MG Actually, I think emusic may have the "Epopee du Mandingue" on their site, Bev.

That is REALLY sad. Back in the summer of '65, I worked night shift in a small manufacturing firm and we used to have the radio on all night. After 2AM, when the BBC closed down in those days, we'd switch over to a French station (don't know which). Couldn't really listen to the announcements, though, in fast French. One Friday night/Saturday morning, I heard this tenor player who just HAD to be John Coltrane, though I'd never heard him before, only read about him. And I just left my work and listened. And they played THE WHOLE OF "A LOVE SUPREME". Now, that's jazz radio! Needless to say, as soon as I got off work, I was off into town, breakfast at Joe Lyons, then round to the jazz record shop - "I just heard this thing, which I'm sure was by John Coltrane, and it went on forever." "Oh, they all do," Ken said. "But it might have been his new one." MG

Well, I have to confess that my trips to West Africa occupied a decade from 1993 to 2002. I'm getting a bit too old to keep on my toes, as you have to in Africa, as you would in the Philly ghetto, for a period of several weeks. The system in Senegambia (and I've been told that Guinea and Mali use the same system) is that royalties are paid on the number of units manufactured, not the number sold. The copyright offices, which collect the royalties, can establish the former number with some ease, but the latter number disappears into the miasma of the informal economy. So record companies tend to be a bit conservative and, if they don't think they can sell another batch of twenty-five thousand albums (the normal duplication run), the album will suddenly be out of print. So the record shops - and I mean the legit ones, as well as the informal ones - all keep back one copy and use it, after deletion, to copy the album for customers who still want to buy it. So, if you go into the back rooms of these shops - and of course I spent enough money to be allowed in the back rooms - what you see is a mini history of the music the shop has stocked since it opened. Now, they don't have a Spillers Records that's been open since 1894, but some of these places have been around since the seventies. If you're searching for one specific record, you might have to go to a few. But phew! They're like an Aladdin's cave! (My big find was an album Kine Lam made with Youssou Ndour's band that even Toshiya Endo didn't know about.) But it's mostly modern music. The big exceptions are for Mandinke female vocalists and Wassoulou kamelengoni singers/bands (depending on area). MG

Absolutely on both points. My starting point, which I tried not to lose, was these interrelated families of kora players and the evident differences between the two generations - and between different tendencies within the younger generation. Roy Eldridge was not Dizzy Gillespie's father (I feel sure) (Though Arno was Randy's ) MG Thanks - dumped into my favourites with scarcely a glance, so greatly do I rely on your taste. (Where's the smiley for "arselicker"? ) MG

No reason why not. The whole Mandinke big band thing was fuelled musically by the musicians borrowing jazz ideas and techniques and grafting them onto their own songs. That's mostly what the Kora Jazz Trio do - most of the songs are simply different versions of Djeli Moussa Diawara's own songs recorded on his other albums, plus the odd jazz tune. I like it. But is it good? How would I know? MG

Oh yes; some people definitely are - other kora players. But, as I riffle through the back rooms of shops in Senegambia, I've never, ever, seen any recordings - not even pirates - of any of these kora players. Not even in Brikama, where the Kontes and Jobartes live and are well known on the street, do the cassette shops sell their stuff, or that of the other kora players. But they have a ton of the more modern Mandinke music, and people coming in to buy all the time I was there. I hadn't come across the Voice of America blog before, thanks. The other two are very interesting indeed. MG PS - by the way, I wasn't trying to imply that the skills of these players aren't being passed on. As you point out by reference to the ngoni and other instruments, there are great players on these instruments, and there will continue to be. And so are the skills of instrument makers. (The business of learning to play a kora, involves making your own instruments - getting larger as the child grows up. But the bala is usually made by a specific tradesman.)

I think maybe they're joining a different tradition, and possibly it's because they can't sell what used to be done any more. Whereas they CAN be marketed outside as the inheritors of a tradition that's at least 800 years old, which is a good commrcial point. MG Having thought about this a bit over dinner, I'm inclined to be a bit more positive. Dembo Konte, certainly, has joined/is joining western society. Though of course, he spares an amused smile for the floundering attempts of tourists who stay in his home to cope with Africa - including me And there are always two meanings to this, as is true in the US. But one can see his recordings for Rogue and Sterns are much better payers as adverts, linked with mentions in the Rough Guide to West Africa, than they are a source of direct income from royalties. MG

I think maybe they're joining a different tradition, and possibly it's because they can't sell what used to be done any more. Whereas they CAN be marketed outside as the inheritors of a tradition that's at least 800 years old, which is a good commrcial point. MG

Doesn't seem to be about sex. MG

Late Fate Marable The Great Gates

Don't think you'll find Wynton recording with Roswell Rudd anytime soon. Ha! Just experienced my first hearing of Rudd on BFT71. Terrific! Will peruse Allen Lowe's thread soon. For more background, do check out Graeme Counsel's website I posted a link for earlier. I haven't bought his book yet, but you can download from that site a pdf file of his thesis, which is really very interesting. Graeme has been decorated by the Guinea government recently, for his work on the Syliphone Records catalogue. I doubt that they did so lightly. He's DA MAN! MG

I'm always a bit wary about the term 'the people'. An awful lot has been justified in their name - Lenin and his middle class accomplices invoked a dictatorship in the name of 'the people'; Hitler justified his dictatorship and rode roughshod over the law on the grounds that he was acting for the German people; our own politicians constantly claim that when the follow their own self-interest they are acting for the people. To say 'the tradition is owned by the people' is to imply that there is a single, defined tradition. I'd argue that the tradition is owned by the person/persons who define the tradition as such...it's a retrospective construction, a particular arrangement of selected pieces of the jig-saw puzzle that fits the perpective or interests or prejudices or special interests of the constructor. Which is why I'm always suspicious of those who claim to have a particular insight into what the tradition is. Perhaps I put this poorly. To me, traditions are something that people do/use/have reference to/have various kinds of hooks to. We're talking about music, but we could be talking about the kind of pots they use/make, the houses they live in/build or the patterns of cloth they use/make, but in each case the artists who make that stuff, or play it, are a part of the people, most of whom aren't capable of doing so, because their skills lie in other directions. From time to time, one of these artists is going to see the need to change something in what they're doing. This happens, I reckon, more frequently in times of social upheaval than in tines of quietude. But whenever, the innovation has to pass a test, which is, do the people want it like that? Because, if they don't, the innovation will simply disappear. If they do, they'll buy it and it will become the latest part of a continuing tradition. This is very often a commercial test, but not always; when the tradition involves the way people behave amongst themselves, such a test seems unlikely - eg the change from polygamy to monogamy in our society was probably not subject to a commercial test, though I doubt if historians could tell us yea or nay on that So what I mean by the people owning it is they've (generally) bought it or bought into it. MG

I agree entirely. I think that, in the forties, the same could be/would be (perhaps was) said of much of the new R&B that was coming out of the ghettos in the US, whereas Prez could be filed alongside the 78 albums of Beethoven MG

I guess you're in Chicago - so here's one at US AMazon $8.99 used http://www.amazon.com/Mali-Ancient-Strings-Various-Artists/dp/B000059TAJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1264263275&sr=1-1 MG