The Magnificent Goldberg

Ray Charles - Trilogy - Swingtime & ABC material MG

Too many options. It's crap. MG

If he's deep into Soul and not jazz, I'd say the Freddie Roach is the best bet of those (though I don't know the Max Roach album). Another, but never issued on CD, is Jack McDuff's "Lift every voice" on JAM. Not wordless, however; the choir sings the words. Tracks include Gil Scott-Heron's "A prayer for everybody", Trane's "Naima" and Jeff Lorber's "Night love" as well as a McDuff instrumental. This one went down very well with the British Acid Jazz crowd in the eighties. Donald Byrd's "Up with Donald Byrd" on Verve is another and, in my view, better for a Soul fan than "I'm tryin' to get home". But don't just focus on the vocalese albums. If your friend's a Soul fan, he might go for all kinds of Soul Jazz stuff. Boogaloo Joe Jones, Lou Donaldson, Grant Green, Jimmy McGriff all might have a lot to offer him. MG

Let's not forget the WONDERFUL job he did on George Braith's "Two souls in one", in particular the jungle of percussion he created on "Braith-away". And he plays on Thornel Schwartz' "Soul cookin'" and Jack Wilson's "Jazz organs" - 2 good albums that few may have heard. Also, he was on the live session that produced Esther Phillips' "Confessin' the blues" and "Burnin' at the Pied Piper". No organ on that one, as I recollect He's given a LOT of pleasure over the years. MG

Ruben Blades Reuben Wilson Harold Wilson

I just checked - most of my downloads are MP3s, so itunes will play them, just like that. But my rips are .wma files and, if I import them into itunes, I get a message saying that they'll be converted to .aac format. Does that mean I wouldn't be able to play them with the WMP? Or does itunes make a different copy somewhere? MG

Bernie Glow, Al Klink and Romeo Penque were based in New York City, not Hollywood. Yes, I should have noticed. Too obsessed with Plas Johnson's 5,000 sessions. MG

Who? Reuben Wilson? Trevor Lawrence? Malcolm Riddick? Tommy Derrick? MG

I generally look for some personal connection between the musician playing and the one who's music is being played. Funnily enough, I was listening to the King Curtis Sam Cooke material yesterday as part of the Bear Family Capitol box, and it's pretty good. My favourites are David Newman - I remember Brother Ray - HighNote (Ray Charles) Houston Person - To Etta with love - HighNote (Etta Jones) Sonny Stitt - My buddy - Muse (Jug) Sonny Stitt - Stitt plays Bird - Atlantic Other good ones, where there isn't a close personal connection, are John Hicks - Music in the key of Clark - HighNote (Sonny Clark) Jimmy Smith plays Fats Waller - BN Hank Crawford - Mr Blues plays Lady Soul - Atlantic (Aretha Franklin) MG

Hm, so what about getting an ipod that isn't made by Apple? Are there such things? MG I don't believe so, but there are plenty of other digital music players in general. I have a Sony model that plays the files in ATRAC (Sony proprietary) format. Sounds just as bad as the ipods then, from the point of view of flexibility. Is this business still at the stage of VHS/Betamax? MG

Albert Ketelbey Charlotte Siegenberg Mabel Maud Pritchett

Hm, so what about getting an ipod that isn't made by Apple? Are there such things? MG

Hm, well, my wife wants one for Christmas and I think I'm going to be doing the loading and the finding for her. Not a good deal. That's why I think I want my own (self defence ) MG

The iPod will play any MP3, but won't play Windows Media Files as far as I know. You may have to reformat them to MP3 or AAC (Apple's "lossless" format) before putting them on the iPod. With any MP3s you have downloaded, you can bypass iTunes altogether and drop them directly into the iPod. One important thing, it's best to have your iPod set to "manual" as opposed to "automatically sync with iTunes." The automatic mode means it will automatically update your iPod to only include the files currently in your iTunes library. Personally, I keep nothing in my iTunes library because I don't want the files taking up space on my computer. Thanks Noj. So, if I'm ripping stuff off a CD, I shouldn't use WMP to do it? I should use itunes? (But I hate using itunes on the computer - I have two albums that only play on itunes and it's dire trying to fire it up and find the playlists.) MG MG

I'd be surprised if it hadn't, but I don't know. I haven't got one MG

Wow - that sounds obscure ! I guess it must be, curiously it states that its a A Record Supervision Production and therefore I wondered if it might have been a Lansdowne recording. But Lansdowne were on Columbia and Piccadilly was part of Pye. Any rate, this new slice of Shake set me listening to my Joe Harriot Cds and then to the wonderful Gearbox EP just released and mentioned a few pages back. Gearbox records. Lansdowne also had stuff released on Pye, I seem to recollect. I think Chris Barber's "Petite fleur" had a note to that effect on the label. Haven't got any of those Barber records so can't look it up, but they might have been earlier than the other material we know better. Or it might simply have been that some musicians were already under contract to other labels and their material apeared on those labels. In the pop field, that was what Joe Meek, RGM, did. He had stuff issued on HMV, Parlophone, Decca, Top Rank (I think before EMI took it over), as well as his own label, Triumph. MG

Cab Calloway - Vol 2 1935-1940 - JSP MG

But how will he do when you give him 3 days to study ......then quiz him on all the Jimmy Smith releases between '56-'58 including tracks, personnel & Japanese TOCJ catalogue numbers??? AH HA!!! ....that'll fix the little guy!!!!! MG

I'm extremely pleased. Thanks for relaying this news. MG

Thanks Bev. What's the best store to buy one in over here? MG

Sorry. No sweat. To quote The Drifters - come on over to my place... http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...c=55838&hl= MG

Another silly question - I've got a lot of stuff on my PC that I've ripped from CDs (either original ones or ones recorded from tape or LP) using WMP. Also stuff downloaded but not through itunes. Can I load them into itunes or will I have to do them all again? MG

Thanks Noj. If you record an LP or tape onto a CD, then rip the CD into your computer, then shove it into itunes, how does itunes know how to find the details? MG

That was the Hawkins I got to know first and best, mainly through his Prestige recordings. So I never realised how extraordinary he was to do that. MG

Is there a thing a non-hifi ignoramus (to be precise, me) can look at to show him what he needs to know about using one of these things? I don't wanna know about flacs and MP2s 3s and 4s and lame stuff like that () I just wanna have fun listening to strange music. 1st question - suppose I want to put about 200 albums (say 200 hours) onto an ipod: a) how long will it take to write the stuff into an ipod? b) how long will it take to organise the ipod so I can find things? c) how big an ipod will I need? 2nd question - I can't think of one. MG