The Magnificent Goldberg

I'd have to disagree with your assessment of Membran. I have the 10-CD sets of Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Artie Shaw and both the Louis Armstrongs. On top of that, I have 9 of their Quadromania titles. I might warn someone off of these sets if they are really into the info typically included in booklets or if they really wanted the discography info but I can't think of a single set of mine that I wouldn't recommend based on the sound. The only exception I can think of was on one of the Quadromania sets. There might have been a discs worth of material that had pretty bad sound but I would attribute that to the source material. It was a live concert and it sounds like the group was being recorded from a remote mike or mikes. I think the age was a contributing factor as well. It sounded like one of those things that was intended for personal listening and not intended for release. Given the age of much of the material being released on these sets, I'm not expecting clean/pristine modern studio quality recordings. I've been very happy with the sound on the Membran sets. The sound was good enough for me to buy 14 of their sets and I wouldn't think twice about buying another. I think I'll agree about the sound. Some of the Johnny Dodds Quadromania contains Hot Five material that I have on a real cheapo Laserlight CD and the Membran version is a lot better than the Laserlight. OK, I appreciate that's not saying a lot I also have the Gene Ammons Quadromania set and already had a lot on LP - some since the year dot, so I'm pretty familiar with it. I'm happy with the sound of the Quadromania set. And I recently bought two boxes of Cab Calloway on JSP, remastered by John R T Davies. I haven't tried a back to back comparison with any of the Quadromania material yet but the JSP material doesn't seem so much better. Of course, Membran may have ripped off the JSP stuff - the JSP came out four years before the Quadromania. The real problem with Quadromania is the packaging and information. The packaging is total crap and the information is often wrong. But, as far as info is concerned, JSP isn't all that great - the Calloway boxes don't have any info on who wrote the tunes, what their original issues were, or who's soloing. In comparison to Frog, or even Hep, that's pretty poor. Quadromania scores by being cheap, so you can get a box, explore a musician and, if you like the stuff, go on to something better - or at least fuller - as I did with the Calloway. Dealing with it at that level is the right way to think of the firm, I believe. MG

Oh! Wattasprize! I hadn't noticed. Wonder how many it is now. MG

Hur hur hur hur hur hur!!!!!!!! MG

Do you have some kind of government scrapping system over there to help the ailing motor industry? We turned in our ten year old Daihatsu (just qualified by two days!) for a new Nissan Micra auto 1.2 a few months ago and got two grand off for a car that wasn't worth anything much really. 56 mpg. My wife really likes it. MG

Still no rain. None forecast for here until Saturday - so that'll be the whole of September without rain. We had one damp day with the cloud cover below us, so everything got wet, but it wasn't really raining. And one day, 74 raindrops landed on our patio. MG

Bet they don't put this one in Brill cover! Great album, with the Mod Squad. MG

The number of CDs in your collection exceeds what your enjoyment of that artist would warrant. Oh well, us poooor people don't have that problem Now, if you ask who's UNDER-represented in my collection... It's be the same list except Grant Green wouldn't be in there MG MG, I didn't see Grant Green on your list. I surmised that he's been on fewer than 40 releases. Sonny Stitt 77 Jack McDuff 61 Jimmy Smith 60 Gene Ammons 58 Houston Person 58 Jimmy McGriff 55 Stanley Turrentine 54 Lou Donaldson 49 Les McCann 48 Willis Jackson 46 Charles Earland 44 Hank Crawford 41 Groove Holmes 41 David Newman 41 Shirley Scott 40 Yes - 34 (or 35 if you count Dave Bailey's "Reaching out", which always seems to have GG's name on it). MG

One of the old Prestige twofers Gene Ammons - Gentle Jug (Nice & cool/soulful moods of - Moodsville) MG

The number of CDs in your collection exceeds what your enjoyment of that artist would warrant. Oh well, us poooor people don't have that problem Now, if you ask who's UNDER-represented in my collection... It's be the same list except Grant Green wouldn't be in there MG

Hm, what's OVER-represented? I've never had enough money to collect records because they're there. Perhaps I might say that Sonny Stitt is over-represented in my collection, because I have 77 of his albums. I recollect someone on the board telling a story about Jim Sangrey listening to a Sonny Stitt album and exclaiming something like, "why the hell did you make so many albums the same, Sonny?" Well, Sonny made Soul Jazz albums and Bop albums. And I guess half of my Stitts are Bop and half Soul Jazz. So perhaps I can look at those Stitts as two collections. In any case, I have only about half of Sonny's albums. But I have everything Grant Green ever recorded, that's been released, as leader and sideman. Is that over-represented? But GG is one of my two all time favourite musicians. I have Sonny Stitt 77 Jack McDuff 61 Jimmy Smith 60 Gene Ammons 58 Houston Person 58 Jimmy McGriff 55 Stanley Turrentine 54 Lou Donaldson 49 Les McCann 48 Willis Jackson 46 Charles Earland 44 Hank Crawford 41 Groove Holmes 41 David Newman 41 Shirley Scott 40 For all of them except Sonny and Shirley, that's pretty well most or all of their albums as leaders. But these are some of my favourites and I like listening to them and do so a lot. Furthermore, I don't mind having, and listening to, records of these (and others with smaller discographies) musicians that are below par. To me, the below par records are every bit as valuable as the top whack ones because, good, bad or indifferent, they all bear some relationship to the way the musician is. (Except for Lou Donaldson's two Cotillion albums, but I had to buy them to find out if they were really as crappy as they looked, and they are. Yes, I've still got 'em - how, in all conscience, could I inflict them on some gullible frequenter of the local second hand shop?) Another way of looking at it is to say that even the Sonny Stitts represent only about 1.7% of my collection. Looking from the point of view of what types of music I've got, which may be what you were thinking of, I get: Type ......................% SOUL JAZZ ..........42.05 GOSPEL ..............7.69 MBALAX ..............7.38 BE BOP/MODERN JAZZ ..7.15 DJELIYA .............5.67 RHYTHM & BLUES ......4.84 SOUL/FUNK ...........4.33 LATIN ...............3.77 SWING ...............3.30 BLUES ...............2.65 That represents just under 89% of my albums. You could say Soul Jazz is over-represented in my collection, but I don't think so So I kind of don't know, really... MG

Why not? Do you know any bank managers? Do you judge them solely by their abilities as bank managers? Or any other line of work? MG Consider the source of the original statement. And knowing someone is a little different than what's behind statements like these. Do you know any musicians, or any people for that matter, who are beyond reproach? No, I don't. But you have to take people as they are. Which means not ignoring things about them. I think this is a very difficult issue and started a thread about it about a year ago or so. In the end, I think one can't REJECT the music of someone who was insane and murdered his girl friend, or bands whose long-standing tradition was to use their music as propaganda and did so for a repressive and later a murderous political regime. But one can't forget that there is this or that about these people, either. MG

Why not? Do you know any bank managers? Do you judge them solely by their abilities as bank managers? Or any other line of work? MG

Little shopping trip to Cardiff today and dropped into Spillers. I've been wanting a collection of early Professor Longhair and this 2CD set was pretty cheap, so I said to myself, "this'll do", but reading the sleeve notes on the bus home, maybe it won't. Got this one on now. This is wonderful! Perhaps she's not quite the Boogie Woogie Queen that Camille Howard (with Roy Milton & his Solid Senders) was, but she's mighty fine. Glad I got this one. Really glad! MG

Those are great! But so are "Get up and get it", with Teddy Edwards & Pat Martino, and "The groover" with George Freeman. And, as noted earlier, "Somethin' special". His Muse albums from the 70s are not to be sneezed at, either. MG

Yes, Ace's license expired at the same time as ZYX's - I think ZYX was the license-holder for a large consortium of companies in different European countries (and Australia). MG

Saw this in Spillers, when I went into Cardiff today. £19.99 ($31.78), as I recall - pretty good price for 10 CDs. Didn't get it because I have all but one of the Teddy Wilson Brunswick set on Hep, remastered by John R T Davies, and I like to hear Billie in the context of those recordings - some instrumentals, some other vocalists. And Billie can't be listened to continuously without total emotional breakdown, so the other material is most welcome. MG

I rather like him. He actually did a gig in Cardiff in the nineties and his ballad playing impressed me a lot. What do YOU think of it, Dan? MG

Yes - I picked up Horace Silver's "Take a little love" and "27th man" on the strength of that list. Sure there were more. MG

Tea. MG

I haven't been keeping in touch with what newies have been coming out all this time, so I'm putting together a new list from surfing here. Lonnie Smith - Palmetto Red Holloway - Delmark Jesse Jones Jr - from CDBaby (and a Bill Heid on Doodlin' that I neglected to get before and which I can pick up at the same time) I've found a few Japanese reissues on the Hiroshi thread and have already written to him about them. What else have I missed in the Soul Jazz area? MG

Oh well, no good me looking then. Thanks SS. MG

And the material from his second stint is, frankly, not all that good. I have all but one of them, and they're fine if you're a fan... He was using an X77 on a few and I don't like the sound much. MG

Thanks for making me (us) aware of this book. Sounds highly fascinating. My Amazon order went out right away! Mine too! Oh, and I didn't forget to use the Organissimo link. MG

I just looked through and only found four JOS - Back at the chicken shack pts 1 & 2 (1877) Freddie Roach - I know/Googa mooga (1890) These have the half/half blue/white labels Sonny Red - Bluesville/Stay as sweet as you are (1761) Horace Parlan - C jam blues/Up in Cynthia's room (1770) These two have the solid dark blue labels. Missing - probably misfiled and I didn't see them as I was looking through Lou Donaldson - Blues walk/Masquerade is over JOS - Can heat/When my dreamboat comes home I used to have quite a few BN 45s. In the early 60s, BN LPs were hellishly expensive (nearly twice the price of a UK manufactured LP) over here - so I bought 45s, which weren't so much more than UK 45s. But generally, as I got LPs, I ditched the 45s. I read somewhere - somewhere here, I think - that BN usually pressed about 3,000 45s and 2,000 usually went into juke boxes. MG

Here's a link to an interview Isoardi did with Leroy Hurte. It's 179 pages or thereabouts, but Hurte was such an interesting man. http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb4m3n...=&brand=oac MG