The Magnificent Goldberg

You were younger than me then. Are you still? MG

Nowt there for me, but there are some goodies in this if anyone wants to know what I think... Willis Jackson - Headed and gutted - Muse, with Pat Martino. The best thing in the auction. Worth whatever you have to pay, I kid you not. Gene Ammons - Big bad Jug - Prestige. You can pick this up on a twofer CD but a bit of the other LP on the CD is pretty poor. But this LP is great all through. Johnny Hammond Smiff - Higher ground - Kudu. Some great Joe Henderson and Hank Crawford on this. Charlie Brown - Why is everybody always pickin' on me - Contact. A Flying Dutchman subsidiary label. Brown was part of Bernard Purdie's band at the time and a lovely player. This is a really nice album. Funk Inc - Hangin' out - Prestige. You can get this on an Ace twofer (maybe). But this in my view was Funk Inc's best LP. Pharoah Sanders - Oh lord, let me do no wrong - Signature. One of my favourite Sanders albums. Some heavy blues playing and singing from Leon here. JB - Popcorn - King. A lovely instrumental LP. MG

I only ever noticed what crummy records the group made. Never interested enough to wonder why. Just poor pop music. MG

Chet Baker & the Mariachi Brass? MG

Inez Andrews & the Andrewettes - The need of Prayer - Songbird (Vogue France) Rev Amos Waller & the Mercy Seat Missionary Baptist Church - Come to Jesus - Songbird (green label) and from the same venue Swanee Quintet - 27th anniversary live at the Mercy Seat Baptist Church, Chicago - Creed (dull yellow label) I didn't notice those two were recorded in the same place until I was posting just now! MG

It was the angle of his head. MG

I can see what you mean and, in a way, I agree. But there's "Parker's mood", as well. Oh, and Sonny Stitt's version, too. John Lewis was what he was and, yes, sophisticated and erudite but also attached to his roots (though not IMMERSED in them). I'm not sure that it's a bad thing for a person to show different sides at different times. But I do think it's a bad thing for someone to expect consistency from a human being. Even an artist. MG

The track listing there gives a good idea of how widely among the US indies London spread its net (the write-up doesn't mention Savoy, though). Decca also manufactured Vogue/Vocalion and had Contemporary, Aladdin and Duke/Peacock coming in that way, though King had gone to EMI by about 1958. MG

Posting just now in the MJQ rediscovered thread, I noted that I like the MJQ over breakfast. I wondered what others felt. I manage to get breakfast to myself. I take my wife a cup of tea and maybe toast or cereal in bed and get my own in peace and quiet for an hour or so. MJQ is good then. I also like to listen to small group swing at that time. Bud Johnson's two albums on OJC have been getting a lot of breakfast listens, as have the Teddy Wilson Brunswicks. Blue Mitchell is another who's particularly welcome at breakfast. MG

Funnily enough, as I was listening to some of these a while back, I thought you'd probably like them. I don't think they're for every day, but I do like listening to them over breakfast. By the way, "No sun in Venice" is "One never knows". One reason I got that one is because I'd seen the film the previous year in a re-release cinema in Golders Green (it was called "When the Devil drives" over here). And why I got it again this year is because I'd just been listening to an Ernestine Anderson album with a vocal version of "One never knows". A lovely tune. MG

That's correct - RCA had been handled here by Decca since about 1957. The early Elvis records came out here on HMV (EMI) - Victor having owned HMV way back in the early years of the century, the two firms had a long standing relationship. Decca's capture of rights to RCA, along with its heavy exploitation of American indies on the London American label, made it a more important firm than EMI in those days. MG

The Mamas & Papas' singles were originally released on RCA in the U.K., not on Dunhill: RCA 1503 - California Dreamin' (1966) RCA 1516 - Monday Monday (1966) RCA 1533 - I Saw Her Again (1966) RCA 1564 - Words of Love (1967) RCA 1576 - Dedicated to the One I Love (1967) RCA 1613 - Creeque Alley (1967) The original U.K. albums: RCA Victor RD 7803 - If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears (1966) RCA Victor SF 7639 - Cass, John, Michelle, Denny (1967) RCA Victor SF 7880 - The Mamas and Papas Deliver (1967) I couldn't an original U.K. release of their fourth album, The Papas and the Mamas, Presented by the Mamas and the Papas. Ah yes! I remember better now. Thanks Hans. MG

I started off with the MJQ early in 1960 – aged 16. I bought two of their albums – “One never knows” and “Music in vol 2” – without having heard them, mainly because they were on Atlantic. And over the next several years, I got a load more, eventually having 11 of ‘em. Then I got rid of them all because I needed money to buy Soul Jazz and there was little in common between Soul Jazz and MJQ. Soon afterwards, though, I started buying the odd Milt Jackson album – Soul Jazz stuff again to start off with, with Ray Charles, Stanley Turrentine, Wes Montgomery and Cannonball. And a lot more in the past ten years or so; some of them rather more Bop oriented than most. A few months ago, I began to feel that I’d probably missed a lot of what Milt was doing in the MJQ records I’d sold over 40 years ago. So I picked up a few albums. Three I had had before – “One never knows”; “Pyramid” and “The sheriff”. Two I hadn’t heard before – “Fontessa” and “The M J Q”. I also wanted to get “Blues at Carnegie Hall”, which was the last one I bought in the sixties, but it was a bit expensive at the time, so I gave it a miss. I deliberately eschewed the more fanciful MJQ albums I’d had before, like “Third stream music”, “Collaboration”, “Odds against tomorrow”. I did want to get the ones I thought would be more centrally located in modern jazz. Well, all was as I remembered it, but yet not. I knew how well the band had swung, but I didn’t really know how well they’d swung. I knew what a beautiful sound they had – it seems to me that this is the real thing the MJQ did better than almost any other band – make beautiful sounding music. This time round, it seemed to me that the man really responsible for the band’s sound was Connie Kay. All those tiny cymbals, triangles and whatnots really made the overall picture John Lewis had conceived. And it was Kay who really swung that band, too. And there’s a curious parallel with the Jazz Crusaders – because it’s Stix Hooper who really gave that band it’s sound. But CKQ is really hard to say, y’know? MG

I don't recall the Mamas & Papas being released in the UK on Decca. Memory is that they came out here on Dunhill, which was manufactured and distributed by EMI. I could be wrong about this, because that band was rather off my radar, but that's how I remember it. MG

I have a feeling that's been photoshopped. MG

Just found this Damn - missed my chance of fame! MG

That reminds me of a story from the early sixties. There was a small electrical shop in Ealing which sold records, too. I was friendly (well, not that friendly) with the young lady who ran the record counter. Some time in 1963 (I think) she told me that one day, she got a phone call from the New Musical Express, a paper that used to run the most widely read pop chart of those days, to say that they'd had some kind of problem and all the survey data they'd got for the charts had been destroyed, so they were doing a quick ring around to get enough feedback for the next week's chart. They asked what she'd been selling most. Now Ealing was a blues market - this lady could sell a dozen Howlin' Wolfs on the day of release. Anyway, she said her best new seller had been Petula Clark's "Ya ya" - which she wasn't even stocking. And, lo and behold, it appeared in the charts and went on to be a big hit. (For the benefit of the uninitiated, this was a cover of the Lee Dorsey song, sung mainly in French.) MG

Ace Records has bought the company and has everything. MG

Oh yes! I walked into Spillers one day in 1975 and heard Fela Kuti's "Gentleman" being played over the PA for some young woman. She didn't like it, to my great pleasure, so I got it. Ah, I think I remember Cheapo Cheapo. Were they mostly in a basement? And was everything completely disorganised so you had to look through half a million LPs to be sure you hadn't missed a gem? MG

True. I'll probably visit Spillers on Monday. Here are a few snaps. Some photos of Spillers Ambition - a Spillers babygro! Ambition - a Spillers babygro! MG

I can remember their ads in Jazz Journal. Never been to Plymouth. MG

And several others that you (ahem) don't list... you gotta remember that I live in a part of the world where the target market for these type of recordings is not an abstract concept...It's also not as large (or as living) as it was a decade or so ago, but there was a time in the quite recent past where if you wanted to find these recordings and others like them, it was not at all difficult. For that matter, there's an African-American AM radio station here that still does Sunday morning live remotes from local churches, some of which are not too far removed from what you hear here. BTW - CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN is simply breathtaking in its beauty, power, and use of the phrase "whilst traveling through the paradistical celestial", which sounds like the title of a late Trane piece, as does, ultimately, the whole sermon. From what I've come across, it's the one to have if you're only having one. Yes, Rev Jasper is a favourite. "I'm black and I'm proud" also has a breathtaking bit, talking about Simon Stylites - "and a black man carried the troubles of the world on his back"... If you see any knocking about by Rev W L Jones (on Randy's Spiritual), make sure you pick 'em up. His delivery is nothing short of incredible. Of course, this stuff is incredibly difficult to find over here. Even Miracle Music in Brixton (a gospel specialist shop in the London ghetto) didn't stock sermons. It's only since Atlanta International reissued a lot of stuff from Jewel and other labels last year that Amazon UK has had any. If I lived in the US, I'd need two houses for records and a lot more money that I have MG

Oh, I have tons of that, Allen. I even have an album by COGIC UK! MG

Yes, it's very dark. I love it. MG

The "new Von Freeman" ??? ??? from me, too. MG