The Magnificent Goldberg

Rusty Bryant - Friday night funk for Saturday night brothers - Prestige Walter Bishop - Coral keys - Black Jazz MG

Claude Rains Wynder K Frogg Sunny

Don't live next door to a husky whose owners keep going out. MG

Bruce Lee Bruce Springsteen JOhnny Winter

Thanks for reminding me. I had it in my head that, when he led his band in the mid-thirties, he used the name Jack Travis. Nat Jones, who was with James Brown in the early sixties, was in that band, I believe. MG Knew him a bit in the late '70s / early '80s. Nice enough fellow but sometimes unbearably full of himself. Estate agent - say no more. MG

Thanks for reminding me. I had it in my head that, when he led his band in the mid-thirties, he used the name Jack Travis. Nat Jones, who was with James Brown in the early sixties, was in that band, I believe. MG Knew him a bit in the late '70s / early '80s. Nice enough fellow but sometimes unbearably full of himself. Estate agent - say no more. MG

Joe Henderson - If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem - Milestone Bruce Forman - In transit - Muse MG

Good old MoD: we don't give a toss MG

Billy Boy Arnold P P Arnold Arnold

Have a great day! MG

Have a great day! MG

Thanks for reminding me. I had it in my head that, when he led his band in the mid-thirties, he used the name Jack Travis. Nat Jones, who was with James Brown in the early sixties, was in that band, I believe. MG

Thanks to both of you. I'll take these titles to the library tomorrow and see if they can get any. MG

A couple of extra things to recommend - neither are available on CD, however. George Freeman - Frantic diagnosis - Bam-boo (produced by Sonny Hopson in the early seventies). This was reissued sometime in the nineties, on LP only, by Ubiquity. It has brother Von, Caesar Frazier on organ, Charles Earland on synth, Dave Hubbard on alto flute plus a bunch of rhythm section. The title track is 19 mins and SCREAMS! "The bump" and "Free-man" are more in the same vein, but not quite so far outside. And "God bless the child" is played the way it should be. Rhoda Scott - Live at Club Saint Germain - Barclay a 2 LP set never reissued. A trio, with Rhoda's regular drummer and Leo Johnson on tenor on some tracks. Johnson was in a very outside mood that evening - quite different from his normal playing. I included one long cut - War's "Slipping into darkness" - in my BFT last year. Of course, there's also Rhoda's 2CD set "Very saxy" on Ahead. Disc 1 features Ricky Ford tearing the paint off the walls. Disc 2 has Houston Person doing his usual thing; very good if you like it. MG

That sounds interesting. Any titles/authors you can mention? MG

Swan Silvertones LPs this afternoon - RIP Claude Jeter Love lifted me - Specialty My rock - Specialty The Swan Silvertones - Vee-Jay (Everest) The Swan Silvertones - Vee-Jay (Upfront) and, on 78 Jesus remembers/My soul is a witness - Vee-Jay The sound on this 78 is bleedin' fantastic! Clear as a bell! Why did we ever go over to vinyl? MG

I was listening to Jimmy Ponder’s album “Live at the other end” (Explore), which I bought a few months ago, yesterday morning and, for the first time, looked at the sleeve notes, by Ted Panken. Here’s the first part. The first thing that struck me was that the conclusion that jazz was becoming chic was a very fair assessment following that brief survey of the locality. And also a most telling one; if there’s one thing that jazz had never been before (well, a possible exception might have been in Paris in the fifties), it’s chic. And perhaps that does explain some of what happened to jazz thereafter. My next immediate thoughts went to Jack Travis and his book, “The autobiography of black jazz”. Travis, being an estate agent, focussed a lot on the buildings in Chicago where jazz was played. But, from memory, I don’t think he drew any conclusions about the way in which the physical developments might tell us anything about the way jazz developed there. It seemed to me he simply presented the various facts about the buildings because he knew them; not because they actually illuminated what happened. But another piece of history, that was illuminated by a sense of place, occurred to me. Early last year, I bought a couple of albums recorded in the mid-seventies by Ntemi Pilosi, a South African jazzman. The sleeve notes surprised me greatly by devoting some space to the antagonism that erupted between Abdullah Ibrahim, when he returned to South Africa in the mid-seventies, and the South African musicians who’d stayed at home. Apparently he was criticising SA jazz musicians left, right and centre. The notes quote Lulu Masilela, a saxophonist and organist. Apparently Masilela's band The Movers did record Mannenburg for Teal records and had the satisfaction of seeing the Mover's recording outsell Ibrahim's "original". Clearly, one is supposed to sympathise with Lulu and his confreres. And indeed, I do. But it isn’t as simple as Lulu made out. Some light on the factors underlying this animosity was thrown, for me, a short while later, when I got the local library to get me an academic book called “Africa’s urban past”. It included a paper on the land use planning aspects of the clearance of District 6 of Cape Town. Cape Town’s District 6, where Ibrahim and many of his band came up, was an old part of the town, near the centre (which meant possible real estate benefits) and near the docks. Like many docks areas all over the world, it was home to a wide variety of people from here, there and everywhere. And to middle classes (usually living above their shops), working classes, a fishing community and layabouts. And, crucially, to blacks, whites, coloureds and Asians – in the terminology of the apartheid government – all living cheek by jowl, shopping in the same shops, and going to the same cinemas, the same theatres, dance halls, bars and clubs; I think there was a concert hall in the area as well, also open to all. An intolerable situation to the government, but one that had existed for a long time. A crucial point the writer made was how cosmopolitan and varied the population was; both ethnically and in outlook. This was contrasted with the situation in which the evicted population were placed in townships on the periphery of the town. Township policy for the displaced population was not merely to get “the blex” out of the way but to separate them into their “tribes”, as in other South African cities, on the grounds that if they were all put together, they’d fight each other. So the situation in which Ntemi Pilosi, Lulu Masilela and Zacks Nkosi came up (mostly Alexandra Township in Jo’burg) was one that was organised so that much more limited horizons would be available to the population, than the one in which Ibrahim developed. But, of course, the musicians created as they could under the circumstances. It seemed to me that this approach, of looking closely at certain locations which were in the position of a nexus of some kind of development, might yield fruitful results for the understanding of some of the things that happened in the music. Discuss. MG

Ah, sad to see a great one go. Sure Allen Lowe will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he was one of the first singers to really use the falsetto style (though Pha Terrell was using it a bit in the mid-thirties) He organised the Silvertone Singers in West Virginia in 1938. Seventy years ago! Time to dig out my Swan Silvertone records and listen to that great voice again. RIP Claude. MG

Love Arlen's tunes! Stormy Weather, Come Rain Or Come Shine, One For My Baby, etc. He also wrote "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead"! And Ann Ronell wrote "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf". MG

Last night Donald Vails Choraleers - We've come to praise him - Savoy Jack McDuff - Live at the Jazz Workshop - Prestige (Stateside UK) Eric Gale - Forecast - Kudu (Pye UK) MG

But it did remind me of this, which I don't think has been posted yet. Still think this is one of Ponder's best. MG (That's Mrs Ponder on the sleeve)

Used to have that one. Nice music - but the cover! MG

Sonny Stitt - Burnin' - Argo DG mono MG

Doctor Jazz Little Jazz Teeny Bopper The Big Bopper Buddy Holly Ritchie Valens

Doctor Jazz Little Jazz Teeny Bopper The Big Bopper Buddy Holly Ritchie Valens