The Magnificent Goldberg

Vinyl morning, with new ones, today Dave Bailey - Gettin' into something - Epic (70's pressing) Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis & Bill Doggett - Midnight slows vol 10 - Black & Blue Sonny Stitt - Blues for Duke - Muse next Hank Marr - Live at the Club 502 - King MG

It looks like those Impulse recordings would make a decent Mosaic. Never heard any of them. MG

That's one of the few groove Holmes albums I haven't got. I didn't know it was done at the Half Note. So it's not much like "I'm in the mood for love" or "Theme from the $6,000,00 man", then? Does he play that Hammond X-77 on it? MG

I first heard "I'm just a lucky so and so" in a taxi - the cabbie was playing a tape of jazz stuff his wife had compiled for him and that followed George Benson's "The greatest love of all". Blew me right away. I got the CD set the following Monday. Hm, Duke ain't bad on this, either MG

I read that too. What a damn shame ! Paul Pace and his staff were pretty well running the last bastion of independent jazz retailing in London and doing a good job of it I thought, with the interesting CD selection, some good 2nd hand bins and nice coffee shop, indeed one of the most pleasant such emporiums in Central London. Even some vinyl. I've spent pleasurable hours in that particular 'Rays'. Hope it doesn't mean the demise of 'Rays' but the total cynic in me suspects that the jazz will go and the cafe bit will expand. If so, I won't be buying many more over-priced books from Foyles. That's right - the bookshop business is being hit by Amazon etc on line sales, too. Even second hand shops are coming on as Amazon sellers, if they've got any sense. It's been a while since I visited Hay-on-Wye; perhaps I'll go there in the summer (if we have one next year). MG

Henri Christophe Jean-Jacques Dessalines Toussaint Louverture

Thanks Jim. There are some organists who you can hear that 'click' with more clearly. Groove Holmes, I think, is one, particularly on slower numbers. MG

My 'art bleeds. MG

It's remarkable to me that someone can supposedly hear Warne Marsh but not appreciate Konitz and Tristano in any depth. Usually it's Marsh who is unappreciated ... Q The little Warne March I've heard had a very nice warm sound, whereas what Konitz and Tristano I've heard had a cold sound. That might be the explanation; not what they played, but the sound they made. MG

With most music, painting, literature etc it then requires the brain to disrupt those patterns and defy the expectations set up by them. If jazz is about anything its about the notes landing where you don't always expect them. There's a line in Humphrey Lyttleton's 'Best of Jazz' where he talks of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith instinctively avoiding symmetry. I think you get that to varying degrees in most 'artforms' but I'd say it's one of the distinguishing qualities of jazz...and a reason why smooth jazz is so unsatisfying to the seasoned jazz listener. It also gives us (a lot of) maths, but it's the opposite, I guess; things landing where you do expect them - or can predict them. MG

Just finished Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson - Hold it right there! - Muse now on Rodrigo, guitar concerto - Narciso Yepes - Decca (World of Great Classics) - my wife's copy and it jumps MG

Yes, that's interesting. When I was buying classical records, there were only two pieces of which I had two versions. The Rodrigo guitar concerto, of which I greatly preferred the Narciso Yepes version to the Bream, and the Bloch violin concerto, and liked the Menuhin version a lot more than the Hyman Bress version on Supraphon. But I couldn't tell which was actually BETTER, just that the ones I preferred felt better to me. But it didn't make me a fan of HMV or Decca. Hm, my wife's got the Yepes somewhere. Think I'll dig it out if I can. MG

I don't think the writer was implying that we have to believe that these things we see (or hear) are really there, rather that we're not deconditioned by experience to dismiss them automatically. So we take notice of anything that looks like a pattern, in case it is. Most times, I guess, it is a pattern that we (might) want to know about for some reason, even if it's to take it for granted as being familiar as the next door neighbour's face. MG

Is it perhaps because of the fascination lots of jazz fans have with record companies like Blue Note? Frankly, I can't see anyone having that same sort of fascination with Angel, Melodiya, Supraphon, Lyrita or Erato. So, if the audience for classical music is different from the jazz audience in its general attitude to collecting music, one would expect those in charge of reissues to understand and relate their policies to those differences. MG

Well, he's got a point. There ARE a lot of shops, staffed by know-nothing, care-not-at-all staff. I can bear the passing of such shops with great fortitude. Good ones will, I think, survive by knowing what they're selling; to whom; and what those people want - same as any other business. MG

Too technical for me, but I'll be interested to know what the organists think. MG

There's a good bit on Nathan and King in "Little labels - big sound" by Rick Kennedy & Randy McNutt. What it didn't mention, and which was a revelation to me when I read the article posted earlier, was that, from the fifties, Nathan ran a racially integrated operation. That seems to have been a bit exceptional in that period, even in the north. MG

Thank you, Allen. I didn't know Ace owned this stuff. Usage is a wonderful thing. Ace is a singular noun encompassing a plural; a bit similar to saying "a number (singular noun) of people have done such and such", rather than "has". Which formulaton would you use? In fact, "a number of people" is a noun phrase and plural, so you're strictly speaking correct. But you're wrong because language is what people use. And over here, where we don't speak American, but only several varieties of English, we use the name of an organisation as if it represented the organisation as a whole, which is how we think of it - and probably how you think of it over there. MG

Sugar Ray Robinson Sir Alan Sugar Shirgar

Alf Hall (I'll catch you) Ken Platt Archie Andrews

Two more albums of early African recordings of Salsa turned up this morning. A compilation of seventies material by Star Band No 1, in various guises. SO impressed with Dexter Johnson's even earlier stuff that I got on Thursday, I ordered this one, which is material recorded between 1964 and 1968. MG

It really was a different society in the early & mid fifties. Kids of ten-fourteen could cycle around the countryside, go out onto the Yorkshire Moors, or to another town, and no one would fear that any real harm would come to them; and it wouldn't. So long as we were competent cyclists and knew the highway code, we were safe to go and do what we liked. It beat doing homework by MILES! MG

Indeed, I've kept on remembering it when I've been nowhere near a computer. Then forgetting it again MG

I checked this at Amazon UK. They're not doing it in the UK. What a bleeding pain in the arse they are over here! MG

Yes, interesting. Thanks Aloc. MG