The Magnificent Goldberg

Pierre Boulez Achille-Claude Debussy W C Fields

I think it's going to rain today (too). Damn good job for scanning that Randy Newman didn't come from South Wales. MG

I haven't bought anything they've released in the last ten years. The most recent Verve I've bought was Pharoah Sanders' "Save the children", which was released some time in the first half of 1998. MG

Well, there have been comedy records since the beginning of the record industry. The change with LPs enabled a whole (or substantial part) of a comic's act to be produced. This was different to people like Tom Lehrer, who was singing short songs. So I didn't know Lord Buckley was going so early. What label was he on? Was it Dick Bock's WP? MG

Oh, and another album I've just remembered Johnny Griffin - Soul groove - Atlantic with Patton & Hank Jones (org) Matthew Gee (tb), Aaron Bell (b, tuba), Art Taylor (d), Potato Valdez (cga, bgo) And of course, Griffin was an influential tenor player who could play this stuff but preferred not to. MG

Here's another thought. Not everyone can play Soul Jazz - you need a certain sensibility and kind of experience - or wants to. Who were the influential post-war trumpet players up to the early seventies? Diz, Miles, Brownie, Lee. I suspect that's about it. Who were the influential tenor players? Dex, Rollins, Trane, Joe Henderson - but also Jacquet, Ammons, Stitt, Jaws. It looks like tenor players had a lot more, and more appropriate, role models for organ combo work. MG

I dunno. But really Zorn was right. You can name the main trumpet players who worked frequently with organists pretty easily: Blue Mitchell Virgil Jones Frank Robinson (Willis Jackson's regular trumpet player) Bill Hardman Lew Soloff Jim Rotundi A few others, like Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard made a few (justly) celebrated organ combo albums. But, apart from Frank Robinson, none of the people I listed are what you might call organ specialists (Virgil is nearest to that). Looking through my collection to find those people, however, I began to get something of a feel for the answer. First, organists tended to be leaders, though most did some sideman work, too. And the bands they led were characteristically trios. You could get more work as a trio - because you could also get gigs backing tenor players like Turrentine, Stitt, Ammons and other tenor players who worked as singles - and split the proceeds with fewer people. The exception was, of course, the tenor/organ combo. But these tended to be focused on the tenor player (McDuff's is an exception). There were few organ BANDS in the sixties - Willis Jackson's and Lou Donaldson's were about the only ones (and, except for Bill Hardman, who was in and out like a yoyo, Lou seemed to keep his trumpet players only a few weeks). In the early seventies, some organists like McGriff and McDuff began to carry larger groups and McGriff's included a trumpet, usually simply as part of a horn section though, for recordings, Blue Mitchell came in a lot and obviously took a solo role. Earland also started having a trumpet player at the same time but had a radically different, much more Hard Bop, approach to horns from any other organist, which is why Lee and Freddie were superb with him, and also a strong general preference, it seems to me, for trombonists. So I suspect that there was an environment that systematically tended to exclude trumpet players, moderated by the personal approaches of some bandleaders who did hire trumpet players on a regular basis, if only in the seventies. Glad to hear of alternative views, as I've kind of made this up as I went along MG

Damn! forgot all of them! MG

J J Cale Curly Moe

Buckets this afternoon! Torriental, as a friend used to say MG

Discussion of comedy albums in the Verve thread made me think about this a bit. One of the things that the LP record enabled was capturing the act of a stand-up comedian/enne. I don't know much about this but I think Verve may have been one of the companies into the field early, in 1958/59. Chess were issuing Moms Mabley LPs from 1960. Riverside issued one or two - I think there was a Peter Ustinov LP on Riverside. Anyone know more than me? (I should bleedin' well hope so!) MG

You must be joking! When you think about the many hit singles and albums that Ramsey Lewis had (19 hit LPs on Argo/Cadet). Plus 4 Ahmad Jamals, 2 Odell Browns, 2 Ray Bryants, 2 Kenny Burrells, and a John Klemmer. On the blues side, there was Little Milton, whose records wouldn't need subsidising - nor those of Koko Taylor and Tommy Tucker. And big catalogue sales for the fifties material. Course, Moms DID have a lot of hit albums on Chess. MG

I don't know much about Montrell, either. He made an R&B single for Specialty in the fifties. MG

Jack Wilson - Jack Wilson Quartet - Atlantic (Discovery reissue) Randy Weston - Blue Moses - CTI (Pye UK edition) Cal Tjader - Huracan - Crystal Clear - the sound on this one gets me EVERY time; and the music is great, too! MG

More Great Jug Bands That's how I read it at first, too MG

Yes, the first three Berman LPs (Inside, Outside and Edge) sold BIG! All top 10 hits and on the chart for more than a year - Inside for 2.5 years. And those were the days when there were only 40/50 LPs on the chart; not 200. Sahl had one hit on Verve; not a big one. In those days, you didn't get mega-huge sales. None of those Bermans sold half a million, according to RIAA. But it seems clear that there was a good deal more profit in the comedy albums than the jazz. Only Ella mamnaged to get on the pop charts for Verve in those days and only scraping in for a few weeks. But her stuff sold very consistently - the Gershwin songbook made the charts in 1964 - five years after it issued. But it seems certain that the comedy albums subsidised the jazz to an extent. As comedy albums, I'm not too keen on them. I used to have three Berman LPs in the early sixties and laughed a lot at them. But they soon wore out and much of the humour became extremely dated (whereas Marx Bros from the thirties and many of Peter Sellers' recordings from the fifties/sixties still seem very funny to me - so it isn't just a question of age). MG

I do agree with you there, Allen and, like a lot of what you say on historical fronts, it makes a lot of sense. But I wonder to what extent, in either case (ie gangsta rap or Jewish jokes), the oppressed group were REALLY taking control of the message. I think that most of it is accepting the role assigned. I know little about Jewish music, but there are periods in the early development of Rap, and most other kinds of black music I feel, that the singers/musicians/audiences really did take control of the message but they were soon stamped out by the industry and only those who accepted the lesser role got a look in. So I'm still suspicious. MG

Yes, we got that yesterday evening. I went out for a smoke and was OUTRAGED! More on the way - still very gloomy here. MG

Wardell Quezerque Alan Toussaint Cosimo Matassa

I would have to agree with this statement. Speculators have completely taken over the price of oil as they feel little fear of losing any money in the near future. They feel that the oil price can only go up in the near future. I believe they are wrong and they will be soon punished. I think oil has basically topped out. There is greater downside in current pricing than there is an upside. This is usually a sign to stay away. We'll see a drop soon. As far as oil companies gouging the American public, I don't know enough about the subject to comment; but I'd imagine that the oil companies also make money on increased prices as they are involved in drilling as well, aren't they? In general, it's hard to place so much blame on oil companies when the price of oil has gone from $20/barrel to $141/barrel in the course of approx 2-3 years time. The decline of the dollar has also played a huge role in the oil runup. I would primarily blame American stupidity (as far as shortsightedness in conservation and seeking alternative fuels), lower dollar, supply/demand, speculators, and OPEC. It seems unfair to aim a single-shot gun on the oil companies. I am not enamoured with these companies either, but there are bigger culprits out there. I think you're right about this Conn - it's a variety of things. But what I wonder is the extent to which it's the same people, or people in bed with the same people, who are responsible for most of these things. That's something Aggie's charts wouldn't show. But it seems to be where Goodspeak's guts are leading him. MG

Bill Doggett - Monster party - King (Odeon France) Todd Rhodes - Dance music that hits the spot - King (Swingtime Denmark) MG

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pressass/20080701...gh-6323e80.html MG

And YOU'VE been racking your brains about the Quotations Where's the weather thread? That's all I'm good for. MG

Yes - I see the parallel with "Birth of a nation" wasn't quite apt - that was MEANT to be taken seriously. I still FEEL unhappy about this. MG

They were on Verve-Forecast (as was John Lee Hooker), which was intended as a Folk music label (and probably wasn't managed by Creed Taylor), though the "folk" credentials of a good a good few of those artists don't seem nearly as convincing now as they probably did then. The Mothers were on Verve. I've remembered that my cousin had a 45 of a recording of "Imagination" on UK Verve, by some group whose name I don't think I even tried to remember, which was in imitation of the Marcels (does anyone remember the Marcels' "Blue moon"?) and was 1961 or 1962. Now THAT was in the Creed Taylor days. I can't understand why it came out on Verve when MGM had a perfectly serviceable, though bland, R&B label, Cub, at the time; but there we are. MG The Quotations were a white vocal group - I'd forgotten all about them and that record until you mentioned it - so perhaps that's why they weren't on the r&b Cub label. Could be - but I did have the feeling that the Impalas were white, too. MG