The Magnificent Goldberg

Yeah, best of luck to Paps and anyone else who's quitting - though it isn't luck at all. What FFA said is quite right - you can quit if YOU want to, not if you're under pressure from family or whomever to do so. I don't want to quit. I smoke 2.8g of tobacco a day in 10 very thin cigarettes. The cost, even with high tobacco taxes here, is not a motivating factor in getting me to quit, though it did help cut down from 7g a day when I retired. Nor's the health aspect; I'm going to die of something and I may as well die of something I like doing. A friend has a good way - he hasn't quit, either - he just hasn't bought his next packet of cigarettes yet. He bought his last packet forty years ago. (There's something very Simpson-ish about that, I think.) MG

I ignored this album for decades and only bought it last year. What an album! This really is one, when I heard it, that made me say, "Oh, I could have been listening to this for 40 years!" There's a sense in which this is something of a follow-up to "Midnight blue". But the title track goes WAY beyond anything on that album, with fabulous playing by Ray Barretto and a real conversation between him and Kenny. It absolutely flattened me! MG

I'm sorry to hear this. RIP. MG

Tony! Toni! Tone! (supposed to have acute accent over the e)

I thought - that geezer looks like Stanley Holloway! And it was! Lovely clip Milovan - thanks. MG

Agree 100%. Has anyone with access to Michael Cuscuna ever popped the question? Up over and out. Perhaps Mrs Cuscuna did that one Valentine's Day. MG

More rain. I thought it wasn't so cold yesterday evening as the day before then, when I was going to bed, I noticed that my wife had turned the central heating on! Still, the water bill will be lower this year, to compensate for the higher heating bill. MG

Oh, I forgot about that! Complete Kingston Trio on Capitol! Complete Lou Rawls on Capitol (actually, I think I might like that one). Complete George Shearing Capitol albums with slightly lubricious sleeves (nice booklet with pull-out centrefold!) MG

I'm sure you'll recall the story - I think it's in Arnold Shaw's "Honkers and Shouters" - about Al Greene, who owned a paint manufacturing business during the war. In 1944, one of his operatives developed a substitute for shellac (which was rationed) and they used that for making records. Apparently they sounded like shit but they played. And this event seems to have opened the floodgates, because the number of record companies active in the US about doubled that year. Green was selling so much of this stuff that he opened his own record company - National. In the same book, Otis or Leon (I forget which) Rene talked about their need in those days to recycle and melt old 78s to get material. Can't imagine those records sounded any too good, either. MG

I doubt that it's the crucial factor, but every little helps. MG

A good needle still makes a lot of difference. If I forget to change my stylus when I play a 78, I certainly know it! My stepfather's parents had a collection of 78s which I used to play when I was spending summer holidays with them; and a wind-up gramophone! I don't remember much about the sound, because the records they had were pretty lame - Tony Martin etc. But when it was the girl downstairs' birthday, there was suddenly Little Richard and Fats Domino and Presley (oh, and Pat Boone) to play on it and it definitely made an impact! (Well, not the Pat Boone, y'know.) MG

Lionel Hampton disc 4 just started MG

It would be. It's sad that a bunch of squares have accidentally been given the final word on which "jazz" albums are worthy of being reissued. That is why I buy used vinyl. I don't want to buy into the narrow tastes of a bunch of overweight guys who live in their parents' basements. I don't think MC is square, but he IS a purist. And you're not. And I'm not. And many of us aren't, I think. But that was and remains the Mosiac business plan, and maybe it's the only workable business plan that was, and remains (?), possible for such a company. But that's all it is; a business, not something to be revered. Hence this thread. MG

I was knocked out at breakfast this morning by Kaloum Star - Maliba, from the Various Artists comp "Discotheque '74" Syliphone. I rarely listen to compilations, but picked the '74 and '76 more or less at random this morning - eyes too gummed together still to see what I was getting off the African shelf But this stopped me mid-muesli! Hot rhythm! Wailing band! Great Guinean style guitar; hard bop trumpet; semi-avant alto solo! Phhoooooo! MG

I think the point that was being made was not that Caiman didn't refund without fuss when they didn't deliver. It was that so much stuff seemed deliberately to have been placed on Amazon to attract temporary cash for orders that Caiman didn't expect to deliver and that this was a scam to assist Caiman's working capital position. All those ten/twenty dollar orders for which they don't have to refund the cash for three/four weeks can add up to a sizeable chunk of money. MG

I can hear what you're saying, but I think that LD made more good records than AB. Very true. Yeah! But probably AB hasn't made as many BAD ones as Lou, either. (Not counting "Hot dog" ) MG

Doesn't William Hague frequent Ronnie's? Not sure if he does any of his 18 pint drinking sessions there though William Hague isn't a jazz fan. His Press Secretary in the nineties was a jazz fan and a neighbour of mine. He reported nothing of that nature. (And Ffion ain't a jazz fan either, so I doubt she's converted him ) MG

MG

MG

OK, 'nuff Prez MG

Someone's not paying attention... MG

Like bleedin' November yesterday. Rained all day and was bloody cold! No warmer today, but the rain left off a couple of hours ago - for a while. MG

Gabby Hayes Jimi Hendrix Margie Hendricks

Blythe is also on one cut of Eric Gale's 1980 LP "Touch of silk" - "Au privave". The band on that one is Gale, Blythe (as), Harold Vick (ts), Earland (org), Muhammad (d). A cooker, of course. Very commercial! MG

Or even Duke Ellington, Armstrong, Bechet, Baby Face Willette or Fred Jackson. I have to agree that much of what politicians say of their personal preferences is tailored. The only one I know likes jazz, because he's often seen in clubs, is Ken Clarke. MG