The Magnificent Goldberg

I love Al Grey! He was one of the nicest people I ever met. Lots of soul and greeeeze coming out the bell of that horn! I can't agree with the reference to JJ and Curtis, though. "Thin" is not how I'd ever describe either one of their sounds! Have you ever heard either one in person? Also, have you heard the record Al did w/JJ? I believe it was called Things Are Getting Better(Pablo). Never seen either Curtis or JJ in person; neither has ever been to Cardiff. I've got the Yokohama album JJ did with Nat. And I haven't heard the album Al & JJ did together. It's on my list, but low down. Perhaps smooth would have been a better description of his sound; I just feel it lacks emotion, as a sound. MG

That one's excellent and long overdue - but no bonus tracks! This was in the LPR series...; I've got it. Or am I mistaken? I believe you're mistaken. The only Burrell album in the LPR series was his Christmas album. EDIT: Shawn (and his lovely avatar , whoever it is!) beat me to it. Yes - I have the "Night at the Vanguard" on a Japanese mini-lp issue. The sleeve note in Japanese is dated 1997. No bonus cuts on that edition. MG

A couple or three years ago, on AAJ, you posted a link to some site on which there were results from some research about the variety of material people like Mississippi John Hurt and others normally performed. I never saved it, to my regret. Could you post it here, please? I have the feeling it might be somewhat relevant. MG

Allen - a question: What do you mean by "authentic"? Yeah, that's my question, too. But perhaps more to the point is what does whoever Allen's reading mean by it? MG

Una Stubbs MG

I didn't know he was in Dizzy's band. Interesting versatility. I'll mark that one down for later acquisition. MG

I wonder if they'll add extra material...that is a very short album in it's original form. My guess is they won't. I haven't got this on LP, so I'll certainly buy it. It was originally on the Metro label, which was a cheapo series. JOS did three live gigs that were put out on Metro; Berlin and Paris were the others. You'd say, what kind of business plan, in the sixties, was putting JOS out on budget labels? That's not a rhetorical question - those were very different from the material he was recording in the studios with Oliver Nelson arrangements and so on. MGM/Verve was spending real money on those so these, you can bet, had as little money spent as possible. I reckon that will translate through into no other tracks around. The Paris material DOES have lots of extra tracks - the 2 CD set from the Salle Pleyel is over two hours long. But it really doesn't sound like the Berlin job - or like Verve at all. If I had to stick my neck out, I'd say that the continental Salle Pleyel CDs were recorded by someone else at the same time as the Verve material - is that possible? MG

Ghost, I can see how this was an earlier attemp at some of the tunes that ended up on later LPs like Love Bug and Blue Mode. However, it doesn't mean it was 'bad', perhaps just different and the released versions of those songs are classics... The following session however, looks REALLY to be worthwile. The players are all top notch and it comes at a time when Reuben was on the top of his game playing-wise. The tunes were never released or re-recorded in any fashion. I get the feeling times were changing and they ended up with "Set Us Free" which has a completely different approach. If I were a betting man, I'd say this is probably a top-notch contender for a stunning Rare Grooves-type session that has never seen the light of day... Reuben Wilson Quintet Ramon Morris, Harold Ousley (ts) Reuben Wilson (org) Ted Dunbar (g) William Curtis (d) Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 26, 1970 Son Of Man Blue Note unissued Do-Ba-Dat-San! - Dance Ville - What's Gonna Happen To Me - Weaver Of Dreams Yes and no - while what's there looks great, I wouldn't mind betting that the session was a track short, so maybe there's only a half hour of music there. Not that you couldn't put it together with something else, as was done with GG's "Blues for Lou", and make something good. By the way, Ousley's tune "Son of man" was recorded a few months later for Prestige, by Houston Person. Great groove tune, like so many of Harold's compositions. MG

Hardly anyone mentions Al Grey here. I've just been listening to "JATP 1983" by Jaws, Sweets and Al. And I'm thinking how much I love that sound Al had, how moving and expressive it is compared with the thin sounds of J J Johnson or Curtis Fuller (I don't want to put those guys down, but they were into something else). Al was a basic swing man, but he could play modern stuff, too, and R&B and Soul material - and it always came out Al Grey - always tough and joyful at the same time, full of wit and humour. And funky as battered hell! I never had much interest in Al - he was always someone to whom I thought I'd eventually get around, though. And when I got Jimmy McGriff's "Blue to the 'bone" in 1990, I was knocked out. So I've got a dozen of Al's albums now. LURVE him! MG

Phew! I managed 90% in 2004, but it was a hell of an effort. Normally, I manage somewhere between 60 and 70 per cent of my older albums (> 1 year old at start of the year), but resolve each year to play all the albums I failed to play the previous year. I haven't managed that yet, either - there are 27 I haven't played for ten years or more (but reasons for that). But, as one's collection gets bigger, the weight of the older albums could prevent adequate exploration of the new - and I think that would be something I wouldn't want to happen. So I would want it to be easy for my resolutions to be derailed MG

A guy who went by Sailor Vernon, from whom I used to buy a lot of blues and gospel albums in the early eighties first brought this phenomenon to my attention. It's true, you can't ever experience your first kiss (&etc) again. But you can certainly kiss other girls. And I've found a lot in Africa. You can't try Amy Winehouse, because you've heard her - try the one I've fallen in love with (metaphorically) over the past few months; Concha Buika. (I won't ask you to try Castro Destroyer ) MG

Can't help you myself, Jams, but I think you'd do better asking in one of the Bartok threads. This is the biggest http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...5&hl=bartok MG

Anyone who can post a pic of an album on the Squalor label is welcome here! MG

MG

Good thread - makes you think. Since I bought my firt jazz records in 1959, I've never listened to jazz exclusively; to me it was always a kind of music that I could, and increasingly as I got to know more bout it, relate to R&B and Soul, my first musical love. But as time went on, though I bought more and more jazz albums that satisfied this relationship with R&B/Soul, I discovered other kinds of music that also had a close relationship with R&B - Blues; Gospel; Ska; Funk; Reggae; Disco; Hip Hop; Salsa - and I started buying African recordings (1963), so that Mbaqanga; Mbalax; Highlife; Afrobeat; Djeliya; Wassoulou got added in to my mix - and more recently, Zouglou and Hip-life - and those musics, too, can be related to R&B/Soul. Classical music, which is hard to relate to R&B/Soul, I gave up on the grounds that I couldn't afford that as well as all these other types of music that I could see were around, or around the corner. And I've never got tired of the mixture. But then, I'm certain that I don't listen to music - any music - as intently as most people here listen to jazz (or any other kind of music, I guess). If I can, I tend to listen with my body, with my mind sort of disengaged (but sometimes it IS hard to disengage your mind ). To me, none of this is music for contemplation; it's music for moving your body. And it's something of a window on a foreign culture, of course - but a feeling window, not a thinking window, if you know what I mean. But maybe, because of the way I listen to it, this mix of music won't cease to inspire me until I'm completely paralysed. MG

I don't understand exactly how it works but it has considerable power. Most annoyingly, in order to satisfy QCA the exam boards have to write their specifications in jargon. Decoding exactly what they want us to do can be irritating. OFSTED tell us we should share marking procedures with students - good advice. But I always have to translate them into English first. Even then they often don't make much sense, being intended to impress QCA with the boards' 'intellectual rigour' rather than demonstrate to teachers and students exactly how they can attain the standards they are being assessed by. Interesting. Glad I got out into something nice and easy like economics when I did MG

Indeed - I got that Spiritof Memphis set a few weeks ago and am still being amazed and overwhelmed! MG

See? There are HUGE cultural differences between the English and Americans. MG

Oh THAT Mike!!!! A very happy birthday, Mike. MG

Yes, I actually thought you meant something like that...I wasn't really getting upset! The National Curriculum is set by the government through QCA - however, it is now a set of broad skills and topic areas, giving considerable room to shape. GCSE and A Level syllabi have to be approved by QCA - there are a set of standards that all syllabi have to meet to be approved; but each exam board is free to shape its syllabus within that framework. There's plenty of choice. Ah, thanks. The QCA is a QUANGO - they vary as to the amount of political input there is in their operations. I assume from what you say that there's not much into the QCA. MG

Five life sentences http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pressass/20080221...-6323e80_1.html MG

Thanks for posting this Claude - good to see you around again. There some very odd things in this proposal. 1 Session musicians don't get royalties, do they? 2 A session musician can change labels if EMI won't reissue an album on which he played third violin fifty years ago - so what difference will this make to anything? 3 Ditto for a leader - eg Billy Fury. Who the fuck cares if Billy Fury, whose current performances no one wants to hear (is he alive even?), tries to get a contract with some other label? 4 A musician who started a career at 17 may lose any royalties from that period when he's 67, but not from the rest of his recordings over his working life. As for someone like Billy Fury, who was popular for a couple of years, being able to rely on royalties for the rest of his life on those two years' of work, I can't see any merit in it, whereas there seems to me great merit in the work becoming public domain. This is a snow job. The Commission has been persuaded by specious arguments of the industry that this is to the advantage of the artists, but of course, it's to the advantage of the industry. MG

MG, granted, I am just seeing these short clips, and can't see what if anything the drivers see to tell them about these car killers. Do people from smaller towns know about these??? Someone lost could turn down the wrong street, someone that was talking to the passenger...who knows??? What I do know is if you look at the first clip again, that guy hit his head on the windshield! I mean, stupid to not have his seatbelt on, but still. The other clip shows a car that got airborn. People clearly get hurt, was that the intention of these devices??? Or was it to increase business auto repair shops? And I imagine the traffic becomes a lot worse after a car gets impaled at a light. Hows a towtruck get there??? Just seems quite 1984 to me. One time I am glad we have so many trial lawyers in the U.S. Cities would lose millions if they tried them here.... Right, thanks Berigan. I suspect you're seeing these clips wrong. Two or three of those cars that got caught were trying to slide through tailing a bus tightly. They knew what they were doing. Would the US justice system have sympathy with people who got hurt trying to break the law? (And indeed, breaking the law, by not wearing seat belts?) MG Well, perhaps, but that first lady looks awfully confused...perhaps that is the way she always looks. But, how commonplace are these things? Are they on 10% off all side streets in London??? 80%??? Are they only in London??? One delivery truck was caught on it as well....What happens if a bus had to stop midway out because the police were speeding across the intersecting street??? In L.A. I recall seeing buses on special roads that clearly no one else would get on, just one lane, one way.....they get on and off these roads at lights...more room there though... Yes, we have bus lanes, but they're not separate from the rest of the road, so anyone can use them, since there's no barrier to prevent it. These bollards are an attempt to keep other traffic out of the bus lanes, which are supposed to be used only by buses and taxis or other forms of public transport. We don't have bollards in my area and it is virtually impossible to keep the lanes for the exclusive use of public transport vehicles. So the value of those lanes is generally not very much in terms of helping to make public transport a more attractive option. MG

Correct me if I'm wrong Bev, because I left education administration in 1979 and haven't kept up to date, but I think that there's no government input into curricular details (as opposed to setting a core of specific subjects to be studied). These are set by examinations boards, which are supposed to be independent, though I think there's a role for HMInspectorate in monitoring them for consistency. MG

Nyah! Our dishwasher collects cassettes!!! MG It does? Well you better throw it out! 'Fraid you missed the joke, BN82. By the way, why 82? There surely can't be 81 other people wanting to be called bluenote ahead of you? MG