The Magnificent Goldberg

Shit Chuck, you spending my holiday money again? MG

I only need 1199 now! MG

Me too. I'm getting 6 December notifications this afternoon/evening, after a few days of no notifications at all. MG

Wiki has it definitely mixed up. On the pop charts, the McVae disc entered 25 Jan '47, peaked at #3 and was on the chart 9 weeks. On the R&B charts, it entered 8 Feb '47, peaked at #2 (for 2 weeks) and lasted 7 weeks - NOT peaked at 7 and lasted 2 weeks. Thanks for your memories, Larry. Actually the first memory of mine that I can actually date is singing along with my mother to "Open the door, Richard", which was on the radio. I was three then. I don't know which of the many hit versions it was. In America, Count Basie's was the biggest hit, closely followed by Louis Jordan's. I imagine it would have been either of those versions that would have been the hit over here. Certainly not McVae's, since B&W wouldn't have been able to get a British distributor. Despite my great love for the R&B of that period, I've never actually heard McVae's version of the song. Coincidentally, I was playing Louis Jordan's version earlier today. And that's not really a honker; I can't really imagine McVae's version being either. If I had to guess at where Jaws and Fats were coming from on the Savoy tracks, I'd say it would probably be Illinois Jacquet. Fats recorded with Illinois for Aladdin on 7 January 1947 (the "Jivin' with Jack the Bellboy" session) - about two weeks after that Savoy session - so I guess he would have been playing gigs with the band through December at least (and he was on the Jacquet's April 1947 session, too). Illinois was shit hot at that period - even though he wasn't getting records on the charts. And Savoy had a definite yen to make that kind of record. It wasn't until later that year that they managed to crack that market wide open with Wild Bill Moore, then three R&B #1 hits with Hal "Cornbread" Singer and, the following year, Paul Williams, Big Jay McNeely. Savoy was the market leader at the time for Honkers and Screamers (as well as for Bebop). Herman Lubinsky DEFINITELY had specific ideas about what those honking records should be like. The sleeve notes to "The roots of Rock & Roll" on Savoy Jazz, say that Lubinsky was furious to hear Phil Guilbeau's very boppy trumpet solo on Paul Williams' "The hucklebuck" and was going to reject the record. This was two years later but is a fair indication that certain pressures are likely to have been brought to bear when Fats and Jaws were recording. At the same time, I think Fats himself wouldn't have been human if he himself hadn't been carried away by the unbounded energy of a Jacquet show (Amiri Baraka's story "The screamers" conveys this perfectly, though it's about Lynn Hope, not Jacquet). So, although there may have been pressures from Savoy, I rather suspect that Fats may not have been an unwilling recipient, at that particular time. MG PS - and don't forget, Jaws had played on two monster R&B hits by the Cootie Williams band - "Cherry red blues", which had the longest run (39 weeks) on the R&B charts (only a top 15) of any single, and "Somebody's got to go" which made #1 in 1945 (both with vocals by "Cleanhead" Vinson). This stuff was in Jaws' blood, too.

Ephrem Zimbalist Jr Connie Stevens Ed Byrne

Huh? Where does that McVea date come from Larry? According to the Billboard books of Whitburn, the record debuted on the Billboard pop charts on 25 January 1947 and on the R&B charts on 8 February 1947. None of the other hit versions of the song debuted on either Billboard chart before 1947. It's supposed to have been recorded in c September 1946 - I guess it could have issued in October. MG

MG

Blue Mitchell recorded "High heel sneakers" two months BEFORE Stevie Wonder had a hit with the song I think if there had been any that Chas didn't find, they'd probably have showed up in my collection; there aren't any. So it looks like Big John is the winner. MG

Check out this thread. http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...c=27673&hl= MG

The worst mistake I made was not getting the Amos Milburn set. I think I have a little over half of it on 78, LP and CD and, at the time, I couldn't justify the opportunity cost. But listening to some tapes I'd made of all the stuff I've got, eliminating the many duplicates, I really wished I'd lashed out. The Jacquet set is another, though I don't feel so bad about that one. Their mistakes? I, too, don't like the avoidance of original cover art and sleeve notes (where they existed). And I agree the Patton set should have been a big box of everything. I think they could have issued more collections like the Commodore and HRS boxes. Not that I've got those, but it seems that they've concentrated on licensing from the majors and forgotten about some interesting jazz indies that weren't acquired by the majors. Beehive, Progressive and JAM come to mind. I'm pretty sure there would have been others in the Avant Garde area; an area they've entirely ignored, I think, even more than they've ignored Soul Jazz. MG

Yes, well the Hampton box definitely lived up to expectations. MG

I never IMAGINED there'd be a real place on the web where people were REALLY interested in all that funky organ stuff. But as soon as I heard (despite efforts to the contrary) on AAJ that there was a place called Organissimo, I KNEW that this was the place for me. There's more... MG

Chapman Pincher Doberman Bilko

Dan Gould will send you a Christmas card for that MG

Two beautiful sunny days here. First day with ice on the garden pond, though. Better than rain - by about a milion per cent. MG

When she was in high school, my mom didn't like Elvis and those guys. She was a Chet Baker fan. Actually, I've not only bought jazz records for my mom, I've taken her to jazz shows, including Abbey Lincoln and Bud Shank. Wow. My own mom didn't like Elvis or Buddy Holly or Fats Domino or any of those fifties rockers either. She also didn't (and doesn't) like jazz, classical, country, or any other type of music. Doesn't like movies either. In 1960, I brought home Duke Ellington's "Nutcracker suite". My mother's comment was, "oh yes, Duke Ellington. I saw him live in 1936." MG

or even better: "the complete blue note lee morgan 1960s false starts" or at least some kind of compilation like: "jazz for days where nothing works: the best of the blue note false starts and breakdowns" I think you have a selling idea there! Tell Michael Cuscuna. MG

Mark Sheldon posted this pic of Lonnie Smith on the Blindman Blues forum I enlarged it 46% this morning and cropped the bottom half off so it went to 1024x768 and it makes a SUPERB desktop. Been out shopping and when I got home and turned on the PC - wow! took my breath away! MG

Sound! That's the key for Jaws I think - not so much the actual melodic improvisation but the way he made it sound. Something he shared in common with Gator Tail, Illinois, Fathead, Jug, Stanley Turrentine, Hank Crawford etc. For me personally, that's one of the crucial things that most of my favourite musicians have, that REALLY gets through to me. I've been on a bit of a Jaws binge for about three years now - bought about 13 of his albums. I think I've got almost all his work (except the King material) with Shirley and all but a couple with Griff, as well as others with Wild Bill Davis and Don Patterson. Still got more to get. "Afro-Jaws" on order from the Concord sale. MG

WINRAR actually stopped working for me, when the freebie license ran out. I use 7-zip, which seems to do quite a lot of things and IS free. http://www.7-zip.org/ MG

Did she get promoted next year? First office party I went to - I was 17 - was in Harrods (just the travel bureau staff) and I got completely ratted and threw up all over the place. I got promoted the following January - but since that meant I went to another office, maybe... MG

That reminds me of the Shelley Berman story about how, when he was young and dating a girl at a restaurant, he thought to emulate Bogart by lighting his and her cigarettes together - AND FORGOT TO GIVE HER ONE OF THEM! MG

But I've always thought it was quite witty. And that excuses cheapskateness! MG

Well, I had a Virgin voucher for my brthday, so finally got around to going in to buy a record. Good grief! Virgin is now called Zavvi - the rumour is that Branson flogged the firm because he knew it was going down the tube and wanted it to go down under someone else's flag so much that he chucked in fifty million quid's worth of training as an enticer. Nick, at Spillers told me several weeks ago that I'd have difficulty spending the voucher. I did. There was literally only one album in the blues, jazz and world music sections to get. This one. It's OK - it's a recent set re-recording a lot of numbers of which I already have Baobab's original versions. I've got to say, the new performances aren't as good as the originals but, hell, the band's been together for well nigh forty years, with few personnel changes, and I'm not going to say that it's wrong for them to get paid by an English record company for remaking their old stuff that appeared on Senegalese labels. Nor am I going to refuse to support the effort and deny the guys their probably small royalties. Though, probably, I could have gone into the Urban section and picked up a Jill Scott MG

Interesting stuff. The real point, that is brought out but immediately thrust aside by the first two articles, is the difference between a regulated lender - where there is some government or quasi-government organisation looking over its shoulder and able (and willing) to deal with complaints - and an unregulated one - which, if you default, will send Ronnie and Reggie round to break your legs (or you may feel that they might). Over here we seem to have pretty strong regulation - it's been tightened up in the last decade, since the Labour Party took over - it's an issue that Gordon Brown is personally very keen on. I don't doubt that in most of western Europe, the position is rather similar. In America, I don't know. I do have the feeling that, over there, this sort of lurking behind your shoulder activity on the part of government is very much frowned on - and not just by conservatives. The fact that this sort of stuff is for poor people - people who have effectively failed the American dream - and maybe people who are black - tends to make the rather more comfortable majority focus rather more on freedom than welfare outcomes. Is that prejudice on my part? MG