The Magnificent Goldberg

Brook Benton Dinah Washington Eddie Chamblee

Hi 8:15 ("The workers' train"?) Actually, that's not a bad thought. Though "Iron city" contains "Go down Moses", "Motherless child" and "Work song", which aren't listed in the Verve discography. But that information could be erroneous. Mistakes of that nature have been made often. MG

If you wanted to get your neighbours phoning the CIA Hamid and Sabir otherwise Jug and Sonny Bags and Wes or I'd give another vote for Griff and Jaws MG

I was just looking at some economic statistics for Senegal. The country has had a growth rate of 3-4% for quite a few years now. But it's still extremely poor. Per capita GDP is about $700. This equates to $1758 in spending power (ie, if an American took $700 to Senegal, he could buy goods costing $1758 in the US). Inflation is about 2%. A couple of years ago, it was 0.8%. One of the things that was not touched on in either review, so I assume it wasn't mentioned in any of the books, was rising inequality. In Senegal, 30% of the national income goes to 10% of the people. This is probably about half as bad as in the US, but it's still very far from good. And, though I have no numbers to support this notion, it seems to be getting worse. Over the past five years, the CD market in Senegal has become quite significant. A new CD of a Senegalese band will cost about 10 Euros - is this about $12-13? The same album, on K7, costs about $2. (These are prices in Senegal.) I've been told that a lot of CDs are being sold in Senegal nowadays. There are certainly a lot more albums being issued on CD and, since BSDA requires royalties to be paid on numbers manufactured, not on sales, the Senegalese record companies tend not to manufacture records they can't be confident of selling. So, to add to the problems set out in the reviews, Senegal - and no doubt other African countries - is relying ever more heavily on luxury spending that is inherently unreliable. MG

Les McCann & Houston Person - Road warriors - Greenestreet orig Lonnie Smith - Gotcha - LRC orig Lonnie Smith - Finger lickin' good soul organ - CBS UK mono MG

Thanks Guy - the second critique is rather more convincing than the first. MG

I don't know. How many? How many versions of What's going on", "Willow weep for me" or "Since I fell for you" by a tenor player do you want to hear? Or maybe it makes a difference who he is. MG

I would have said this myself, but what do I know? Only that it's the same here, but not so rife Hey, and what's this euphemism "limited service chicken chains" or something to describe a place where something almost but not quite exactly unlike food is thrown at you? MG

Not enough? The racing car business is very, very, big indeed. $100m is not out of order, I'd say. MG

And you can buy all the items at Amazon.com! MG

I haven't had any e-mail notifications of new posts to my subscribed threads for about 12 hours. So I had a look at my subscriptions in my control panel. At the bottom of the page, I found this message. "Subscription auto pruning is switched off at present" What the heck does this mean? Does it have anything to do with my lack of notifications? MG

I'd pay $5-10 for the Buddy Montgomery, though I haven't heard it. Let us know what you think of them when you get 'em. MG

I'm not keen on Fritz. His arrangements seem too brittle for me. "Woga" is pretty poor, in my view. "Your mama don't dance" is a bit better. The instrumentation of "Charles Kynard" offers very little scope for Fritz arrangements, though most of the tunes are his. They're slight, but jazz abounds with slight originals, so, shrug. "Charles Kynard" sounds about as good as "Wah-tu-wa-zui" and "Afro-disiac" to me. As far as I know, the only cover recording Charles made was of "Soul makossa", in which he was a member of a studio group - Afrique - put together by Bob Shad specifically in order to steal sales from Manu Dibango's version, which had been a hit all over Europe. And it succeeded; Afrique's version was nearly as big a hit in the US as Manu's. If you mean by covers, recording tunes that other people have recorded, I'm not sure what the problem is. I don't think people like Duke Ellington, Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, Percy Mayfield, Jobim, the Gershwins etc etc, ever thought that other people recording their songs was a problem. MG

Interesting remark. I find I have to be in a certain mood to dig almost any album. Isn't that part of the reason we have all sorts of different music in our collections? MG I don't know...I'll have to give that some thought when I'm in the right mood. MG

I'm told this one is true. Sounds like wishful thinking to me. MG

Camel Marlboro Capstan Full Strength

Welcome to another Joe Splink fan! MG

RIP. MG

Didn't know he was married to Vicki Anderson. RIP. MG

Have a really good one, Dan. And many thanks, for many things. MG

Last night, it was Coleperson Hawkins & Ben Webster - Blue saxes - Verve Polydor UK issue (DG) Les McCann - Live at Montreux (double) - Atlantic orig MG

Interesting remark. I find I have to be in a certain mood to dig almost any album. Isn't that part of the reason we have all sorts of different music in our collections? MG

Melvin Sparks' "Groove on up" has a tabla player on one track. It works really well. MG

Donny Osmond Marie Osmond Little Jimmy Osmond

The Expanding Headband Michael Foot Bigbelly