The Magnificent Goldberg

Oh, so it's this! http://cdn.discogs.com/9PRbJEb_T6xyweESbRHI8BeZziU=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb()/discogs-images/R-4164468-1357407946-9851.jpeg.jpg My goodness! NOT one I've got - looks like, despite having 22 Tate albums, I'm still low on Buddy Tate. Well, well. Thanks. MG

Damn me, I should have got Buddy Tate! That's mid fifties, I think. Never heard any of Tate from that period. In fact, I think he only did two sessions between about 1950 and '58. This really shows he shouldn't have been left out in the cold. MG

A DL for me please. MG

Most definitely featuring the same musician twice in the same BFT is allowed! I have done it several times! #8 is a Keith Jarrett composition which I have heard by Jarrett many times. I can remember Jarrett's soft vocalizations behind certain parts of this, on the original recording. But I can't remember which Jarrett album it is from. It's maddening. It could be an excerpt from "The Koln Concert", which did not have song titles. I do not know who is playing this Jarrett piece. Ah, Dick Griffin! No wonder. I was listening to one of the recordings he made with Charles Earland over lunch. I guess I'm not surprised I didn't like what he was doing on this, now I know. MG

Well, late in the month again, but a bit earlier than last month; I’m catching up. Here we a-gogo. I do like your cover 1 ‘Smooth sailing’, a number associated with Arnett Cobb and Ella Fitzgerald, who scatted Arnett’s solo on her version. Well, this is a rather polite version; at least to start with. But Arnett – surely it’s Arnett, though I can’t find a recording he did with this instrumentation – brightens things up when he comes along. Well, I listened to this again and surely it AIN’T Arnett. I said in one of the recent BFT discussion threads, ‘how come no modern players imitate Arnett?’ and I think you’ve thrown this one in to show me that someone does or has. Nice work, Thom. 2 Bit of a clever type tune. I recognise the rhythm riff from somewhere but can’t think where. But I don’t know this recording of whatever it is. The alto player reminds me of Jackie McLean sometimes and Sonny Cox other times, when he’s sounding a bit strangulated. So I don’t suppose it’s either. And the trumpeter makes me think of Woody Shaw, but I don’t suppose it’s him, either. The tenor player reminds me of someone who’s had hard lessons from an exacting teacher and mastered them. So does the pianist. Yes, OK, lads, well played, but you still lost. 3 Oh, here’s another one. I am really out of sync with this, so I’m going to skip it. 4 Sorry, I don’t know what this music means. Skip. 5 Ah a ballad. Well, so quiet and so little being said, I nodded off after less than a minute. Skip. 6 More stuff I don’t get. There’s some stuff that’s a bit intriguing being done with echo loops and cyclic phrases, so I haven’t skipped, but this is generally leaving me cold and somewhat irritated. But after 4.5 mins, skip. 7 A tune that tries to be dramatic but is only portentous. Nope, this ain’t for me, either. 8 This is quite nice. I think it’s Abdullah Ibrahim playing some kind of folksy song like ‘Shrimp boats’. I have one recording of him doing that song, rather differently and with more of an rhythmic emphasis and with a bass player and drummer. But that was nice. 9 (the long #9) Ah, here’s one I’ve got and was playing this morning, as it happens. It’s Groove Holmes, with Houston Person, Bob Devos, Idris Muhammad and Buddy Caldwell, playing ‘Do it to it’ from the Muse LP ‘Good vibrations’, with a smashing cover photo. http://ring.cdandlp.com/jetrecords/photo_grande/114682455.jpg[/img] Thanks for that one, Tom. 9 (the short one) ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ and a nice version, which sounds as if I’ve got it. But when we get to the trumpet solo, I realise I haven’t got it, but probably should have. Sounds like a bunch of pretty recent guys, out to prove they can play the same nice music as was done forty years ago. But I think they really ought to be playing music as nice as was done forty years ago, but not much like it. Still pretty nice, though. 10 Sounds as if it’s gonna be a hard bop kind of blooooze. Sounds OK, but the alto player, playing all those non-blues changes kinda gets on my wick. And the trumpet player, too. I keep wanting them to start digging in and expressing something, but they don’t. The pianist’s doing it, too – that is, NOT doing it. So, in the end, I don’t really care who the guys are, I’m afraid. 11 Another kind of hard bop thing, sounding as if it’s Kai Winding trying not to be commercial on a commercial album. And the tenor player’s taking that advice seriously. Well, I don’t think it’s Kai Winding; I don’t think he was this good. 12 Ah, the only flute player I can recognise straight off, Fathead. This is from one of his many HighNote albums, reprising, with a different title, something he recorded in the sixties or seventies for Atlantic or Warner Bros. The tune is the title of the album – ‘Song for the new man’, with John Hicks, Curtis Fuller, John Menegon and Jimmy Cobb. I can’t remember what the original title was at the moment, but I might think of it in a bit. Oh, it was originally ‘Song for the new man’, which he recorded on ‘Newmanism’ and, honestly, it was a bit better than the more recent version, to my ears. Though there’s nothing at all wrong with this one. 13 Oh, a nice roaring trombonist. I like trombonists who shout nice and loud. Can’t say I like the piece much, but I do like the way he plays. No, I really don’t like what he’s doing, but I do like the way he’s doing it. 14 Something fairly familiar about this sax player. Sounds like they’re going to break into ‘My favourite things’ in a minute. Hah! a quote at the end of his solo for ‘Mann’s is the best brown ale, best brown ale, best brown ale. Mann’s is the best brown ale, let’s have one now’, better known as ‘Oh du lieber Augustin’ I think. Never heard that on a jazz record. Wailing violinist. He’s a bit familiar, too. So’s the guitarist, if not so interesting. It isn’t ‘My favourite things’, but bits of it put together backwards. I like this and I’m looking forward to finding out who this is. Oh, it’s someone called John. Or maybe John’s the engineer or producer. Glad I skipped several cuts rather than abandoned this BFT. You always never know with BFTs. Thanks Thom. MG

Oh well, I've got #4 as well. Gotta say I hardly play it. MG

Duh? It's back to normal now. MG

Got up this morning and started playing one of the CDs I'd got out last might to hear over breakfast. Shocked to find I was listening to #3 of the BFT! Well, bugger me! So it's 'Goes blue' by Ximo Tebar, from the Omix album 'Ximo Tebar goes blue', with Dr Lonnie, again, Idris Muhammad, whom I also should have recognised. Also at the session, and not on this cut, was Sweet Papa Lou. Well! MG

Well, I’ve delayed long enough, I feel. Gonna have a listen to this before the answers are put up. Also gotta confess that I haven’t been looking forward to this with great enthusiasm, or I’d have found time earlier, but I still hope for pleasant surprises. Well, the album sleeve is GREAT!!! So here goes, when ‘OUA’ by Papa and Kandia Kouyate finishes in a couple of minutes. 1 Fairly familiar tune. I think I must have this. I’m going to guess after two minutes it’s Dr Lonnie Smiff, playing ‘Nick’s kick’ with Crash, on 6 September 2003 at the Cellar, Vancouver. A DAMN fine album that, perhaps the best Dr L ever made, except his Club Mozambique job. Well, bugger me, that was a VERY pleasant surprise. 2 ‘Just the way you look tonight’ played by guitar and organ so quietly I can barely hear them, when I’m on full volume. Oh it’s a bit better when I put my earphones in. Well, I can hear the guitarist’s playing a bit too fast for his mind to work out nice shapes. The organist sounds like Melvin Rhyne. And since the guitarist ain’t Wes Montgomery, it’s gotta be someone like Peter Bernstein, except his sound is a bit too solid for him, so maybe it’s a European. 3 Whips earplugs out. Something else I have. Well, I know that guitar intro, but I associate it with a record by a tenor player, so this isn’t something I’ve got. Well, the organist’s either Jimmy Smiff or one of his recent imitators, and I go for a recent imitator. The guitarist’s a bit of a Grant Green imitator, so this sounds like a recent band of young people who didn’t grow up in the society in which rap makes sense. 4 Oh, here’s another I’ve got. No I haven’t, it’s just a familiar tune once recorded by GG, LY and EJ. I can’t be asked to decide what the title is. I think I’ve heard this guitarist before and don’t like him. Oh well. Four organ tracks is a nice start for me. Well, this is probably Bill Heid. 5 OK, piano. ‘Easy livin’’ played by a tenor player who’s got the right experience. He’s pretty good for a recent guy. But he doesn’t have the feeling that I associate with people like Ike, Illinois, Arnett, Hal, Jaws, Griff (etc etc etc), so that dates him. But he’s studied those players well and, to my amazement, isn’t imitating anyone in particular. This is someone I could get interested in. The very end sounded like Harold Land. 6 I have a strong Billy Strayhorn feeling about this tune. Sounds like guitar, bass and drums. Nice bass solo, nice guitar solo. Not something that makes me get up and boogaloo, nor something I’d go out of my way to listen to, but here, it’s very nice. 7 ‘You and the night and the music’! I haven’t heard this song in YONKS! Lovely song! I don’t think I’ve got any recordings of it. The flow of the guitarist puts me much in mind of Rene Thomas. Can’t say much about the flow of the pianist, ‘cos it’s barely there. 8 Song about trying to put a bass on an aeroplane. Moderately funny. Well, it gets funnier as it goes along. Thanks for this. 9 Well, two minutes of slow intro. Is this going to take off? Well, it does at 2:40. Very nice rhythm and time, reminding me of ‘Native land’. Now at 4:00 we go into a bit of contrapuntal stuff for half a minute, then the solos begin. With a soprano sax. Well, there’s definitely meat, potatoes and gravy in this, but I could have done without the hors d’oeuvres. I like them straight ahead, like smoked salmon, not unrelated bits of sushi. Whoever these guys are, they’ve GOT to have listened to Curtis Amy’s ‘Native land’ and decided to do the same thing but different. But even though it’s not Amy, Bolton and Wilson, it’s well done and enjoyable. I thought we were going to get a nice piano solo, but no, it’s gone back into the counterpoint thing, then a nice tag with the two horns. Then enough applause. 10 ‘There will never be another you’ by a tenor player. This is another fairly modern geezer. Someone like Eric Alexander, who seldom really plays as well as he probably could and has once or twice. So, OK. 11 Now this is an older guy. A bit of a bopper. I get a feeling of Lucky Thompson or Don Byas, someone I haven’t heard all that much of, about him. The tune is a bop line and, is it my imagination or is it based on ‘There will never be another you’? I’ll be interested to see who this is, though on the strength of this recording, I don’t think I’d get interested enough to go seek him out. 12 I’m afraid this cut is doing absolutely nothing for me. I just don’t get it. 13 Oh ‘The hucklebuck’! Or maybe they call it ‘Now’s the time’. A perennially popular tune, ‘The hucklebuck’ keeps coming back and making another hit record. I think the last one was by an Irish C&W band which made the Irish pop charts in about 2010. Can’t say that much about this version. Well, lots of pleasant surprises here, I’ve got to say. Thank you. MG

I'll have a DL please. MG

Allen Lowe recommended a couple of books on the history of recorded sound, which I bought from Amazon. They were 'America on record' by Andre Millard, and 'Sound recording'; by David L Morton Jr. I was attempting to find out why vocals became so much more popular than instrumentals in the mid twenties. The issue was that a big change seems to have occurred between 1925 and 1927. I can’t remember what prompted me but, in 2007 or 2008, I looked through that Whitburn Pop Memories book (which I know has its serious faults, but which can be useful if one treats it as a dated list of records that were pretty or very popular) picking out bands that had goodish careers through the twenties and into the thirties and counting the numbers that were instrumental or vocal. I’ve set out the results in this table. Well, I've deleted the table, because it just comes out rubbish on the board. But in summary, these were the bands: Benson Orch of Chicago Ben Bernie Carl Fenton Fletcher Henderson Isham Jones Roger Wolfe Kahn Sam Lanin Ted Lewis Vincent Lopez Ray Miller Leo Reisman Ben Selvin Nat Shilkret & Victor Orch Paul Specht Frankie Trumbauer Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians Ted Weems Paul Whiteman Of 363 early hits by those bands, only 37 were vocals. Of 562 later hits, only 36 were instrumentals. Obviously, I picked bands because only bands have the capability of making vocal or instrumental records and I wanted to find bands whose policies had changed at some time. I didn’t, and still don’t, think these bands changed their tack because they were driven by aesthetic considerations; I think they changed to reflect what their audiences were looking for, maybe even asking for. So the results reflect a genuine change in audience preference. Again, it’s clear that SOMETHING happened in the midtwenties. But one wonders what. It doesn’t seem to have been the emergence of a charismatic vocal stylist who changed people’s perception of what they should be listening to. The only people I can think of who might have done something like that were Al Jolson and Bing Crosby, but Jolson had been around for over ten years by 1920, and Crosby didn’t get going until about 1930. So I was reading these books. The Millard book is very good. He writes about the technology in a way which includes the reader, so that isn’t a problem. He also seems to understand very well what musicians’, singers’, companies’ and indies’ responses to the different technological developments were (though he did miss a point that Morton picked up), though I don’t know whether his comments on Rock and Punk are correct, because they’re pretty foreign to me – like Mbalax is to most westerners He covered a wide range of material and there’s a lot of meat in the book. The subject index is crap – no index entry for electrical recording!!! (OK, part 2 is headed “The electrical era” so it may be too big for an index entry, but Edison gets a whole section of indices.) In contrast, Morton’s book is a bit lightweight, though he covers the Dictaphone business, which Millard misses. I had no idea Columbia was making cylinder Dictaphones up to 1950, and cylinders for the customers right through to the sixties! And he occasionally makes some telling points that Millard overlooked. For example, though there was no Federal ban on radio stations playing commercial records (as opposed to transcriptions) in the thirties, stations were warned by regulators that licences might not be renewed for those that didn’t provide “high quality material”. But he points out that “use of live network programmes was a business strategy designed to keep the network broadcasters powerful and profitable at the expense of the independents.” He also notes that, during the Depression, classical music fans were much better heeled than pop music fans and were prepared to pay top whack prices for good recordings, so classical music became one of the mainstays of those few companies left in business (except, I think, Decca, which was committed to low prices, undercutting the other two major companies). Victor introduced 33.3 rpm 10” and 12” LPs for classical music in 1931 and kept them going for a couple of years until times got too bad for the new medium to be sustained. Well, as I read on, I saw that Morton does a much better job of covering the development of tape recording in pre-war Germany, and the ripping of the technology by the Allies’ firms at war’s end. He’s also somewhat more interesting in dealing with the development of different kinds of tape businesses from the fifties on. And he makes a very good point about piracy – all those transcription discs that were used for albums of airshots by big bands show how prevalent piracy (which it apparently is) was in the early LP era. So I’m inclined to give Morton a pass. OK, the answer to the instrumentals > vocals transition seems to have been electrical recording. I read it in Millward but didn’t note down the page numbers, relying on a decent index, which neither book has. So it took me bloody weeks to find the stuff again because it’s REALLY boring re-reading something you’ve only just read! So a few pages is about all I could stand at one sitting. The story seems to run something like this. Following the Civil War, the most popular music was that of large marching bands; the most successful was that of Sousa. This lasted into the 1890s, when opera (!?) became hugely popular. But opera singers were not well recorded acoustically. Millward mentions the ‘squeaky’ voices of Nellie Melba and Adelina Patti. Tenor voices fared rather better because the tenor range fit the frequency range acoustic equipment could capture rather better than sopranos and basses, and some, like Caruso, fit very well into acoustic recordings. Starting in 1902, his recordings were very popular and eventually resulted, in 1907, in the first million seller record - of ‘On with the motley’. Obviously, there were plenty of well heeled classical music buffs who could afford Victor’s Red Seal records at $2 a go (or at least, well heeled people who thought it appropriate to acquire those expensive discs as status symbols – not an unforgivable practice – my wife and I went to Glyndebourne in 1972 or ‘73, when they had vacant seats for ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ and offered tickets at two quid a go – music not worth my while, but watching the audience was nice, and that was what they were there for). Despite the success of opera singers with the right voices, and anyway when opera became less popular, voices weren’t as well recorded as instrumentals. The singers who did well were those who had vaudeville experience – like Sir Harry Lauder and Al Jolson – which gave them a strong declamatory style. Of course, the vaudeville stage was acoustic, though I don’t doubt that there were singers about who were able to project more intimately. But there’s an interesting reference in Millward to a little book of instructions, ‘The phonograph and how to use it’, issued by The National Phonograph Company (Edison’s firm) in 1900, which was intended for the use of performers, which tells singers to ‘avoid singing with too much expression’. That‘s a line that just spoke to me, directly and to the precise point. Electrical recording changed all this quite radically, but not exactly overnight, because there were still problems with early electrical recordings. A number of small incremental improvements occurred, following the first electrical recordings, which were adopted with differing degrees of haste by the companies and their studio facilities. This is probably sufficient to explain why the various bands I looked into and mentioned in my earlier letter didn’t all change over – just like that (as Tommy Cooper used to say). But by about 1927, the new technology was good enough to usher in the era of the crooner. And things have never been the same since. Of course, people have always LIKED singers and vocal music, because they could sing along with them; could learn the songs and sing them out in the fields or on the way to the factories, or in the bath (if they owned one), so I don’t want to emphasise this point too much. And it’s true that a LOT of very good songs were written in the late twenties and early thirties, which certainly helped the vocalists. But it does seem that, in the acoustic era, vocal records were handicapped as against instrumentals by the inadequacies of the technology, and that this handicap disappeared or grew much less with electrical recording. Also, of course, some people are so extremely good at what they do that they can succeed under pretty nearly any circumstances – Al Jolson is an obvious case in point as one who was not made even slightly redundant by electrical recording. But on the other hand it’s hard to believe that, in the acoustic era, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby and Perry Como could have been successful. Subsequently, since their technological advantage had disappeared, instrumentals have had to become successful on their own merits. As time passed, movies, TV and music videos, together with the technological and marketing power of the market leaders in the record business (owed by the same movie & TV firms), have increasingly made image, not musical talent, the main factor in achieving big sales, and this has served musicians rather poorly. You NEED something to declare other than talent to succeed on a grand scale nowadays. So, unless someone tells me I’m making large mistakes in this I’m going to be satisfied with this explanation.

Oh yes MG

Alec Wilder’s ‘American Popular Song: the great inventors 1900-1950’ I started reading this yesterday. I’ve given up now, after half a dozen pages of chapter two (which is about Jerome Kern). I’ve never, ever, read a book so obviously intended for an audience of 647 real people, fifteen hundred music students and thirty thousand designers of academic curricula. I never want to read another one. A small excerpt from the Kern chapter will serve to illustrate the point. “There were, indeed, occasions upon which he reverted to his enthusiasm for English and Viennese musical manners, and he never could have been called a truly ‘swinging’ writer of songs. One can’t imagine him being excited by Duke Ellington’s music, let alone the experiments of Gerry Mulligan with a ten man group (a “tentet”). But there stand those melodies, straight and healthy, and ever green.” Well, thanks to Alec Wilder for that last sentence. It’s always a great pleasure to read a beautiful sentence, and that’s definitely one. But in the next paragraph, he really hits you in the face with a pile of dogshit. “Shelton Brooks had no European cage to escape from, though he grew up in Canada and loved Victor Herbert’s songs. Irving Berlin fought his way up out of extreme poverty and had no time to indulge in “culture”. As for George Gershwin, by the time he became culture-conscious, he was so indelibly labelled an American product that he risked his identity by slipping into European musical mores. Let’s say he [who? Gershwin? Berlin? Brooks? Kern?] settled simply for French harmony [!?!?], as did most arrangers of the thirties, excepting the driving Negro swing band arrangers.” So what the buggering hell is “French harmony”? No clue. No footnote even to refer to. Does he mean harmonies frequently utilised by Debussy, Faure, Satie, Ravel, Franck, Hindemith, Berlioz, Poulenc, Alkan or Saint Saens? (And which? They’re certainly not all the same.) Or was he referring to older musicians, like Couperin, Rameau, Leclair, Boismortier, Marais or Lully? Or to a bunch of composers of French pop songs in the first third of the century? Well, does it make a difference? To which the response has to be, how would one know? I readily admit to not being a musician. Further, my music education ended when I was fifteen. Most people would, I think, say the same. So I find the entire basis of Mr Wilder’s book completely impenetrable. This is set out in the introduction, by James T Maher. “Early in the preliminary research that led to this book, the author decided to devote its content to the popular song per se. He also decided to emphasise the music, and to touch only incidentally, with respect to analysis, on the words of the songs. The two elements, as the text makes clear, cannot be separated. One may talk about words, or one may talk about music, but one cannot talk about song and mean anything less than the combination of the two.” Well that’s common sense. So this unpromising statement means that Wilder knowingly attempted to half do a job that couldn’t be half done. And more, because almost every time Wilder includes the musical notation that illustrates the point he’s making (well, I have to assume it illustrates it), he avoids putting the relevant words above or below the notation. It’s right to say that, for me, the one time he did that, for ‘St Louis blues’, I got the point straight away. So Wilder’s decisions have deliberately made it impossible for the average music lover to get anything meaningful out of his book. Well done, Mr Wilder! So if, after reading this, anyone in Britain (or Paris - I'm visiting Paris next month) would like a copy of the book, I’ll send it to them, for nix. Just PM me an address. However, I’m not paying foreign postage rates for something that I’d otherwise sling in the recycling. Yes, I know I'm a heathen. MG PS - when I was looking for the correct cover of the book, I noticed this one Good Lord, what an inimical-looking guy! I had to look at what songs he'd written and the only one listed in Wikipedia that he wrote the music for that I can ever remember hearing is 'I'll be around'. A good song but one I can do without, especially after seeing the above photo.

page, I have also tried to figure out when this version of "Caravan" by Tito Puente was recorded. From what I can tell, from a lot of online research and listening to many sound snippets available online, I think it is from a session in either late 1949 or 1950 for the Tropical label. I think it was released on an LP titled "Tito Puente & Friends", and later on a CD titled "At the Beginning!" From what I can tell, "Caravan Mambo" is a different arrangement and recording altogether. This version of "Caravan" was not on the "Complete 78s" series, the four CD set which was released on CD within the past ten years. I have that four CD set and this track is not on it. If you like this version of 'Caravan', page, you should try the lovely version by Norman Simmons, from his album 'In private'. I included it in one of my BFTs severl years ago. There are several tracks from that album on YouTube, but 'Caravan' is not among them. If you PM me an e-mail address, I'll send it to you, but I don't think the board's software will let me do it (and Jim might not like it, either). MG

Damn me, I HAVE the Sun Ra! I got the LP in 1970 and am no on my THIRD copy!!!!!! Sometimes, I must take no notice of what I'm listening to. MG

Ha ha! MG

Yes, Bill. Watch out for 'Hollywood jazz beat', which I have as part of a Collectibles twofer with 'The Madoson time'. Don't be tempted by cheapo prices - it vies with 'Hampton Hawes plays movie musicals'. MG

Well, still not clear why Dan didn't get 'Afro-disiac'. Still, we can all have off moments. Thanks Bill, it's been good. Oh, sorry, this is going to come out gibberish. It says I've posted more than the required number of blocks, so I'm going to mess around with it, as I don't know how to turn my text green. MG

Me too. DL please. MG

Taken me longo time to catch up with this, Bill. Heavy reading to blame. But here we go. 1 Oh, here’s something old. Just a solo piano, but not boogie woogie. More like a rag. Oh, there’s a familiar riff in the left hand coming along about a minute into it. Knowing your taste a bit, I’m going to guess this is early Jay McShann. Nice. 2 Oh, here’s one I know. No I don’t, but the intro sounds just like one of the tracks on Gene Ammons’ Chess album ‘House warming’ with McGhee and three guys who no one's ever heard of and who might have been fellows incarcerated with them but those cuts ain’t no two minute jobs. And it isn’t Jug anyway. Though it could be… an edited and generally fucked up and speeded up 45 version? 3 I know this one, too. Kynard, another KC man. This is from the LP ‘Afro-disiac’, with Houston Person, Grant Green, Jimmy Leis and Pretty Purdie. Without comparing the tracks, I think this is the title track. If you like this Kynard, his best albums were ‘Professor soul’ and ‘Soul brotherhood’. 4 Don’t know this. Nice arrangement. Nice band. Not a top rank band, but a very nice band. The sax backgrounds to the trumpet solo are really nice to hear. I feel I should know the trumpet player, but can’t call him to mind. Baritone player had a long walk to get to the mike and had to elbow the tenor player out of the way. And what a NICE solo! Is it me or is the pianist Jay McShann again? Oh, and an electric piano solo. This must be the pianist’s recording, or the A&R manager was being unwontedly generous to him. At times he sounds like Ray Charles, but I suspect a McShann influence on Ray anyway. What a nice record! 5 Oh, a Latin kick! ‘Caravan’. Too bad it doesn’t sound as exhausted as a caravan plodding through the Sahara ought to sound, but Messrs Ellington and Tizol didn’t think of it that way, so why should I complain? The piano solo leads me to believe this is a real Latin band, not a jazz band playing Latin music, though there are a few jazz pianists who can do that sort of stuff. So maybe it’s Tito Puente or Rodriguez. 6 Abdullah Ibrahim it sounds like to me. One I haven’t heard. Damn nice. One I suspect he recorded in South Africa for Gallo in the early seventies. The feel of those sessions is on this one too. HAH! A nice quote from ‘Caravan’ and more than a quote, this is ‘Caravan’ with a long quaint Ibrahim intro. Wish I had this. Oh, well, I’ve got it now, haven’t I? Thanks Bill. Looking forward to finding out what LP this comes from. 7 More Latin stuff, without the percussion. Some pianist is playing TOO MUCH PIANO!!!!! I keep nearly recognising bits of tune, but then he slides off somewhere else. No idea who this is but he’s pretty modern. You kind of can’t help admiring this but, in the end, it’s not terribly entertaining; more like he’s showing off. Or do I mean she? Could be Mary Lou. 8 A ten minute cut and I’ve got it on full volume… OK, it’s very, very, modern, but I can stand it. The pianist makes me think of Zawinul, back in the days when he played real music, and made real hit records, with Cannon. Definitely something Zawinul-ish about him, as the tenor player gives the tune to us. All those Coltrane-isms and Henderson-isms from him don’t impress, because his sound is really not much to write home about. Oh, let me have trumpeters around me that are PHAT! All these horn players sound like they’ve got their bollocks caught in a mangle and can’t get loose enough to breathe properly. Well, I don’t know if it’s Zawinul on piano or not, and don’t really care who the other guys are. This AIN’T one of my favourite things. Break for a cuppa now. 9 OK, back again, restart! Oh right, now we do have a phat trumpeter around us. Good. What kind of effin’ tune is this though? Sounds like it’s been cobbled together from bits and pieces that didn’t fit into an unfinished Ellington composition. Once they finish playing the tune, I can DEFINITELY stand the trumpeter. Pooh gosh, yes! Thinking about some of the stuff you like, I’m going to guess at a St Louis origin for the trumpet player (Clark Terry said all St Louis trumpet players, including himself, have common facets to their style and I have the feeling I could hear something of that) and maybe the whole band. Couldn’t be bothered with the bass player. Can’t argue with him, either, though. The others are just there, though, but with nearly 3 minutes to go, I’m waiting for the sax man to come in. Well, here they are, all a bit nondescript, I think. One’s on bass clarinet, another’s on some other not quite sexy sax. Well, the trumpet player’s the draw on this; bet it AIN’T Miles Davis. Hope someone will find me something else of his that’s more enjoyable. 10 Soprano sax player. Is it necessary? Well, I suppose if playing without even an ounce of soul is all you can do, it may be, if you can’t be a professor of quantum physics. Well, I’ll keep this playing while I file a few CDs back in their shelves so, if one of the players kicks me in the goolies, I’ll notice and write some more about this one. 11 Big band in an echo chamber. Why did that piano player take off like Monk? What is THIS thing called, love? Well, it’s not ‘Mambo for Kenton’ ‘cos he wouldn’t have been recorded in an echo chamber. But it does have that brittle, unattractive, Kenton sound. 12 Now a twelve minute opus. Enter, right, doodling on a pad, from California. Lovely train rhythm section. I could grow to like this. I think I’d like even more ‘Night train’ played over this rhythm. But this is nice, so leave it be, even if they ARE playing the wrong song. The rhythm section is KILLING me! Here comes the guitarist. This has got to be seventies rubbish, but it’s SO good, can’t help liking it. And actually, the guitarist is doing the train thing wonderfully well! Goodness me, only three and a half to go so soon! But they’re slowing down as they approach Paddington. Oh no, this is only Reading. Hey, they gave the last solo to an effin’ violinist? Oh yeah, I can see why. Bloomin’ ‘eck Tucker, you should have ended the BFT with this one! 13 This had better be a blast! John Coltrane plays love and magic. OK, this tune was actually from the album ‘Blue train’ wasn’t it? Is there some association of ideas at work here, Bill, or is it a coincidence? Am I the only one who hears #12 as a train song? Well, it ain’t a blast. It’s yet another pianist playing too much piano. But I like the connection of the ideas, even if I’m the only one to think in those terms. Well, that was pretty interesting Bill. One thing about doing this so late in the month is that I shan’t have to wait too long to find out about all this nice stuff I don’t know about, like the trumpet player on #9 and whether #12 is really a train song and who by. Thank you and Gawd Blesher Guv. Just time to post this before I have to take the dog out! Back tomorow for a read of this thread. MG

How foolish I was to have doubted your knowledge when it comes to this area ... Pretty sure that the Time label came first, then Mainstream. Time had all that avant-garde classical stuff like Gazzelloni & Cathy Berberian, plus the two Kenny Dorham albums, Max Roach, Sonny Clark, Stanley Turrentine, some Marian McPartland/etc. Then came Mainstream, which morphed into the 70s with a whole new look and sound. Mainstream reissued some, but by no means all of the Time catalog. I've been looking for some of the classical stuff lately and finding it on both Time & Mainstream, but that jazz stuff...only on Time that I've found to this point...Time & Bainbridge, much later. Funny thing about this one is that I bought the Mainstream LP off Da' Bastids a year or so ago and still haven't listened to it yet. Who knew? Mainstream had 2 spurts of life - in the sixties it seems to have gone moribund (ie making rock records including one by Big Brother & the Holding Company in 1967) and was revived in the seventies with those white sleeves with the photo in an imperfect square. Here's a link to the Both Sides Now Mainstream discography which focuses on the release dates of albums, not the dates they were recorded. You'll see 'Organ out loud' came out in 1964. http://www.bsnpubs.com/new/mainstream.pdf Here's a link to the Time page on BSN http://www.bsnpubs.com/new/time.pdf That lists 'Hot organ' as 1966. MG

Wow! My EXTREME goodness, you're good Page! I've never heard either of those versions and wouldn't have guessed the singers in a zillion years! WOOOOO! MG

Nonsense. I have 43 versions in my iTunes library, and only a portion of my collection has been transferred there. At Jazzstandards.com, they rank 1,000 of the most-frequently recorded standards of all time. At #119, "I Love You" is in the top 12%. Wow! I only have about 2. (I confess, I also used to have a version by Perry Como, done during the MU strike, with a choir !!! NOT terribly jazzy MG

Oh, so 'Ballin' the jack'/'I lurve yew' IS Gene Harris. Well, I still don't think it's the kind of thing he'd do, but shows how much I know bout Mr Harris. So, I looked up 'Smack dab in the middle' to find that Charles Calhoun was a pseudonym for none other than Jesse Stone!!!!!!! Who used the name when he was moonlighting from Atlantic (but apparently at Ahmet's suggestion). He recorded it for MGM in 1955, under the name of The Charlie Calhoun Orchestra, and coupled it with '(I don't know why) the car won't go'. So, I was wrong, not a country song, but an R&B song, by one of the greatest R&B songwriters. Here's a link to wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Stone And 'Blue suede shoes' was actually written by Carl Perkins, prompted by an idea from Johnny Cash. So, wrong again. But you gotta admit, Charles A Calhoun sounds as if he OUGHT to have been writing country songs. MG

This is the Ludwig LP I've got, from which 'Moanin'' comes. It was reissued on Time (another Bob Shad label) under the title 'The hot organ' The Mainstream is the original. MG