The Magnificent Goldberg

Better actually - there's never anywhere for me to put my shoes. MG

The "I do not get this" remark referred to the fact that my second post worked OK with the quotes, but the first didn't. I split the post to see if having fewer quotes worked OK, but it didn't. Then it did. So I still don't get it. (Where's the smiley of someone tearing out their hair at the machinery?) MG

Robin Alfred Pennyworth Miss Moneypenny

hmmmm... the words are not german, aren't they? But it is a nice wordgame indeed. And you are absolutely right, it is a nice opener. I like this very much, the bass player follows the words for example the piece with the low tone.... Yes, it is English, but spoken with what sounded to me like a German accent. But I see now that it is a Dutchman speaking. Well, if it's the sax player someone above identified: He's a Danish citizen of American descent! And the bassist is from Poland. He used to liove in Frankfurt for a while, played with Peter Giger a lot, still does in a trio setting, or did until recently.

I think I had "The Third Man" in mind, together with a cigarette ad on TV in Britain in the late '50s "You're never alone with a Strand". Glad you liked the screenplay. Try also "Secret agent men" by Akira Tana (with Lonnie Smith) - film & TV spy themes plus 5 original tracks at the end; "Fictitious soundtracks from "Tough Guy"" I thought it was Mabern because he seems to have a knack of writing tunes that you think you've known a long time, but which you've actually never heard before. Now, maybe I HAVE heard this tune before, I don't know But yes, I liked it a lot, even if it's not Mabern. No, I didn't dislike it. I LOVED the trombonist - and am very impressed if there were no electronics. But the others were good, just not as good for me as the trombonist. There is a lot of modern jazz I don't like much. But I particularly don't like spiky tunes and spiky improvisations. They just don't seem best calculated to be widely entertaining, which I think should be the aim of most musicians. (In a John MacEnroe tone of voice) I DO NOT GET THIS!!!!! MG

hmmmm... the words are not german, aren't they? But it is a nice wordgame indeed. And you are absolutely right, it is a nice opener. I like this very much, the bass player follows the words for example the piece with the low tone....

Yes indeed! MG

66.7% But I WAS listening to Boogaloo Joe Jones at the time (hem hem). MG

Yeah, well, it took me long enough to decide if it was necessary. Still unsure. I couldn't find a small enough image of the Lash LP, which is my favorite. Clifford - find the image of the album you want. Save it to your hard drive. Then open it with MS Office Picture Manager, or Paint. Either program has facilities to let you reduce the size proportionately. Reduce it so it fits the avatar requirements and save it again. Then you can make it your avatar. MG

Oh yeah! Moon Ray leaves me in awe each and every time I listen to it! Me too! And not just for the singer, though she swings impossibly. MG

BFT 42 DISC 1 1 A German Word Jazz. Nice poem. Nice start to a bass feature. 2 CC – “Everything I’ve got belongs to you” – the only “disc where Oscar flubbed a note”. I’ve LOVED CC” since 1960. Thank you for including this Mr B. Actually, I've always wondered whether Oscar really did miss a note and if C actually improvised that line, and the one following, or whether it was all worked out in advance. 3 Funky “In the mood”. Must be a German Radio band. A live performance. The drummer is really kicking during the guitarist’s solo. I like the guitarist and trumpeter, but for me the drummer’s the star. And the arranger. Love the growling trumpet section! 4 Bass & bari duet. Bass man establishes a very good mood from the outset. And the sax doesn’t disappoint, when that comes in. The baritone player sounds like someone I ought to recognise. Perhaps it’s Joe Temperley, he says, without much confidence. Whoever it is, this is a lovely piece of music. Yeah! 5 Very boppish tune that I don’t recognise. The sound of the recording seems quite ‘40s-ish to me. But the playing time indicates that it must have been recorded in the LP era. Oh and the bass player has very modern chops. No idea who these people are. Not my sort of thing, but not something I screw my nose up at, either. 6 The tune sounds a bit musicianly. Sax player sounds like Joe Henderson on a quiet day. Perhaps it’s Bennie Maupin. Just time for a ciggy before this track ends. 7 Piano trio. Good stuff, I guess, but it really doesn’t get to me. Someone played me a Bill Evans record once, about 40 years ago. This feels like that did. 8 “Cherokee”. Vibes – Lionel Hampton? Tenor player – more modern, but this was still the era when everyone played together. Piano – tons of chops in the left hand – Tatum or Hines? I really like this. It’s from a big gap in my collection. 9 Modern tenor & rhythm. Nowt here for me, I’m afraid. Just sittin’ here. 10 Film soundtrack music. Black & white film from the forties. The hero’s running through ill-lit streets, being chased by the baddies. He keeps looking back, ducking around corners, pausing to gasp for breath. Then he’s off again! He manages to keep his trilby on the whole time, however – no mean feat! He’s slowing down, but he’s found somewhere to hole up. The baddies race off into the night in the wrong direction. 11 Drums, bass and cello. And guitar. Sounds a lot like an exercise in all four musicians’ technique, to me. There’s something familiar about some of the riffs – country feel to some of the guitar figures. 12 This starts off as though it’s going to be familiar, then it isn’t. Pianist feels a bit like Harold Mabern in a modern mood. 13 Electric trombone? How does he make those funny sounds? I love that trombonist, but can’t say the same for the alto player, the pianist, or the tune. 14 Really don’t like this one. 15 Sounds like a Christmas carol. Or a medley of carols. Like this one. Nice ending. Lots of stuff I’ve enjoyed in this one Mr B. Thanks for putting them all together. MG Oops - edited to remove the singer in trck 2 - sorry, forgot.

It's today, isn't it? So, once more - Happy birthday Eric! MG

Trouble is, Orrin Keepnews ran the only one of those companies that FAILED. The others were all profitable. There were different management styles in any case; Chris Albertson said a little bit about the differences in the thread on Bob Weinstock, when he died. The person who could tell the most, I suspect, is Joe Fields, who worked at Prestige and, when that company was sold to Fantasy, started Cobblestone, then Muse and now HighNote/Savant/Fedora. MG

Actually, you can get a feeling that something like that's going on from the sleeve notes to Gene Ammons' "The happy blues". MG

In sincere (?) imitation of "Don't mess with Mr T" MG

I don't know, but Rudy's objection may have been to the smoke, rather than to the principle of doing drugs. After all, it was his and Mrs vG's home. MG

Were they people? MG

Jim - I never saw any of those before. I see what you mean. MG

As we used to say in the 70's, "Pull your head out, dude!" Those covers have been on the site for a couple of years, although I think the pages have been re-arranged once or twice. Right now, they're located on this page, following the longest, most anal collection of 78 rpm labels you could ever hope to see. edit: For anyone who's still on a dial-up connection, I wouldn't blame them for not finding everything at Gokudo. I never thought of looking on THAT page! Why didn't he put them with the other BNs? MG

Yukkk! MG PS, of course, we're men - what are the ladies' like in US department stores? Having worked in retail for over ten years now, believe me, you do NOT want to know... As bad as the gents' then. MG

Because Don Schlitten was a producer with a clear vision, at least when it came to music. Not quite - I've been told he wouldn't use RVG's studio because Rudy let him smoke marijuana. which is why most of his productions are engineered by Richard Alderson, who didn't mind. MG Did you mean "because Rudy wouldn't let him smoke marijuana" in the studio? Otherwise, I don't see how "Alderson...didn't mind" makes sense? Yes, missed out the crucial bit. MG

MG

Quite right, John wasn't overtly sweaty. And it's very obvious, in respect of Freddie. But it's also true of many, if not the majority, of the albums that did hit the charts. Most, I think, though I haven't counted, didn't have a pop cover as the central hook track, either. Sometimes, as with the Willis Jackson/Jack McDuff "Together again", there doesn't seem to be any kind of hook track. And don't forget, if you did have a hook track, you only needed one (probably not a pop cover, though) to have a hit album - like "Sidewinder" or "Song for my father". How many of the other tracks on those albums could have driven those albums up the charts? That's why all those later BN hard bop LPs just had one "Sidewinder" type tune, with the rest straight ahead material typical of the leaders. And "The silver meter", "Fat Judy", "Soul woman" and "The turnaround" seem to me all ideal material. (So is "Mustang" which also didn't make it.) As Sidewinder says, the Patton tracks were popular with the Mods over here - I think "Fat Judy" and "Silver meter" (and "Googa mooga") were the hip 45s you could get for half a quid or more at a stall in Lisle Street when you were buying your Bobby Bland imports etc. Never any chance in those days, though, of a breakout by BN in Britain. But America? I wasn't there; that's why I asked. MG

The bit that really cracked me up was, after SD Jr had stretched out comfortably on the floor, someone asked "what happened?" Who was the actor playing the yong man with the plaster on his forehead, who picked up the mouthpiece? Reminded me of John Cassavetes. MG

That's just where you're wrong, Sidewinder. It's a British perspective. I had the same view myself. However, between 1975 and 1979, 462 jazz albums got onto the Billboard pop or R&B charts. That's the best performance of jazz albums since the late '50s. OK, very few were straight ahead jazz; the vast majority were disco or rock/fusion albums. But many of the charting musicians had been BN regulars like Stanley Turrentine, Wayne Shorter, Donald Byrd, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Smith, Freddie Hubbard, Gene Harris, Blue Mitchell and Lonnie Smith, not forgetting the Jazz Crusaders, who had a reissue on the BN paper bag series, or people like Bobbi Humphrey, Ronnie Laws and Earl Klugh, who were having hits on BN. Cashing in by reissuing earlier material of a successful act is a time-honoured way of making cash in the record business. And there was PLENTY of scope at that time. MG