The Magnificent Goldberg

Mountainous Maurice Dennis Maurice Chevalier The four horsemen of the apocalypse

The Pointer Sisters - Break out - Planet UK issue The Georgia Mass Choir - We've got the victory - Savoy original MG

Danm! I KNEW I had Pharoah playing that tune! MG

More live stuff! A good idea. Means we can't cheat and listen to samples on AMG. So here we go! 1 Pianist starts a bit like Ray Charles; vibes player a bit like Milt Jackson. Wow! This is FUNKEEEEE! And great fun! I can’t imagine who these guys are! And I don’t care! What a smiley recording! What a laughing recording! I wish I’d been there! I suspect this performance might not be typical of either musician. Wonder if it’s Milt & Monk live. 2 Electric stuff then big band. Nice pop sound. Sounds like it could have been a hit in the ‘70s or early ‘80s. Sax player reminds me of Grover Washington Jr. Goes on a bit. Oh, it’s live! 3 Another electric piano start. Big band. Flute. Trumpet. Think I can safely make a cup of tea while this is on. Tenor solo, guitar solo. I don’t quite know what motivates people to make this kind of music; it’s clearly not commercial. So how you could get enough people to a gig to pay all these musicians I can’t guess. It’s all rather OTT. Even the effin’ tambourine player’s OTT. 4 Nice bluesy piano, bass, drums trio. “Melancholy baby”. This sounds like a studio recording. I could listen to this stuff all day. Sometimes I do. 5 Surely it’s Fathead. A Clifford Brown tune; “Delilah”. Who’s on organ? Not a B3, by the sound of it. Best guess here is it could be a pianist who doesn’t normally play organ. If this is late ‘80s, it could be Kirk Lightsey, who was with David at that time. 6 Nice tenor player. Very breathy. But modern, not Ben Webster vintage. Not even Stanley Turrentine vintage. Nice ballad, though I don’t recognise it; perhaps an original. I like this but I really think I’d like it more if I knew the tune. I always think ballads are supposed to mean more than just music. 7 I know this tune. Not remembering the title was annoying me so much, I had to stop the record and go outside for a ciggy. Now I’m back, I think it’s “Central Park West”, but I’ve just played the start of Pharoah’s version and I’m not sure. I’ve got another version of this song which sounds rhythmically much more like this performance, but I can’t think what it is. Oh well, here goes again. In comes the tenor player and it sounds a good bit like Pharoah! But only sometimes. Actually, he’s got a slightly bigger sound than Pharoah. And he doesn’t engage in Pharoah’s flights of sublime lyricism. So I don’t think I know this guy, though I want to. I wonder what was going on at about 9:00 – big cheers from the audience as he leaned back and split his trousers? OK, I’m going to guess that it IS Pharoah, with John Hicks and possibly Idris. But it may be wishful thinking. Ah, cut off to conceal the announcement. 8 Dex? Another well known tune I can’t remember the title to. A lovely performance. Oh no, that CAN’T be Dex at the end. 9 Singing bass player plus piano & flugelhorn? A very charming performance. Nice flu solo. I can’t hear drums. The trio swings quite well enough thank you. Nice piano solo, too. Something here is saying – this is what jazz is all about. Is the bass player European? Splendid compilation, Tom. Mucho interest and enjoyment. Thank you very much. MG

Lee-on-Solent Kingston-upon-Hull Stratford-on-Avon

Sonny Stitt Mosaic box discs 7 & 9 MG

Waxie Maxie Hunter Hancock Porky Chedwick

Here's hoping he now has the time to complete the book that has been announced for over a year: Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975 One I have been anxiously awaiting. MG

Thanks for that work Mike - very interesting indeed! I see there was no link to the Jimmy Coe/Paul Weeden album "Now I know dreams do come true" except the Coe discography on the Red Saunders site. Anyone know how to obtain this album? MG

Trevor Bailey Freddie Trueman Dennis Compton

Rev Jasper Williams - I'm black and I'm proud (sermon) - Jewel original MG

Well, at least you're being honest. The question is, after you'd heard it, why did you want to keep in anyway? It's one of my favourite GGs - he plays so beautifully on it. I don't give a damn if he doesn't play Hard Bop; Hard Bop ain't nothin' special; just a style of music. GG was a Soul Jazz player who played some Hard Bop sometimes. MG

Struth! What about a CD player? They don't mention those. Are they all 1X players? MG

Mostly, I think you're right, Chuck. But I've seen some in which the hole really ISN'T in the centre - you can see the edge of the disc going in and out as it turns. MG

Ah! That's it! Brilliant Daniel! MG

Certainly personal preference! I'd certainly been aware of Peggy Lee before "Fever", but I knew her name then. And I bought "Beauty & the beat" as soon as it came out and played it to death (now on copy #3). It wasn't until 1961 I heard of Chris Connor - a US serviceman who was a neighbour played me "Chris craft" and I was immediately overwhelmed - the sound of her voice, the strange instruments, and most of all, beautiful songs no one ever heard of - well, I hadn't - and a couple had never been recorded before (and weren't again for nearly 40 years). And how many singers have attempted Ornette's "Lonely woman"? Only a handful, all relatively recently. Chris did it in 1962! Phew! (Of course, she and Ornette had the same manager.) I've had a thing for her ever since. In the late '60s I got rid of all of my Chris Connor albums - I had 15 by then - because I thought I could get along without them (and because I was on the dole). But I was wrong. Thank goodness for the CD reissues! MG

Well, it's certainly a cut above many of the pop or jazz bossa cash-ins that were common to that period. I'm not sure how something on Riverside ended up on Capitol. But the fact that both Mendes and Cannonball were on Capitol and Pickwick licensed lots of capitol stuff, that explains at least 5 of the 10 or so variations! I like it a lot! Good commercial music! What happened was that Riverside went bust. Part of the deal for the creditors was that Capitol bought Cannonball's contract and included were seven of Cannonball's masters. The others, as far as I know were Them dirty blues At the Lighthouse Cannonball takes charge Jazz Workshop revisited Cannonball in Europe The pollwinners MG

Old man Mose Moses Davis Moses Maimonides

Must say I prefer "If you go" to "The man I love" - probably because she sings a lot of songs you don't often hear. Everything on "The man I love" is your usual run through the Great American Songbook. I think that's why I prefer Chris Connor to Peggy Lee - even more unusual material. Frankly, the producers, arrangers and singers take so much care over releases like these, there's usually not much to choose between them except the songs themselves. (Mind you, Chris could never sing "Always true to you darling in my fashion" the way Peggy does.) MG

Maybe because the pitch fluctuation occurs over an increasingly shorter loop as the tone arm moves in? That's all I can think of. For those of us with above-average pitch, this problem can be really annoying. There have been times when I've had two copies of an LP and unloaded the cleaner copy because it was off center. I'll take a few pops and clicks over fluctuating pitch any day. The informaton in the groove has to be more compressed nearer to the centre, but the stylus takes exactly the same amount of time to do a revolution. But surely the compression couldn't affect it disproportionately? I agree with you about preferring rotten sound to fluctuating pitch. When, after a few years, Grant Green's "Easy" was issued in Britain, I didn't hesitate to buy a copy. But the sound is disgusting! I ended up playing the original on side 1 (which was correctly pressed) and the UK version for side 2! (What's even more annoying, my mate had three copies of the original and they were all OK and he wouldn't swap one. Well, I suppose I can't blame him - but why was he so bloody lucky?!) MG

Pearl Bailey Opal Nations Martin Humm

I think I can remember that one. MG

Absolutely right! That's the one downside of my current turntable; I used to be able to do that with its predecessor. But I've never had that off-centre problem with BNs, whatever their source, as far as I can remember. I had a bad one in GG's "Easy" on Versatile. Several others; some gospel 45s as well. 45s are OK, because they've got a big hole and you can manually centre them. But I think I've managed to replace all the off-centre LPs with CDs now, so it probably isn't an issue for me. I may have a 78 or two like that; not sure. MG PS - why is it that this off-centre problem always sounds worse the nearer to the centre of the record the stylus goes?

Portrait of Sonny Criss - Prestige Fantasy repress MG

Gayle Storm Phileas Fogg Foghat