The Magnificent Goldberg

Glad you like them! MG

Hal Singer The Chanters The Revival Temple Mass Choir

Badfinger Erykah Badu National Badema

Earlier this afternoon Joe Thomas & Bill Elliott - Speak your piece - Sue now Chester Thompson - Powerhouse - Black Jazz next Les McCann - Much Les - Atlantic And just found a load of Les' vinyl I haven't played for ages, so I'm gonna have myself a Les McCann orgy tonight and tomorrow! MG

The Devil Satan Santa

Back in the early 80s, we had a computer game at work with a cave adventure called ADV on it. In those days, there weren't too many video games - this one was all descriptions of places you moved to and, somewhere in the descriptions, were clues you could use at some time, to find your way out. Good practice for reading Acts of Parliament, because you had to read what WASN'T there as well as what was there. One sentence in one of those descriptions attracted my attention. "Off to one side lies a gleaming pearl." Yeah! That's George Freeman! Nuff sed. MG

Ben Dover Eileen Dover The Fall

Been having a nice morning with Clarence Wheeler (and the Enforcers) Doin' what we wanna - Atlantic The love I've been looking for - Atlantic The new Chicago blues - Atlantic Burn for Bern - Straight Ahead now Ray Charles chante et joue le blues - Atlantic (France) - not quite the same as 'Ray Charles sings the blues, as it includes 'A bit of soul' featuring Don Wilkerson, which was only issued as the B side of 'Early in the morning' and isn't on any US LP. MG

Rained all evening yesterday Another lovely day today (so far). MG

Dame Nellie Melba Peaches Etta James

Ah, thanks, I didn't see that one - I see it came out in 1969 and I only used to catch it occasionally in those days. It really is an Agatha Christie sketch but I can see how it resonated differently over there, five years later, to the way it would have been seen here. MG

I listened to this early in the month, and wrote about it then, but failed to post it. So here it is now. 1 Oh, pretty advanced music here. Obviously competent, but not my cup of tea, or within the scope of my knowledge. 2 Well, I don’t suppose it is, but this makes me think of Herbie Mann with Chick Corea. But when he stated talking, it obviously wasn’t Mann. Early seventies Black Revolutionary Ensemble or some such band with much influence from the Last Poets. OK, if this song is called ‘Complete the circle’, it’s by Ju Ju, from Chapter 2: Nia. You shouldn’t put stuff on with titles mentioned and those by only one band ever. Sorry. Damn good, though. Glad to hear this. 3 A bit of hard bop by a biggish band with a fleet trumpeter who might as well be Freddie Hubbard. Great for what it is. Band is a bit too brassy for me. Needs more saxes. 4 Oh, it’s groove time in the old homestead! One thing about the hard boppers I always liked – they can put a good groove on when they relax and don’t try so hard. It wouldn’t surprise me if the drummer were Idris Muhammad. But it wouldn’t surprise me if it weren’t, because I think I might be able to ID it if it were. I probably know the horn players, but can’t finger them. Damn good! 5 Is Bennie Maupin the tenor player here? Never really paid much attention to him, though I have a few things with him on them. I don’t think he and the trumpet player have quite enough to them to sustain this for a quarter of an hour, but we’ll see. Five minutes in and no flagging of interest here. Eight – I’m supposed to get tonight’s dinner in from the garage freezer, but I can’t stop this. Well, for a change, I do not think the trumpet player is Freddie Hubbard (so it probably is ) The piano player seems a bit under-recorded – I mean, quiet and overpowered by the drummer. Can’t concentrate on him. Well, back with the chore done and a cuppa made and now we’re on the low-powered bass solo. Same problem, overcome by the drummer. This is either the engineer’s fault or the drummer’s. Perhaps it’s a live recording, in which case everyone does the best they can. OK, this was good except for the sound, which wasn’t up to scratch for the piano and bass, or the drummer, who was too loud. It’s not often a bit of hard bop chains me to my seat. 6 More of the same, with a lady singer, whose voice I don’t like much. But the tenor player is WAILIN’. Woooooo!!! Yes, Word, I know it’s a spelling mistake. Damn good drummers you’ve picked for this BFT young man! And you can hear the pianist clearly. Backings like this are one good reason to use electric pianos. Hazard a guess at George Coleperson on sax, but without much conviction. 7 Same singer? Sax player sounds as if it MIGHT be Harold Vick, this time. No, Coleperson again. Not Coleperson, much too Hendersonlike for George. 8 Different singer. Good singer. Interesting song. Interesting and often exciting accompaniment. No idea who. 9 Heavy rhythm sections, you’ve chosen. I can see what someone meant about the flow of this programme. I immediately like this trumpet man: dramatic but not silly with it. I doubt if I’ve heard him before. Soprano man’s a bit ordinary, though good. The only soprano saxmen I can identify are Fathead and Sidney, and it’s neither of them. Pianist sounds a bit like Cedar Walton to me. 10 Ah, relaxed, almost balladic version of a tune I can’t identify. “Prince of Peace”. Well, it was always a ballad. The singer sounds foreign – not American, that is. Oh and he can sing!!! Oh, this is something! Live and he’s well liked by the crowd. So he probably IS American, but with a slightly different accent. I feel the pianist is familiar. I like what he’s making of this a lot. The tenor player is right there, welcoming me in. A right little band of masters here. Don’t know who this is, except there’s a version by Tony Esposito. 11 Gawd, another good song by a good singer with an interesting delivery. Never heard this singer before. I get a strong feeling someone’s been listening to Gil Scott-Heron here, but can do it better. A lot better. Really NICE stuff in this BFT young sir. Mostly very enjoyable. You have my thanks. I await the reveal with great interest. MG

Lovely day Christmas Day. Rain all day yesterday. Another lovely day today. Changeable MG

Gator Tail this morning Earlier Please Mr Jackson - Prestige (OJC) Funky Reggae - Trip now In Chateauneuf-du-Pape 1980 - Black & Blue (the original issue, but he was still under contract to Muse, as was Groove Holmes) next Mellow blues - Trip (Upfront) Will probably play this later, as I'm in the exact mood for Gator Gator's grove - Prestige (Blue label) MG

Shirley Temple Charlotte Church Samual Chappell

Slim Gaillard Gayle Storm The Gaylords

Thanks Jim. Watergate was two years after Monty Python came out... or wasn't it shown over there until then? Another thought came to me last night - Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in? MG PS I don't remember that gunman sketch and I wonder whether the team produced a different show, or some different items for the US market.

Dunno, Dan. I was never very much into American TV humour - so much of it in the fifties and sixties seemed to be endless versions of 'I love Lucy' or Bilko. Now Bilko may have been one of the steps along the way, though what do I know? The only American humour I bought into was Shelley Berman (I had 3 of his LPs) and Tom Lehrer. Well, Berman's humour was undeniably Jewish and I guess there was a connection there which my family and I could make at the time. Lehrer definitely came from somewhere ELSE and may have been some kind of step from somewhere to somewhere. We certainly had nothing like Lehrer in Britain in the fifties until Paddy Roberts recording of 'The Ballad of Bethnal Green', which was clearly influenced by Lehrer, but translated - I think the thing is, you can't appreciate a historical development of humour unless you're THERE with it. If you're not it's very hard to make sense of it - I reckon an American listening to that Paddy Roberts cut wouldn't hear how extremely subtle he was being in the way he jived around with different varieties of English English in that song, which is the meat of the humour. And 55 years have passed, as well, which adds to the foreignness. So you need to ask an American that question MG

Bo Diddley Bo Derek Beau Nash

I'm not certain that's quite right, Scott. I don't know how it was in the US, but the history of comedy in Britain since the fifties seems to show that society learned to like things in the sixties that they would have fund merely strange in the fifties. For example, Monty Python would have been completely unacceptable in an era dominated by people like Ted Ray, Tommy Trinder and Norman Wisdom (sorry if those names mean little over the other side of the Atlantic). It took a chain of small changes by a number of different people in the interim to get the public's sense of humour educated enough to get Monty Python, which it did in a big way. But it took The Goon Show (radio), Private Eye (a magazine) Beyond the fringe (theatre), The Frost report (TV), At last the 1948 show (TV) and I'm sorry I'll read that again (radio) to get the public into a frame of mind in which Monty Python could be possible. Now that's not quite the same as educating an individual's sense of humour, but not that different, because it's a whole public-full of individuals. MG

I got 'em all right until it screwed up and started taking me to other pages. MG

Just listening now to Edgar Hayes Orchestra - Caravan - Decca Wonderful not quite cover of Duke Ellington's new tune, done 2 weeks after Duke's version, which Hayes almost certainly hadn't heard - but his manager was Irving Mills, who probably gave or loaned him a copy of the music. A very different approach from Duke's. MG

Auntie Gloria George Coleman (her husband) Massey Ferguson

Happy Christmas to one and all! (The ONE is Jim, who does it all for us.) MG

Alfred E Newman Spy Spy