The Magnificent Goldberg

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

Just finished Red Holloway - Red Holloway & Company - Concord Jazz (Bellaphon) just started Kenny Burrell - Tin tin deo - Concord Jazz The title track is one of the most groove-ass things Kenny ever did! next Bishop Jeff Banks & the Revival Temple Mass Choir - Mater mind is he - Savoy MG

I got a dressmaker, too. MG

Earlier Ramsey Lewis - More sounds of Christmas - Argo (DG stereo) then Lou Donaldson - Sunny side up - BN (King) now Perri Lee - A night at Count Basie's - Roulette MG

I've got that on a K7, and I love BOTH sides - of course, I don't understand a word of it. I wish Kindred Spirits would reissue the Barenreiter Musicaphon albums from 1970, by most of the bands that later recorded for Mali Kunkan, like Kene Star Sikasso. The Malian Government owns the copyright to all of them and the 1970 material is very ACE! MG

Me too - and for a DL. I'm a 5, too MG

The Mighty Burner Mighty Joe Young Mighty Mouse

I'm just an old fig - can't afford horn rims and tweeds All old stuff on the jazz front for me this year, and for the third time in my life, jazz wasn't the largest kind of music I've got in the year - I got more Latin material this year. The most recent jazz album I got was Fred Anderson's 'On the run', which was done in 2000. I did get some of this year's new recordings (at least as far as I can tell they're this year's) from Africa, however. And at least one of this year's reissues of elderly material. So the African newies are Kande Sy - Khabou - CK7 - Best of the year! Diaby Doua - Faba ndambe - CK7 Thionne Ballago Seck - Diaga - TBS Wally Ballago Seck - Voglio - TBS This year's reissues Kemo Conde - Soumankoi - Syllart - Best of LOTS of years! Sayon Camara - Saramaya - Syllart MG

Been too busy to get anything, but a friend sent me a rip of a recent K7 I've never heard of Kasse Mady - Yili malo - Elite Productions Bloomin' fantastic album! My friend sent me a .FLAC, which I can play OK, but can't put on my ipod. Anyone know an EASY converter to do .FLAC to .MP3? MG

Billy Wright, Prince of the Blues, became a transvestite MC in a naughty club in the seventies. You couldn't invent it! MG

I fear mine's UNfashionably distressed by now. Hers too, I'm afraid. MG

We're having that this year - most often it's beef nowadays - with a shoulder as well, in case there's not enough to go round on the leg. My younger grandson - 13 and as completely obnoxious as only a 13 year old boy CAN be - insists on turkey, we think just to be awkward, so we've got some sliced turkey we can give him for tea. Oh, in deference to grandson #2, we're also having lobster for starters - I may try a bit but to me there's nothing better than smoked salmon, which I slip into the shopping basket as often as I feel I can get away with it. MG

Earlier Billy Wright - Stacked deck - Savoy (Route 66) now Milt Buckner - Them there eyes - Black & Blue (Belter - Spain) next - back to Christmas Rev Cleophus Robinson - Christmas carols and good gospel - Peacock (no image on web) MG

Beau Nash Beau Brummel Beau Geste

Well, all the work's done, just in time for Christmas... Well, we haven't actually got a floor in the garden room - it rained like anything all the time they were building it and it'll take some time to dry out. So I'm having to hoover the condensation off the roof every morning - I can reach the lower two thirds on tiptoe, but worry about the rest when I'm standing on a stool, swaying. My wife - astoundingly! - found some extra jobs we'd never thought of. So I spent four days on my knees stripping 9 years' worth of varnish off the old back doorstep. Fuck me! And two days resting up, but my bottom was just too painful to sit down on, so I lay on my stomach. Feels fine now. She oiled it after I'd done that and it looks nice - fashionably distressed. The other job was cleaning all the green gunk off our garden furniture - then doing it again when it came back, and again... But the stuff's clean now and the table and two chairs are now in the garden room, for Christmas - it's as cold as a fridge out there so we're going to put all the drinks on the table for when daughter & grandchildren come. Oh, the next job (NOT one I'll do) is to relay the patio slabs outside the new back door, because we've discovered that the door is exactly positioned so that, when it rains, you step out into a quarter of an inch of water, which has slid down the slight slope under the roof. Don't know if the slabs were replaced wrongly by the builders or if they were laid like that 8 years ago. Haven't sold my wife on doing this yet, so... It's only today I've been able to spend much time listening to music. So I started listening to some Christmas music. MG PS - she didn't oil my bottom! MG

I guess this guy Garth was one of Ronnie Hawkins' band, the Hawks, later The Band. Is that correct? MG

Oh good. This sounds like the first stop. Thank you both. MG

Good and bad news. It's good to hear your Dad's getting over it, Lon. Do you and Lucinda plan returning to Texas in a while? My wife went to her best friend's funeral yesterday. They met through the Barry Manilow Fan Club, thirty-something years ago. Her sister-in-law, whose husband arranged the funeral, had them playing 'Copacabana' at the cemetery! Always something. And at our age, funerals are coming along rather frequently. That was the sixth this year. MG

I thought it would be a nice idea to start a thread in which we could tell us about news from us personally – not our favourite deceased jazz musicians. Sometimes there’s important news that warrants a separate thread, and people have posted that sort of thing. I think that’s good and didn’t intend to stop us from doing it. So, since I’ve got a couple of bits of news, I thought I’d start. First bit is that we’ve had a garden room built; only the electrics haven’t been put in, and the guys are coming to finish that this evening. Flooring’s not in there, as the concrete’s still drying out. We had rain almost every day – on and off – while they were building it. Took them about twice as long as estimated, as a result. The day they finished, we’ve had no rain since then. If the system will let me do it, here are a couple of photos my wife took the other day. Other news – the bloody carbon monoxide alarm went off by our central heating boiler yesterday evening. Had to turn it all off. When we eventually got a guy from down the road to come out and test the boiler, it was fine, so it was the fault of the alarm! So we enjoyed a cold – very cold – evening and an even colder day today until lunchtime. The service contract people have a 24/7 service. When you phone them up, in the evening, they tell you to call back at 8AM. Good service, eh? Anyway, all’s well, heat back on.

The Doughboys Herbie Flowers Ernest Van Trease

Thanks but I don't usually go for compilations unless I don't think I'm going to get the real albums. They have to be ditched when I do get them. MG