The Magnificent Goldberg

You obviously know nothing about employment law in the US, or what kind of protections exist and don't exist for most employees. That's what I said. So, go on... MG

Indeed. Sorry to see him go. He produced some ace material at Atlantic in the '60s and '70s. MG

It's all very well to assume this is part of a great plan to run Fantasy's operation into Concord's, but no one gets sacked on 3 days notice as part of a grand plan; not unless there's something odd going down. I don't know what the law is in the US, but I bet Terri had a contract that specified that she had to be given more notice, against which they'd have had to compensate her; at arguably greater expense than keeping her on for the full period of her notice. MG

Egad! And consecutive numbers, too! And I never noticed. Looking closely now, I think between 4238 and 4239 she'd had a hairdo and shortened the dress (also removed her trousers). MG You are truly a Master Jazz Geek and I tip my hat to you sir! Jazz is such fun, sometimes, ain't it? MG

An alternative exchange just now has raised in my mind the issue of whether, when you download material, you get accurate credits with it. Do you get, for instance, songwriter info? And is it accurate? (I mean, more accurate than AMG, of course.) MG

Ahhhhh! Gawd blesher Guv! MG

Well, it does mean a thing to me: someone who had an important job at an important company (pre-Concord Fantasy, or so I thought) but, unlike many of her colleagues, used to answer emails personally, without preset messages, and frequently went out of her way to help. So, whatever the reasons behind these, and I accept there might be some good ones , this is definitely no good news. And why exactly did Concord buy Fantasy? And what for? F I was never in contact with Terri, but I always found Fantasy staff knowledgeable and helpful in responding to e-mails. I got replies from the actual people who had done the things I was writing about - blimey! I've been buying up OJCs for a few months now. I have had a VERY bad feeling about this takeover from the day I heard about it. If there's one thing that indicates a lack of knowledge and understanding by the Concord staff of the Fantasy catalogue, it's the artist index on the website. Fantasy staff KNEW that Red Garland was the same artist as the Red Garland trio; and so on for Cannon, and numerous others. Concord obviously employ either a bunch of idiots or consultants/contractors. And if there's another, it's that there's no e-mail address on the website where people can contact any bugger there, even the office cleaner. So every event such as Terri's dismissal (THREE FUCKING DAYS NOTICE?!) is simply another indication that Concord is not going to do any better in the future than it has in the past. MG PS - I seem to remember reading in Billboard in the mid-'90s that Alliance Entertainment had tried to buy Fantasy for $100m, but been told to look elsewhere. This is the firm that bought Concord.

A few old organ grooves on 45 Toussaint McCall - Shimmy Ernie freeman - Night sounds Dave "Baby" Cortez - Belly rub pts 1 & 2 MG

AH! - "Pinpoint" is one I missed before. Good to see that again. MG

Thanks for posting that Chaney. I had a feeling this was happening. The sample of Terri's writing is very impressive! Hope she gets on well in the future. MG

So apparently, "More today than yesterday" isn't being released. After reading what SoulStream said about that, I'm devastated. MG

This looks like a good one. I recently read "The autobiography of Jazz" - mainly about Chicago - and this looks as interesting. MG

I agree, but I counted ten LPs and one CD with previously unissued material. There is some commercialized stuff among it, covers of the pop hits of the day, with generic party vocals, typical early 60's stuff, that Michael Cuscuna wouldn't care for. I don't see Columbia doing this ..... Waht are the three you have? I like the ones with versions of pop hits - mainly R&B material, of course. I've got Stone Soul Soul Bag Hey! Let's party. Listening to all three last night was most enjoyable. Sonny Fortune's work is particularly funky. You're right about Cuscuna's views - he doesn't like commercial trash. So we'll have to wait until the material becomes out of copyright in Europe to see its reissue. MG

Egad! And consecutive numbers, too! And I never noticed. Looking closely now, I think between 4238 and 4239 she'd had a hairdo and shortened the dress (also removed her trousers). MG

I don't know how tough it is to find or if Da Bastards re-stock, but my copy of Getting into Something came from an inexpensive vinyl reissue probably three or four years ago. As far as Lonehill goes, I do give them credit for being complete bootleggers, as the Bailey set includes "Brownie Speaks" which was only issued on Almost Forgotten, an almost forgotten 1983 comp of unissued Columbia tunes. Since then, most of the music has made it out on CD reissues, but Lonehill's the only place you can find that forgotten track. All tree LPs plus an extra track on one CD? Wow! MG Two cd set! I have steered clear. Thanks Lon MG

I don't know how tough it is to find or if Da Bastards re-stock, but my copy of Getting into Something came from an inexpensive vinyl reissue probably three or four years ago. As far as Lonehill goes, I do give them credit for being complete bootleggers, as the Bailey set includes "Brownie Speaks" which was only issued on Almost Forgotten, an almost forgotten 1983 comp of unissued Columbia tunes. Since then, most of the music has made it out on CD reissues, but Lonehill's the only place you can find that forgotten track. All tree LPs plus an extra track on one CD? Wow! MG

I didn't realise that; I've got "One foot" on the Koch Cd and "Two" on LP, but not the third, "Gettin' into something". Which of those are on Lonehill? MG

And England have won. Without having to do very much. Goes for the whole comp so far. No one knows what England have got that can go anywhere. MG

Dave Bailey made some good LPs for Epic in the early 60s. "One foot in the gutter" was reissued on CD by Koch a few years ago. As far as I know, "Two feet in the gutter", with the wonderful Frank Haynes has never come out on CD. And I think there was a third LP on Epic, but I'm not sure of this. I'd also like to see a decent reissue of the George Benson/Lonnie Smith band Columbia material. I guess there's something approaching 5 LPs' worth of material that's been issued - and I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't more tracks knocking around in the vaults. I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the material that issued wasn't faded out quite a significant time before the musicians stopped playing - Columbia kinda liked short tracks. I'd also like to see a complete Mongo Santamaria set of Columbia material. Mongo had fabulous sidemen in those days: Capers; Laws; Fortune; Gasca; Purdie... Think I'll dig out the three I've got and play them... MG

Please identify the specific bands/records which identified "soul jazz ... right from the start in the '40s". The early leaders were mainly tenor players: Illinois Jacquet, without whom there would have been no honkers; Gene Ammons; Ammons/Stitt (though half or maybe more of Stitt's career is Bebop); Arnett Cobb; Ike Quebec; Big Jay McNeely; Paul Williams; Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson; Hal "Cornbread" Singer; Wild Bill Moore; Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (first tenor/organ records in '49). Other big names included Tiny Grimes & his Rockin' Highlanders. Among vocalists, Dinah was the Queen. In the early '50s, there was Wild Bill Davis and other pre-Smith organists like Milt Buckner & Bill Doggett. MG None of these people played "soul jazz" as the term is used. I'm not at all disputing that there is a continuum from those you mention to soul jazz as the term has been applied (by everyone I know save yourself). You might want to call those folks "pre-soul jazz". This is also the view of Bob Porter, a man whose views on this subject are not to be sneezed at, I reckon. MG I presume you mean that Bob Porter calls 40s R&B "soul jazz". Does this mean that everyone else doesn't count? The simple fact is that "soul jazz" was recognized and identified as such in the late 50s-early 60s. That does not mean that we go back to its antecedents and rename plain old R&B "soul jazz". I think it's very difficult to call the recordings of those musicians R&B. That would place them with Professor Longhair, Charles Brown, Amos Milburn etc, which doesn't seem to work for me - and I doubt that it would work for you, either. Certainly, they shared the objective of R&B, and it's also true that the boundary (if that's the right word) between the two groups of musicians was permeable (much more so in the forties than later), but they were nonetheless jazz musicians who were playing jazz. I think the key point is that there WAS a continuum, as you've so rightly said. The '60s and '70s recordings made by the musicians I mentioned in my earlier post - those that lasted that long, anyway - are clearly Soul Jazz, and I hope you'd agree. But these later recordings show both that the men were playing essentially the same music and that their objective in doing so was the same. To me, the point in time when a kind of music is generally recognised and identified is an important historical point only in terms of the critical appreciation/marketing of the music. That is, of course, not a negligible matter when dealing with commercial music. But it's frequently the case that those who make such distinctions stick are behind the general public and the musicians themselves. A good, and related, example is the recognition and identification of R&B, which occurred in 1949; a fair while after R&B developed. (And there were, of course, extraneous reasons why this identification was needed more quickly than that for Soul Jazz.) Further, it seems to me that the development of Soul Jazz can only be seen coherently in its whole development up to the Smooth Jazz of the present day if one looks at the music right from its origins in the forties, and traces its parallel development with R&B. MG

You were 3 weeks too late! MG

Please identify the specific bands/records which identified "soul jazz ... right from the start in the '40s". The early leaders were mainly tenor players: Illinois Jacquet, without whom there would have been no honkers; Gene Ammons; Ammons/Stitt (though half or maybe more of Stitt's career is Bebop); Arnett Cobb; Ike Quebec; Big Jay McNeely; Paul Williams; Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson; Hal "Cornbread" Singer; Wild Bill Moore; Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (first tenor/organ records in '49). Other big names included Tiny Grimes & his Rockin' Highlanders. Among vocalists, Dinah was the Queen. In the early '50s, there was Wild Bill Davis and other pre-Smith organists like Milt Buckner & Bill Doggett. MG None of these people played "soul jazz" as the term is used. I'm not at all disputing that there is a continuum from those you mention to soul jazz as the term has been applied (by everyone I know save yourself). You might want to call those folks "pre-soul jazz". This is also the view of Bob Porter, a man whose views on this subject are not to be sneezed at, I reckon. MG

Jimmy McGriff - The big band (trying to make up my mind whether I want to buy the CD next month) MG

Yeah, I'll go for it, C-A. I enjoyed Mike's. I'll enjoy yours, too, I'm sure. PM on way. MG

Please identify the specific bands/records which identified "soul jazz ... right from the start in the '40s". The early leaders were mainly tenor players: Illinois Jacquet, without whom there would have been no honkers; Gene Ammons; Ammons/Stitt (though half or maybe more of Stitt's career is Bebop); Arnett Cobb; Ike Quebec; Big Jay McNeely; Paul Williams; Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson; Hal "Cornbread" Singer; Wild Bill Moore; Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (first tenor/organ records in '49). Other big names included Tiny Grimes & his Rockin' Highlanders. Among vocalists, Dinah was the Queen. In the early '50s, there was Wild Bill Davis and other pre-Smith organists like Milt Buckner & Bill Doggett. MG