The Magnificent Goldberg

Someone sent me the text of the NY Times report and told me he was ill. I assumed he'd got worse since the NYT article. MG

And here´s the proof. He played on April 23 (20:00) http://www.kwadratuur.be/agenda.php?detail=8042 http://www.kwadratuur.be/nieuws.php?id=229 Ah good - I see you've got here first. MG

It needs to be the right kind of dancing. No matter how gorgeous the Foxtrot might look and feel accompanied by Houston Person's band, that ain't gonna do it. MG

Johnny Griffin is 78 today. He's ill in Paris, where he's seeing doctors to try to keep what little health he has together. Fortunately, although he retired from playing some time back, he doesn't appear to be short of money. Johnny is one of the GIANTS of the tenor sax and I'm sure we all wish him a speedy recovery. AND A HAPPY BIRTHDAY! MG

This is a tasty thread! I generally like African food, though I think few westerners would. My wife, on her last trip to South Africa, found a new food to try out, called Bobotie. Apparently it's an Africanised version of some ideas brought over by Malaysian immigrants. It's mainly a stew of minced beef (or lamb), with a few veg like potatoes, plus fruit - pineapple, sultanas, mangos etc - plus egg custard. We love it! There's something incredibly hot in West Africa. I didn't catch what it was called when I came across it when I ate with a family of traditional musicians I'd hooked up with on my first visit. I was told not to eat it if I found it in the bowl from which we were all eating. But, unlike all the other incredibly hot things I've come across, it wasn't brightly coloured; it looked a bit like an piece of potato. But it was solid fire! And neither water nor beer would put it out! I hate rice pudding but, when offered a bowl of rice pudding with assurances that it would put out the fire, accepted gratefully. And it worked! I did once have something in West Africa that made me very ill for a few days, but I don't know what it was. It was partly my own fault as I'd visited several African families around lunchtime and had been persuaded to join them, so ended up having bits of three lunches. Actually, the most objectively awful thing I have ever had was brought back from Zimbabwe by a former colleague who was a part time missionary. This was a handful of dried pupae of some caterpillar-like creature. He DARED me to eat them. So I did. They were a bit dry, but all right. MG PS Restaurant food from the Francophone areas of Africa is wonderful; sensational; delightful. The French influence. Food in restaurants in the former British colonies shows the influence of English cooking at its most disgraceful.

WoW!!!! MG

Thanks - I'll put "Resistance is futile" on my list. MG

I'd have liked that to have happened. I should get some of that stuff. Any recommendations? MG

And one from me, too, Steven. Plus a big "Merci". MG

Stan Getz, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Smiff. MG So you agree with Chuck - Verve should stick to the reissues? No - I'd like it if the company found exciting musicians (even ones who've been around for a while - there are plenty who don't record much). But I don't know what kind of jazz (real jazz, not Smooooth Jazz) could ever sell again in the way those musicians sold. There was a period when jazz was what popular music was - the thirties. Then it tailed off in the forties as the big band business failed, for a number of resaons. In the fifties, jazz, mainly Swing or the former big band singers, represented "quality" in the mind of the public and a lot of that kind of albums were selling big; they represented 42% of the albums getting onto Billboard's LP charts in the late fifties. After another hiatus, Soul Jazz became a big seller, then Fusion. What seems to be needed for big sales is a MOVEMENT and that isn't what there is in jazz at present, or in the foreseeable future. So, in the end, since catalogue sales make up nearly half of all sales at present, the sensible thing to do is hit the reissues business. MG Edit - You need a movement in order to market music (of any kind) to a wide non-specialist audience. But a movement has to have roots in at least a significant element of US society.

Stan Getz, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Smiff. MG

I think he was probably unlucky. The doctors said no one's been known to live with so many things stuck in his head. I thought you could pick up real guns dead easy () in the US. MG

The other logical alternative is not to survive. Maybe he won't. MG

I used to have this on Crown. The CD sleeve note tells me that there were TWO versions of the LP, with the same catalogue number but different tracks. I didn't have the original one. Glad to get it again. MG

Shopping this morning with the Stanley Turentine box discs 1 & 2. Very soulful. MG

Not really funny, I guess, but... MG

There are a couple of threads around about the takeover. Sorry, I don't know how to find them; I'm not very good at this stuff (yet). For your most immediate need, I had an e-mail yesterday from True Blue music listing a sale of deleted items. There were quite a lot of Prestige LPs in it. Go onto the True Blue site or Mosiac and you can find your way to that, I guess. Also looks like Wes Montgomery and Art Tatum boxes are going, too. Outlook poor. I have big OJC list which will take me until Summer 2007 to buy. Fingers well crossed. MG

The strange thing is, his colleagues at Universal, running other divisions, do think they have the power to shape the market, and they do so. So why can't Goldstein? MG

I only have 2: a British compilation of Earl Bostic from the mid-fifties and one issued by Ace over here in 1981 by Oscar McLollie and his Honey Jumpers. I used to have a few others but I replaced them with CDs or 12". MG I have sixteen 10" records. Among them are Sidney Bechet's conert in Paris in 1952, Cugat's Favourite Rhumbas, Mills Brothers Barber Shop Ballads, The History Of Jazz- Then Came Swing, which is a compilation which includes tracks on which Benny Carter, Sid Catlett, Nat King Cole, Bumps Myers, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet and others are featured, America's Music - Basin Street Six, Sarah Vaughan Sings, Woody Herman's Blue Prelude, Dixieland Comes To Carnegie Hall, Woody Herman And His Herd, Clifford Brown Ensemble with Zoot Sims, JazzTone Society Spec 100 Jazz Sampler, Harry James - All Time Favourites, and Sarah Vaughan - Images. My main local vinyl source has a good-sized section of 10" LPs, about half and half, classical and jazz. The 10 inchers I've found are in surprisingly good condition, still in their original covers. Sometimes the covers are a little rough. But, the records were well-cared-for, for the most part. Nice. I just had an e-mail from True Blue music, saying that they had a load of stuff on its last legs. Included in the list were a dozen or so 10" LPs - reissues (I guess) of Prestige originals featuring mainly Bebop classics. Not my sort of stuff. $17.98 each - is that a good price? MG Seems a little high to me, but not unreasonable. But, keep in mind that the price always depends on the demand for the product, as it does for anything else. I usually get mine at my favourite vintage vinyl place and his prices are very reasonable, from $5 to $20 usually. The Clifford Brown was $5, but a vintage Rafael Mendez, which I sent to my best friend was $20. My guy bases his prices on the condition of the record. The Brown had a skip on "Blue Berry Hill" and the Mendez was close to mint. So, I would say snap up only the records that you actually want to listen to. $5 would be too much to pay, IMO, for even a rare record that you don't think you'll ever play. The stuff from True Blue would be new, not vintage. It's not my type of material at all, so I wasn't thinking of buying it. (If there'd been some Ammons or Jacquet, that might have been different.) I just thought that, for a sale, for new records not vintage, the price was high. MG

Don't think they did either, but I've always enjoyed the quartet date she did for Impulse in 1963, "Soul Sisters," with Grant Green on guitar, Leo Wright on alto, and Pola Roberts on drums. She also showed up on Wright's "Soul Talk" that same year. Gloria is a wonderful organist. Perhaps she should have her own thread here. MG

I only have 2: a British compilation of Earl Bostic from the mid-fifties and one issued by Ace over here in 1981 by Oscar McLollie and his Honey Jumpers. I used to have a few others but I replaced them with CDs or 12". MG I have sixteen 10" records. Among them are Sidney Bechet's conert in Paris in 1952, Cugat's Favourite Rhumbas, Mills Brothers Barber Shop Ballads, The History Of Jazz- Then Came Swing, which is a compilation which includes tracks on which Benny Carter, Sid Catlett, Nat King Cole, Bumps Myers, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet and others are featured, America's Music - Basin Street Six, Sarah Vaughan Sings, Woody Herman's Blue Prelude, Dixieland Comes To Carnegie Hall, Woody Herman And His Herd, Clifford Brown Ensemble with Zoot Sims, JazzTone Society Spec 100 Jazz Sampler, Harry James - All Time Favourites, and Sarah Vaughan - Images. My main local vinyl source has a good-sized section of 10" LPs, about half and half, classical and jazz. The 10 inchers I've found are in surprisingly good condition, still in their original covers. Sometimes the covers are a little rough. But, the records were well-cared-for, for the most part. Nice. I just had an e-mail from True Blue music, saying that they had a load of stuff on its last legs. Included in the list were a dozen or so 10" LPs - reissues (I guess) of Prestige originals featuring mainly Bebop classics. Not my sort of stuff. $17.98 each - is that a good price? MG

Indeed! MG

I only have 2: a British compilation of Earl Bostic from the mid-fifties and one issued by Ace over here in 1981 by Oscar McLollie and his Honey Jumpers. I used to have a few others but I replaced them with CDs or 12". MG

1 March 1966, a few weeks before "Got a good thing goin'" (29 April 1966). There's some discussion of this on the thread dealing with George Braith's "Laughing soul", which was also recorded on the same day: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...topic=20021&hl= I've always had the feeling that the Oliphant set was used by Patton & Green as a kind of try out before the BN date. Not that Atlantic reps would have approved, of course. But I don't know whether they would have had the second date set when they did the first. Still a good record, though. (Both of them on the CD.) MG

MG