The Magnificent Goldberg

Well, I gave up listening to rock in '64, so I'm the LAST person to look for any sense on it. (Selling records next door to an art college in 1969 was kinda purgatory, you can guess.) MG

Oh well, I'm listening to Felix del Rosario now, so I'll have a listen tomorrow Now Felix.... MG

Rogue Warrior Sir Warrior War

Very nice rhythm section. Vocals a waste of time in my view. 'Song of the wind' was very good but for the rock guitar sound - I'd far rather hear Big Jay McNeely honking and screaming for an hour. Well, perhaps not precisely an hour, but I've never like the sound of rock guitars, whereas I do like the sound of a screaming tenor, even it it's not played as articulately as Santa's playing his guitar. Thanks very much Jim. It's not the sort of thing I could stand to listen to over and over, and certainly not desirable enough for me to want to dig through dozens of cuts to find but, at least, I can see what people are on about. Chalk one up for the Ministry of Education (Bev as well). MG

Thought I'd also try out Joe Baatan's 'Afrofilipino'. Nothing much going on here, either. MG

The Beach Boys The Bleach Boys The Furr Coughs

Odysseus Penelope Cruz Farthings

Just the regular tea MG

Jack Six Seven Blue Babies Eight Bold Souls

David Newman - Under a Woodstock moon - Kokopelli Although this has songs about spring, summer and autumn, I tend to associate it with autumn - could be the leaves on the trees on the sleeve. But whatever. Jolly nice album. MG

Tommy Smalls Little Large

Bob Dylan Dylan Thomas Dylan

Are you sure about that? Could it be that it would be easier for me to find his work than it was for you? Maybe MUCH easier? Ever shopped at an Amoeba Records? Have you ever listened to (for example) KKUP? It's becoming a smaller and smaller world, MG. 30 years ago, it would have been a huge advantage to live in NYC or Chicago or SF and surrounding areas, and I'm sure it still is to some degree, but that advantage is gradually dissipating, I think. But we're talking about music that's over fifty years old I suspect we understand different things by influence. When I first visited West Africa, I met a guitarist/singer called Idrissa Cissokho and spent a few days in his and others' company. At one time he and I went into a bar in Banjul, Gambia. We had what we all thought was a very strange conversation with the barman - because between the three of us we didn't have a common language. The barman spoke English and Wolof, I spoke English and French, and Idrissa spoke Mandinke, Bambara, French, Arabic and Wolof. (Of course, it was a slow conversation, translations necessitating many beers ) I asked Idrissa how come he'd learned all those languages (most Africans don't speak more than three). Mandinke was the language of his home, as he and his parents were Mandinke, but they lived in a largely Bambara speaking area of Mali, so he absorbed Bambara, much as he'd absorbed Mandinke - it wasn't something he'd had to be taught, any more than we have to be taught English. He'd been taught French at school, as it's the colonial language, and Arabic at the Madrassa, then picked up Wolof when he was working on a construction site in Libya with a bunch of Wolof workers. Now Idrissa not only absorbed the Mandinke and Bambara languages, but also Mandinke and Bambara music and was later able to work with Super Biton de Segou, one of the top Bambara bands of Mali (though its years of greatness were over by then). Music is a language, too, and some people can be bilingual or even multilingual in music just as they can be in languages. But I don't think it's from learning but from upbringing and no choice is involved. My point about Coltrane was that no one's brought up in a Coltrane environment because there's no such thing, nor even a free jazz environment. You have to make a conscious decision to get into it. It's not good or bad, it's just a different kind of thing. MG

Interesting story. Reminds me of Don Braden's album 'Organic', for which he had to LEARN soul jazz from Bob Porter. A polished example of how difficult it is to play a 'foreign' music - he didn't make it, partly because he wanted to make a soul jazz album with intelligence. MG

I don't think we're quite together on this and it's probably my fault. Influence is something that slips up on us out of the culture we live in that makes us prefer brown trousers or black ones and maybe, as fashions change, green ones. And makes some people see some musicians as an inspiration (say Gene Ammons) rather than others (say Dexter Johnson) - or vice versa. In guitarist terms, Grant Green is much more accessible in some places/societies than Barthelemy Attisso - and vice versa (though people in Senegal have heard of George Benson). You have to CHOOSE to be influenced by someone from a foreign society; they're not just there, always in the corner of your mind because you can hear them on the radio or your mates tell you how great they are or whatever. OK, black and white America are closer than America and Senegal (unless you happen to live in Little Senegal, I guess, where some things may be available to you that aren't in San Francisco ) So, if I were to say 'You, guitarist, should be influenced by Barthelemy Attisso, because he's the world's greatest,' (he isn't, though he's very good indeed), you'd have to work like hell to even get to hear more than a small fraction of his work, and that's before you tried to figure out what his objectives were and whether he fulfilled them and how well,,, and so on and so on. But you'd still have a big worksheet to fill out to get all this even from Cornell Dupree. MG

Just finishing Gene Ammons - Nice & cool/The soulful sound of - Moodsville (Prestige twofer) next going to listen to 'Stone flower' from this Fats Theus - Black out - CTI (with Grant Green) then the same tune from Santana - Caravanserai - Columbia then Houston Person - The nearness of you - Muse MG

Well, please don't forget this is an Englishman. English jazz criticism has always left a VERY great deal to desire (especially if one likes something like soul jazz, of course). MG

But... you said you've heard almost nothing of Santana, so... are you forming that from what others have said? Anyway, better not to think about it in those terms, imho, particularly with regard to bands of that period. That time produced a real melting pot of styles and influences. Carlos Santana was heavily influenced by Coltrane, btw. I hear it, and really think highly of his very recognizable and emotionally charged style of playing. As a general principle, I'm very out of sympathy with rock - didn't like it back in the day and can't be bothered to learn to like it now - got other music to learn to like So my views are pretty much informed by casually having heard bits of 'Supernatural'. And it doesn't really matter to me that Santana was heavily influenced by John Coltrane (now, if you'd said - truthfully - Willis Jackson ) because to me Trane is just another bloody genius, like Bird, Ellington, Rollins, Monk etc, whose music actually doesn't normally make a great deal of difference to me. So thinking about Santana in THOSE terms (legitimate as they might well be) isn't helpful to my grasp of that band. MG ?? The only thing that should logically be helpful to your "grasp of that band" is to listen to their music before writing it off because of some nebulous label like "rock" has been attached to it. Do you really think you can assume you're not going to like Santana's entire catalog because you didn't care for bits of one album? I just re-read all the comments here, and Jim alluded to Santana's earlier recordings being "an easier listen". I would agree, but it seems to me that MG tends to lean that way in his tastes (e.g., Willis Jackson over Trane), so...?? I didn't mention Coltrane's influence on Carlos in order to suggest that this is necessarily an important reason to listen to Santana. It's just one piece of information which might cause one to discount the idea that Santana was just another "rock" band*. I also wasn't suggesting that Carlos didn't have any other important influences (jazz or otherwise). * The term "rock" annoys me. There's no more meaningless and useless label in the entire world of music, imo. Well, I do agree that listening is the key, but gaily writing off a band - and indeed an entire genre (or multiplicity of genres) of music - which we all MUST do for plain old lack of time to explore them - is a normal reaction in all circumstances but being grabbed round the throat on initial impact. Of course, age enters into it - I have a lot less time now than I had when I was twenty So, yes, I'm more inclined now to dismiss something that doesn't appeal to me without even a slug of conscience. Just at the moment, I'm exploring lots of different kinds of Latin music and that's probably the reason the thought about Santana and El Chicano occurred to me. I fear you may have misunderstood the point about Willis Jackson. To me, influence isn't learning about something, it's something in an artist's general life background. So an artist being influenced by Gator Tail isn't anything to do with his music, it's to do with the artist's life. On the other hand, being influenced by Coltrane isn't in anyone's general life background - simply because he's a genius and you have to study it to be in a position to accept the influence. That's not better or worse than Gator's position; it's simply completely different. Santana & others were never in a position to be influenced by Willis Jackson, because they lived in a different world. If they'd wanted to have been influenced, sure, they could have learned one foreign music as well as they learned another - Cotrane's. I feel that would have made them different kinds of people than they were (and maybe their names would have been Randy Johnston), but I certainly would have been more interested in them. MG

But... you said you've heard almost nothing of Santana, so... are you forming that from what others have said? Anyway, better not to think about it in those terms, imho, particularly with regard to bands of that period. That time produced a real melting pot of styles and influences. Carlos Santana was heavily influenced by Coltrane, btw. I hear it, and really think highly of his very recognizable and emotionally charged style of playing. As a general principle, I'm very out of sympathy with rock - didn't like it back in the day and can't be bothered to learn to like it now - got other music to learn to like So my views are pretty much informed by casually having heard bits of 'Supernatural'. And it doesn't really matter to me that Santana was heavily influenced by John Coltrane (now, if you'd said - truthfully - Willis Jackson ) because to me Trane is just another bloody genius, like Bird, Ellington, Rollins, Monk etc, whose music actually doesn't normally make a great deal of difference to me. So thinking about Santana in THOSE terms (legitimate as they might well be) isn't helpful to my grasp of that band. MG

I just had a quick butch on Amazon UK and found 'Viva Tirado' (their first) and 'El Chicano live' are available as mp3s. So is 'Painting the moment', from 1998; that's rather different from the earlier material, though I like that, too. MG

Can't say I dug, or even particularly got, the Morales groove. Yes, there's a groove; OK, so? If I want (and I often do) to listen to groovy electronics, I've got lots of (not the same) West African music with that. But I DO like War. MG

Did he get advance warning that Google was on the way? MG

This morning Mango Santamania with DCG-P - Suppertime - Pablo Live (red vinyl) Fabuloso! MG

Leroy Vinnegar Bea Booze The Waters

Delois Barrett Hansen & the Barrett Sisters - Carry me back - Savoy MG