Ken Dryden

I don't know if any of you ever read a spoof CD review that first was posted by Bret Primack at Bird Lives, but it was of a non-existent Mosaic set that included all unreleased Duke Ellington, it was so big that a forklift was included. I forget the writer's name but it was a scream.

I knew the owner of Black Label and wrote a couple of liner notes for his releases. He never did manage to include any documentation about the dates and venues of the music and this was before I had access to the web or Tom Lord's Jazz Discography. I'll have to check my Coltrane discography and my latest Lord CD-Rom at home to provide a definitive answer for the date and location of the Coltrane/Dolphy Black Label CD.

I'll getting ready to review the Clifford Brown-Eric Dolphy disc for All Music Guide within the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.

Steve Allen bemoaned the discarding of kinescopes of his old Tonight Shows, as he regularly featured jazz musicians on his program. The audio portions of a couple of Art Tatum appearances have been issued at least twice, but I'm not sure of any others. Another senseless loss. Duke Ellington did a pilot with Billy Strayhorn for a program, but some union official demanded that the video be erased. Another great example of the redundancy of the term "union stupidity."

I just discovered this thread so I might be of some help. I own both an original copy of Jim Hall's Jazz Guitar CD and the long out of print original Pacific Jazz LP (prior to Bock's dumb editing and overdubbing of Larry Bunker's drums). The LP is not in terrific shape, but at least plays without skips. I interviewed Jim Hall around 1990 and he told me that the longer version of "Things Ain't What They Used to Be" was actually the master take and the one shown as the master on the CD reissue was actually Bock's edited version of the same take. I imagine that the budget and time constraints prevented Michael Cuscuna from continuing a search for a near mint copy of the original LP (wouldn't a jazz library like Rutgers have one?), though I bet someone out there will be glad to loan a mint copy in case it is reissued again. BTW, Lord's discography relies on the CD and has the alternate/master situation backwards, just like the CD.