Ken Dryden

Five home runs for the Braves tonight, leading the Twins 6-2.

My guess would be home run...

If you order any of The Montreux Years CD series, especially from Amazon, play them promptly. When I opened my copy of the Tyner CD today, there was glue residue on the edge of the playing surface rendering the last track unplayable. I am not always prompt about playing my Amazon purchases and that 30 day window can arrive in seemingly no time.

Sounds good!

The times I heard Phil Schaap on the air it seemed like he talked far too much, though there were points of interest at times. The worst thing is an overly talkative emcee. Make the necessary announcements about house rules and concert sponsors, then get off the stage after introducing the leader, not the entire band one by one, unless that is what the band requested. One of the Concert Vault shows had an overly talkative emcee with a scripted introduction, on the second show the NYC audience shouted him offstage.

We had a pianist here in town who toured with Buddy Rich for awhile and recalled some of his tirades on the band bus, tapes of which have long circulated.

That's just too much talk, nobody is that interesting.

Mel's story about Buddy hitting him in the face with a pie right after he was introduced at the start of a set was startling. He couldn't take the stage, his tuxedo was ruined and it was embarrassing. I doubt anyone in Rich's band found it funny. Torme had some issues with arrogance, but Rich easily had him beat in that department.

Gene Ammons Gene Estes Estes Kefauver

Mel Torme was a fascinating composer and talented author, while the recorded output of his later years was at a consistently high level for both Concord Jazz and Telarc Jazz. But his people skills were lacking as he alienated a lot of people. I tried to get a phone interview with him in the early 1990s and was told that he only granted interviews to those based in cities where he was performing. When he finally was booked to do a pops concert in Chattanooga, my calls were never returned by his management. Eventually Conocrd Jazz contacted me about writing liner notes for a CD taken from a 1982 concert he played with George Shearing and Gerry Mulligan, both of whom I had enjoyed interviewing, which I had recorded from a Jazz Alive! NPR broadcast in the fall of 1982. It would have been nice to have been able to talk to the singer, too. Maybe he had one too many dumb interviewers where they asked about his multiple marriages or disparaged a part of his discography, who knows?

I never understood the addition of Tony Watkins as a vocalist, he was so detested that a European audience booed him so much that Ellington abruptly ended the concert. I consider “One More Time” featuring Watkins to be one of the weakest Ellington compositions, Cootie Williams hated it so much he would storm off stage when it was called.

Duke Ellington appears in the film as "Pie Eye." There's also a photo of Ellington and Jimmy Stewart appearing to play duo piano. I don't recall if that is shown in the film or just a publicity shot.

I've got both the Columbia CD and the original Atlantic LP. Can't say that the song was ever a favorite of mine. It also appears on this out of print CD:

I never had any patience for announcers talking over the music. I know they were doing as instructed back in the day, but it is still annoying. I have never done it over the many years that I have produced a jazz program (1988-2002 & since 2019), the music is more important than anything I have to say to listeners, I can always cut my remarks. What I especially hated was announcers with overly long scripts on NPR syndicated shows, especially Jazzset, being dubbed over the live music or causing it to be faded prematurely, though some of the syndicated live shows were at times ruined by an untimely entrance by the emcee, like Alan Grant on Four Queens Jazz Night From Las Vegas did on occasion. The worst offenders were the hosts of the Montreux-Detroit Jazz Festival when it aired live on Labor Day weekend back in the 1990s. Some fool instructed the on air hosts of this live feed to jabber away at the top of the hour, whether it was a local or regional group, or even the main act for the evening in the midst of a set. The worst example was a gorgeous version of the Dave Brubeck Quartet playing the pianist's "Koto Song" featuring Bobby Militello on flute. When the top of the hour came, the two co-hosts started jabbering away without saying anything important, it was not like they were reading underwriting statements or a station ID (the latter which isn't required during a live show, it can be worked in during a natural break in the program, otherwise imagine what would happen to a live Texaco-Metropolitan Opera broadcast). When this happened, I was screaming obscenities at the co-hosts to shut the @#$! up until the music was over. It got so bad that when our program director had to pick either the Chicago or Montreux-Detroit to air on Labor Day weekend, I told him to pick the Chicago Jazz Festival, as the hosts and their program director had better sense than to talk over the live music that listeners tuned in to hear. I remember when I was an undergraduate I heard a stunning version of Vladimir Horowitz playing "Pictures at an Exhibition," a record that I owned in fake stereo. When I asked the fellow student why his sounded so great, he had an original mono LP, mine was the 1970s fake stereo with the Toscanini & the NBC Symphony Orchestra Ravel arrangement on the other side.

I think Sounds of Yesteryear is basically a UK public domain label that now only issues overpriced CDRs. Here's an example they issued of a rare, long out of print limited edition 2 LP set:

I feel that vintage recordings need to be left alone, other than remastering to improve fidelity. I have no use for editing by others or anyone who overdubs their contributions on top of the original recordings. Nothing of interest to me has been created, it is like adding paint to a print of a masterpiece.

B Brilliant live solo piano, out June 30 on Sunnyside. Finally got around to acquiring this 2009 release after doing an interview with Helen Sung, it didn't disappoint!

I just received the Daniel Hersog today. His debut CD was a masterpiece, so this one should be great.

It's not just Time, it happens everywhere. Publishing houses rarely have in-house editors any more, so some real howlers slip through the cracks. One of my all time favorites was in a Raymond Horricks jazz book, where he added a piece of trivia that wasn't well researched, "born in Lynchburg, Virginia, home of Jack Daniels." I guess he thought the label on the bottle read Virginia Sipping Whiskey...", or else he drank scotch...

I am not a fan of buying music that I already own just because of a new remastering, unless the sound is lackluster on the one I own, or there is bonus material of sufficient interest. My wife has attended a lot of jazz concerts with me, but I listen alone at home. In the car, she always wants to hear stuff she likes, rather than take a chance on my auditioning new acquisitions. As a result we often drive separately around town, then meet for lunch.

I checked the final draft I sent and the press release is correct about who mastered it. Heading to bed...

Water, no booze for ten more days, doctor’s orders.

I discovered that I never got around to buying the Brother Thelonious Quintet CD and I just learned of her LP with Marquis Hill doing research for the interview. She was a fun guest, though I was fighting technical issues as I tried to begin the I review that were getting very close to The Twlight Zone episode “A Thing About Machines,” probably caused in part from the insomnia following my surgery last month.

Different song, this is a Nathan Davis original.

Today I interviewed pianist Helen Sung for a Hot House feature in July. She will be leading a big band with a number of well known artists at William Paterson on July 11.