Ken Dryden

I have learned to use priority mail or FedEx with Dusty Groove. Chicago is one of the notorious phantom zones where packages disappear for weeks or months.

The bigamous lives of Charles Lindbergh and Charles Kyralt come to mind as well. Let’s not get started on politicians…

One of the first times that I interviewed Ken Peplowski in the early 1990s I asked him which vocalists he enjoyed playing with and Carol Sloane was the first one he named. R.I.P.

BFrank: I'm wondering the same thing. I took advantage of my writer's discount with Fantasy before Concord Jazz bought it and gutted their catalog, routinely spending several hundred dollars per order and getting a lot of what I wanted, though I missed a few things, too.

Denny Zeitlin shared his interpretation of Jimmy Rowles' timeless ballad "The Peacocks," with a peacock video by Bret Primack. View it here:

Ben Hur and The Sound of Music had intermissions.

No shipping notification yet… 😟

I don’t think the tour was all that boring, particularly the Amsterdam concert that was broadcast and appears on various bootlegs. I got a laugh out of the tv theme quoted at the end of “Ms. Pinky.” But some of the material recorded in that era was pretty bad, especially “Dumb All Over” and the forgettable “Jazz Discharge Party Hats.”

The only thing that is a royal pain is when limited edition 2 LP sets have tracks missing from the CD versions. Anything to get us to spend more money.

There was a small European label that put out limited editions of 500 LPs. The owner told me in a phone interview that he was having quality control issues because so many vinyl manufacturing components had been scrapped, the skilled operators had died or retired and the remaining plants were overworked and not properly maintained. Frankly, I've purchased few of the "new" vinyl pressings and I have been unimpressed and think they are overpriced. I'd rather invest in CDs, as the sound will be better and they will probably last longer without defects. Not to mention, CDs take up a lot less space.

Ted Gioia does some excellent analysis of the "record revival" and how the industry managed to screw things up instead of building a customer base. https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/did-the-music-business-just-kill?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

PM sent

PM sent for: Aki Takase & Alexander Von Schlippenbach - So Long Eric! : Homage to Eric Dolphy (Intakt) - $12

He is on a new CD by trumpeter John Bailey. Horizon disbanded a few years ago as Bobby Watson was leading his new group. Victor Lewis is a fine drummer and composer.

I always get a laugh out of "Florida Man" stories: https://nypost.com/article/crazy-florida-man-headlines-that-made-the-meme/

Maybe Ashley Guillard's alias is "Dinah Moe Hum," since she obviously "throws a mean tarot..." I imagine that this idiot doesn't have much in the way of funds to pay for the coming damages from this lawsuit.

Unless a release is a particular favorite, I'm not much for upgrading any CDs for better sound. I'm too busy trying to fill holes in my collection...

No 78s, as I've never had anything to play them. I've kept most of the LPs, except for those crappy live audience bootlegs that were put out years ago that were reissued on the equally crappy label Squatty Roo as CDRs.

The book arrived in the midst of the Christmas season, so I haven't started reading it yet.

70-80 CDs of Duke Ellington seems so long ago, but not nearly enough at my house. A quick count shows 167 CD releases on my shelves (including 2 & 3 CD sets in jewel boxes), plus 8 boxed sets of various size ranging up to the Complete RCA box. That doesn't include the numerous LPs.

I missed this post from years ago. I remember a show around that time at Variety, but it was a duo with George Cables. They opened and closed with Cables' "Lullaby" and I was amazed at how soft Frank Morgan's sound was during this concert. I will have to see if I can find my ticket stub, but I am pretty sure that we are talking about the same show. I was told a Frank Morgan story that bugged me. After he supposedly kicked his habit and he was on Methadone, Frank Morgan was supposedly no longer using drugs. Someone I knew gave a ride to the airport after a gig, was directed by Morgan to a certain address, where the driver witnessed him score and shoot up. The worst unexplained bitching I ever experienced was during a recording session by Bob Wilber and Kenny Davern, produced by the host of the Atlanta Jazz Party, Phil Carroll. In the middle of the date, Davern started cussing up a storm as the rest of the musicians sat or stood quietly until he finally calmed down. Phil never said a word, but he never again invited Kenny Davern to play his jazz party, though Bob Wilber made several more appearances.

I just finished this book, though I felt like a few topics were either truncated in the editing or that Gerry Mulligan shared what he wanted to and moved on. I do think that Ken Poston did a great job with the editing and letting Mulligan speak for himself.

I just got through with assembling an index for Con Chapman's excellent upcoming book Kansas City Jazz: A Little Evil Will Do You Good. I believe that it is due out in March. Like his terrific Johnny Hodges biography, Kansas City Jazz is very well researched and flows well. Many lesser known names are discussed, in addition to Bennie Moten, Lester Young, Count Basie, Mary Lou Williams, Pete Johnson, Joe Turner, etc. I won an e-reader in a drawing about 10 or so years ago. I downloaded one book preview, then bought the book itself. I've never used it since and I'm not sure where the charging cord is for it. It would be great if I had a lot of reading to do on planes, but I still have lots of room for book storage for now, as HutchFan can verify.

EPB, our public utility, cut off the power unexpectedly ay 7:39 am with the outside temperature being 8 degrees. TVA, its supplier, evidently ordered rolling blackouts. At 8:10 am, they sent a text that they were doing controlled power outages for 10-15 minutes. Fortunately, we added a whole house generator in 2020, a few months after the Easter tornados hit our area and we lost power for two days (which wasn't bad at all, considering many people were out of power for 10-14 days). So the utility loss was for 30 seconds at most. It is now 9:15 and we are still getting power from our generator. So much for 10-15 minutes of an outage. Too bad if you don't own a generator and have a loved one hooked up to medical equipment...