Ken Dryden

I still have the last series of texts that I exchanged with Claire Daly. Somehow I can’t delete them, even though the last message was a year ago. i couldn’t access the NYT obit, did the writer contact Joel Forrester? If not, he may have been harder to reach if he is still living and working in France.

I am in the process of transcribing my 1997 Michel Petrucciani interview. He was so full of enthusiasm, it was a pity that he died at 36. i got that email and requested a copy.

I bought a CD reissue in 2021 , I will have to give it another listen.

This 2 CD set won't be released until December 8, 2024, but my copy arrived today. While I have had long had recordings of the broadcast versions of these two shows, aired on the old APR series Four Queens Jazz Night From Las Vegas, each CD adds music that was never aired, around 60 minutes worth. These decades old tape reels held up nicely, as do Emily's performances.

I was unaware Claire had been battling cancer. A couple of times I met her for lunch while visiting NYC, she recommended great restaurants that I would have never found on my own. She was an important baritone saxophonist and she will be missed. She must have been ill when she was working on Vuvu For Frances.

AKA Jack the Dripper…

Very whimsical, indeed. I wrote a similar article titled "How to Spot Potential Turkeys" years ago, which was published in some now defunct magazine (Planet Jazz?) and online. I am not even sure where the magazine is. I think All About Jazz lost the article in one of their crashes in the early years. My biggest challenge is getting excited about CDs by musicians I've never heard of doing all original material who seem straight out of Berklee or some other jazz program. I did have an odd situation with a publicist that began sending me a lot of these type of CDs and I noticed names of well known musicians mentioned in the press releases that were consistently misspelled. When I emailed her about it, her response was, "Well, that's the way my artists spelled them." I told her it was part of her job, just like when I write liner notes, I check the spelling of every name, make sure the song title is as published and the correct composers and lyricists are credited. Inevitably one or more mistake or omission is included in the information sent to me.

I will have to admit it is a nice perk to get promo copies sent to me due to writing about jazz and broadcasting a radio show, but I still spend a significant amount every year. I am thinking about thinning out some things that I may be unlikely to return to in the future, but I need to start setting time aside each week to do that. If I ever overrun the current music library, my wife has informed me that shelves of music elsewhere in the house are not acceptable. There is no room to add any more shelving in my library, besides, the added weight, since it is over the garage, might not be a great idea.

A strong pass, I love Lee Morgan but this set is overpriced with a lot of filler.

I've worn hearing aids for a number of years and I am considering an upgrade, as the current ones are useless in certain situations where they don't lower the background noise enough, like in a busy restaurant. I finally realized that my hearing was really slipping when I had trouble hearing women's voices consistently in certain situations.

I just saw an old Laurel & Hardy short, about the two of them competing to marry a widowed heiress. It was a scream!

The painting is by Bob Haggart. Marian McPartland told me that Haggart painted a portrait of her late husband, Jimmy McPartland, then shipped it to her. He died around the time it arrived . He also drew this illustration.

A nice 1991 studio date.

It would be nice to see all of Jaki Byard's Prestige output as a leader or solo pianist in one package. I have a few unissued tracks from the Lennie's sessions that were never issued, though some of them are multiple rehearsal takes of "King David," a tune evidently not performed that night. I understand that Mosaic may think since the material has been reissued on CD (minus "Hello, Young Lovers," which was omitted from that messed up compilation of Solo Piano and Jaki Byard With Strings), that Byard fans have been able to acquire most of the music, though I think all of his Prestige albums are out of print.

Archive.org discovered they were hacked and took most of their website offline last week. More details can be found here: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/archive-org-a-repository-storing-the-entire-history-of-the-internet-has-been-hacked/

That is one of my favorite films, I get a kick out of James Mason’s final line. I took my fiancee to see it when it was released.

I will be airing a tribute to Terry Gibbs as he celebrates his 100th birthday this Sunday, October 13th at wutc.org. Archive.org is offline so I don’t have files for download or streaming uploaded, but I can Dropbox files to anyone interested.

Is this Delmark's doing after they acquired Sackville following John Norris's death?

This is only a 2 CD set, not a boxed set, but it is a new copy from Dusty Groove at a very low price of $0.99:

It seems like I just bought this set from either Dusty Groove or Jazz Messengers a year or so ago. Never stand still or the jazz release you want may disappear from print.

One of the treasures I have is a framed copy of the Great Day in Harlem photo with a signed note from Marian McPartland. I feel fortunate that I was able to interview a few of the people who were in it, including Art Farmer, Benny Golson, Sonny Rollins, Gerry Mulligan, Milt Hinton, Horace Silver and Marian McPartland.

My cousin and her husband are evacuating their island home in Tampa Bay tomorrow. I can't even imagine what a 15 foot storm surge would be like. I remember riding around a desolate part of New Orleans the summer after Katrina hit and seeing the numerous vacant or destroyed homes, plus the high water mark on a statue in front of a church. My cousin and her brother grew up in a small 1940s house a few blocks from Tampa Bay.

I can’t imagine enduring two hurricanes so close together. Be safe, Dan, hope you have a generator.

I enjoyed Norah Jones in her two guest appearances on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, her own recordings just weren't that interesting, as none of the songs grabbed me.

I've done this type of show at least once before. It will include songs by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, David Gates, The Rolling Stones, The Moody Blues, Elton John and Frank Zappa. A couple of the mashups are a scream. https://archive.org/details/timeless-jazz-10-6-2024