Ken Dryden

Arrived today:

I guess this pseudonym was news to Roger Kellaway when this CD was released. If that wasn't bad enough, three of the five songs are misidentified. It is a safe bet that no one (the artist, the songwriters or the publishers) saw one cent in royalties from this third rate reissue.

I can do February. I hated missing doing one in June, but the income from the book indexing took priority...

The first time Bill Evans recorded “Blue In Green” as a leader on Riverside, he insisted that he composed the song and Orrin Keepnews added a co-writer credit. As far as I know, Miles never took any legal action to challenge it. Could it be that “St. James Infirmary” was of unknown origin and Irving Mills was just first to publish it, using the name Joe Primrose? I have no idea.

It's not really a big issue here. Masks are still required in businesses until November 22 here and music stores have vanished except for a large used book/music chain that occasionally has new releases. I am hesitant to travel to Atlanta, Knoxville and Nashville at this point, since I don't know the risks for those cities.

Jim, I hope you have a lot of fun doing your show. I missed doing a regular show and it's been lots of fun producing mine once more after a sixteen year gap.

That is great. Havens was always a class act.

One of my best friends from Tulane spent 30 years at San Quentin, as a staff psychiatrist. I don’t know if there was still a jazz band there during his tenure, which began around 1982-3.

If he is still living, he turns 90 this year.

Bob Havens was a regular at the Atlanta Jazz Party for many years, as he was a favorite of the host, Phil Carroll. I believe that he at least a studio session or so on the afternoon/evening after the Party that ended up being issued by Jazzology or GHB. He was a very soft spoken, humble individual, but he could swing. I'm glad that I had so many opportunities to hear him on stage.

I produced a show with a similar theme not long after Stan Getz/Kenny Barron People Time was first released. It is amazing how strong some performances are by artists with a terminal illness, such as Charlie Rouse's final CD Epistrophy, issued by Landmark.

I just finished Phil Woods' autobiograhy Life In E-Flat. There are a lot of great stories that he shared in interviews and his Phil In The Gap column for the Al Cohn Memorial Newsletter, plus additional material about his personal life that isn't as widely known. Woods discusses his own shortcomings with candor, while Ted Panken, who edited the book, wrote an excellent introduction and Brian Lynch shared his thoughts about working and talking witht he late jazz master.

Gene Harris told me that he wasn't too happy with the stuff he recorded in the early 1970s, which is why he retired to Idaho before Ray Brown eventually lured him back.

That is a common error. Richard Rodgers and Willard Robison are often misspelled and Bill Evans is frequently credited with composing Miles’ “Nardis.”

Adding composers to a discography adds to the challenge since so many releases have incorrect or incomplete credits.

There is one Fats Waller title issued by a collector who lives in Thailand that you might not have. Let me look up the title. I am pretty sure that I have all of McCoy Tyner's recordings as a leader, co-leader or soloist on Milestone, Impulse!, Blue Note, Half Note, Timeless, Who's Who In Jazz and some other things.

I have extensive collections of numerous artists, though I hesitate to call any of them complete. There's bound to be a hard to find import-only album or bootleg that I have never run across, not even counting appearances on others' recordings. If we're only counting releases under an artist's name, I think that I own everything by Jaki Byard as a soloist, co-leader or leader, as I managed to pick up a number of European and Japanese releases to fill in some gaps. An added bonus is that I have a dub of the remaining unissued tracks from The Lennie's On The Turnpike date.

You might be better off looking for the two individual CDs, Nothing Personal and Nighttown.

I enjoyed this solo piano DVD from late in his career .

Don't get your hopes up for The Last Time We Saw Paris seeing a legitimate reissue, though one of the gray labels may well reissue it without having to pay royalites. Brubeck hated that album and blocked reissuing of it during his lifetime. I don't know how much pull his surviving children have, but I would imagine that they would honor his wishes. I kept hoping for a Brubeck live Columbia box or a collection of all of the recordings that Brubeck and Mulligan did together for Columbia, but so far, nothing...

Yeah, he was amusing. JJA would have celebrating guest emcess. The first show I attended had both Avery Brooks and Soupy Sales. Soupy's jokes included: "I'm in a self-help group, sex without partners." "My grandmother was told by her doctor to walk 3 miles a day. It's been two weeks and we don't know where she is..."

Stateside Distributors is still sending me regular SteepleChase CDs, no damned CDRs. Amazon and ImportCDs have been notorious for selling CDRs without labeling them as such. I usually try to look at the artwork before opening any new CD, as the burns sometimes remove the credits and original text from the tray card, a dead giveaway that it is not what one paid for according to the description. Amazon will take CDRs back if you act promptly, if they failed to list them accurately on line, even if they have been opened.

I found Crouch's writing to be frequently overbearing, much like his public persona. During one Jazz Journalist Association he took a swing at president Howard Mandel, then there's the time he cold-cocked another writer in the side of the head while he was seated. My one encounter with him was during a JJA Awards Show, which he had bulldozed his way into being a part of it (with Mandel's blessing), even though he was not a member. He talked for a few minutes, then sat at the drums and gave a rather boring solo. Afterward, Francis Davis made fun of it when he took the microphone, but even better was comedian Al Lewis, who was a special guest that year. Lewis remarked, "I remember being on 52nd Street back in the 1940s and hearing Sid Catlett, now there was a real drummer!" The audience groaned and hooted in agreement. I always wonder if Crouch thought about taking a swing at either of them.

Didn't he play on that LP by Daphne Hellman, called Helman's Angels?