Ken Dryden

Masters of the Air, Chapter 5, on Apple +

In our first house, one day I received a bundle of CDs in padded envelope, along with one that had a book. It was not addressed to me, anyone on our short street, or even anyone in our subdivision, but it had a delivery confirmation sticker. I stuck it in my maiblox the next day and hoped they would get it to the right addressee.

The only Tim Hardin I remember was the junkie folk singer who wrote ”Hang On to a Dream” and overdosed young.

Wasn’t Hawk in pretty bad health by the time Sirius was recorded?

Hopefully they lost a lot of money.

Liebman always has numerous diverse projects in the planning stages, limited only by finding funding, never by finding the right musicians or composing the music for them. The man is fascinating to hear in person and a captivating interview guest, both of which I have experienced.

I’ll have to find my playlist, but I remember including two Ellington tunes, “Track 360,” “Happy-Go-Lucky Local” and Mulligan’s “K4 Pacific,” one of the tunes played by his big band that Concord Jazz chose to omit from his CD with Mel Torme and George Shearing.

It's funny how some titles suddenly jump in price once they are out of print. I get the idea that Uptown was more of a hobby than a business and once the founder died, his heirs had no interest in continuing the label.

I have respect for David R. Adler, a good hire by the new ownership. Hopefully he and his staff can repair the damage done by the group of clowns that ran the magazine off the cliff with their garbage writing.

I am barely into the Dolphy biography, it only arrived yesterday. I am not much on reading e-books, they tire me...

I remember all too well from my retail management days when the reel to reel had issues with pitch, causing a wow in the sound. We were warned not to play the radio over the sound system, to avoid ASCAP complaints. One of these guys used to drop in on a little luncheon place in an office building, the owner told him he wasn't playing music for customers but for himself on a little cassette playing boom box. They will check every possibility for potential revenue.

My cousin’s husband in Tampa bought a duplex, half of which he uses for his extensive train layout. I sent him a CDR of various train themed songs, not all jazz.

Given the age of many of us, we won’t be around to see a list in 2074…

All that's missing are those annoying in-store ads inserted for Kmart's goof proof picture perfect guarantee.

I was very impressed with the sound and scope of this set.

One of my questions to Marian during that interview in 1988 was who did she want as guests whom she had not had yet. She got two of the three, but Floyd Cramer never did appear. I also shared Keith Emerson’s phone number with her but he told her that he didn’t have the confidence to do it.

Dave Brubeck told me during an interview that Paul Desmond blocked the release of the Christmas concert where he joined the Modern Jazz Quartet. The audio was awful on the CD, which I heard on headphones during my initial hearing. When I went back to listen to the LP, I discovered that it was far worse than I remembered. From my 1988 interview with Marian McPartland: KD: Did you ever happen to perform with Paul? MM: I always wanted to and he always promised.He would sit in and he used to come and see me and we were good friends and we hung out but he never did. I always felt so badly about that because I think we would have sounded good together but... KD: Both being ballad lovers in particular. MM: Yeah, he was rather snickety about what he wanted to hear behind him. Imight have played the wrong change or something and upset the apple cart but it was a shame we couldn't just have done that informally. Anyway, I'm happy that I got to know him at all as well as I did.

It would be a long list: Art Farmer, Horace Parlan, Johnny Griffin, Ben Webster, Kenny Drew and Oscar Pettiford are among the many who moved to Europe. Sir Charles Thompson moved to Japan.

There is also an Emily Remler broadcast from Jazz at the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, likely recorded in 1988 or 1989 and aired in 1990. It features her solo, playing duets and with a trio.

There was both a VHS and DVD of the documentary. Somewhere in my digital photo files I have a photo of Jean Bach, who was instrumental in getting this film made, standing in front of a poster of the famous photo.

What was that 1964 tour like? It must have been rather eventful with Johnny Coles getting ill. Yeah, it was quite a scene. That was in Paris, when he fell back. Hazel Scott, Bud Powell and his wife, they were standing behind the stage watching us. When Johnny fell, they went out and called the ambulance and got him to the hospital right away. Never forget that. I am thinking of starting a Substack blog to feature interviews I've done over the past 37 years, with the idea of publishing a book. Progress is going well, but editing is time consuming, removing "you know" and repeated words that would get tiresome reading. Of course the interviewer needs editing, too...

Jaki Byard described what happened when Johnny Coles collapsed that night in my interview with him in 1990.