king ubu

and here's the rest - thanks a lot for this fun compilation, Sir! #20 More euro stuff, I assume? Trumpet is nice, so is flute and the whole sparse waltz-groove. Sounds like a modern day take on some John Lewis ideas to me... #21 Doesn't do that much for me... I guess I'd need to hear more to judge. #22 More Monkish piano... guess you really like piano-centred jazz? The tune's an old one, "Just You, Just Me", and the performance goes quite far at some spots... yet the touch remains delicate most of the time. Nice one, I think... is this one to deceive? Something much older than most of the music on this BFT? Maybe the Monkish touch goes much farther back (I thought of Tatum at some moments)? #23 More tenor trio... sounds vaguely familiar... not bad at all! #24 "What Is This Thing Called Love" again? Definitely like this more than #21... nice one, how he(?) plays the full piano, left hand walking, chords, melody/single-note lines etc. #25 A two tenor free improv? Or is it three? (Would make the Brötzmarksson trio an option, Sonore - but did they ever do such short tunes? I only have live recordings by them.) Hm, no, it's just two... good one, starts very abstract but gets quite beautiful and then some as it continues! #26 Nice programming, I guess (had a break in between, alas). Nice one, these descending runs make for a good structure... #27 More slick programming, back to piano... nice one! #28 An almost seemless segue... into what? An etude? Hm, pretty weird...some moaning in there? Keith Jarrett? Not bad how it evolves! Is this an improvisation based on a classical/notated piece? Quite ok, whatever it is. #29 More slick programming... does this sound familiar? Friedlander? #30 So then here's some more traditional stuff again. Very nice sound on tenor. I've heard this tune before but can't pin it down... Dexter like lines (and phrasing?) but very different sound. Pretty good, but sounds a bit retro-like to me? #31 he he... nice - probably a transcription of some classical piece for soprano/tenor duo? Sounds a lot like some of those Bach things I used to play to practise on tenor... nice, and sounds indeed pretty good! #32 Hm... not going very far. Another one that's more a teaser for more, to me. I'd not be opposed to hear more, though... #33 Again this doesn't go anywhere far to my ears, sorry... it still has something I like, those slightly off lines, the way how the "accompaniment" adds and intervenes with the "melody" or "lead"... #34 Could be Tony Oxley? With Cecil? Could well be them two old farts... good one! #35 A very freeish take of "Thelonious" (I think that's the name of this Monk tune, but I'm not quite sure, as usual with Monk - one of my favourite versions of this one-note theme is on Bud Powell's Columbia album with Monk compositions). Starts rather unmotivated, I found, but gets more and more concentrated as it slowly approaches the theme, touches it from different sides and goes on embellishing and improvising. #36 A groovy and fun closer... that nervously punctuaded accompaniment is quite nice... not sure where to put this, but it's nice one to ease out of an entertaining, at times challenging, but very rewarding compilation of music!

Yes, very sad news. The NYT obit is a bit weird I thought. I read a much shorter in a Swiss newspaper this morning that managed to be a lot more accurate in its appreciation of Hilberg's work. I've had the German translation of "The Desctruction of the European Jews" on the shelves for two years or so now but I haven't felt like reading much in it so far, after having read various excerpts before.

yup

Finishing my listen to the two of Sonny's last Prestige dates with Kenny Dorham (first date), Wade Legge, George Morrow and Max Roach (plus Earl Coleman on two tunes of the second date). This was actually a short-lived edition of the Max Roach quintet with Legge at the piano, otherwise not documented. It's a fine unit, for sure! Rollins is on fire and Roach is great, too! With respect to this post of mine in the Art Davis thread... I don't have that Elvin album yet - it's on my huuuuuge OJC/Fantasy to get list... Probably he was (is? has the news been confirmed in any way by now?) just too strong a musical personality. I mean his walking lines, his timing, all of it is too personal for him to just fit in on any kind of jam session or loosely arranged studio date. With Roach though, he's very inspired and inspiring, I find - much more so than George Morrow, who just happens to play the bass in the band, most of the time, Davis is there, you can feel him at any given moment and he's actively shaping the music, not just accompanying - that's how it feels to me, at least... ... is that there are statements about Morrow in the montage of quotes by musicians/sideman in the Roach Mosaic booklet, that state that he was the only one to really cope with the fast tempos at that time (before Davis joined, that is - no negative words about Boswell, but he's not exactly your greatest bass fiddle virtuoso either, though he did a fine job with what was one of Roach's most underrated bands, in my opinion). There are statements that mention others sitting in, including Oscar Pettiford, and simply being unable to keep the tempo... so Morrow was no slouch, I guess... rather he wasn't a great solo player (not at all... there's one bass feature on the Brown/Roach band, not such a great track, but quite alright), but it seems he's respected by his colleagues if just for his able walking at breakneck tempos. That tempo thing is one of the slight letdowns of these Roach bands, I think - Billy Wallace makes that point (and he seems quite certain that his own circle of musicians in Chicago was far better than the Roach group he played with... I don't think that makes too much sense, speaking of being better musicians, on that level, but I wouldn't doubt Wallace's statements per se). Anyway, the band so often just playing as fast as they can brings a certain sameness to the music that not even guys like Booker Little and the great (underrated? I guess so even if it's a stupid tag and I already used it in this post...) George Coleman can help getting over that. It's possibly some kind of restlessness, that would again make it interesting... a nervousness, a sensitivity? I don't know, though... looking forward to get through the Turrentines band and then on with the "Freedom Now Suite" - the 5/4 opener with Hawkins rough and stunning tenor solo most definitely offers one of those fat swinging grooves that Wallace seemed to miss in the Roach band... maybe it's like Roach has lost that nervous edge, gone a step further around that time (Freedom Now and also Percussion Bitter Suite from 1961)?

discs 6 & 7 of the Sonny Rollins Prestige box - great, these two dates with Legge/Morrow/Roach and KD on the first! Sonny's in top form! I forgot how good they are, revisiting them because of my Roach listening trip...

Thanks, still digging through the second half of #49, so I'll be ready for yours in a couple of days!

Very sad news

Raul Hilberg, 81, Historian Who Wrote of the Holocaust as a Bureaucracy, Dies By DOUGLAS MARTIN Published: August 7, 2007 Raul Hilberg (Nancie Battaglia, 1985) Raul Hilberg, a Jewish émigré from Nazi-occupied Vienna who helped begin the field of Holocaust studies with his long and minutely detailed 1961 study of the massacre of European Jews, died Saturday in Williston, Vt. He was 81. The cause was lung cancer, said Jeffrey R. Wakefield, a spokesman for the University of Vermont, where Mr. Hilberg had taught for 35 years. In his landmark work, “The Destruction of the European Jews,” Mr. Hilberg said the Holocaust had been the result of a huge bureaucratic machine with thousands of participants, not the fulfillment of a preconceived plan or a single order by Hitler. As uncountable separate instructions were passed on, formally and informally, to a range of actors that included train schedulers and gas chamber architects, responsibility became ever more diluted, he argued, even as the machinery of death churned inexorably ahead. “For these reasons, an administrator, clerk or uniformed guard never referred to himself as a perpetrator,” Mr. Hilberg said in an interview with The Chicago Tribune in 1992. “He realized, however, that the process of destruction was deliberate, and that once he had stepped into this maelstrom, his deed would be indelible.” Though some critics said Mr. Hilberg had understated the impact of historic German anti-Semitism, his broad conclusions were based on painstaking research. He examined microfilm of thousands upon thousands of prosaic documents like train schedules and memorandums between minor officials. “This head-against-the-wall technique is the only virtue I can parade without blushing,” he said last year when Germany gave him with its Order of Merit, the highest tribute it can pay to someone who is not a German citizen. The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote that Mr. Hilberg’s book “reveals, methodically, fully and clearly, the development of both the technical and psychological process; the machinery and mentality whereby one whole society sought to isolate and destroy another, which, for centuries, had lived in its midst.” Mr. Trevor-Roper called the book’s most surprising revelation, and its least welcome one, its suggestion that at least some Jews cooperated in their own annihilation. Examples included Jews who had helped organize deportations or led victims to gas chambers. Mr. Hilberg argued that Jews had a long history of passivity and that some had mistakenly calculated that the Nazis would not destroy what they could economically exploit. Many historians, survivors and Jewish leaders disagreed, pointing to examples of Jewish resistance. But Holocaust historians of all views began using terminology Mr. Hilberg had devised, including that of calling the Holocaust’s principals perpetrators, victims and bystanders. Raul Hilberg was born on June 2, 1926, in Vienna. In his memoir, “The Politics of Memory: Journey of a Holocaust Historian” (1996), he said his father, Michael, had been a “middleman,” someone who bought household goods for people needing credit and paid him in installments. In 1938, the occupying Nazis arrested him but released him because he was a World War I veteran. The Hilbergs emigrated to Brooklyn, where Michael worked in a factory and Raul attended Lincoln High School. His studies at Brooklyn College were interrupted when he was drafted into the Army. His unit was housed in the Nazi Party’s former offices in Munich, where Mr. Hilberg was fascinated by crates containing Hitler’s personal library. He returned to Brooklyn College, where he quit chemistry for political science and history. He went on to Columbia, where he insisted on writing his doctoral dissertation on the Holocaust, which few academics were studying. His adviser, Franz Neumann, warned him that his choice of subject might be his academic funeral. At least five publishers rejected his major book. It was published by a small Chicago house after a wealthy patron agreed to buy 1,300 copies to go to libraries. His caustic personal style, which contrasted with the monotone of his histories, did not always help. When academics asked about his subject area, Mr. Hilberg was prone to reply, “I study dead Jews.” He next taught at Hunter College and landed a federal job helping to catalog documents being released from German archives. He copied material by hand so he could use it for his own research. Mr. Hilberg started teaching at Vermont in 1956 and retired in 1991. In addition to writing and editing five books besides “The Destruction of the European Jews” and his memoirs, Mr. Hilberg produced two more editions of that book (1985 and 2003), adding considerable material. Mr. Hilberg’s first marriage, to Christine Hemenway, ended in divorce. He is survived by two children from that marriage, David, of Brooklyn, and Deborah, of Jerusalem, and his wife, the former Gwendolyn Montgomery. The multitudinous materials Mr. Hilberg examined convinced him that those very documents were the strongest argument against those who contended the Holocaust had never happened, he told The International Herald Tribune in 1996. “These individuals are not familiar with the archives, or they would see that nobody could forge these millions of documents,” he said. source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/us/07hil...amp;oref=slogin

#13 Nice how this mixes the plaintif trumpet soloist, the great tuba backing, and the orchestra - samples, overdubs? Sounds like a short take from one of those Winter & Winter "movie-like" albums... nice! #14 Ooooh! Great! Masada String Trio, maybe? Ah no, some more than just strings... lovely track! Again a beautiful soft trumpet sound here. Too often those who play softly also play sluggish, nice to have someone pull all (most of) the stuff and still not play with steel chops (or not showing them off, at least). #15 Very nice, that minimal groove thing in the intro. Another great one. Very loose drumming... hellyeah! Another of those euro circus tunes... the dutch touch... no idea who it is, but it's terrific! Bennink? A favourite! #16 Sounds like it should have been on my BFT... lovely! Nice mix, baritone, trombone, trumpet, flute... love it! There's a voice in there, too. Clarinet solo? Weird intonation but I love it! I definitely want to hear more of this! Heart-warming stuff! Trombone is a bitch! Oh wait, that's bass clarinet, not barisax...of course, hence all the weirdo intonation things... great! Another favourite track! I like the fact that much of this is a group performance, this loose and open way of playing together is something I enjoy a lot in ZA jazz - no need for a long string of solos, just let everyone have his fun while playing together with the rest. #17 More good pianistics... not a favourite, this time, though... #18 Great! I think I know this but I'm not sure... sounds like a solo performance by Stephan Oliva to my ears. It's another Monk tune, one of those usually done in that mid Monk tempo... opening and execution all the way through makes it sound like a classical piece, almost... stunning! The mood it creates reminds me somewhat of Oliva's cover of "India Song" (from the artsy fartsy Duras flick) on his "Jazz 'n' (e)motion" disc. #19 "What Is This Thing Called Love" - here's a tune I hardly ever fail remembering the title of... very nice tenor sound, somewhat old-fashioned, robust. Solid delivery, no-nonsense, I guess. Very good one... I have a feeling I ought to know this but I can't tell... this is how far I came today - very enjoyable, with a purple patch (#15,16,18,19) just to end now!

Rachida! Alibi...

Ah, Michiel Braam on #1?

ok, finally I'm having a first listen on the ipod while at work... haven't had a glance at this thread, here are some first impressions, more to follow: #1 Very nice... a European take on the Monk/Nichols tradition? What's that guy's name... Dutch pianist? Can't remember the name I think of... nice short opener! #2 A weird lullaby... not sure what the heck this is - much too lovely for its content, it seems... #3 This picks up where #1 ended... this is definitely a Monk tune but I'm always having trouble pinning them down... "Off Minor"? Lovely! From the Enttäuschung/Schlipp project? #4 Beautiful sounding tenor sax! I know this tune... one of those old Carmichael things? Bass does offers a nice boomy laid-back foundation, drums enter softly, very nice! This is a huge toned guy in his soft mode, I think, right? Makes me think of Bobby Jones here and there, of Bennie Wallace at his softest, too, but it's not him, he'd do his gruffy honk stuff now and then, at least... A very restrained performance, no need to show off, simply beautiful! #5 Piano duet or overdubbed? Reminds me (of course) of the Tristano Atlantic date in some spots, I guess that's an obvious reference for this kind of performance... starts sounding like it's three pianos after a while. Pretty intriguing! #6 Ha, nice, some bossa... oh heck, another tune I ought to know... beautiful stuff, loveable. #7 Sounds like a classic ICP opening... yeah! Great stuff! I love it! That's Michael Moore doing the whining alto part... trumpet is great as well! #8 This leads nowhere, noodling around... still nice noodling, if that exists... #9 I like this breathy kind of alto playing (also the really full-bodied, but not much most in between...) - Lee Konitz influence, I guess, though nowhere as idiosyncratic with those simple lines. Not going far, either, but a good example for well-structured improv, I guess. Like it a bit more than the one before. #10 What the hell? Noise? He he... Brötz? Would be too obvious I guess... not bad at all, though the drummer isn't the most imaginative, I'd say. Nice how it goes in and out, or rather, how it makes you believe there's some kind of structure, in between, while the sax goes out now and then. Not my favourite cut, however... not exactly a nice sound on tenor and quite full of clichés in execution... those circular lines though, they got something that grabs me (not unlike some of Evan Parker's playing) #11 Ha, one of my favourite Ellington ditties, "Angelica" I think... Love the version on Ellington/Hawkins! The pianist has a very nice touch, Great one! #12 Not bad at all! Sounds quite great, in fact! Rollins-like tenor improvisation, though it goes farther out at some spots that I think I know of him (although that 1967 thing with Bennink...). I'd like to hear more of this!

you can edit your first post and change the thread-title (also this is in the wrong forum anyway...)

Yes... that's interesting... I prefer Philly Joe and Elvin for daily listening pleasure, I think, but Max (and similar Roy Haynes) are so great if you can listen a bit closer, less of that easy swinging groove (I guess that's the point about "Max Roach doesn't swing" - it's repeated by some of his sidemen, Billy Wallace mostly, I think, in the montage of quotes in the Mosaic booklet) but a highly musical, intense and concentrated way of playing that holds a lot of fascination.

Hard to say... there's none that's in constant circulation, really... but the one I played most often of late, I think, is the Randy Weston Select (particularly disc 3).

Oh yes! That's the first album I ever heard with him on drums. The solo he pulls on "St. Thomas" is jaw-dropping (as is the whole album... Blue Seven!) Beautiful sound on that album too (even on the 80s Fantasy version), it's so deep and blue - one of my very favourite albums to this day! I was able to catch Max live, in a weird concert with Abdullah Ibrahim. First both of them played half a solo set, and after the break they made a lame attempt at a duo. The Roach solo portion was the only part that was convincing and partly very good, but the whole event was a big letdown, even though I love both guys when they're on their own (or working with more sympathetic partners). "To The Max", the 2CD set, is a nice showcase of more recent Roach, including M'Boom, his 80s quartet, the double quartet and more. Covers all the variety of things Max did in his later career. Nothing of it comes close, in my opinion, to the stuff he did in 55-63 or so, though... in fact probably most of his post Brownie material isn't coming close to their quintet in 55/56, except maybe for the Candid and Impulse albums mentioned in my first post. But then, luckily, it's not just about "greatest" albums all the time... he did so many good and great ones besides those classics, too!

I've been digging a lot of Max Roach's music, lately. Put most of the Brown/Roach Quintet material from the great 10CD box onto my iPod (omitting some alternates and false starts). Then I just recently got around playing most of the Mosaic box, combined with the albums he did for other labels in between the Mercury albums, including "Max" (Argo), "Deeds Not Words" (Riverside), the Time album, and just this morning while commuting the great Prestige album of Sonny Rollins' heading the Roach +4 band with Wade Legge and Kenny Dorham (including the magnificient Bird-medley, which probably was the idea for the Mercury album "Roach Plays Charlie Parker", I assume?) Anyway, it's most fascinating to see how Max evolves. Also it's very interesting to read the liners in the Mosaic and compare the music, play it in chronological way, check out how Roach's solo conception changes and grows... he seems to have been one of jazz' sharpest minds back then - a very intriguing character, to me. Looking forward now to continue the trip with more of the Turrentine Bros./Julian Priester Quintet (incl. the Tommy T. album for Time adding Horace Parlan on piano, and the live album on Enja predating the last of the Mercury albums recorded in Paris). Next then what I still think are his best albums (besides the Brown/Roach material), "Freedom Now Suite" and "Percussion Bitter Suite". What a great body of work in so few years! Too bad only that Mercury had more of a project-based approach and didn't document the working quartets/quintets more thoroughly! They're clearly on fire on the 1958 Newport set! Max Roach Mosaic thread Max Roach & Tony Williams thread Max Roach recommendations thread Album: Max Roach Trio feat. Hasaan Album: Percussion Bitter Suite Max Roach health thread Max Roach health thread (2) Album: Roach/Brown Quintet: Live at the Beehive Album: Roach/Brown Quintet - The Last Concert Crappy discography (courtesy of the usual suspects) a couple of his best albums include:

same here - r.i.p.

and now, just for the fun of it... Grinderman, one of the most concise box sets, just about 40 minutes of great music:

Ha, I was lazy and posted about the Hampton and the Roach in one go... sorry 'bout that!

disc 6 now (alternates to the drum battle and the album with Abbey sitting in), to be followed by the second half of disc 5 (the masters/original album w/Abbey) - great stuff (though not the drum battle... rather tedious)

Happy Birthday! :party:

Last night: discs 1 and 2 of the Lionel Hampton Complete Verve Sessions with Oscar Peterson Now: Max Roach Mosaic discs 4 and 5, with the Booker Little UA session and the Time album by Roach preceeding the second date on disc 4. Great stuff!

Yep. Got it from newbury comics (via amazon.com) for 65 bucks, all inclusive - not bad, considering how cheap the $$ is... And I finally played the first two discs last night, and wow! Great music! Probaby the first time I really dug Oscar Peterson (he doesn't bother me when playing behind Prez or Hawk or Ben, but I don't exactly wait for his solos...), but Hamp is indeed "on" all of the time, what an amazing flow of ideas! The rhythmical momentum he creates is infectuous, and Buddy Rich suits in there just right, too! Not to forget Ray Brown... definitely a great box set to have!

I saw the Basie being announced somewhere. Lucky to have at least the live Mosaic... great music indeed! With no Maynard here I might look for that one... ah yes, some Maynard, "Chameleon" - best part is the banned ones unedited liner notes, the music sucks heavily...