Christiern

If only Phil Schaap would devote as many hours as it might take to the complete works of Wynton Marsalis as heard through the ears of Orrin Keepnews. Then I would be glued to WKCR for at least a month, and this would be a far more acceptable place for some people to post. Is that a pipe dream?

Guess the "I"s have it. Yes, Allen, I think most of us heard that one, or a variation thereof--but wasn't that a defrocked priest? Or is this aging troll having another senior moment?

No, Randy, I had no idea that any of my shows had been released commercially! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Now I wonder if this is the only one?

Randy T: "Have they reused the tapes or discarded footage from this series? I was kind of young at the time, but I remember seeing Mingus on one show and a group led by Rashid Ali on another." Karl Knudsen (the late Storyville Records founder) had plans to issue the shows on VHS/DVD. He found that PBS in Washington, D.C. had 13 of them, but there were many more. New Jersey Television, the producing entity, had erased most of the shows. The Mingus show survived (two brief excerpts were used in "Triumph of the Underdog," which Karl financed), but I have not found a good copy of the Bill Evans show, and no copy of the one with Joe McPhee. It's a shame that even media people don't understand the value of preserving such things. I recall Gil Noble (of WABC-TV) telling me how he found and rescued a sizable amount of Malcolm X film footage that had been discarded but, fortunately, not yet collected. BTW, where on earth did you dig up that clipping???

Calling WRVR a "national treasure" is, of course, way over the top--a very small fraction of New Yorkers have ever heard of the station and I suspect that an even smaller percentage of the national population know of its existence. Sure, we who love jazz music want to see as much air time as possible devoted to it (wish Schaap also felt that way ), but I guess Bach and basketball enthusiasts are equally anxious to have their hunger satisfied. A 24/7 station can surely find a way to satisfy all three segments of its listeners.

Don't be too sure that Public TV retained the tape--they have a bad habit of reusing tape and discarding film footage. I also saw that show, but wish I hadn't--it was very sad, and I remember wonder why Dan allowed it to take place.

For a hot minute, I thought Sheriff Moose had taken up the tenor!

under?

I wonder who has the Cole box that was stolen from me. Well, I actually still have the box and pamphlet, they just took the CDs. BTW that goes for all my Mosaics, except the Stuff Smith. As for jacking up the price, I guess one can not blame a person for wanting to sell these things at the best price, but we all would rather see these releases in the hands of people who will enjoy the music.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are an intriguing couple. If you haven't already surmised that, I suggest a visit to their site, which leaves no detail untold. There is also a special section about the Central Park "Gates" project. Here's another photo I took from my window yesterday. These photos are like the Christmas tree that has yet to be decorated...

Born in Jersey City, NJ, November 2, 1924

Christo is about to do his thing to Central Park. Some of his "Gates" will be across the street from me, so I have taken some pictures from my windows. Here (at the bottom of this post) is one from this afternoon--I'll get closer when they unfurl the stuff.--Chris This time, wrap star Christo's open palette is . . . Central Park BY TERESE LOEB KREUZER Travel Arts Syndicate NEW YORK - The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude think big and they are very, very patient. This was the couple that wrapped Berlin's Reichstag in silvery material, surrounded 11 islands in Biscayne Bay in pink fabric and placed thousands of umbrellas on both sides of the Pacific Ocean for The Umbrellas, Japan-USA, 1984-1991. Now they're working in Manhattan's Central Park on a project they call The Gates. Their plan is to erect 7,500 gates at 12-foot intervals (except where low-lying branches make this impractical) over 23 miles of the park's 58 miles of pedestrian pathways. Fifteen thousand steel bases are already in place, awaiting the 16-foot-tall vinyl poles from which saffron-colored fabric will hang. `CRAZY IDEA' The panels will be unfurled on Feb. 12, weather permitting, and will remain until Feb. 27, after which the structures will be disassembled and the materials, recycled. The project, which has taken 26 years to bring to fruition, is expected to draw millions of visitors to New York City. The $21 million project is financed entirely by the artists themselves from the sale of studies, preparatory drawings and collages, scale models and the like. Some of the preparatory drawings for The Gates, for instance, have been purchased by museums for as much as $600,000 each. ''In some ways people see it as this crazy idea,'' says Laurie Carman, a sculpture student at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston who took a semester off so she could come to New York and work on the project. ``And in some ways it may be, but I'm just anticipating it being this beautiful thing throughout Central Park and a real gift to New York City.'' BEYOND THE PARK Like Christo and Jeanne-Claude's other projects, The Gates is free because it is in a public venue where all can come and go as they wish. However, there are other places to see their work in Manhattan, and some of this, too, is free.

If you want to laugh and weep, read this a couple of inputs from this thread, which I just stumbled upon in my ongoing attempt to feed my jazz hunger. Scroll down to a poster who calls him/herself "blubananaz." He is the Professor Irwin Korey of jazz posters, and obviously Stanley Crouch's main source of information.

I was interviewed re one on Lonnie Johnson, so that should be coming in the next couple of years.

Don't have a spare cup of coffee right now, but here's an "I" for your post.

Larry, I find disturbing the fact that Chilton misquoted you in his Hawkins bio. As I have noted previously, I had the same experience--most recently with Linda Dahl in her Mary Lou Williams book. That sort of thing makes suspect everything else in the book, IMO, and thus seriously decreases its value to future researchers. The discrepancies you mention don't seem to change the story's course, but they are still quite bothersome. One problem is that factual errors tend to be compounded by subsequent writers who take things at face value, so misquotes that might seem trivial in one work can easily snowball and become significant. There simply is no excuse for misquotes when the interview is on tape, as was the case with Dahl. I still have great admiration for Whitney Balliett, who attended a recording session of mine, armed only with a pad and pen, and managed to capture verbatim a conversation between Roy Eldridge and Jo Jones. I had the advantage of having that moment on the master tape, and Whitney did not miss a comma.

No, but she would have loved that place, and it was a half block from the Apollo Theater, where she often performed.

Willie was a very good friend of Steve and Edie, as well as Sinatra. He was a great guy, and the highest-paid DJ in the country--probably the world. He also loved jazz and hosted some memorable live programs--I recall one from Basin Street East, with Duke, his band, and Billy Strayhorn. Others with Nat King Cole, Ella, et al. When I was at WNEW, Billy Taylor was there, too, and the station played a lot of good jazz, along with the good pop. In the 1940s, it was quite jazz-oriented. Here's a 1945 photo...

I think that's a different Tom Tracy--but maybe not. Anyway, I haven't kept in touch with him. I left WNEW to go with WBAI and, soon thereafter, when I became general manager of that station, I brought Tom over to be my chief engineer. I also stole Willie B's secretary, Joan Henry.

Bingo, Randy! At the time when the photo was taken, Louis and Willie B were co-hosting the ABC-TV night show. The birthday celebrant is Tom Tracy, who was an audio engineer at WNEW, where I also worked.

First hint:

Chuck is right, that Louis Nye. I don't expect anyone to recognize the guy on my left (whose birthday we were celebrating), but who's the guy on my right? Need a hint?

Don's got one right. B3er batting zero, so far.

The Silver Rail, a harlem bar, 1963. Who is hanging out on a Sunday afternoon? You might ID 3 of these guys.