Christiern

As a matter of fact, Christmas mail was always delivered by Santa Claus.

Not only were there two daily mail deliveries here (in NYC), but there were no mail boxes and delivery was actually made to my front door, on the 16th floor. There were also more frequent pick-ups.

A former neighbor whom I had known for 20 years. I let him stay in my apartment while I was out of town, and he apparently made many trips past my doormen. I didn't know about his problem. BTW he also took about 100 DVDs, but none of my audio or computer equipment.

I have had close to 5000 CD stolen from me by a crack addict, including some of my favorite boxed sets. So I am down to 5 or 6000, but--except for the odd one that somehow escaped their fingers--all my Bird, Trane, Duke, Louis, Billie, Sarah, Basie, Jelly Roll, Waller discs are gone.

yeah, right, I brought politics into it. And if it was, say, Albright who had made the comments, you would have raised the same objection?? Absolutely.

Paul Bley

Get in line!

Gary Burton?

Shrdlu:"I agree about the Riversides. For all the ranting against Orrin Keepnews, that was a great label and produced many a classic album, including the best work by Monk, Cannonball and Wes Montgomery, and a lot of Bill Evans's best work, if not the best." If you had been in the studio (as I was on several occasions) and seen how Orrin worked, I think you would give credit to the artists rather than the time-keeper. Also, the decision to sign many of these artists should be credited to Bill Grauer, the force behind Riverside--he does not get anything close to the credit he deserved--and I think we can largely fault Orrin for that. Calling critique of Orrin "rants" is a biased remark based on nothing more than assumption. Thou shalt not assume?

So, why bring politics into a non-political thread?

MS. WILLIS-ARASLI: What is it that you like about jazz? SECRETARY POWELL: It captures, to a large extent, the black experience in America. It shows the creativity of African American artists and where we have come from and how we have been able to take that experience of ours and use it for a broader purpose. It gave us inspiration and sustenance during long, dark years, but always was something that was uniquely African American yet it went beyond the African American experience and touched the whole country. It was the African American contribution to the culture of this nation and to this nation. I think the above answers your question, Big Al. Pay attention to Ms. Willis-Arasli's question, then tell me if Powell has answered it to your satisfaction. Notice that what he purports to like about jazz (or "this stuff," as he calls it) really has nothing to do with the music. Notice, too, how he in the final sentence excludes all other contributions to our culture by black Americans. As for you, GregK, it does not surprise me that you would find some partisan motive in my response. You really need to get a grip and face reality, shake that paranoia, or something!

I have eaten whale and horse meat, snails, frogs legs, ram's testicles, and sheep's eyes, but none of that came close to being as disgusting as fish. I love shellfish, but the other kind--with the fins, scales, and piercing eyes--is something you will never see on my plate!* "Have to admit that Miles served me fish for lunch at his house 32 years ago, but I suffered as I picked my way around the bones, pushing the skin aside. "You don't like the skin?," he whispered. "No," I answered, somewhat embarrassed. "We shan't waste it," he said, scooping the skin from my plate with his fork.

Powell is obviously clueless when it comes to "this stuff."

Dan, thanks for posting the liner note remarks. Peter Keepnews is obviously still around--I'd be curious to contact him & find out what his source was for this info. I'm still thinking that the "Hammond abandoned album" and "Godfrey audition" are probably one & the same. But does the rest of the session survive? I'd like to think that it does--where & how on earth did Columbia dig up "Love for Sale" in 1983? Again mostly an artifact for Montgomery & Indiana jazz fanatics, but I find the whole business fascinating. I don't think that Monk & Wes ever recorded together in the Hampton band--they both show up on certain Hampton sides, but I haven't found any together yet (and if I did, I highly doubt either would be featured). This Columbia session, whatever it was, certainly seems to be the first time that all three of the brothers recorded together. Peter probably learned that from his father, Orrin, who did, after all, and spend time with Wes. As for finding the session, I found sessions (sometimes just audition selections) at Columbia on a few occasions--it happens when one goes over the files or one might simply stumble upon an unknown matrix number. As I pointed out, John (and, I presume, other producers) took people into the studio to audition them. I remember one such occasion when I dropped into the control room of Studio B. I was working on another project elsewhere in the building and John was waiting for an artist whom he was about to audition. When the phone in the control room rang, John asked me if I would get it. The West Indian security guard told me that "there is something here for Mr. Hammond." "Oh," John said when I relayed the message, "that would be Sylvester, tell him to send him up." It was Sylvester, in his pre disco/fame days, wearing a gold lamé evening dress, clutching a matching purse, and ever so ladylike. I don't know what happened to that audition tape, but somewhere in the Columbia vaults there should be about a half hour's worth of Sylvester, singing at the keyboard, Nina Simone style.

Where did you see this? Are you sure that a whole album was recorded? John frequently recorded auditions, many of which were never released, nor intended for release, but usually done in Studio B (on 52nd Street) with the same care as the real thing, but only one or two selections. As you probably know, Wes and his brothers did not record for World Pacific until December of 1957

Thank you for starting it. You know, we who live in NYC are reminded of 9/11 every time we look at our skyline and see the erasure.

Shrdlu:"It is satisfying to know that God will get the culprits, and has already gotten the ones who died in the crashes. Now they know that Islam is a crock." By your reasoning, your "God" got three planeloads of people 3 years ago. There is something wrong with your equation, Shrdlu, because--if we are to follow your way of thinking--"God" took about 3.000 innocent lives and only 19 "culprits" on that day. If that is "God"'s idea of justice, I don't want any of it! Also by your reasoning, the 3,000 innocent people who died should now know that their religion is "a crock." Please, spare us such illogic.

This morning, C-Span carried Bush's reading of a brief 9/11 script from the Oval Office, surrounded by family members of victims. I think it was quite appropriate for him to say something on this sad anniversary, but he shamelessly turned it into a not-so-thinly-veiled campaign speech. These worms have no shame! I hope Kerry's radio address will be more sincere and dignified.

Thanks for the photos! BTW, why is your post of DeFranco so reddish?

Excellent nostalgia trip, it makes one wonder how black pop music could have deteriorated so much in 30 years. BTW, there is also a CD

The mouse that came with the original iMac was horrible. Called the hockey puck, it was round and ball-driven. The current Macs have a far better mouse, although I wish they had added a scroll wheel. Still, these things are inexpensive, and any USB mouse will work as well on the Mac as on a PC.

I bought my first Mac in 1984 and have had a slew of them since. The first Mac was rather limited, but I was attracted by the graphic interface (so was Bill Gates, obviously). I bought an early PC and soon learned how to hate it. Today, I do most of my computing on a G4 dual processor tower, but I also have a Mac cube, two early iMacs, an iBook (G3), and a couple of in-between beige guys. Clearly, I am sold on the Mac. As for learning curve, a survey taken a few years back showed that many companies who use Macs do so because, although the machines were more expensive, they spent less money training their staff to use them. A few years back, I used to help people get started on a Mac and found that it was much easier to teach people who had no previous experience with a computer--former PC users tended to want to make everything more complicated than it was! Although there is, as yet, no upgrade to the graphic card in the new iMac, I'm sure it will come, but it looks as if that machine will meet your needs. If you must run Access, you can do so through Virtual PC, which enables the Mac to become a Windows machine, but there are excellent data base programs for the Mac, my favorite is Filemaker Pro. Of course you can also get Microsoft's Office for the Mac, as well as Quark. I believe PageMaker is being discontinued, but Adobe InDesign is even better, IMO. The new iMac will be available with a 20" screen, so that should not pose a problem.

I don't know what I can add that might be useful. The selections were made by TL's editors, mainly Jerry Korn, Phil Payne and Jeanne LeMonnier, all great people to work with and all jazz enthusiasts, but not experts. As annotators, we had the great advantage (apart from receiving fees that would be outrageously high even 25 years later) of being able to avail ourselves--through the editors--of TL's amazing research department. As a result, the notes often contained new information, interesting (albeit sometimes trivial) details that previously had escaped the inquiring minds of low-budget jazz writers.

This little piggy went to market.... this little piggy stayed home.... but wished it hadn't.

I was Mnytime for a two-day period during which I didn't post.