Christiern

Sometimes, ignorance is truly bliss.

I take comfort in the assumption that much of what I will never hear isn't worth hearing, and in the knowledge that much of what I have heard had a positive influence on me. Bad music makes good music sound gooder.

I would test it on an Alice Coltrane disc.

I knew I should have updated that form on the 20st. Will they still take my money?

Jesus? Yes, I believe he was in one of the ads. I don't recall hearing much ado regarding these trade mag ads. If Miles didn't like that one, he would have said so, but he may not even have seen it. I think you are making way too much out of this. I suggest that you melt all your Columbia vinyl--it might ease your mind.

First of all, let me point out that the ad copy isn't sufficiently mundane to have been written by Mort Goode. e was somewhat of a joke around Blackrock in those days. That said, I am reminded of another full-page ad that ran in the trades around the same time. I can't find an image of it online, but it was for an album by The Last Poets. The copy read (bold white lettering on black bg): If you're white, it will scare the shit out of you, If you're black, it will scare the nigger out of you!

Weizy: "...Note to self: must text eldest daughter this afternoon and ask her why her teacher is still perusing my copy of 'Bessie' a full year after she brought it to school? " Sounds like a job for Evelyn Wood! "

The Young and the Restless The Bold and the Beautiful The scraps from the end of the reel The bottom line

I believe the Coltrane shower tapes were copped by Phil Schaap, who no-soaped a request for their release. He does, however, claim to have seven or eight 5-8-second snippets of Bird blowing Red Rodney's nose.

GA Russell: "... I got the link from Amazon's "Customers who bought this also bought that..." A couple of years back, when I had to order a copy of my Bessie biography from Amazon, they said that people who bought it also bought a certain electric broom! I didn't make that up

Thank you, Larry.

Larry, you make some good points. When Clint Eastwood made the mistake of using that awful Chan woman as his consultant, the result was Bird with a disproportionate focus on drugs, when Susanne DePasse based her script on what Louis McKay told her, the story was also derailed—both "consultants" were opportunists who had used the subject to advance their own agenda. Unfortunately, the tabloid approach sells books. I wrestled with all that as I wrote Bessie, but concluded (perhaps justified in my own mind) that telling it like it was is paramount, as is including the good with the bad.Billie and Bird were done a disservice. I am also reminded of the 1972 Warner Brothers readers report on Bessie, written by someone who—having read the galley proofs prior to publication—concluded that this was not recommended film material, because “Bessie Smith was not on drugs, and this is not the five-handkerchief stuff that ‘Lady Sings the Blues’ is made of.” We saw the same wrongful approach in Ken Burns' outrageously misdirected TV series, Jazz, and I'm afraid the mindset that creates these wrongly focused tales is not going to go away soon. That said, I think the Sonny Clark piece is interesting, but I also see why you look upon it as a bad sign of things to come from Stephenson.

Love the saintly trumpeter. Gabriel?

Link corrected Sorry about that—not your browser, just a wrong paste on my part.

My good friend, Danny DEEP sent me this link, which is well worth pursuing—if you haven't already done so.

"This would be in the public domain if it weren't for the continued extension of the term of copyright. Where is it going end? Perpetual copyright? Is that what you want? This company has already enjoyed windfall profits from the extensions. This should have already been in the public domain." Yes, the company has made rather large amounts of money on this material, but, rather than see it enter the public domain, I think it would make sense to shift royalty payments to the artists and/or their estates. These—with very few exceptions—are the largely uncompensated victims of record industry greed. I'm sorry, but, as consumers, we don't deserve a penny of that money—the creative people earned it, we didn't.

No you don't!

Good to see you back, Rolf. You were missed.

Orrin was always second banana at Bill Grauer Productions.

My blog has had a link to this for about a year. The photos are great and so is the story behind them.

To quote the great Gertrude "Ma" Rainey: "If you don't believe I'm sinkin', look what a hole I'm in!" Very depressing.

Let us by all means express our unhappiness, even dismay. The LofC is going to digitize and preserve great sounds that form an important part of our musical heritage! I shed silent tears when I heard this news—future generations will be cursed by the mere fact that these priceless recordings will be preserved. Oh, how happy we all were in 2008, when we learned that irreplaceable audio masters—an important part of the Universal library—had been reduced to molten metal and ashes. I did a little celebratory dance and my high was still intense when the news turned out to be wrong. I found myself wondering if there might not be some benevolent arsonist lurking about to make our dreams come true. Alas, there wasn't, but hope has been renewed and we can only fervently pray that the LofC botches up the job and succeeds in destroying this material. Of course, one cringes at the thought of considerable amounts of tax money being spent on all this noise—money that could have been used to kill and maim innocent people on the other side of the world, money that could have been used in the name of glorious freedom for white folks everywhere. Ah, but I transgress.... Damn you, Library of Congress!

It isn't bizarre, it does not make juvenile use of four-letter words, but I have always rather liked The Louisiana Toe Ticklers (and wondered if they ever had plain old, down-to-eart Toe jams). Some might find their music a bit corny.

A stranger who wanders into this forum from the outside might either be terribly impressed, shocked, or outraged by what he/she sees re some of the regulars.