Larry Kart

What a lovely mellow trio album this is from the three men who backed Betty Carter for a good while: Simmons, Lisle Atkinson, and Al Harewood. Beautifully recorded by David Baker, too. Title tune and two other tracks are slow and bluesy, there's an excellent version of "Confirmation," one of the few readings of Johnny Mandel's "Emily" I've ever liked, and more. Simmons had his own voicings, perhaps akin to those of fellow Chicagoan Chris Anderson. A gem. You'll want the CD version, which has extra tracks. https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/normansimmons3

“He acted like everybody worked for him and that he was above others,” said John Weinreich, 48, a former executive casino host at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, where he saw Mr. Paddock frequently from 2012 to 2014. When Mr. Paddock wanted food while he was gambling, he wanted it immediately and would order with more than one server if the meal did not arrive quickly enough. Guys who order from more than one server syndrome -- a dead giveaway.

The way he planned and executed what he did seems too methodical to be in the bag of "go fucking crazy." Also, there's lots of other mass murderers, and this guy's pattern seems not to fit previous ones. When/if we do find out more, I'll bet it'll be a head scratcher.

Admire Levey's drumming and the way he pulled himself up by his bootstraps early on (his father was a bad dude) and then as an adult dealing with addiction, but this was a pleasant but rather thin in substance and at times repetitious book, I thought.

Surely you have this album. If you do, you have more Abney. If you don't have this album, you need to get it.

Unbelievable. Didn't see that coming.

Yes, indeed -- at least IMO.

Just picked a compilation of Maynard Ferguson’s two EmArcy jam session albums from 1954, with the likes of Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Herb Geller, Milt Bernhart, Bob Gordon, Russ Freeman, Claude Williamson, Curtis Counce, John Simmons, Shelly Manne and Max Roach. What caught my ear was Russ Freeman’s solo on “Night Flight” (at the 5:13 mark), with Manne breaking up the time behind him for a while, as the two of them liked to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1lRHA1EMtQ Also interesting is Shank’s rather Desmond-like solo on “Somebody Loves Me” (the first solo on the track): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H6FeWXTj5U I much prefer the early Shank to the “hot” Shank of later years.

Ran into Preston circa 1969 when I was doing an interview with Zappa and the Mothers, among the first I'd ever done at Down Beat. Zappa couldn't have been a bigger dick -- utterly unresponsive/fluffing me off, and finally he just walked away after a few minutes. Maybe I wasn't, in my relative callowness, an interviewer in the Orriana Fallaci class, but Zappa was just getting off on being a ass----. This was by the side of a outdoor pool at a suburban Chicago hotel, where the band was staying before playing at Ravinia Park that night. Preston, who was sitting nearby, saw what happened and after Zappa left, he proceeded to gather much of the rest of the band, who had been lounging by the pool, to talk to me. Got all the stuff I needed from them and from the concert that night. IIRC, Preston was very shrewd and bright. Also, it was fairly clear that he and the rest of the band regarded Zappa with no fondness whatsoever.

Speaking of the brilliant Bobby Pratt (on "Swinging Scots" he sounds at times like a cross between Bobby Hackett and Conrad Gozzo), let this be a lesson to us all: http://henrybebop.co.uk/bpratt.htm On the other side of coin, there's Tommy McQuater: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/jan/26/obituaries.mainsection

I believe so, but I didn't keep track of him after this album, nor was I a follower of Heath.

Budd has several ferocious solos on this Maynard Ferguson album:

Bought this album when it came out back in 1957, when I heard it a record store and liked it. Then it went away, to linger very faintly in the memory, and now it's back in my hands and head, thanks to the Ronnie Ross compilation depicted below. (Funny BTW how you recall every note of a solo or a chart you haven't heard in 60 years just as you hear those notes again.) In any case this is a perhaps surprisingly close to superb neo-Basie album that features, as the title suggests, British jazz musicians of Scottish origin, many of them then-members of the Ted Heath Band. Keating's warm, relaxed writing is quite something IMO; check out this track: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=johnny+keating+headin+north The soloists are quite good and quite individual: baritone saxophonist Ross, trombonist George Chisholm, tenormen Duncan Lamont and Tommy Whittle (somewhat Ammons-like at times), and no less than four top-drawer trumpeters -- Jimmy Deuchar, Eddie Blair, Bobby Pratt, and Tommy McQuater. Speaking of which, if anyone has this album in its original form (it was on Dot in the U.S.), I'd love to know the solo order. Deuchar is easy to recognize, as are Lamont and Whittle, and I think I can identify the fat-toned Pratt, but I'd especially like to know when Blair and McQuater solo.

Anyone know this French-Canadian pianist-composer-bandleader? A few years ago I ran across the album "Blue Cenre" that the track below (the line is based on a Lester Young solo) comes from and was intrigued by their personal translation of Konitz-Marsh-Tristano. A second album, also interesting, had a somewhat different flavor. The title of this piece BTW means roughly "He who f----s s--t up." I prefer the cooler, more Tristano-ish version from the album, which also is on YouTube, but for some reason I couldn't embed it. The album version is on Spotify, along with other stiff from Gagnon.

Maybe standup straight into the board, but there's also very little bass sound period, and it would have been useful if there had been some string bass sound to contrast with Martino's rather "from the box" timbre. Nonetheless a good record -- not only for Martino but also for some perky Gonzola R., Lewis Nash (who is quite interventionist with much success), and Lovano in his muttering under his breath mode.

Does Christian McBride play electric bass here? Kinda sounds like he does; if so, I wish he hadn't, though the overall results are pleasing.

Well, for better or for worse, I did spray some Deoxit into the narrow inner and outer openings around the volume knob. Then I took a folded strip of typing paper, poked it into those openings and ran it around. The paper came away black at first.

Kevin and Stefan -- I think that's it! I worked the volume knob back and forth a number of times, and things sound fine now. If the problem should return, I'll take the unit in and they can remove the volume knob and clean underneath. Thinking back, the unit has been sitting in my basement since 2009, and no basement is free from dirt/grit, etc. Thank you and everyone else who has weighed in over the life of this thread. And cancel the exorcism.

Many thanks, Kevin. Now I get it.

I'm fairly dense in these areas, Kevin, so please bear with me. Why would what you've suggested (use the pre-amp outputs to drive the external amp amp) be different diagnostically than just hooking up their loaner amp to my speakers? If the problem doesn't go away when I do that, and it does go away when I do what you suggest, what does that tell me about what's wrong equipment-wise? In particular, what part of my system do I then need to get repaired and in what way, or what part of my system do I probably need to replace altogether? And what if the problem goes away in both cases or in neither case?

Update: Amp checked out by tech at store, driving other speakers, everything sounds fine (heard the results myself). Speakers checked out by tech at store (different store, both high-end places), everything sounds fine (heard the results myself). Speakers hooked up at home, same gargly problem. Also, using new Rocket 33 speaker cables. Tried hooking up everything to a different wall outlet, no change. Unhooked my power-line conditioner, no change. Sound through headphones is still as it should be. I'm baffled, as is everyone else out there who's tried to help. Audio Consultants suggests that their tech, for a price, could come out to the house, listen, and perhaps detect something that everyone has missed, or they could lend me an amp and see if that makes a difference. I'm thinking of an exorcism.

About Bud Powell and Hawes: There's a wide variety of less than top-drawer Powell recordings, and some of them, flawed though they are or may be, reveal aspects of his sensibility that almost no one who cares about Powell would want to be without. If we agree, Steve, that "Jordu" is less than top-drawer Hawes, I don't hear anything in that performance that tells me something about Hamp other than what he sounds like on a night when IMO the dial was turned down. Hawes, unlike Powell, just wasn't that inherently various a player, though I'll take that back in part to account for the somewhat Bill Evans-influenced period that Hawes got into in the mid 1960s, albeit he turned that influence in a very personal direction,, particularly on the album "Here and Now." Allen: I hear what you're saying about those live Hawes performances from the '50s; I just picked "Yardbird Suite" because it was good enough to make my point (or so I thought) and was available on YouTube. Even in those salad days for Hawes, he favored certain intervals and figures, but the rhythmic agitation (if you will) of his playing, the sheer "snap, crackle, and pop" of it, was pretty special.

OK, some examples. Hawes' reading of "Jordu" (first link below) begins in a somewhat promising fashion (though is there a small uncharacteristic stumble from Hawes in the theme statement?), but then the articulation in his solo seems to me to be (by his own standards) rather plodding, while the phrasing is rather airless (Hawes' near-Birdlike use of space while on the run was a trademark). Also, doesn't he get fairly well hung up during his solo on massaging one rather nagging motif over and over? Could it be, though it seems unlikely, that he didn't know the tune that well? By contrast, from the same general period, there's the IMO considerably greater rhythmic brightness and zest of Hawes' playing on "Yardbird Suite," from a band with the same instrumentation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DbM8wOiANI Speaking of that small stumble on the theme statement of "Jordu" and the other things I hear on that tracks and elsewhere on "All Night Session," could it be that Hawes might have been somewhat stoned that night? P:S, What I hear as a small stumble from Hawes on the theme of "Jordu" could be glitch or "burp" in YouTube's transfer of the recording.

Don't have the "All Night Session" albums any more -- maybe I can listen on Spotify or YouTube -- but what I recall is a dispiriting rhythmic logyness, like the whole band was suffering from a bad cold. On some tracks it was like Hawes was trying to make his way through a room full of tapioca pudding.