Larry Kart

James P. arrived today.

LPs bought over the weekend at a used record store in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The Milt band is comprised of Teddy Edwards, Cedar Walton, Ray Brown, and Billy Higgins. Walton is in really fine form. The Hawes-Solal duo is accompanied by Pierrre Michelot and Kenny Clarke.

Monk to me sounds here more like he did on Prestige than he did on Riverside, which to me is a big plus. Can it be primarily that Tom Nola's engineering and studio resemble that of RVG versus that of Ray Fowler? Robin Kelley's account in the notes of the ups and down of Monk's life at the time do not suggest that he was likely to have been in a great mood, but he sure sounds ... vivid. Also, as Brian Priestley points out in his notes on the music, Rouse sounds very fresh here. Further, the team of Sam Jones and Art Taylor really takes care of business, especially SJ.

Email I sent to a friend: Got the Monk soundtrack set the other day. Exceptionally vivid playing and very well recorded. Thanks for the nudge/tip. For some reason the album left me feeling rather sad, though — perhaps it was the contrast between all that vividness, the number of years that have passed since then, and the fact that everyone, or virtually everyone, involved is no longer among the living.

Had a dream last night where the fight was taking place in a swimming pool. McGregor swam over to Mayweather and hit him just once with a looping left in or just below the ribcage, and Mayweather slid right down the side of the pool to the bottom, totally stunned, badly hurt, limp and perhaps even unconscious. Bout over, rescue operations commence. You heard it here first. As they say -- Oh, THAT dream.

That's a NICE body, attractively posed.

subtitle: "The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues." Not a jazz book but a record industry and societal shift book. Near incredible, down-to-earth stuff about how things went down in the golden age of r&b. Great stuff on Atlantic, Leiber/Stoller et al. Chuck might enjoy this, as should Allen Lowe and many others here. Morris Levy is a prominent member of the cast.

I can't recall my specific reservations right now without listening to the various albums (I don't have the Beehive box), but I do recall, during some talk about it here, Chuck Nessa saying something along the lines that he'd give a lot to be able to remix those recordings. Further, while none of those dates would have been made without the instigating presence of Jim Neumann, who was Beehive, I would have given a lot to have Chuck rather than Jim select the personnel and be the in-studio producer. I would say that there's a kind of looseness that's basically welcome because it's inseparable or close to inseparable from an atmosphere of genuineness, and there's a looseness that just loose -- as though the producer either didn't want to or thought he ought not to intervene here and there in the course of the date in order to tighten things up. I should add that Chuck and Jim were friends, so there was nothing pissy about what Chuck said.

Dick Katz's notes do ID who solos when -- e.g. on "Blue Monk" Kai takes the first chorus, J.J. the second; on "Judy" J.J. takes the first chorus, followed by Kai, etc. I'll have to listen myself later on to see how those IDs line up by left channel/right channel, but my subjective impression FWIW always has been that Kai (the ex-Kentonite) was the more brash and forceful of the two, J.J. the more linear and lyrical.

I like these:

Hank's solo on "Nica's Dream"! The Hankenstein.

Merged.

First, Mosaic isn't just "any small to medium size company." The problems you describe may prove to be fatal to Mosaic, but the company's mission and track record in fulfilling that mission over the years are unique. Second, where did I say you were "more concerned with shipping than ... with the music"? I said that you "placed a high value on shipping," which clearly seems to be the case -- that's all. You're available?

So go deal with an outfit whose shipping service you prefer and forgo access to what Mosaic offers. I'm not saying that Mosaic is perfect in their shipping service, but, as Steve says, they outsourced their shipping operations. Why? Probably because they thought they could save/needed to save money there in order to keep doing things that they thought of as more important to the overall quality of the operation. If so, then this wouldn't be "100% about shipping. Absolutely nothing else!" It would be about choices Mosaic probably made that you don't like and think were unwise. In that last, you may be right; we shall see. They will lose the business of some of their potential customers, such as you, who place a high value on shipping service but may continue to retain the business of customers who prize the quality of Mosaics sets and are prepared to put up with shipping service that is less than ideal. I should add that I've never in all these years had a problem with Mosaic's shipping such as the ones you describe -- " lost orders, orders shipped to the wrong customer with said wrong customer either being instructed to simply keep the product, or return it at Mosaic's cost." Maybe if I had... OTOH, when I ordered something from Presto Classical in England several years ago, my credit card info was nabbed somewhere along the way and used to set up a porn site in Eastern Europe at a cost of a good many thousand dollars. I did get the charges erased eventually, but that was not at all amusing.

Fine. But did the "little boutique business in England" from which you acquired that rare Dolphy CD have anything to do with (legitimately?) acquiring that material and annotatiing in a way that I assume you found satisfactory? Or was their role, and their expenses, essentially limited to taking orders and processing them? You do see that there may be further "realities" here "that cannot be ignored"?

Pretty much how I see it. Mosaic is not selling razor blades or toilet paper; they're selling something that many of the likes of us dearly want and that was, at least at Mosaic's level of quality and in many cases just outright, available nowhere else (except in latter days, from pirates). Plus, if anyone here has had any direct contact with Cuscuna, Scott Wenzel, and the late Charlie Lourie, one knows that they are ( in Lourie's case, were) terrific people who are totally devoted "to [making] Jazz music for which the owners of Mosaic Records have a deep passion available to passionate listeners." Further, let us not forget the likely very positive effect of what Mosaic has done over all these years on the lives and sensibilities of thousands of people around the world, who have become intimately familiar with beautiful, important music that they otherwise might not have heard and who also learned a great deal about that music's meaning and context (those booklets).

That's a very good one, but the first three are dynamite and more or less form a trilogy.

There's a muted trumpet solo, I think it's on "You're Not the Kind," that's probably my favorite Lee Morgan solo ever, just one continuous gorgeous swinging line. And the team of Philly Joe and Percy! Is this their only record together? And Golson and Bryant!

The guitar of Nachtmusik #2 gave rise to Schoenberg's Serenade. S. went on about Mahler's use of the guitar in that movement with much eloquence. “...{T]he entire movement is based on [the guitar’s] sonority. It belongs to it from the start, a living organ in the piece: not perhaps the heart, but the eyes, their gaze giving the face its characteristic aspect. We are very close here, but in a modern context, to the classical composers who built whole works and movements around the sonority of a particular instrumental group."

Just listened to Tilson Thomas' 1999 Mahler 7th with the LSO. Perhaps the best interpretation I've ever heard, and a superb recording job too. The 7th probably is my favorite Mahler symphony, in part because it's kind of a stepchild to the others in the eyes of a fair number of Mahlerians. Also, I recall the story of Schoenberg and, I think, Berg and Webern as well listening to the Vienna premiere with ears wide open, thinking something like "Mahler wrote this for us." P.S. "Arnold Schoenberg, certainly not a proliferator nor fan of uninspired correctness, was famously “converted” into a Mahlerian by the Seventh. He showered Mahler with praise after hearing the work’s premiere on Sept. 19, 1908. “'As for which movement I liked best: All of them!' said the not normally effusive man, who was soon to unleash Erwartung on the world. 'From minute to minute I felt happier and warmer. And it did not let go of me for a single moment. In the mood right to the end. And everything struck me as pellucid. Finally, at the first hearing I perceived so many formal subtleties, while always able to follow a main line. It was an extraordinarily great treat.'”

Glad that they let Roscoe speak for himself. A heck of a lot more information and context in what he said than there would have been in almost any "profile."

Tovey not only wrote about music but he also was a composer. This piano trio and solo violin sonata are fascinating -- the former like a lost work by Brahms, the latter unique. Performances are excellent. Haven't listened to the piano quartet yet:

Great to hear Jeb again, back in town from Boston for a visit. Mars was strong. Phillips, the leader, new to me, reminded me some of Joe Morris. There may be louder drummers than Hamid Drake, but probably no one hits a drum harder -- if that distinction makes sense. Hamid and Jeb were really locked in.

9:00PM at the Hungry Brain, 2319 W Belmont Chicago Edge Ensemble : Hamid Drake, Jeb Bishop, Mars Williams, Dan Phillips, Krzysztof Pabian