Larry Kart

48 tracks, all but the first five are big band. And even the nonet sounds rather big-bandish. P.S. Dig the announcements of what else jazz-wise is going to be broadcast live on these major radio networks (NBC and CBS) in the upcoming weeks. Lots of everything -- from Blakey to the Maynard Ferguson big band to Bobby Hackett's sextet to Sarah Vaughan and all stops in between.

Don't know the Pinnock, but why the heck would anyone want Hogwood? I'd go for Karl Bohm (and at about $3.50/disc): https://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Symphonies-Wolfgang-Amadeus/dp/B000G7599Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1495826482&sr=1-1&keywords=mozart+symphonies++bohm

Yes, "titty-boom" is what Pres said he wanted from his drummers. What Osie does on many of those RCA dates fits that phrase in another way; it's a tippy-toe, more or less circular in feel way of drumming (the polite ride cymbal beat sounds like "titty") , with a fair number of dumpy, even at times IMO rather square, tom-tom punctuations (the "boom"). Again, more or less circular and/or enclosed in feel, not linear or leaning forwards -- almost at times as though Johnson were playing a club date or backing a lounge act. Certainly not Blakey-esque, which wouldn't have fit those musical situations of course, but also far from Kenny Clarke-like, which would have fit them quite well. In fact, when the aforementioned swing-to-bop Shadow Wilson shows up on some of those early neo-Basie RCA small group dates, it seems to me that there's a significant difference in style and degree of propulsion. In any case, my point above was that Osie Johnson on these Pettiford performances sounds like quite another drummer from the one on all those RCA dates -- loose, boldly aggressive. linear in feel, and often swinging darn hard. I've always assumed by the way that in addition to drumming abilities/style per se, Johnson got all those studio gigs during that demanding maybe three-or-more-dates-per-24 hours era because a) he was highly reliable in every respect, especially in terms of always showing up on time and in condition to play; b) he was a good reader and had a compositional mind himself, important if in-studio adjustments needed to be made; c) he was a very compatible guy on a personal level -- witness the bond he formed with the three other members of what was virtually the house rhythm section of the NYC studio scene of that time: Hank Jones, Mil Hinton, and Barry Galbraith. BTW, Re: what Big Beat Steve said above about Osie Johnson's playing on all those neo-Basie dates, just imagine what they would have sounded like if the drummer had been the superb and no-less stylistically compatible Gus Johnson, who certainly was no 'show-off "bomb thrower."

Working my way through Disc One. Band and charts (both very good and individual) are familiar from Pettiford's ABC-Paramount albums and other recordings of his. Sound is pretty good for airshots. So far, I'm struck by how much freer Gryce sounds than he does on his studio recordings of the time, and also how hip and aggressive Osie Johnson is, contrary to my impression of his IMO rather titty-boom playing on many of those RCA dates he was on. Before I looked at the personnel, I felt sure that the drummer on the nonet tracks that begin Disc One must be Shadow Wilson. Art Farmer is in very good form (e.g. on "Speculation") -- so lucid. Nice snatches of JR Monterose, though I'm surprised that the scholarly Noel Cohen refers to him in the notes as J.R. Monterose. His given name was Frank Anthony Monterose Jr. -- the "JR" stands for "Junior."

Borrowed that from Groucho? -- IIRC "I shot an elephant in my pajamas."

Yes -- Bill Barron! There are/were many ways to skin a cat, and the living history of this music does not necessarily fit a "progressive" template.

I do give a gift to our regular mail carrier at Xmas because they're careful and pleasant, but yesterday a sub carrier left no mail in our exterior mail box, which is quite unusual. I chased him down, still in my pajamas, as he strolled down the other side of the street, and when I caught up to him he forthrightly admitted (i.e. he already knew this) that he had put our mail into the interior mail slot of the house just to the north of us because (he explained) he had assumed that the house numbers on our street went along in different increments than was the case (this rather than actually looking at them). When I suggested that he go back and try to recover our mail from the house to the north of us, he was very reluctant to try but finally did so, and fortunately that person was at home and gave us our mail.

It seems to me that English (perhaps better in this case than British?) men and women of McPartland's middle-class social background (and above, too, and below as well) often are (or were) given to understatement and implication when expressing themselves. In the latter case, I'm also thinking of conveying one's meaning through tone of voice rather than literal choice of words. I recall a long telephone interview I did with my favorite novelist of the 20th Century Anthony Powell (1905-2000). During its course, Powell said the word "yes" more than a few times; and depending on his tone of voice that word meant anything from "Of course -- doesn't everyone knows that?; let's get on with it" to "That's interesting; I've never thought of it quite that way, please elaborate" to a good many points between those poles, if indeed those were the poles. BTW even the "let's get on with it" pole didn't seemed at all rude, just economical in expression and perfectly precise. The assumption was that this is how people who are on the same wavelength tend to communicate; that Powell felt right off, even though he was English and I was American and some 40 years younger, that we were enough on same wavelength that he could express himself in this habitual manner was pleasing to me. I'm reminded of the incident that gave Powell the title of "A Question of Upbringing," the first volume of his twelve-volume cycle of novels "A Dance to the Music of Time." Powell and a friend were riding in a car late one night down the Great West Road when they suddenly saw another car approaching them head-on at a high rate of speed. In that brief moment, Powell's friend, who was behind the wheel, said,"This will be a question of upbringing." The crash was avoided -- I don't recall how, but I assume that Powell's friend chose either to swerve to left or to the right, while the other driver either continued straight ahead or swerved to the other side. In any case, the prior remark of Powell's friend was a kind of understated semi-joke about the fact that one makes such potentially life-determining choices on the basis of acquired habits (if indeed one isn't just paralyzed by fear and makes no choice at all). P.S. Part of that semi-joke was its implicit acknowledgement that probably no habits or upbringing could fully prepare one for the grimmer potential aspects of what might happen next, even though one might well fall back on those habits of understatement rather than scream bloody murder.

From my friend Bill Kirchner: 'The Rockland Palace “Lester Leaps In" clocks at about 4:20 -- all Bird in-and-out heads and a stunning solo. That’s about as long a recorded live solo as we have for Parker -- much longer is unlikely.'

"Reprise" rec. live at Birdland in Sept. 1998. McPartland born March 1918. I dig what you're saying about MM, but I liked this album for pretty specific musical reasons, which I'll try to outline after I listen again. Not that they're strange/mysterious, but they are a bit subtle and elusive -- in part because they involve MM not doing some things that a lot of pianists have been doing for a good while, especially harmonically, and because they also involve her doing some things (albeit in individual ways) that some pianists of earlier eras used to do but that almost no one does anymore. That said, by 1998 there was nothing retro about her, if there ever was. (Time out for a bit of re-listening.) The main thing for me about MM was how she thought from the bass line upwards. In this, she might be thought of as an unlikely cross between Jess Stacy (I wouldn't be surprised if Stacy was an early model) and Al Haig (IIRC Allen Lowe mentioned Haig in reference to MM a while ago), with maybe some vintage Sir Charles Thompson or Clarence Profit thrown in. Listen to any piece on "Reprise" and home in not only on MM's left hand but in particular on the lowest notes her left hand is outlining in relation to all the rest, and I think you'll find a unique (the Stacy factor perhaps) clarity and cleanness of bass-line driven melodic/harmonic thinking. Within MM's left-hand chords, or her single note left-hand lines, there's often a kind of deep bell-like "ring" or "bong" effect -- a sense that certain privileged, semi-isolated notes are being singled out, harmonically and through touch, so as to vibrate upwards into the overall texture, an almost Monk-like effect, if you will. Further, the touch that does a good deal of the emphasis of those "privileged notes" is quite something -- as precise as Haig's but with a relaxed spare evenness to it that for me brings Sir Charles to mind (or his model Basie for that matter). Again, though, I don't think that MM intends to or is summoning up or referring to the jazz past. Though not overtly boppish, by 1998 her time, a la Haig, is certainly modern, no hint of East Side Manhattan in the mid-'50s rhythmic complacency. And getting back to her bass-line driven melodic/harmonic thinking, when those bass-line "bells" of hers begin to ring, they ripple up through and shape the whole texture of her pianism in a unique manner. Was she a great player? Well, for one thing, as Jim may have implied above, MM almost always gives one the sense of a certain reserve, that she's playing within herself. Which is not to say that she's "ladylike" -- rather, I'd guess that is has to do with her British origin, of a national temperamental tendency toward implication and understatement. But she was, at best, one heck of a subtle, individual pianist.

No, never saw her live, I'm sorry to say.

This "live' reunion of McPartland's Hickory House Trio (Bill Crow, Joe Morello) is excellent. I think MM got better with age.

I you like Candoli -- sure. No annotation BTW, just tune and personnel listings. Transfers seem OK so far. On the moral front? That's up to each of us. Pretty sure that there is no legit way to get, say, "Cool Gabriels," nor do I think there will ever be.

Picked up this baby today -- some of it familiar to me, some new to my ears. Bemused right off by the new-to-me first album "Cool Gabriels," made for an RCA subsidiary label in 1954 with a rhythm-and-seven trumpet lineup: Candoli, Nick Travis, Don Stratton, Dick Sherman, Phil Sunkel, Al DeRisi, and Bernie Glow. Inventive work by all the soloists (Glow and DeRisi don't solo), though without a scorecard it can be hard to who the soloists are -- fortunately, if you google "Cool Gabriels," there is a site that tells who's who. Conte is a bit on the brassy side at times on album two, with Claude Williamson, Max Bennett, and Stan Levey, but I'd forgotten that Williamson is in terrific form here. All or most of the others I already know. P.S. Probably because it has an Andy Warhol cover drawing and also because few copies now exist, I see that an original LP "Cool Gabriels" goes for $1,250. P.P.S. Glow does take a solo on one track.

Thanks to all.

Sorry if this had been done before, but... Also, Von's shoes look rather spiffy for this setting.

"It is unlikely ever to be used to decorate the walls of jazzy bars in the way that Herman Leonard’s seductively smoky photographs regularly did in the 1990s." "Jazzy bars"? What is Mr. Dyer thinking of? OTOH, if there are many or any jazzy bars, it seems likely that that is where Dyer spends a lot of his time. IIRC, one famous Leonard image (of Fats Navarro and Allen Eager with Tadd Dameron at the Royal Roost?) is or was on the wall of a well-known jazz venue (don't recall which one, someone probably will), but I'm pretty sure that it was installed there well before the 1990s.

"George Kelly Plays the Music of Don Redman" (Stash), rec. 1984, is excellent. Kelly had his own thing going for sure. In an interview he said something like "I think like Lester Young and play like Coleman Hawkins." My memory is that his phrasing has an attractively "talky"quality to it, a rhythmically compulsive "bounce" feel. Not as much so as altoist Pete Brown, maybe akin to Julian Dash. In any case, my sense was that this came from being a player who was formed in the late '20s/early '30s, though there's nothing about Kelly that was retro. https://www.amazon.com/Plays-Music-Redman-George-Kelly/dp/B01LVUBWF3/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1494713417&sr=1-1&keywords=george+kelly+don+redman

Shipping notification for the Condon set.

Don't miss him here:

Recently picked up a Euro box of Mundell Lowe recordings. On the three or so albums in that compilation with Duvivier, he is magnificent -- and very well recorded, too. https://www.amazon.com/7-Classic-Albums-LOWE-MUNDELL/dp/B018WS9ILI/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1494623193&sr=1-1&keywords=mundell+lowe

As a longtime Weiskopf admirer, I somewhat recklessly -- but that’s how I tend to behave in such instances -- bought all three recent Weiskopf albums, all on the Positone label — “Overdrive” (2014) "Open Road” (2015) , and “The Way You Say It” (2016). Sampling them in chronological order, my thought so far is, Is this the same guy I knew from all those Criss Cross albums, the most recent of those (of the ones I have) being the marvelous “See the Pyramid” (2010)? Either because of how he’s being recorded or on his own hook, Walt’s sound seems to have changed quite a lot and not for the better IMO — all through his Criss Cross recordings there was a lovely and very expressive “grain” to his sound, no matter how intense things got otherwise, while on these Positone albums, with the partial exception of “The Way You Say It,” it sounds like the mic has been jammed right into the bell of Walt’s horn and/or there's a wall right behind him — it all sounds harsh and blunt and airless, like Walt’s sound is being forced through a narrow tube, with most of the overtones missing. FWIW, all three albums were recorded at the same Brooklyn studio, Acoustic Recording, by the same engineer, Nick O’Toole. Again, so far, I hear some improvement on “The Way You Say It,” but no matter how I fiddle with the tone controls on my amp, the other two albums are close to unlistenable. Can’t imagine that Walt suddenly has altered the way he plays this much and in this direction, but then I also can’t imagine that when he hears himself on these albums he can’t hear the difference and/or finds the way he sounds here to be to his taste. Does anyone else know Weiskopf's Positone recordings and hear the same sort of thing on them that I hear? LK

This album of contrafacts and standards -- thus the title) is worth seeking out, some terrific Billy Drewes:

Listened to all of "No Greater Love" while driving down to last night's CSO concert (Muti conducting Brahms 1&2, excellent). I take back what I said or implied above about Hedges not being in top form on this one. He is.

Just ordered the Condon, as much for Dan Morgenstern's liner notes as for the music. I have much of it on a JSP box and various other discs. Also ordered the James P., even though I already have a good deal of what's in it. Don't see anything else that cries out to me except for maybe the Woody Shaw Muse set. Again, I have most or all of it on single discs, but is the sound quality of the Mosaic a big improvement over prior LP and CD issues? One that's gone that I found to be a blessing is the Lunceford set. What a fabulous band, and so much of what on that set was new to me. Sets like that are what Mosaic is/was all about.