Larry Kart

Never had any use for Lloyd.

I think it was Mrs. Goldberg who opted for the countertops.

Goldberg comes awake, says "Where am I?" Doctor: "You're in the hospital. You've been a terrible car wreck. We've been able to save your life, but I have some bad news; your private parts are gone. "On the other hand, we have a top notch plastic surgeon on our staff who can replace what's missing; his fee for doing this is substantial however -- $1,000 an inch. Why don't you go home and talk this over with your wife and get back to me in a week." The following week. Doctor: "So what's the verdict?" Goldberg: "We're getting granite counter tops."

His writing for sax soli always caught my ear. He was Julie Andrews' music director and did an album with her and his band called "Jewels" where she served as a wordless vocalist sort of ala Johnny Hodges.

i like Florence's writing, though my friend Bill Kirchner finds it very white bread. I see what he means, but I still like it. And it's a very good group of players. I'm especially fond of "Magic Time." Nick Ceroli was a fine drummer.

You'd have to hear the track to get the joke, if that's what it is. Robinson's solo is sinuous and seductive more or less, but he's playing a contrabass sax. Put those things together and you have a 500 pound Cleopatra.

Exactly 137 pounds.

Hey -- I wrote the liner notes to "Inside Out" and had a good time doing so. I particularly like my notion that the huge sound that Scott Robinson's contrabass sax gets on Sandke's "Plumbing the Depths" suggests "what Cleopatra might be like if she weighed 500 pounds."

I know Basile from the album he did with Sam Dillon and found him to be a good player and less of a Pepper Adams sound-alike than Smuiyan.

I agree. As for Quinichette, the Prezian model is obvious, and yet no one would mistake Lady Q for anyone but himself. His connection to Prez was a deep soul connection, so to speak -- a way Quinichette found to express the unique musician/human being he was. A strange thing, perhaps unparalleled in any art, but there it is, at least as I see it. A key here perhaps is that Quinichette's model was not vintage Basie Prez, the Prez that virtually all Prez disciples bounced off of, but the " increasingly oblique, more or less "wounded Prez of the mid- to late-'40s, BTW, Dan Morgenstern once pointed out to me that the vintage styles/approaches of Zoot Sims and Al Cohn can be traced pretty directly to two specific Prez solos. I checked it out at the time, and damned if he wasn't right. One of them was "Blow Top," don't recall the other one. Nor do I recall which Prez solo, according to Dan, inspired which man.

Your correction is misguided; we don't disagree. I didn't mention "Cheesecake" because my point was how brilliantly Griff plays on the other two-tenor joust, "Blues Up and Down."

Dexter Gordon -- Live at Carnegie Hall Very good late Dexter (1977 IIRC) -- very well recorded and the Cables, Reid, Gladden rhythm section has the pots on. On one of the two tenor battle tracks with Johnny Griffin ("Blues Up and Down") I give it to Griffin on points -- he's really inspired.

Whoa! I ordered the album.

I knew about C.C. Siegel but not Hunt Peters.

Trombonist Hunt Peters takes several nice solos on the album. Anyone know who he is?

This 1965 Atlantic album, coupled now with a worthwhile but not great Atlantic album of the same vintage, "And Then Again," is very close to great in my book. Line up is Thad, Hank Mobley, Dollar Brand, Steve James (el. piano), Donald Moore, bass. Only drawback is that sound quality is less than vivid -- a remastering would be desireable, maybe some dial twiddling will do the trick. Thad at that period sounds like the trumpet giant ("Bartok with valves" in Mingus' apt phrase from the late '50s) that for some reason he arguably never quite became (too much attention paid to writing/band leading perhaps and/or just not enough evidence on record of Thad soloing at length?), but the adventurousness and intensity of everything he plays here pretty much takes my breath away. "Who is that masked man?" one feels like saying. Mobley is in top notch form, as are Elvin and Brand. Can't believe that this date sat on my shelf unheard for so long.

I think someone else recently mentioned this but I just listened for the first time to this 1961 Riverside album (now OJC) with Thad, Hank, Frank Foster, Frank Wess, and Art Davis. What a gem. Three fine Thad originals — “Lady Luck, “Buzz-At, and "Ray-El." Elvin gets his solo spots, sounds terrific, and is well recorded. Two trio tracks. A very happy co-operative date.

I'm a great admirer of Mickey's music. Hope that this performance can be preserved.

Sad. Fine player, Fire and soul over a long career,

Emo Philips took to Twitter on October 6 to express his feelings about losing Judy. “My favorite Judy Tenuta story: after a show, the comic who opened for her is driving her to their next gig; as they’re passing cornfields at 2 AM he asks, ‘So what did you think of my act’ & she replies, ‘Ask me again when we get a bit closer to town.'”

I think I gave Judy her first review (in the Chicago Tribune) way back when. She was very funny , smart, and inventive.

Check out Chuck Wayne's "String Fever" on You Tube (the album itself goes for almost $50). Gorgeous trumpet solos on some tracks from Don Joseph.

It does sound like my E.A. stance. To which I would say that there are degrees of emulation and Smulyan IMO crosses the line, in part because Adams' style was so distinctive. An exception FWIW to my Smulyan and E.A. stances would be my taste for Grant Stewart. I've thought about why for me he is an exception, and I think it's because his models are more various (both Mobley and Rollins) than one track (more or less) and because I always get the feeling that Stewart is being personally inventive in the moment, even when an outright Rollins-ism creeps in.

I've never seen why a guy who almost photographically reproduces Adams' style was someone I wanted to listen to. In fact the album TTK was looking for was the one that really turned me off on Smulyan, who couldn't play a ballad to save his life IMO. I bought it used because Bob Belden wrote the string arrangements, and I was curious about how they'd sound. OK but not good enough to make up for the rest.

Some very good Hawkins here, from a period where not much has been reissued. Fine Dan Morgenstern notes.