Larry Kart

Some sample tracks from Dillon's album convinced me. Thanks. Another really good young player (sorry for forgetting to mention him before) is Jason Rigby.

Tardy is very spiritually inclined in a good way.

Sorry -- forgot about Keefe Jackson (a friend as well as a favorite). Also -- Mark Shim (knocked me out in person once, I liked his first album but haven't heard him much on disc since then), and Gregory Tardy. About Alexander, he doesn't outright annoy me, but as long as the music made by the guys he's modeled himself on (and in some cases the guys themselves) are still around, why should I bother? If you dig him, enjoy. Harry Allen -- utterly spineless. And early on (he may have altered his approach in this respect since then) his emulation/imitation of the sound of "Long Island Sound " Stan Getz was among the creepiest things I've ever heard. I know, lots of guys have been heavily influenced by the sounds of Hawkins, Young, Coltrane et al. and managed to come up with something personal, but that particular slice of Getz was so intensely personal to who Getz was at that time that copying it seems to me to be -- well, blech. I ask myself -- you may ask -- why do I like Grant Stewart as much as I do, given how Rollins-esque he can be at times. The answer I come up with is that within that bag (and at one point he clearly was digging Mobley too) he always seems to me to be "in the now," making up coherently swinging melodies that (again, to me) seem to be results of his own thinking/feeling, rather than shuffling through an anthology of his models' favorite licks.

Thumbs down from me on: Eric Alexander (I've already heard it from George Coleman et al.) Harry Allen (blech!) David Murray Tony Malaby Noah Preminger

Add: Jimmy Greene Tim Warfield

Grant Stewart Donny McCaslin (sometimes) Ravi Coltrane Ingrid Laubrock Rich (not Rick) Perry — though at age 63 he’s certainly no youngster Artie Black and Hunter Diamond (they're probably age 30 or less, Indiana U. grads, and they’ve both listened to Warne — and not in that creepy freeze-dried Mark Turner way). They were a highlight of this year’s Chicago Jazz Fest for me: https://blackdiamondchicago.com/about/

Very interesting, but FWIW for me all those latter-day "live" recordings of "Nardis," with those long intros, are the musical equivalent of watching a cocaine-fueled hamster run himself to near death on a wire wheel in a cage -- lots of desperate spinning movement, but Evans never really gets anywhere.

What joy...

No, the others on that Real Gone set are all Granz recordings from the '50s, plus a 1952 one on Capitol with fellow Ellingtonians of the time. Haven't listened to all of them yet, but what I have heard is quite good. I agree that the Summit band was as fine as, maybe better than, the Gibbs band of the time. Bellson's band played out more; to me Gibbs' band always sounded like they were playing Bill Holman charts even when they weren't. Nothing against Holman, but his insistently linear approach often made bands sound somewhat smaller than they were -- again, not a negative, just a matter of chosen style. Certainly those Benny Carter charts on the Bellson album are a joy. On the Granz dates, there's some quite striking Charlie Shavers, if you care for him (and he can be over the top). On one date he and an exuberant Zoot Sims are the horns. Interesting when they trade fours on one track to hear how Zoot reacts to Shavers' flamboyant inventiveness; you can almost here in his responses how Zoot can't quite believe what he's just heard from Shavers. Charlie's chops were unreal. BTW, on the tracks that are drum features or have Bellson solos of some length, I find myself intrigued by his bubbly inventiveness. And does he ever swing.

And he might have been high.

I wouldn't say that that's a flaw in Lenny's hipness, just a verbal typo. And maybe at that point in his life, he'd never even been there. Now if he'd referred to the the Five Spot as the Three Deuces . . .

Someone else mentioned/endorsed this a bit more recently than Berthold, adding that Fresh Sound had put it out with additional small group tracks recorded in the studio a few days after the Summit gig. I just picked it up minus the small group tracks on a Real Gone compilation of seven Bellson albums, and I agree that this is an exceptional album. For one thing, most of the charts are by Benny Carter at the top of his game (those sax-section soli), the band is inspired, as is Bellson (he and bassist Jimmy Bond are locked in), and Joe Maini's several solos are the best I've ever heard from him. Also, the other poster who mentioned this album noted the presence of tenorman Carrington Visor, who in fact plays his ass off when he gets chance.

Rene Urtreger (b.1934) is a world-class player -- Bud Powell-inspired, but he's his own man. A good deal of Urtreger on CD. I particularly like his work with the HUM Trio (Hum for Daniel Humair, Urtreger, and Pierre Michelot. There's a nice concert DVD with them backing Gary Burton in 1980.

The band's overalls gave Blakey more room to stash his drugs and works.

I believe that Sam's wife Ann took that picture. The El station at 35th and State, right? The place where JB Hutto played was just below the station. Sam was quite an operator -- not always a sufficiently careful one, if that's the way to put it. He sure made a hash of the reissue of the John Hammond Vanguard Records jazz albums. I wrote to the people at the Moss Music Group about what he had done to that point because it seemed like there'd be more to come in the series to come, and the job needed to be done right. As a result, Sam lost the gig. I learned through a friend of Sam and Ann's who was a longtime friend of mine that Sam was furious at me for what I'd done. OK, I thought -- but why not just do it right in the first place? The problem BTW was that most, but not all, of the Hammond Vanguard albums were 10-inchers. Thus, it was important that the series -- which probably was going to be bought by collectors who wanted to replace their old LPs or didn't have all of the originals or people who had heard tell of the quality of the music and wanted to acquire it for the first time -- be assembled on CDs so that the integrity of the various original sessions was preserved as much as possible. How to do this might have been tricky in some cases, but Sam made little or not attempt at it; sessions were scattered among two or more CDs. Further, personnel listings were all screwed up; and IIRC there were similar problems with the liner notes. One still bought the reissues, albeit with smoke coming out of one's ears, because that that was the only choice if one didn't have all the old Vanguard LPs. Further, again IIRC, it would have been just as easy, or almost as easy, to do it the right way instead of the "throw things up in the air and see where they land" approach that Sam seemed to have taken.

Fascinating posts on Smith, sgcim. That you think he was "probably the greatest plectrum guitarist that ever lived" is good enough for me. And as you say, it was not just a matter of technique but also of beauty of sound. BTW, here's the story of Smith playing the guitar part in the Schoenberg Serenade:| It wasn't planned for me to play the guitar part and I wouldn't do it again for anything. What happened to me with this piece was this. They'd been working on it for a long time -- several months, because it was going to be performed in honor of Schoenberg's 75th birthday with the composer there; but this was just before he died, and he was very sick so he wasn't there. They had this classic guitarist and he couldn't get it together. Schoenberg had written the piece in actual pitch -- in bass and treble clef where it sounds, so they'd even taken the parts out and transposed them an octave higher into the guitar's register. But I guess the poor classic guitarist's problem was that he just couldn't follow direction. So on a Friday afternoon I was leaving NBC and waiting at the elevator and these guys came up to me and said they'd like to talk to me. One of them was a violinist with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and they told me that Mitropoulos was thinking of scrubbing it. This would be a disaster because this was Friday and the performance was on the following Wednesday; and they had composers who had come from all over the world for the occasion. So, they said, was it possible for me to try to do this piece, and they handed me this thing. I looked at it and I wanted to say that there was just no way. But they said if you're not willing to at least try it they're going to throw it out. So I said when is our first rehearsal, how long do I have to look at this music? They said that Monday morning would be the first rehearsal. Well, I'm an idiot and I say OK. So this was Friday, and as usual I didn't have to work Saturday; I went out and made the rounds and really got myself good and juiced up and got to bed about 5 o'clock. At 6 o'clock the phone rang and a guy says the maestro insists on having a rehearsal at 7 o'clock. I couldn't believe it! I hadn't even looked at the music - I'd hidden it under the bed. He says 'I understand that, but the maestro insists and you've got to come up.' So I go up there to his suite and, Oh, my gosh, I felt terrible. I was just hung over; had the shakes -- the whole thing. So, boy, I get my box of mistakes out and put the music up there. He gives a down beat, and naturally I couldn't find the neck of the guitar; but when he gave a down beat if I saw that there was something there well I'd hit it. And I guess that impressed him enough in at least one respect: that I could follow direction. So we shambled a bit on this thing and he gave the OK nod and everybody was real happy. Now, at that time I was working with a man at NBC by the name of Irwin Kostel who had been pianist with my trio and later became chief arranger with Sid Cesar. He was one of the finest musicians I'd ever known. He [would score] all the music for West Side Story, The Sound of Music, all these things, and he'd win all these Academy Awards for his orchestrations. Anyway Irwin and I were real good buddies, so I went out to his house and we spent the whole weekend, day and night -- bless his heart -- sitting at the piano and guitar going through this music. We rehearsed Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday night we performed the work in the theatre in the Museum of Modern Art, and it went perfect. Dimitri Mitropoulos was such a warm, beautiful genius that there was no way you could make a mistake; he just gave you that confidence. And they received that piece so well that we encored the whole 7 movements. As with the recording, which we did later, I used my Epiphone Emperor without an amp, and I really had to pound to try to get this thing heard. And it's not really all that loud on the recording. Incidentally, that Epiphone was stolen during a break at NBC and I never saw it again.

Smith did make some jazz records IMO, but he's basically just (if "just" is the right word) a guitarist, which is OK by me. However, while I'd have to go to performances by other classical guitarists to be sure, my first impression was that on familiar pieces like Albienz's "Sevilla" his approach is a bit different than others' -- more of a sense of "attack" perhaps, which for me runs a bit counter to Jim's' 'he's a"set piece" guy.' Yes, the pieces are that, but they don't sound quite like "set pieces" in his hands; there's more immediacy.

My curiosity about Van Eps led me to this CD, which he shares with Johnny Smith (on acoustic guitar), both men playing solo. The Smith tracks, which date from 1976 and that according to one Amazon commentator Smith didn't want released, are stunning IMO -- vividly (or, if you prefer) closely recorded, they have quite a zest or elan to them. A good many of Smith's tracks are embellished versions of classical guitar staples, but I find them gripping nonetheless, and his version of 'Round Midnight" (below) is quite something. The Van Eps tracks are what one might expect, but from him I expect and get something akin to magic. https://www.amazon.com/Legends-Johnny-Smith-George-Van/dp/B0000006NE/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1539707693&sr=1-3&keywords=legends+johnny+smith

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Visor Based on one or more encounters, don't recall what they were, he was in the warm-toned Walter Benton/Curtis Amy/Teddy Edwards area. Great name, in any case.

Nonsense and Mr. Feather aside, IIRC the music was quite good.

IIRC, back in the 1950s Leonard Feather assembled an all-female band for an MGM (probably 10-inch) album.

Well, I too would have liked Lewis to be "more masculine" in his music, if you want to put it that way, but then he wouldn't have been John Lewis.

suicidal?

Some Van Eps from 1949. One man, one seven-string guitar.

If you've never heard Van Eps, you should hear him. If you like this one, there's more with him, bass and drums, and Alden (who's more than OK here).