Swinging Swede

Damn! It would have been interesting to hear his take on Bird and Diz though. Allegedly he spoke positively about Ornette Coleman.

!?

The original bird lady:

If only Classics gets back on track, we can expect this session to become available in the not too distant future. As it was recorded in 1955, it will enter the public domain next year (outside the U.S. that is). By the way, two more tracks were recorded at the same session. They were later released on a Verve album titled The Genius Of Lionel Hampton, which collected various Hampton 'leftover' tracks.

Kenny G always did seem to be such happy fellow. When I went to school I learnt that 'gay' means 'happy', 'merry'. It comes from French 'gai', which means the same thing. Jazz Kat certainly seems to be right: Don't know if he can switch it off, though.

Interesting. The Swedish "sedan" only refers to a specific point in time, just like in English (just as in English?). So perhaps English has it right after all! It's very common that a word in one's native language only corresponds to a word in a foreign language in certain instances and not in other, as in this case. I think it is particularly confusing when the words are related as they often are in the Germanic languages. The similarity often gives a false sense of security.

Interesting. That's exactly the same type of sound defect that was on a copy of Blakey's Three Blind Mice, Volume 1 I bought back in 1992. It also started strongly at the beginning of the disc and then gradually faded away over the first minutes. I exchanged it, and the replacement was fine, but that sound is still engrained in my brain (maybe from the shock!). I wonder what causes it? It seems to fluctuate with the volume level.

Here are three ideas for a Three Sounds Mosaic: 1. The Complete 1966-1972 Three Sounds Blue Note Studio Recordings OK, the 1972 album was titled Gene Harris Of The Three Sounds, but at least "Three Sounds" is in the title, and only after that album was the reference dropped completely, as the focus had shifted over to Gene Harris himself. Nothing of this has come out on CD (unlike the live sessions from the same period which have come out.) 2. The Complete Verve/Mercury/Limelight Three Sounds Recordings This set would contain the complete 1962-66 non-BN recordings, including the 35(!) unissued Mercury tracks that Tom Lord lists (if they actually exist). 3. A Mosaic Select that gathers the large number of unissued Blue Note tracks that are supposed to exist. This would be a set along the lines of the recent Andrew Hill Select in that it focuses on unissued recordings, and it would then also be natural to include the unissued Four Sounds demos. What do you think?

There is a recent thread about Classics on the Big Band Talk forum. Here is a worrying quote from someone with inside knowledge. "One of the label's owners has expressed his desire to keep the label going but are partnership owns the label and not all partners are of like mind. The partner who wants to keep the label going is, fortunately, the person behind the Classics R&B label and he is the sole owner of that label." I certainly hope it works out. I would hate for Charlie Barnet to end at 1940 and Woody Herman at 1941 to take just a couple of examples.

And that's actually a double error since it should have been "Concert Jazz Band"!

The Wayback Machine is a useful resource in these cases: Kenton Presents Mosaic discography

German Amazon is a useful resource in these matters; they indicate whether a release is copy-protected ("Kopiergeschützt"), and also have scans of backcovers: The upper part shows the copy protection info. If you see a copy in a shop, you should be able to see the copy protection logo on the front, and info about it on the back. So the short answer is that the European version of True Blue is "copy-protected" (a misleading term really), as are all European EMI releases since July 2003. But the good news is that the US EMI releases (including True Blue) still are in the real CD format. That's why many Europeans buy new EMI releases from the US instead. I can recommend CD Universe for getting US EMI releases. Excellent prices and service. As for where to read about Blue Note reissues ahead of time, board member alankin's Jazzmatazz site is an excellent resource.

That one is easy to answer. Brooklyn is part of New York, which reminds one of 9/11, and that combined with the tune title There Is The Bomb simply made that album too offensive to reissue, and thus we got 'Improvisers' again instead. But it doesn't really matter, because with tune titles like Manhattan Cry, Lunatic and Sparkle Plenty, 'Improvisers' will ultimately be cancelled for the very same reasons.

Aha, Sunni Clark - Dial S for Saddam ... didn't think of that! But at least we can look forward to the summer RVGs (except the Hancock). Or can we?

No, it isn't. One tune on it is called Triangle. Haven't you heard of the Sunni triangle, the most dangerous area in Iraq? And another tune is called Mimosa. Not only is that an Asian tree, but it also stands next to 'minaret' in the dictionary. So it would clearly be too offensive to release the Hancock album now. Oh, and welcome to the board!

I wonder if they're actually going to release all of these... Well, Feelin' The Spirit has the tune Joshua Fit De Battle Ob Jericho on it, and Jericho is a city in the Middle East, so the Grant Green clearly has to be cancelled. Speak Like A Child has a tune called Riot. There have been riots in Iraqi cities, so the Herbie Hancock can't be released either. But even worse is Night Dreamer which has a tune called Armageddon (gasp), as well as tunes called Black Nile and Oriental Folk Song. No Wayne Shorter either obviously. Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers. Hmm, Jazz Messengers sounds kind of like Jazz Crusaders, and we know what they think about crusaders in the Middle East. To be on the safe side it probably shouldn't be released either. The same goes for the Art Blakey. But at least we can look forward to the Sonny Clark RVG!

I think it's some gal posting over at that inferior AAJ board.

I'm not a Microsoft defender (and there may very well be flaws in the design of Windows in regard to safety aspects, where other environments have safer solutions), but still, one has to take into account the overwhelming market domination of Microsoft products. Virus (and other malware) writers want to make as big an impact as possible, so of course they are going to target Windows, Internet Explorer etc. If Macs (or Linux) had dominated the market and Windows only had a 10 % share or so, the situation would most probably look very different in that respect.

Only one problem...

Hodges stopped playing the soprano in 1940, I think (which indeed is regrettable). But Charlie Barnet continued to play a Hodges-inspired soprano sax on mood pieces long after that (Barnet was a big Ellington fan of course). According to the liner notes to New Orleans Suite Ellington was planning to persuade Hodges to pick up the soprano again for Portrait Of Sidney Bechet, which was to be recorded on 13th May 1970. But Hodges died unexpectedly two days before the session.

I did some research about these sessions recently and came to the conclusion that the best way to get them actually is to get this 2-CD set from Definitive (not a label I normally would recommend): It contains all the material on the three Interpretations albums, as well as the April 1953 session that made up half of the 10" album The Artistry Of Stan Getz (one of the four tunes from this session later made it to the 12" album Stan Getz and the Cool Sounds, which has been reissued on CD). Since this set contains the complete master takes from these sessions, it also contains the three tracks from the last session that were on other albums (two tracks on the Shrine album, and another track on the Cool Sounds album). As you see, the 2-CD set has, in typical Definitive fashion, been released under a sideman's name (Brookmeyer). Why Verve hasn't done anything with this material before it entered the public domain is beyond me. There is an unissued track they could add, It Don't Mean A Thing, from August 1953. (Getz would soon record that number again for Norgran: first in December that year with Dizzy Gillespie, and then live with Brookmeyer at the Shrine Auditorium in November 1954.) There are also a few alternate takes they could add.

I remember the discussion about the Club Mozambique material. The word from Blue Note was that only mono masters existed, but that the music was good, and that it definitely was going to be released. Haven't heard anything after that. Another one that was going to come out was "Gene Harris of The Three Sounds" from 1972. I think there was specific mention of lost guitar parts being restored, and I have written down 2001 as release year for it (probably in 2000). But it hasn't seen the light of day hitherto either. And while we're at it, there is also an unissued Grant Green studio session from May 1970 ('Green Acid'). The last time I saw it listed it was marked as unissued, not rejected. There has not been much talk about that one; does anyone know more about its status?

This label continues to put out a lot of titles, and one of the new releases combines the two Blue Note "Best From The West" volumes, as mentioned by mikeweil in another thread. But what do you say about the title of this one?

It is indeed. By the way, I was thinking that one thing we really need now is covers for all the unreleased Andrew Hill albums that are on the Mosaic Select. I really have to learn Photoshop myself one day!

Yes, strangely enough those Japanese BN covers aren't on any of the "Blue Note" pages, but on the one called "SP.Rec", and below non-BN covers to boot, so it's easy to miss them.