BeBop

I'm sorry if my approach turned anyone off. This thread, as I'd conceived it, was about collecting and, ultimately, finding. It wasn't about one record. I didn't want it to devolve into the merits of one record, whether that record was worth the search, whether I looked in the right places, et cetera. I was more interested in the psychology and passion of the search.

Back when I was buying CDs regularly, I ordered a few. Some even arrived. (I was never charged for anything that never came.)

I guess I had a suspicion. Frankly, I find books more interesting and useful. I've got plenty of recordings. I learn a lot more from books - including books about jazz/music. Lots of good reading suggestions on this board. Check 'em out.

I've got a Nomad (30GB) which I like. Apparently some of these have also suffered fromheadphone jack problems, but mine's been trouble-free. And I like it. It's a bit on the large side; the Micro is, of course, different in this respect. The Nomad software interface is great. I only wish I got to use it more frequently.

I don't understand this smilie in this context. Perhaps I'm not supposed to. But I can't help but wonder. (It's my nature.)

New York Times -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- August 18, 2005 His Saxophone Is Silent, His Life Is in the Balance By COREY KILGANNON Michael Brecker, one of jazz's most influential tenor saxophonists over the last quarter-century, has been forced to stop performing by blood and bone marrow disease and is searching for a stranger to save his life. Mr. Brecker, 56, was recently found to have myelodysplastic syndrome, a form of cancer in which the bone marrow stops producing enough healthy blood cells. His doctors say he needs a blood stem cell and bone marrow transplant, a harrowing procedure that will be possible only if Mr. Brecker finds a stem cell donor with a specific enough genetic match for his tissue type. So far, they have been unable to find one from the millions of people on an international registry for bone marrow donors. Mr. Brecker vows that his saxophone has been silenced only temporarily. "I really miss playing and I'll be happy to get back to it, but I'm really kind of dealing with a life-and-death situation now," he said recently, resting in bed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. His family, friends and fans have been urgently searching and organizing drives, from his temple in Westchester to the summer jazz festivals worldwide. At the Newport Jazz Festival this month, a table was set up where people could have themselves tested, and announcements were made periodically. A similar drive is planned for the Red Sea Jazz Festival next week in Israel. Fellow musicians have been spreading the word in music circles, urging people to be tested to find a possible match for Mr. Brecker. There was even a rumor circulating that a match had been found, which turned out to be false. "I'm trying to tell as many people as I can," said the pianist Herbie Hancock, who was touring with Mr. Brecker in March when the symptoms began seriously plaguing him. Mr. Hancock said he tried to buoy Mr. Brecker with "positive energy" and is telling him to be optimistic that a match will come, enabling the potentially life-saving transplant that uses a donor's healthy blood stem cells to replace the patient's unhealthy ones destroyed by chemotherapy. Doctors told Mr. Brecker he had a 25 percent chance of finding his match from a sibling or one of his children. But neither his sister, Emily, nor his brother, the trumpeter Randy Brecker, nor either of his children matched. Neither did the distant relatives the family tracked down. He and his family are hopeful about the Red Sea Festival drive because Mr. Brecker's lineage is Eastern European Jewish and doctors tell him patients are most likely to match someone of their ethnic group. Mr. Brecker said that he injured his back while on tour last August in Japan and received the diagnosis when he went for medical testing, but was told he could resume his busy schedule of performing, composing and recording. He went on tour with Mr. Hancock and the trumpeter Roy Hargrove in March and began having severe pain in his pelvis and lower back. Thinking the cause might be his posture, he got a custom saxophone strap, which did not help. One night, playing at Birdland in Manhattan with the saxophonists Joe Lovano and David Liebman, he could barely get through the evening. Doctors finally told him it was the disease causing intense muscle pain. "Soon I could only play 15 minutes at a time and then not at all, no matter what I did," Mr. Brecker said. Hobbled by "pain and a feeling of absolute malaise," Mr. Brecker said, he has been unable to practice or write music. He said he had written songs and arrangements for an entire album but became sick before recording it. He was at Sloan-Kettering for seven weeks recovering from an intense regimen of chemotherapy before being released last week. While there, he listened to iTunes on his laptop and researched his illness online, learning a whole new language with words like leukocyte, antigen and hematological oncology. "We've entered into this world we knew nothing about," said his wife, Susan Brecker. Their daughter, Jessica, 16, has joined the search, working the phones and the Internet every day. Mr. Brecker speaks to his son, Sam, 12, each evening by using a small camera hooked up to his laptop. Ms. Brecker said that although the family was desperate for a donor - and would certainly accept a donation from someone looking to donate only to Mr. Brecker - they were urging people not to become "Brecker-only" donors, but rather to sign up with the donor registry. "I just want to be on the line," Mr. Brecker said. "I want as many people as possible to get tested, not just for my sake, but for the thousands of other people who might need what I need." The Breckers hope that his prominence will increase awareness and that many more people will be tested and added to the registry as potential donors. "To us it's a much larger thing than just Michael," Ms. Brecker said. "It's become sort of a crusade for Michael Brecker, but it might make a difference in a lot of people's lives. "I didn't want him to be a poster boy, but if it takes a 'Save Michael Brecker' campaign to expose people to this, we'll do it." Mr. Brecker first rose to prominence with his brother in the front line of the pianist Horace Silver's quintet, and the two had several hit records in the 1970's with their group, the Brecker Brothers. He has won 11 Grammy Awards and recorded and performed with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Chet Baker, George Benson, Quincy Jones, Charles Mingus, Joni Mitchell, Jaco Pastorius, Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Steely Dan, Pat Metheny and Frank Zappa, among many others. Shifting gingerly in his bed and propping up the pillows, Mr. Brecker said an anti-inflammatory steroid had helped ease his the pain. He added that he was gradually gaining enough strength to begin playing again and mused on how long it would take to build up his embouchure. "I don't know if my neighbors would appreciate it," he said, referring to his fellow patients. In his private room in Sloan-Kettering's transplant unit, the walls were covered with get-well cards that represent a Who's Who of jazz, including Sue Mingus, Charles's wife, the tenor saxophone giant George Coleman, the bassist Ron Carter and the trumpeter Randy Sandke. There were also letters from fans and students and friends and family. A homemade card from the Litchfield Jazz Camp hung close to the head of his bed. "The letters gave me a boost," Mr. Brecker said. "Some of them made me cry. I was so sick and so hopeless and they made me realize there are so many people out there who cared." He leaned back, a man in limbo not only about whether his body will heal, but also about whether someone on the planet with his genetic type will materialize. "I'm functioning as if it's going to work out," he said. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Back to Top

30% on paperback book through 21st of August. http://f.chtah.com/i/9/276579820/081805_pbcoupon.html

For the first time in a LONG time, I'll be buying half or more of these. They all llok good, and - amazingly - I don't already have most of the material.

We're in Kalamazoo on Sept. 9th, not Ann Arbor. Kalamazoo is about two hours from Ann Arbor, I believe. ← Thanks. Let's see if I can get it straight on the 9th.

I was a bit surprised that more people didn't have tales of the long quest. Perhaps y'all are too young.

As jazz lovers, most of us don't conform to standard demographic profiles, at least with respect to music. Everytime I pick up a magazine - particularly one tailored to what is presumed to be my tastes - I find myself uninspired and, frequently, baffled. I've no interest in (and may, in fact, be repulsed by) golf, television, movies, Chrysler 300s, sports, movie star and supermodel women - any of them, 2005 Mustangs, Corvettes, poker, fishing and hunting, NASCAR, Hawaii, Mexican beaches, beer/alcohol, six-pack abs, hair loss, dude ranches, technology-for-technology's-sake (i.e., toys), barbeque, Harleys, Australia, New Zealand, steak, wine... This isn't to denigrate any of these interests, but simply to recognize that demography only gets us so far. Now, back to listening to musicians who died before I was born.

Okay, NOW I'm going to Detroit. Hopefully it's improved in the past year and I'll receive lots of tantilizing suggestions. Or not. (I am planning to be in Ann Arbor on 9 Sept to see Organissimo.) Between a local client and a brief (I hope) inpatient stay at the illustrious UofM Med Center (Ann Arbor), I'm definitely not going to be able to escape Motown entirely. If only I could do something to inspire Uptown to release that Detroit Before Motown CD.

I'm offering this up as potentially interesting to someone...but not to me. IMO, this 'controversy' isn't. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/o...1,5591582.story Is rap tomorrow's jazz? By Thaddeus Russell THADDEUS RUSSELL is a professor of history and American studies at Barnard College. August 16, 2005 A LEADING African American newspaper published a series of articles assailing black musicians for holding back the race. The music "is killing some people," the paper claimed. "Some are going insane; others are losing their religion." The artists under attack were not rappers such as 50 Cent or Ludacris but Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. "The young girls and boys who constantly take jazz every day and night are absolutely becoming bad, and some criminals," the (New York) Amsterdam News wrote in 1925. There is a long but little-known history of African American leaders denouncing black popular music as self-destructive and an impediment to integration, a history that continues in the current campaign against rap. This is unfortunate because rap, like older forms of black popular music now considered to be "America's classical music," is distinctive and important because it differs from the norms of "respectable" culture. Last month, when Lil' Kim was sentenced to prison for lying to a grand jury about a shooting, her raps were also indicted as an obstacle to black progress. "Her music is laced with lyrics that glorify promiscuous sex and gratuitous violence," wrote DeWayne Wickham, a nationally syndicated columnist and former president of the National Assn. of Black Journalists. "She is a Pied Piper of the worst kind — a diva of smut." The criticisms of Lil' Kim were launched amid an anti-rap movement that began in March, soon after shots were fired by the rival entourages of 50 Cent and the Game outside a New York radio station. Al Sharpton demanded that the Federal Communications Commission ban violent rappers from radio and television, and he launched a boycott against Universal Music Group, which he accused of "peddling racist and misogynistic black stereotypes" through rap music. Sharpton expressed special concern about white perceptions of African Americans. Rappers and their corporate supporters "make it easy for black culture to be dismissed by the majority," he said, and the large white fan base "has learned through rap images to identify black male culture with a culture of violence." Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition signed on to the boycott, as did Princeton professor Cornel West, who issued a statement claiming that music companies and rappers made it easy for whites to "view black bodies and black souls as less moral, oversexed and less intelligent." These critics argue that the "damaging" images of African Americans in rap discourage whites from opening the door to full citizenship. Yet a consideration of the troubled relationship between civil rights leaders and black popular music in the past might give pause to the opponents of contemporary rap, and, for that matter, to the proponents of integration. In fact, blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues were all denounced by advocates for racial integration, and for the same reasons rap is now under attack. In the 1920s, several civil rights leaders were so concerned about the sexual and violent content of popular blues and jazz songs that they established a record company to "undertake the job of elevating the musical taste of the race." Promoted by W.E.B. DuBois and A. Philip Randolph, two of the most important civil rights leaders of the 20th century, Black Swan Records pledged to distribute "the Better Class of Records by Colored Artists," which meant recordings of "respectable" European classical music. Civil rights leaders similarly opposed the next creations of African American musicians: rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues. In the 1950s, Martin Luther King Jr. told African Americans to shun the new music, which, he said, "plunges men's minds into degrading and immoral depths." Likewise, Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which produced a great portion of the civil rights leadership, condemned rock and R&B for their overt sexuality and their "degrading portrayal of Negro womanhood." This history suggests that the cause of integration has always been at odds with what is now widely hailed as America's most important contribution to world culture. Many scholars argue that the creators of jazz, blues, rock and R&B were great because of their willingness and ability to work outside European cultural forms and to speak about elements of the human condition that white artists would not, such as sex and violence. Those who attack the latest form of black popular music for the sake of racial unity and "respectability" might stop to consider which side, in the history that will be written of this time, they wish to be on.

My Manhattan Symphonie isn't copy protected. Then again, it's an LP.

Everytime I pass through LA, I cry. Southern California deserves better.

Hey! Happy Birthday, Soulstream!

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/c...ack=1&cset=true This LA Times obit doesn't really do the man justice. I know him principally from his 12 Tones For Saxophones thing fromthe 50s. (Part of a three-LP Gene Norman set on Vogue, as I recall.) Worth hearing. Apologies if I have details wrong. I'm doing this from memory. Corrections welcome! Another bio: http://www.jazzconnectionmag.com/billy_may...e_july_2000.htm http://www.jazzconnectionmag.com/Larry%20O...n%20Article.htm And a recording: http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Pr...afeed.269754_CD Personnel: Lyle Murphy (conductor); Russ Cheever (soprano & alto saxophones, flute); Buddy Collette (alto & tenor saxophones, flute, clarinet); Abe Most (alto saxophone, flute, clarinet); Jack Dumont (alto saxophone, clarinet); Chuck Gentry (baritone saxophone, bass & contrabass clarinets); Andre Previn (piano); Curtis Counce (bass); Shelly Manne (drums). Recorded in Los Angeles, California on August 16 & October 11, 1955. Looks pretty 1950s West Coast to me.

http://f.chtah.com/i/9/276579820/081005_coupon.html 25% off on a book. Yes, a book. Not a CD.

If I was you I'd quit too. ← If I was Peter Frampton, I'd have quit (recording).

Frampton Comes Alive. (This was REALLY tough to find in 1970.)

...or perhaps I'm afraid someone's going to pop up and say "Hey, I've got three copies of that!".

I'm flying through DTW that day. So I'll be there!

I forget. (Actually, that's closer to the truth than you can imagine.)

I recently purchased an LP that I’d been looking for since about 1970. Yes, 1970. And I’d been looking HARD. Daily, in most cases. (I travel constantly, and, until recently, I could visit one or two different record stores a day. Today, most of the places I travel don’t have record stores.) Since around 1990, I’ve been scouring the web. That’s all by the way. I have the LP now. Oddly, I don’t feel relieved about finding this specimen. Nor do I feel joyous. Oh, I’ll enjoy the music; I’ve heard it before and, while it may be a while before I can spin the LP, I’m sure it will be enjoyable. But perhaps less enjoyable than hearing something for the first time. Something I acquired with considerably less effort and expense. The overwhelming feeling is of satisfaction in freeing up time and energy for something else. Anything else. I’m unlikely to take on such a quest in the future, because my collecting days are over. And, moreover, I’m no longer a completist. (I gave up on the last few 78s and cassettes I need to complete my artist collection.) I’ve also come to realize that many out-of-print items are unavailable for a reason. Obviously, this is not universally true. As an aside, I’m glad I was looking for an LP; if this had been a CD, I don’t think I would have found as much contentment in physical possession as I do in this slab of grooved (and groovy!) vinyl. Anyway, this is just rumination on the subject of collecting. Perhaps it will strike a chord with someone who has a related story to share.

You sound like a prime candidate for an IPod, and maybe some noise-reduction phones. ← All else being equal, I'd agree. Unfortunately, where I travel, an iPod is likely to get me killed (in a robbery) or will be confiscated or taken by an immigration or customs official as some sort of 'tax'. Heck, they even take my ball point pens. And Lon, it WILL change. I will make it change. Music is too important to live without. And it's not enough to be able to 'hum' "The Chase" in its entirety.