HutchFan

Thanks Rooster!

Looks very interesting. Hopefully, Dusty will stock it, since shipping is $38 from the UK to the US.

😄 Is there ANYTHING that you guys HAVEN'T heard ?!?? 😉

My best friend from high school hipped me to the Pogues.

Now playing:

Thanks for checking, T.D. Looks like it'll be the on-demand book for me.

That's a bummer. I guess I missed the boat, music-wise. Oh well. At least there's the book.

Any initial impressions that you'd care to share about the music or book, @sidewinder? I'm very tempted to order it.

Thank you, @mjazzg! I think you'll enjoy hearing the music. NP: Disc 1 - The Many Facets of David Newman

More jazz from Japan: Masahiko Togashi & Isao Suzuki - A Day of the Sun (Paddle Wheel, 1979) and Masahiko Togashi & Masahiko Satoh - Sōshō [Twin Crystals] (Trio, 1973)

Gheorghe, the two vocal cuts with Earl Coleman are on Sonny's Tour de Force.

One of my musical heroes, the composer Charles Ives, wrote a series of essays to accompany his Second Piano Sonata. Logically enough, he titled these program notes Essays Before a Sonata. Since many listeners (both then and now) consider his music to be "thorny" and "difficult," Ives hoped that these essays might provide a bridge for listeners to make their way in to his music by providing some insight into his thinking and his musical goals. Ives gave his sonata the subtitle Concord, Mass., 1840-1860, and he structured it around four New England Transcendentalist authors. The dedicatee of the sonata's fourth and culminating movement is Henry David Thoreau. In his essay on Thoreau, Ives describes how Thoreau once heard the ringing of the Concord Bell across a great distance while on Walden Pond. Ives quotes Thoreau, describing how, "At a distance over the woods the sound acquires a certain vibratory hum as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. . . A vibration of the universal lyre." If I recall correctly, Ives later combined Thoreau's ideas in a new phrase, calling this exalted state of awareness (through music) the "vibratory hum of existence." For Ives, the most important and most impressive music somehow captures this elusive, ephemeral quality. A life vibration. I'm just saying all this stuff about Ives and Thoreau and vibrations because it came bubbling up while I was listening to this music by Masahiko Sato. Which is to say: I think it is magnificent, stunning, phantasmagorical music -- music that's as good as it gets. And Ives' words somehow explain very well how certain types of music (like his and Sato's) work (in figurative terms, not musical terms) -- and how it affects us (or me, at least). I hope these ramblings make some sense to you, and I'm touching on an idea with which you're familiar through your own listening. . . . If not, my apologies for the long digression! Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

One of Duke's many sensational concert recordings.

Outstanding.

Yup. American-African Blues (on Candid) was the record that made me a convert. EDIT From his earlier years, I actually think Ford's one New World album, Loxodonta Africana, is better than any of the Muse LPs.

Yep. He can certainly play the HELL outta that saxophone. Jaw-dropping fluency. I like how you can tell that Sonny Rollins was a big influence. Ford's got Sonny's big, striding sound. But Ford's a little more down-home than Sonny. He's got his own bag.

NP: Ricky Ford / Kirk Lightsey - Reeds and Keys (Jazz Friends, 2003)

A desert-island disc for this listener.

Tommy Flanagan - Beyond the Blue Bird (Timeless, 1991) with Kenny Burrell, George Mraz, and Lewis Nash

A fantastic record!

Now spinning: Willie Humphrey - New Orleans Clarinet (Smoky Mary) Joseph Butler's singing is featured on three of this album's cuts, and it always makes me laugh. Naturally, Armstrong is a huge influence, but -- believe it or not -- Butler's phrasing mostly reminds me of comedian Tracy Morgan. For example: Hear what I'm talkin' about? Sorta related: A few years ago, there was talk of Tracy Morgan starring in a Louis Armstrong biopic. Here's an article about it from 2021. Anyone know if anything came of it?

Thanks.