HutchFan

R.I.P. Randy Weston

Jaki Byard did an excellent version of "Hi -Fly." It also served as the album title:

Very sad to hear this news. He has been one of my favorite pianists for a long time. R.I.P. to the great Randy Weston!

Kenny Barron / Dave Holland - The Art of Conversation (Impulse)

The Art of Hank Crawford: The Atlantic Years (Atlantic, 2 LPs)

I just ordered these LPs from Euclid Records: Hank Crawford - Its a Funky Thing to Do (Cotillion) Chico Hamilton - Peregrinations (Blue Note) Ralph Sutton - Live! (Flyright) Clark Terry - Live! At Buddy's Place (Vanguard)

Thelonious Monk Quartet with Johnny Griffin - Thelonious in Action (Riverside/OJC) Pulled this out after enjoying JG's The Congregation so much last night. and Coleman Hawkins - The Bebop Years (Proper) Disc 2 - Cattin' at Keynote

JG sounds so good on this.

Joe Dioro - Peaceful Journey (Art of Life) Beautiful solo guitar. Originally released in 1977 on Spitball Records.

I need to get that ! ! ! Two of my favorite artists -- Lucky Thompson & Martial Solal!

More latter-day Chet: with Phil Markowitz (p), Jean-François Jenny-Clark (b), and Jeff Brillinger (d)

Chet Baker - You Can't Go Home Again / The Best Thing For You (A&M Horizon) Disc 2

Those Quincy charts sound stinkin' fantastic. (I'd never heard 'em either. ) They remind me of the Basie/Sinatra record It Might as Well Be Swing -- Quincy did those charts too -- which just might be my favorite Sinatra record.

Yes sir! Some excellent playing for sure. This morning, I've been listening to The Individualism of Gil Evans: What an astonishing record. Today, "The Barbara Song" made my hair stand on end.

Fathead again: That's an amazing record from beginning to end -- but I think the cuts with Philly Joe Jones are ridiculous.

Mal Waldron - Moods (Enja) Desert island music.

Compiles tracks from three of Earland's Muse LPs originally released in the latter half of the 1970s.

I spent a lot of time driving in the car this afternoon and evening, listening to jazz all along the way. Style-wise, I covered quite a bit of territory. A couple fusion classics: In 1974 Crosswinds peaked at the 23rd position the Billboard charts. Not on the jazz charts; the pop music charts! Can you imagine a jazz record doing that today?!??! Live Ellington from the stockpile: Lots of terrific Shorty Baker on this disc. Some SERIOUS soul-jazz from Fathead: And, last but not least, some great tenor from Illinois Jacquet:

I agree with Ghost. Enough time has passed. My general impressions are that the acoustic/electric thing that formerly seemed like a giant chasm doesn't amount to a hill of beans now. It's all blurred together. BTW: This is not to say that I (or others) reflexively admire WR. Some of it grabs me and some of it doesn't. What I am saying is the fact that they happened to be playing oddly-structured "songs" on electrified instruments doesn't rule them out of bounds or whatever. We're free to pick-and-choose just like we would with any other jazz. Frankly, I think you could say the same things about many of the jazz-hypenated musics in the 70s -- soul-jazz, Latin-jazz, funk-jazz, jazz-rock. The distinctions between them -- which probably had a lot to do with extra-musical, social context stuff -- tend to be less meaningful with the passage of time. Or at least that's how I like to think about it.