Brad

I wonder how many horns they have. I've always wondered, for example, who has Bird's horns or Sonny Stitt's horns? I wonder where they are.

I'll have to dissent here. Except for one song, you've got Sonny playing the varitone, that awful attachment he used on his sax. Absolutely ruins the record. In my view, most of Sonny's work with the varitone is to be avoided.

To stop drinking those (flatted) fifths!

Just imagine if you had the cd, "the Jones Boys", where Leonard Feather brought together Jimmy Jones, Eddie Jones, Quincy Jones, Thad Jones, Jo Jones and Reginald Jones. Under which Jones would you file that sucker?

I guess Willie Wonka doesn't count

I'm going to ask a dumb question but what's a "boston" as in "But I will say that I’d rather hear him play a ‘boston’ than any other pianist."

Thank you for posting that. Wonder how you came across it.

I find I have a problem with this. We have the DSL line upstairs and the wireless connection upstairs and my son has an Xbox downstairs where he likes to play online downstairs. But it seems more often than not that the wireless connection doesn't work. Any suggestions? Could the weather have something to do with it (e.g., if it's cloudy outside)?

Hey- I named three, and he only named one! Granted, his was a bit tougher... Ok, hats off to Jim too

I was just looking the Verve downloads and they've got some albums like the Charlie Barnet Harlem album which was quite available until recently. I was hoping they'd put out some real unavailable items. There's also Listen to Art Farmer, which is at least available on the Mosaic. There's not a lot of nuggets there from the vault.

Sounds like a neat idea for a book. Doesn't seem that it will be pulled off though.

Hats off to Brownie. Was that a posed photo or was HRH a player? Dmitry may have started a new fad here.

Brad, I'm not sure I understand this. . . . Blue Note was founded in 1939 with boogie piano recordings, and blues/New Orleans style recordings, and small swing groups and grew to champion some modern jazz proponents who became icons such as Monk and Bud. Bu wasn't a force til much later. . . . I'm not discounting Blakey's importance or even his consistency. . . . But he wasn't the wellspring your statement seems to make him. Lon, I agree with you to a point but this thread is about the 50s and 60s and I think he was the wellspring during that period.

Leeway posted this on Dec 16: Yes, I thought I was clear but guess not. I know some of you picked him but not many. That's what I found (find) amazing.

I'm getting an ipod soon so thanks for the warning although I'll just use it to transfer existing cds to it. I had thought about downloading one of those Verve albums but will probably not. As Tony says, I just don't have time enough in the day to do all these things. By the time I get home from work, eat dinner and make sure my son gets to bed, I've had it. There's very little time left for listening. So the time I get is valuable. Modern living, it's such a joy.

I've seen several of them advertised in the british journal, Jazz Review. I may give serious thought to picking some of them up.

Milan, My disc, the original one you sent to my home, arrived today. I will proceed to listen to it now. Thanks.

I listened to some of the cuts and while they're jazzy I wouldn't exactly call most of them jazz although I suppose this has some appeal to some people.

It's mind bogglin' to me that Art Blakey, the personification of Blue Note sound wasn't picked by all or at the top of the list. He is Mr. Blue Note. Aside from Horace, every one else one basically springs from him. As far as consistently high quality recordings (and these were not middling at best) look at his late 50s material, starting with Moaning and just continuing on. It can't be topped in my opinion. He was basically a finishing school for would be leaders.

And have a happy good, hmm, well, whatever

Just ordered 6, including one of the Lafittes.

I have the Mosaic and hear the same thing. So, it's probably the master (although nothing is mentioned in the liner notes about it, as they usually do).

The Chestnuts of Christmas By CHARLES PASSY Published: December 18, 2004 Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. — THEY are the songs that constitute the soundtrack to every December, evoking images of "Jack Frost nipping at your nose" and children listening to "sleigh bells in the snow." In other words, have yourself a nostalgic little Christmas. Consider that in Ascap's annual ranking of the 25 most-performed holiday songs, oldies but goodies dominate. The tune that claimed this year's No. 1 spot, "The Christmas Song" (a.k.a. "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire"), hails from the mid-1940's. Not far behind it are two songs - "Winter Wonderland" (No. 3) and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" (No. 4) - that go back even further, to 1934. Other decades-old favorites in the Top 10 include "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "White Christmas," "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let it Snow!" and "I'll Be Home for Christmas." The closest you'll come to something "contemporary" is a pair of songs from the 70's: José Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" and Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime." The latter, at No. 22, barely made the cut - pretty shabby for a former Beatle. Why are we stuck in such a musical time warp? The answer may have less to do with our nostalgic leanings than the Ascap list implies. Plenty of new Christmas songs are written and recorded every year by established artists (this season, for example, has offerings by the country singer LeAnn Rimes, the roots-minded vocalist Chris Isaak and the modern-rock group Barenaked Ladies). But these tunes hardly ever work their way into the public ear through avenues like shopping-mall background music, soundtracks to television holiday specials or, perhaps most significantly, the playlists of the many radio stations that switch to an all-holiday format after Thanksgiving. Part of the problem is that the rules of the modern-day recording industry dictate that a song must indeed be "worked" - that is, positioned with stations - over weeks, if not months. The Christmas season doesn't afford such a generous allotment of time, so labels simply spare themselves the effort. But even if a label were to make the big push, it would still find itself catering to a small piece of the pie. That's because audiences these days are deeply divided by genre. When Bing Crosby sang Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" in 1942, he could be sure that his crooning would be heard all over the country. Billboard magazine, which began tracking popular songs in earnest in the 30's, didn't even introduce a separate country music chart until 1944. The trade journal now has more than 40 charts, covering everything from rock to rap, classical crossover to contemporary jazz. A similar transformation took place in radio, once a one-size-fits-all medium where the songs of the day were heard on "Your Hit Parade." Now, there are formats to fit every subgenre, from mainstream rock to modern adult contemporary. Plain-vanilla Top 40, once the chief vehicle for hit songs, is now the format for only 5 percent of the nation's 10,000-plus stations. All of which means that if Crosby recorded "White Christmas" in 2004, he might have to make a separate dance mix. That's not to say that a holiday song can't flop on its own merits. Even though he had a captive audience, Crosby couldn't make a stinker like "Christmas Dinner Country Style" (sample lyric: "Now sashay along that country ham/And double sashay the marshmallow yams") a major hit, and the country singer Kenny Chesney can't blame niche radio formats for the failure of a song like "All I Want for Christmas Is a Real Good Tan" ("We'll string some lights in a coconut tree/I'll rub some oil on you, and you can rub some on me") to become a Christmas classic. Nor do new songs that recycle the same snow-filled images until they're clichés deserve a second listen. But a moving song like Danny Dolinger's "Rudy," recorded by the Be Good Tanyas, should get a chance - and doesn't. The result is that we've lost something special: the holiday song as a national statement of faith and hope for our time. Nostalgia has its place, but a song like "White Christmas," steeped in the sentiment of the World War II era, is ultimately the song of a different America. Why not sing of ours instead? Charles Passy is an arts writer for The Palm Beach Post. ***************** This so called art writer totally misses the point. Why are certain songs timeless and constantly played and others don't catch on has nothing to do with the process that songs may have to go through today than the song itself. In other words, why is a standard a standard and why do people keep playing it. It's because in all the music ever recorded and all the riff raff that went with it, certain songs survived as classics. The tin pan alley music has survived because it is great music. That is also why Jose Feliciano's I Wish You a Merry Christmas music has survived. It's a great song. Christmas music is no exeception to the usual rules. I don't know who Danny Dolinger is but the name of the recording group, the Be Good Tanyas, probably says it all for me. And if you examine the words of White Christmas that song is in itself nostalgia for simpler Christmases. That's just the way it is around Christmas.

As much as I hate to do this, I'm going to have drop some money on these. The price is just too good to pass up.

Here are some of my faves: Bebop - Don Byas and James Moody Laura - Don Byas Bill Coleman: From Boogie to Funk Mr. Blues pour Filter - Sonny Criss Saxophones a Saint-Germain des Pres La Dernier Message de Lester Young