Brad

As a leader, no. At least according to the Chronological Classics which is said to contains all his dates as a leader. In the liner notes of Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry: Tenor Giants, a Commodore reissue, Francis Davis refers to Billie Holiday's book in which she recounts Chu Berry battling Lester. Perhaps this is what Mike is referring to. According to the notes, most musicians felt that Chu bested Lester that evening.

Dave James and Stefan are the champs so far.

BTW, Benny's Terminal 1 is very, very good, especially his renditions of Killer Joe and Blues March. His playing is at top peak. Plus with Mike Ledonne on piano, how can you go wrong?

If you throw in Selects I'm approaching 50 plus. I wonder if the gurus at Mosaic are reading this.

Never knew that. I wonder why. Must be the tension on the arm.

Yup, got it on Monday. It's great so far and great sound. I even like the singing.

I have a lot, more than 40, that's all I'll say.

Well, good to hear he's ok. We all probably need a sabbatical every now and then.

If it's only one, it's Bird but Monk is a close second. No one sounds or sounded like him.

Like Larry, I've been listening to disc one. I've never listened to this music before but the sound is very good. You can't really believe it was recorded in 1945. I'm also getting to like Woody's vocals, believe it or not. Besides loving Bill Harris and Flip, I'm really enjoying Marjorie Hyams on vibes (who have I to confess I never heard of before). She's underrated (obviously) in my view.

To me, there's only one and that's Bird. His tone is like no other. I don't think it's that hard to distinguish Sonny from Bird, there's just a little bit of a different sound. I don't think Miles is necessarily that identifiable because his tone changed after he hurt his throat and even if you don't agree with that, his tone from the mid 40s is quite distinct from later periods. Other candidates: Dizzy, Milt Jackson and Coltrane.

That's very exciting, for me. Slowly but surely, a lot of the Roulette sessions seem to be coming out so I'll be getting these (I don't have the studio box).

You're assuming that the label recovers its investment. What if it doesn't? Even if it does, I believe (I'm not in the business), isn't that part of the bargain they drive. There's obviously unequal bargaining power so if you want to get in the stores, you need to basically do what they want. I would think that if you become a star, you have more leverage.

Well, I can confess that I did not do so hot on this. Back to the books.

I'm sorry (or penitent, perhaps) that I started this mini fire storm but I do subscribe to what Hans and Shawn have said. This isn't the place for it. Some may say that we have a political forum and that raises a lot of fervent discussion. That is true and if we wish to have religious discussion or interject godly themes, I suggest that we do it in the political forum.

These have been shipped. I just received my copy but have not yet been able to listen to it. However, the book looks chockful of information.

Hans, I believe B. Goren's last post also summarized what I meant to say.

While I can understand the Byrd/Adams and Donaldson Mosaics not being there yet (is Scott implying they're close?), I find it hard to believe that the Mobley and the Parlan aren't there yet, especially the Mobley which has been out for awhile. Perhaps most people bought the LP version, whch has been OOP for awhile.

I think they might have started to ship these because I received one of their customer receipts/purchase order confirmation.

I save mine but never thought of selling them on ebay. Anyway, mine only go back to 1999.

As a fellow resident of NJ, I'm with 7/4. On a more serious note, I'm not sure this forum is the place for religious topics. I'm not anti religious; I thing it just better belongs in the non music areas.

Again.

One of the side benefits of downloading Itunes is that they have 19 different jazz stations you can listen to. I'm listening to a station called the Spirit of Jazz and is described as "in the style of S.F. legendary KJAZ." I'm not familiar with KJAZ but this is a mighty fine station.

I can't begin to figure out how much money I have spent because of this board or the BNBB. It's a lot, that's for damn sure. What the hell, you gotta enjoy it right.

Claude, Thanks. Went ahead and did that so I'm rarin' to go. Was about to download the Buddy De Franco when I noticed it was a lot of strings. Bummer. Now, there's a whole another way for me to spend money