Nate Dorward

Yeah, Anne's really into Fred & Ginger--we have a video of Top Hat which she plays a lot (she can sing "Cheek to Cheek" from heart). She's also a big fan of Silk Stockings, which is a wonderful, too-little celebrated film. Actually I think it may be Astaire's best film. -- Anne's well versed in a lot of old films, since I tend to get them for all-the-family viewing. In fact she's been rifling through my Xmas present, the Kino set of Buster Keaton's films, in the past week. We're also lucky that Toronto's art film cinema, the Cinematheque Ontario, has matinee showings of stuff likely to appeal to kids--she's seen The General, Safety Last & The Freshman there with live piano accompaniment.

I'd go for the Bailey. The Ray Charles is the one with Tina Brooks, no?

AMG ratings are one cut above monkeys on typewriters. My 2 cents. Clay was a wonderful player to judge by the only two appearances I've heard (albums with Don Cherry & Wes Montgomery).

Yes, though not too many--I'm currently trying assiduously to deal with the 2005 backlog! There were a hell of a lot of really good discs that were released last year, not even counting the noised-about ones.

medjuck--yes, the Don Palmer piece was mine. It's now available online here-- http://www.ndorward.com/music/palmer.htm Don's a really fine musician, & I wish his recorded legacy were larger & more representative. He did say he was planning to release some tapes done by the CBC which are in his possession--I hope that comes to fruition. Meanwhile, if you're in Toronto, he does gig around town.

Thanks for the b'day wishes folks. Actually, hadn't got anything special planned--in part because the evening isn't free (Jane's got a choir practice so she'll be out most of the evening). Probably will postphone any celebrations till tomorrow. This evening I'll be home with the 8-yr-old, probably watching Fred Astaire & Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier, which I just rented ("Dearly Beloved," "I'm Old Fashioned"--a great score). Anne's worked her way through all the Astaire/Rogers films already so I thought I'd try her out on some of the later films...

I have it on the Inner City album. Lousy sound on it--I wonder if the CD release is any better...

Kevin O'Neil is indeed excellent but I couldn't stand that Braxton project--I have the 2nd vol of it & some it is just painful to listen to (the mangling of "Waltz for Debby" for instance). While I'm being a party pooper maybe I'll add that another artist I discovered this year was Robert Glasper. Hated Canvas & it's already gone.

I discovered Tord Gustavsen this year--I just didn't like him very much! Randy Sandke, the Respect Sextet, Sal Mosca, David Borgo, Joey Sellers, Jim McAuley spring to mind. Some of whom I'd heard before but only got a proper perspective on this year.

Time flies! I forget exactly when, I just remembered it was pretty recent.

Elvin Jones.

are a) very interesting b) saddled with horrible self-penned liner notes c) sadly out of print

Hm....doesn't this poll mostly just show which labels have deep enough pockets to send out a pile of review copies? Not that they aren't all excellent discs (well, of the ones I've heard, I'd take exception to the inclusion of the Gustavsen--if you want an ECM piano trio disc the choice pick this year is Bobo Stenson) but it does seem to me the decks are stacked...

Good luck! If you have no success (they are much sought-after) then I can provide a CDR burn of all but Aida (I have the latter but only on LP & no setup for LP-to-CD transfer).

Best writeup yet, by Steve Smith-- http://nightafternight.blogs.com/night_aft..._bailey_19.html

By coincidence the Ali/Rhames is winging its way to me here at the moment -- I'm not sure it'll click that much with me (Ali's decades-long series of tributes to Coltrane is getting a little much....) but given that I talked with James Finn at length about his buddy Rhames I want to check him out. Anyway, will have to compare notes once I've got my hands on it.

Gil Melle (not a modest man, I'll warn you) claims credit for inventing the sax/guitar lineup in the liners to the reissued Blue Note sessions. Certainly it's one of the earliest examples.

They seem to be responsible for the silver-boxed sets of older musicians issued as from "Quadrophonia" ro something like that (I forget). I was just downtown & Sam's & saw a pile of them for $13.99 for 4 CDs. I avoid all these kinds of labels.

RogueArt is availabel through Cadence/North Country. The Drake disc is quite nice, not a knockout but if you like his playing it's certainly worth getting. The Mitchell track is one of the better ones on the disc. He's best known for his associations with Fred Anderson, Don Cherry & William Parker. He plays free jazz but usually not that far "outside", often with a groove. He's also well-known for using hand drums rather than kit quite often.

That's very sad news, though not unexpected -- a friend of Derek's had told me how ill he was. I saw him once, in Cambridge at a poetry festival (invited by his friend the poet Peter Riley). He played solo acoustic, with a TV set onstage. Halfway through he explained that he had recently done a TV feature & for some reason they had filmed his left hand & right hand separately--there were no shots of him from a distance. So he played, as a kind of intermission, the tape of the performance, which simple showed one hand or the other but never the two at once. -- There was a pamphlet of poems that accompanied the conference; Bailey & Simon Fell were also asked for contributions; Derek's was a page of what looked like an impenetrable biology/chemistry paper; I believe it was a page from an article pubished by his son. Never saw him again thought I would very much have liked to; did correspond with him a bit when I did a book of essays on Peter Riley, though he didn't end up contributing something (but very kindly sent me Takes Fakes & Dead She Dances, which contains a track with Derek reading chunks of gravesite excavation records out of Peter's book Excavations). In terms of checking out Bailey, I've always found his solo work the best entry-point: Drop Me Off at 96th & Lace are favourites; the former includes an unexpected stretch of 1930s-style rhythm guitar at one point & a snatch of "I Didn't Know What Time It Was". The album with Metheny should be avoided as a first point of entry, I'd think, unless you're a big fan of brutal noise onslaught.

Wow, that excerpt from Bill Crow is great stuff -- something of a surprise for me as I only knew his "jazz anecdotes" writing.

Can't see any connection at all between Ware & William Parker--what are you hearing there exactly?

Mike--you can hear the entirety of the Bird/Diz concert if you check out David Brent Johnson (ghost of miles)' Night Lights archive online, as he did a feature on it a while back. I actually don't yet have it myself but have listened to it via that source (& plan to get the CD soon).

Haven't heard the Cellar Door set yet, but here's the "short" list of CDs I liked this year. New releases Sal Mosca, Thing-Ah-Majig, Zinnia The Respect Sextet, Respect in You, Roister Neal Caine, Backstabber’s Ball, Smalls Records Frank Hewitt, Four Hundred Saturdays, Smalls Records Frank Hewitt, Not Afraid to Live, Smalls Records Anthony Braxton/Matt Bauder, 2 + 2 Compositions, 482 Music Olaf Ton, Das dunkle Vermächtnis der goldenen Kuh, 2nd Floor ROVA/Orkestrova, Electric Ascension, Atavistic Tim Berne/Paraphrase, Pre-emptive Denial, Screwgun Simon Fell, Compilation IV, Bruce’s Fingers Simon Nabatov, A Few Incidences, Leo Badland (Simon Rose/Simon H Fell/Steve Noble), The Society of the Spectacle, Emanem James Finn, Inside Eye, Gingko Leaf Roscoe Mitchell, Turn, RogueArt Joey Sellers’ Jazz Aggregation, El Payaso, Nine Winds Agusti Fernandez/Mats Gustafsson, Critical Mass, Psi Taylor Ho Bynum & SpiderMonkey Strings, Other Stories (Three Suites), 482 Music MTKJ Quartet, Day of the Race, Nine Winds Lindsey Horner, Don’t Count on Glory, Cadence Sacha Perry, Eretik, Smalls Records Vijay Iyer, Reimagining, Savoy Unstable Ensemble, Embers, Family Vineyard Bill Frisell, East/West, Elektra/Nonesuch Keith Rowe, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, Otomo Yoshihide, Erstlive 005, Erstwhile Fred Hess, Crossed Paths, Tapestry Jim McAuley, Gongfarmer18, Nine Winds Adam Lane, Vinny Golia, Vijay Anderson, Zero Degree Music, CIMP Simon H. Fell/SFQ, Four Compositions, Red Toucan (mostly for the 2nd disc) Keith Rowe/Burkhard Beins, ErstLive 001, Erstwhile Randy Sandke and the Inside Out Band, Outside In, Evening Star Bobo Stenson, Goodbye, ECM Randy Sandke, Trumpet After Dark, Evening Star Michaël Attias, Renku, Playscape John Tchicai, Garrison Fewell, Tino Tracanna, Paolino Dalla Porta, Massimo Manzi, Big Chief Dreaming, Soul Note James Finn, Plaza de Toros, Clean Feed David Borgo, Ubuntu, Cadence Stan Tracey, Evan Parker, Crevulations, Psi Marco Kaeppeli, Fredi Luescher, Daniel Studer, Nomis, Altrisuoni Hans Ulrik, Steve Swallow, Jonas Johansen, Tin Pan Aliens, Stunt Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mother Tongue, Pi Jon Easton with Don Messina and Bill Chattin, Cadence Veryan Weston, John Edwards, Mark Sanders, Gateway to Vienna, Emanem Urs Leimgruber, Jacques Demierre, Barre Phillips, LDP – Cologne, Psi Harris Eisenstadt, The Soul and Gone, 482 Music Aram Shelton, Arrive, 482 Music Matt Steckler, Persiflage, Innova Jimmy Ghaphery, Jason Bivins, Ian Davis, Impermanence, Umbrella Tony Bevan, Orphy Robinson, Ashley Wales, John Edwards, Mark Sanders, Bruised, Foghorn Frédéric Blondy, Jean-Sebastien Mariage, Dan Warburton, L’écorce dans la forêt, Creative Sources Scott Rosenberg, Jim Baker, Anton Hatwich, Tim Daisy, New Folk, New Blues, 482 Music Dino Saluzzi/Jon Christensen, Senderos, ECM Ståhls Blå, Schlachtplatte, Moserobie Kazue Sawai, Michel Doneda, Kazuo Imai, Lê Quan Ninh, Tetsu Saitoh, Une chance pour l’ombre, Victo Reissues & discoveries Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, At Carnegie Hall, Blue Note John Coltrane, One Down, One Up: Live at the Half Note, Impulse Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945, Uptown Clifford Thornton, The Panther and the Lash, America/Universal Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, The London Concert, Psi Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman, Song X: Twentieth Anniversary, Nonesuch SME, A New Distance, Emanem Jackie McLean, Consequence, Blue Note John Stevens, New Cool, Emanem Irène Schweitzer, Live at Taktlos, Intakt

Oranj Symphonette Plays Mancini is a good one.