Nate Dorward

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.

Jim--have you heard the recent Jon Easton disc on Cadence? I was wondering what you'd think of that one. (FWIW I liked it.)

Swish; yes, it's on CD.

I think Black Saint & Between the Lines.

That bad, eh? Actually you make it sound almost intersting enough to check out....!

Just a quick bump to this thread to say that I posted a review of Halperin's Cycle Logical here-- http://www.ndorward.com/blog/?p=77 Great disc, if you're a Cool School freak like me. -- & just placed an order for a few things by Lester, Halperin & Mosca at Cadence, so I may have more to report soon....

Yeah, if you're Tom Hull, reviewing a few thousand CDs a month in a sentence or three (check out his website), then you probably don't notice that it's not a very good disc/set at all. For "pleasurable" Braxton I'd go for the Arista/Bluebird Live album every time.

Larry--jeez, thanks for adding your thoughts to this discussion--I find myself really irritated by the way that so much of the discussion around this recording has to do with its circumstances, complaints about sound quality/truncation, &c.... & I find it hard to imagine anyone not finding this a truly remarkable album. Given the way that familiarity breeds complacency, it's been a while since I've been simply floored by a Coltrane record, but this one had a emotional & physical impact which I can't remember since.... hm, probably since I got Impressions as a teenager..?

Picked this one up in Chicago last week & just did a websearch on "John Hines" & it led me here. No surprise that Larry, who was with me at the Jazz Record Mart when I got it, should pick this one for his AOTW! A lovely, lovely disc--I find it hard to believe someone up above was lukewarm on Wilbur Ware's bass solos, since, as with all albums with Ware on them, I find myself often simply listening for him (his work on "Cherokee" is brilliant). Probably my favourite bass player in jazz, period. I got this one in part because I have the slightly later sextet album with Donald Byrd & Pepper Adams added to the band--both of them are superb & should be grabbed while they're still around, given the likelihood that many OJCs are going to be axed.

Watch out with the Hi4Head label. Great music, but the guy who runs it is incompetent at remastering; the one disc I heard from the label had frightful sound, & a specialist in restoring 1970s audio gave me a quick discussion of why (in connection with the weird distorted sax sound on the last track on the disc): In other words, Hi4Head's failure to master the tapes properly quite likely is damaging them further. The music is great, though.

Al Jones once gave me a technical explanation of why sine waves change in sound when you move your head--basically it's the Doppler effect, which is unnoticeable on normally pitched sounds when you move your head but is noticeable on very very high pitched sounds because even a slight compression or expansion of the soundwave will have a discernable effect. Karyobin should be in every collection.

Uh, I'll stay out of the Waxman debate..... Incidentally he did the liners for the new Exploding Customer disc. It shows much more polish & less aimless spew than the extract quoted above. I was puzzled to find (on my return from Chicago today) that there was a mysterious disappearing note in the inbox from D.D. but I think it was an invite to the Six Fuchs discussion? I was disappointed to miss Alessandro Bossetti in Chicago (had a fancy dinner that evening--some truly excellent cuisine at the Tiptons' household)--ah well. Caught Benny Golson at the Showcase, & may post a little on it to the thread on that elsewhere on this board. I went to the Jazz Record Mart & dug around for some o/p CDs: found Sam Rivers' two big-band dates for RCA/Victor among other things & Parker/Bailey's Arch Duo, plus a bunch of OJCs I feared might go out of print.

I think what I'd say is that I have found many supposedly accurate standard reference books to be chockfull of errors or stupidities: it's not just Wikipedia's problem. & with Wikipedia, if you find there's an error, it's simple: fix it yourself. I've written chunks of various articles (the one on Erstwhile Records is still mostly my handiwork e.g., & I tried to make the Philip Larkin & Charlie Parker ones better a while back though they have since evolved considerably).

Anyone heard the new Leo BTW?

John--thanks for pulling teh htread back up--yeah, it's a superb disc. If you like this one, hunt down Chemistry with Watts & Wheeler & the underrated Ray Warleigh; unfortunately I believe it's out of print, though it was available as part of a twofer on Konnex if I remember rightly (under a different name, maybe someone can help here)...

Just possible I may be in Chicago on Friday/Saturday night, & I've never seen Golson play, so this is welcome news.