Nate Dorward

It was issued as part of a twofer of "The Complete Blue Note 1950s Sessions".

Memoirs is the one Steve means--a very good album, though I think I prefer the trio with Peacock.

Well it's not an original BYG production, but the recording quality was never all that good, to judge by the Denon/Savoy reissue I have of it. Doesn't matter: the music really is superb. Re: the pipes: here's the alternate cover, with Bley smoking a different pipe:

Truthfully, I "appreciate" the 1980s/1990s Giuffre trio albums rather than really like them a lot, mostly. Whereas the 1961-62 albums I could listen to over & over--they're simply endlessly fascinating music. Chadbourne is one of the few competent, interesting reviewers at AMG so I find it odd that people would jump on him! I hope one of these days someone gets a book out of the man--anyone who's read some of his longer liner-notes essays (e.g. the brilliant piece in The Hills Have Jazz) will know what I mean. Not sure I like his music a lot, but he can really write & he must have a hell of a record collection.

Actually I'd be interested in these too--I only have the 2CD reissue of the complete Blue Note session which unfortunately has Melle's recent liner notes, which are (1) uninformative about the actual music and (2) so preoccupied with tooting his own horn they come off as unintentionally comic.

The Chadbourne review seems fine to me, he's simply commenting on the BYG reissue of the album. Is Footloose currently in print? If so, it's an excellent place to start with Bley. Great, great music, & yeah, you can tell that JArrett copped a lot off this album in particular. Another favourite Bley performance is his duet with Bill Evans on George Russell's Jazz in the Space Age--easily the most way-out thing Evans ever did. -- & Bley's performances on that Giuffre 2fer from Hatology are extraordinary, even better than the studio albums.

Sounds like a candidate for a reissue!

Both Five O'Clock Bells & Mo Breau were/are on Adelphi; they're now available as a single CD combining the sessions. My understanding was that Coda had trouble in the past with their distributor; I wish they'd get this sorted out (& get a website going!) as it's no longer on the stands of most non-Canadian shops....

Up... There's a long piece on Lenny Breau in the new issue of Coda, which I found fascinating reading. Here's the cover image: The piece concentrates on his time in Toronto in the 1970s, & really gives a sense of a jazz scene that's unrecognizable in the Toronto of today (all the clubs mentioned there are closed, for instance). The piece is a condensation/extract from a forthcoming bio of Breau. Can't wait for the full version.

Bonnie just sent me Baggerboot but I haven't done more than give it a background listen yet (& it's definitely not a disc to background!). Will report back.... I think that I should bug Dan to change that to "JAMES FINN -- Interviewed by Nate Dorward"..... sounds a little ambiguous as it stands. The rest of the issue's superb too--Dan seems to be attracting a lot of good writers lately.

I've heard it; it's pretty good but I found the long squelchy electronics passage from Lisle Ellis in the middle of the 40-minute track at the end rather dull. The first three tracks are more like it (& the opening & close of the 40-minute track).

Actually I think I like the Victo disc a smidgeon better... but they're both superb, yes.

No, I, er, hadn't come across that particular phrase before. You can't blame players who are just coming together for a jam for pulling out the warhorses that you're guaranteed everyone will know. In more formal situations, though, it would be nice if people worked harder to pick interesting repertoire (rather than just originals). On the other hand, Lee Konitz plays the same dozen garden variety standards every gig & I'm happy to hear him do that. Actually I think that it's probably time that "Freedom Suite" be given a rest--it's been covered by Branford Marsalis, David S Ware (twice) & Ken Vandermark in the past two years! I was watching The Pirate the other day & was surprised that the ballad number there, "You Can Do No Wrong", hasn't been picked up. Lovely tune. Maybe it got overlooked because the rest of the score isn't one of Porter's better ones (I'm not expecting any covers of "Nina" anytime soon).

No: the "ch" sound already has a "t" sound in it--this is made clearer if you look at the IPO rendition of the sound, which is a combination of the symbols for the "t" and "sh" sounds.

Just fixed the typo. I just found the album rather precious, not an adjective I'd apply to Miles' music.

Ah well, what I'd feared. Yeah, Chris Potter mostly irritates me, though when I saw his with a kinda Tim Bernish band (Wayne Krantz, Craig Taborn, no bassist, Nate Smith) it was pretty good fusionoid jazz. Potter's overheated mechanical side worked well with the grinding mathematically subdivided funk weirdness. I hated The Infinite--got it, listened to it 3 times & traded it away the following week. (fixed typo)

Allen--wow, you liked the Frisell/Holland/Jones album? I heard a few tracks off that one ("Moon River" & an original) & hated them so much I've avoided it ever since. It struck me as about as irksome a mismatch as the duo album with Fred Hersch, another one I didn't get at all. Frisell I run hot & cold on, but he was doing pretty interesting stuff up to about the mid-1990s when things went wrong circa Nashville. I liked East/West, mostly (the last few tracks on the Vanguard session are disappointing--Frisell's probably got a great "Crazy" in him but not this time). Virtually everything he did with Zorn is worth checking out, & with Paul Motian. I like "After the Requiem" with Gavin Bryars, too, though it's not jazz. Of the albums of his I've heard, Have a Little Faith & This Land have been the best, though I haven't heard the ECMs. Live with the trio is musically excellent, though the sound is poor (but the version of "Strange Meeting", an original from his Power Tools days, is one of the most moving things I've heard him do). -- He's always worth seeing live. Re: Nels Cline, I don't know his work enough to wade into this particular spat--I saw him once with the Red Headed Stranger group & with the Singers, it was OK, but I actually enjoyed Carla B's rundown of a tune of her own far more than the Willie Nelson covers--but will just say that the Clineophiles will probably enjoy his work on ROVA's Electric Ascension, their recent update of the Coltrane classic. It's a tremendous record.

I flipped it off after the cartoon rape in the first few seconds.

There's a 2-DVD set of Arbuckle's work with Keaton, & it is superb. Yeah, Arbuckle was put through the wringer: there were three trials, the first two resulting in a hung jury, the last one acquitting him, with the famous apology to him for his treatment. -- At the end of his life he was on a comeback, having just been signed again to a contract, but he suddenly died. Not very old, either. I think the last thing of Douglas's I heard was Bow River Falls, which was nice but not all that compelling, I thought. I keep meaning to check out Strange Liberation.

← It's a very good album, though I find the end of the Vanguard set flags a bit (I'm not crazy about the amount of space given to Scherr's acoustic guitar there); but mostly it's a very strong set, especially the long tracks where they really dig in. But I was posting to say that the advance info on "East" is wrong: none of those tunes is on there (a pity, as it'd be nice to hear versions of them). Maybe a 2nd volume will emerge one of these days....?

Mmmnhnnn, it's not as simple as that, I think (take a look at the Prisms piece which ends with a truly wacky bit about how jitterbugging dancers are celebrating their own castration at the hands of jazz, e.g.).... but Adorno's a different thread perhaps. -- Larkin certainly had much more of value to say about jazz than Adorno did, anyway.

Yeah Leimgruber at one concert I saw (w/ Leandre + Hauser) often strolled to the edge or side or back of the stage, spending a lot of time blowing very quiet sounds at the wall. I really really like Wing Vane--the sequel is excellent too but it's the first one that really stands out for me. Evan has put out some excellent non-predictable albums recently (e.g. America 2003 & Crevulations) but, yes, sometimes he just turns in the usual patented E.P. performance. A pity. I caught Furt at Freedom of the City some years ago & it was good savage cut-up turmoil, samples hitting you from the speakers like bodyblows. The concert has since been released on Psi but I've no idea how it'd sound on record--anyone heard it & care to report? Their Matchless disc defekt (focussing on compositions) I found rather dull.

He's on much of George Russell's early work, all of it excellent. Start with the Jazz Workshop date.

To be pedantic: 1971, actually; published 1974. Still can't decide if Larkin's poem for Bechet is good or not, but anyway it's his one notable poem on jazz. Surprising he didn't write more, though I suppose that given that most of his poems are downers in one form or another that wouldn't have worked with his enthusiasm for jazz.

Joe Pass's Six String Santa is quite palatable, given that I generally hate the genre.