Nate Dorward

Hm, where'd the typo come from? It's 2004 needless to say. Have it, but only listened to half of it so far (so far, quite strong). I like the Tracey/Parker a lot, though I haven't heard the 1st one (& people who'd heard it seem to like the 1st one a bit better). There will be a piece I did on it on the Paris Transatlantic site on Sep. 1st.

At least two: Equation with local Toronto players Mike Hansen and Tomas Krakowiak, & Shooters & Bowlers with Gerry Hemingway. Everything else I've heard by him--about a dozen or so albums--has been superb, though. I like Intentions with Peggy Lee & Phil Durrant, which I don't think gets mooted a lot. & the trio with Russell & Durrant (three discs strong now--WHEN will Conceits & Concert Moves be reissued??) is a classic.

There's a quote in a book I read ages ago, Zen and the Art of the Macintosh, from Ornette Coleman: "Jazz is just riffing on your mistakes". No citation there, so I don't know if this is an accurate quote (the only well-documented qt from Ornette I've seen on the topic is rather different, something like "I realized that I was onto something when I realized that in playing free you could make mistakes.")

Gokhan--no need to bother with the elaborate writeup! It's mostly just taking notes for myself--I have to do a "formal" writeup for the end of the month & figured I might as well post the notes here to get things going. Glad you like Growing Pains. I really like Braam a lot. Next time I have a little dough I think I'll be picking up his intriguingly titled Foamy Wife Hum.

OK, here goes. Discographical info & personnel are given at the start of the thread. This was recorded live at the Crawley Jazz Festival in 1992. I don’t know anything about the 3 young players here: I’m sure some of the British residents on the board can fill me in. The liner notes have stills from a video: tantalizing, as I’d love to see the band in performance. I don’t think that the stills are from the same performance, as they look like they’re on a set. In the tray behind the CD is a snap of what looks like the actual Crawley gig, though. 1. “Dudu’s Gone,” a memorial to Dudu Pukwana in the line of Ornette’s rhythm-changes tunes--the band’s signature tune, as Stevens announces at the end of the track. This wasn’t on the original disc because the engineer was still adjusting levels; Martin Davidson of Emanem has fiddled the sound on this to even it out, & it’s perfectly acceptable, though acoustically variable. A cool, slightly bent trumpet solo form Wallen that seems to shake the bebop out of itself with a snatch of “Parisian Thoroughfare” & then gets more into a squirting-from-between-your fingers Don Cherry fragility/quizzicalness: as it heats up you can hear Crosby try a brief snatch of Coltrane movement in thirds, & Stevens’ cries of pleasure are quite audible here. When Jones comes in Crosby seems to settle on the Traneish chord substitutions for a while; Jones has a fluid approach that seems to virtually ignore any notional barlines & you can hear the music getting more intense & opening up, leaving behind the changes and 4/4 feel. This is the passage in the track that really makes this outtake a valuable recovery (it's quite different from the version at the end of the set). 2. “Do Be Up”, which the liner notes reveal is Stevens’ take on Ornette’s faster (“up”) pieces like “Ramblin’”, though it’s got a minor feel rather than Ornette’s majorkey feeling. It’s worth quoting Steve Beresford’s excellent liner notes to get an idea of what’s going on here: “What John calls ‘rhythmelodics’ – a quality he hears in the music of Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins and Chet Baker – can bring out hidden qualities in an individual’s playing. ‘Rhythmelodic players are ones who get cloest to a speech-like approach as opposed to an arpeggios type of playing. Any rhythm has an innate melodic content.’ And vice versa. Listen to Gary Crosby’s repeated figure under Byron in that section of ‘Do Be Up’ – singable, danceable bass lines you thought had been lost with Wilbur Ware. Rhythmelodics can involve musicians dedicated to playing within the tradition but put them in places they have never been before. And do that without sacrificing grace or flow. That’s a rare thing to do, especially in Great Britain, in a culture that insistently devalues spontaneity and innovation.” Anyway: A little jump-up tune with a quirky told-you-so bassline (Stevens's tunes always give the bassist something simple but interesting to chew on). A little three-way collective soloing & then it’s Jones’s turn, over a rhythm which as so often with Ornette’s music seems to be harking back to a springy two-beat feel. I’m struck, listening to this, how Stevens, compared to say Blakey or Blackwell, has a rather “suspended” feeling & rarely seems to be breathing down the soloists’ neck: he responds to them (usually with blistering-hot cymbals) rather than forcing them to interact with him. A hot tenor solo, then Stevens drops out as Wallen comes in, pushing it into more of a Cherry + Chet Baker bag, playing off earlier forms: the blues, and (notably) an extended sequence where they work through a few choruses of “Softly As In a Morning Sunrise,” which flips into “You & the Night & the Music” briefly. After the melting trumpet (actually I think flugel?) solo, the harshness of Stevens’ cymbal attack at the start of his solo feature is startling; it turns out to be mostly snares, rather military-sounding actually (made me remember that Stevens & Trevor Watts met while in the military). 3. “You’re Life”. This is also “modelled upon” (sez Beresford) Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament”. A bluesy little bass solo with Garrisonian double stops, to a softly jingling free-time Stevens accompaniment on just cymbals & hi-hat, almost an SME thing. A simple elegaic tune for the horns, almost amorphous in its melancholy; Stevens gradually opens up into his version of an Elvin triplet feel, though it has a suspended feel rather than the racing danger of Elvin. (Stevens can be volatile too but it’s in the unpredictable slashes and sudden heightenings of activity & volume rather than a continuous feeling.) A two-horn improv passage of elegaic fragments, coalescing into a darker, more intent passage for Wallen, his high notes functioning like little rhythmic jabs, his runs whisking upwards. Stevens doesn’t tend to construct performances as “gradually intensifying”: the changes of mood jump out at you, like the big cymbal smashes that intrude 8 or 9 minutes in. The edges get blurry at the end of Wallen’s solo, hinting at freespace, but as Jones takes centrestage the music centres itself again tonally. Inevitably there’s a Coltrane flavour to Jones’ solo & Stevens to respond to this moves into close-quarters dialogue with the horn, often violent interjections that at one point near the end tip over into a heavy blues/rock pattern. There’s a short bass solo & then a free section culminating in a seagull-cry passage for both horns before the head returns. 4. “2 Free 1” – which is, according to Beresford, about freeing up the relation to the “one” in meter, about “people imprisoned”, and “the spaciousness of the sky and quality of light in Norway”. It starts with Stevens solo, on brushes, playing very ambiguously to suggest all sorts of flavours of triple meter, duple meter, freetime, of various sorts. The theme is a drooping little phrase, with a nudging bassline. A little creepy, actually: I could imagine this done as scary-movie music, & Stevens’ drumming here builds a lot of tension just through being so slippery & unpredictable. Wallen’s solo is sharp little fragments, upwards-lifting whoops & flares, & disconsolate seesawing figures. Jones is on soprano, & it’s as if he’s feeding off the elegaic mood of “You’re Life”, a strong contrast with Stevens’ shimmering rush of percussion, & the drummer steps aside for a soft-sad lyrical sax/bass passage that could be John Surman & Dave Holland in duet. Stevens comes in with a soft but still dangerous waltztime. All the ambiguousness gets a temporary respite with a straight swinging passage, rather “cool”, so it’s something of a shock when the droopy theme turns up again as a stinging-bee conclusion with a smeared, distorted coda. A rather mysterious piece, I find. 5. “Dudu’s Gone” again, to end the set, a little shorter & taken faster than before. A fun piece (it’s not an elegy, it’s township freebop). Wallen is one of those cheeky sidekick bebop trumpeters here, full of quotes – a little “Rhythm-ning”, a bit of Ferde Grofe via “All the Things”, some Charlie Parker, “Parisian Thoroughfare” again, &c. The bassist takes a rather Monkish tack compared to the first version. Jones is on soprano, & this gives the tracks a bright upbeat feeling – and there’s a surprise in store, a rocking blues that gives the thing a rather wistful sendoff. I think this is a really fine release: in its own way this is as fresh & as revelatory as Stevens' SME work. It was recorded two years before his death, and it's hard not to regret his too-early passing, & that he didn't record more in the 1980s & 1990s.

I gave it a whirl & came to a standstill at level 8.

Yeah Thirteen Friendly Numbers is great--I have the original Acta release, which I think is the first Butcher disc I got--I saw News from the Shed live, talked a little to the musicians, & then started ordering some of the albums. Which reminds me, it's high time someone reissued Conceits with Butcher, Durrant & Russell.

Yeah, those are great tunes. Rest in peace Mr Zindars.

Yeah, Burrell's worth catching! The duo album with David Murray on Victo actually is really good.

I have the 1st volume. I like it a lot, though it's definitely not for everyone. The duet with Mulligan, by the way, is freely improvised--starts fairly abstract & eventually settles on a pedal point, if I remember rightly. There are also fascinating very long tracks here by Konitz + the Giuffre trio (with Peacock in for Swallow) & Konitz + the Paul Motian Trio. Mostly solos & duos by each bandmember though they join in at the end.

Glad you liked it, & glad you liked the review too. I seem to recall someone here (was it ubu or D.D.?) wasn't so keen on this brand of European jazz, in the comments on the BFT thread..... but yeah, most people liked this track a lot even if they thought my other choices were out to lunch! Have you heard Joost Buis's Astronotes? It's also got Pallesen on it, & it's a terrific disc.

Thank Barber for the Beatles and Stones If not for Chris Barber and his brand of jazz, MARK MILLER writes, Britain's rock 'n' roll invasion might never have happened By MARK MILLER Globe and Mail, Wednesday, August 17, 2005 Every jazz musician has his or her own story, each one a little different from the next. Chris Barber's story comes rattling across the Atlantic Ocean in a telephone interview from his home in Hungerford, west of London -- a flurry of asides, digressions, insights and, along the way, biographical details. The veteran trombonist is making four Ontario appearances over the next few days with singer, guitarist and trumpeter Jeff Healey and his Toronto band, the Jazz Wizards. At 75, Barber arrives as a central figure from the British "trad revival" of the 1950s and a formative influence on both the British blues "boom" and rock "invasion" of the 1960s. As he recalls it so exuberantly, he came to jazz by "sheer chance." The boy Barber liked the classics, although tellingly it was a "very, very acerbic, very acrid-sounding, double-stopped and crunchy" interpretation of a Bach violin solo recorded by Fritz Kreisler that really caught his ear at the age of seven -- "normally not something a child would like." Three years later, while at boarding school, he heard a recording on the BBC of Eric Winstone's English dance band playing Oasis, a piece of Sahara-inspired exotica borrowed freely from the Duke Ellington hit Caravan, all "trumpet growls and bluesy saxophone sounds." Barber was suitably impressed. "I wrote my father a letter -- I only wrote him once in three years at boarding school; this was the one time -- and said, 'I've heard some jazz on the radio, will you send me some?' " Advertisements His father, a classical musician, consulted Gramophone magazine, and forwarded a recording that had just received a glowing review, Coleman Hawkins's landmark 1939 ballad version of Body and Soul. Barber still seems to marvel at the serendipity of his father's choice. "If you need to explain to somebody what you can, should and maybe should not do to a ballad," he says of the tenor saxophonist's rendition, "that's the perfect example." The next revelation came in the form of the book Really the Blues, an idiosyncratic autobiography of the white Chicago clarinetist Milton (Mezz) Mezzrow, who had championed the racial integration of jazz in the 1920s and indeed seemed to want nothing more than to be black himself. "For a young boy, brought up in a moderately left-wing household," Barber explains, "and knowing about slavery and what happened and what shouldn't have happened, that book was like a blue rag to a bull -- to make a pun out of it. Within days of reading it, I was totally hypnotized as a jazz, blues, African-American music enthusiast. That was it. Gone. And I have been ever since." Barber formed his first band in the traditional New Orleans style in 1949, but it was his second, a sextet dating to 1954 with trumpeter Pat Halcox, clarinetist Monty Sunshine and others, that would become the focus of his career -- a career that by British jazz standards has been highly successful. Indeed, the band remains a force today, its evolution to its current, 11-strong lineup documented by CD reissues on the Lake label of its early LPs and new releases on Timeless of recent recordings. If it's no coincidence that the trombonist has been rather less doctrinaire than many of the musicians affiliated with the "trad" movement, he still contends, "I'm an enormous purist, but pure jazz to me is not what some people think it is. It's a philosophical concept, a purity of feeling, of genuine expression. That's the point about it, it seems to me." That philosophical concept saw the Barber band, and its singer and banjo player Lonnie Donegan in particular, popularize "skiffle" music during the early 1950s, setting the stage for the many younger British musicians, the Beatles among them, who would play in skiffle groups of their own before turning to rock 'n' roll in the early 1960s. It also found the Barber band presenting a dozen or more leading African-American blues and gospel artists as it guests during the same general period, similarly inspiring a younger generation of British R&B musicians who formed such bands as the Rolling Stones, the Animals and the Yardbirds. "I think there's a good chance they'd never have heard the blues otherwise," Barber suggests. "It was only because we had the financial strength -- with tours and so on -- that we could bring Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and the others in." Indeed, Waters, Terry, McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, James Cotton, Louis Jordan and their compatriots were so insufficiently known in Britain that the country's promoters, seeing little financial advantage to their presence on a bill, refused to pay extra for their services. Barber was told, " 'You pay for them if you want them.' So we did. "We wanted to play with them. We recognized that if there were a certain lack in the British traditional jazz, it was that it wasn't black enough -- to be brutally frank. We didn't have the blues background, or the gospel background." How better to acquire firsthand familiarity with both than to stand on-stage beside some of each idiom's greatest proponents? And then, naturally enough, to travel to America in person -- which the Barber band soon did, visiting New Orleans and stopping by Muddy Waters's club in Chicago in 1958 during the first of several tours stateside. Of course, Barber's willingness to depart from the rigid tenets of traditional jazz, together with the commercial success that allowed him to do it, stood him in poor stead with the most faithful of the faithful. "In Europe," he notes, "most people who were serious about jazz wouldn't accept bands like mine, largely because the bands were popular." But the last laugh would be his, even as he has expanded his circle of associates and associations further over the years to include Dr. John, the London Gabrieli Brass Ensemble and, as recently as a concert last month in Liverpool, Van Morrison. Never mind those unnamed critics whose words more than 50 years ago still seem to rankle. "All I know is when we got to America and began to meet real jazz musicians of real quality, of real experience and knowledge, all of them were very encouraging to us. They'd say, 'We like your band. It's very good music. You're doing it the right way. Come and sit in with us.' Which was somehow unexpected. We had been led to believe that we weren't any good, so to be accepted totally in that sort of way was a shock." Sure, he admits, his British band sounded a little different than its American counterparts. Distance will have that effect. "If you can tell the difference between a blues singer from Louisiana and one from Mississippi," he proposes, with just a hint of defiance ringing down through the years and across the Atlantic, "then what's wrong with telling the difference between a jazz band from London and one from New Orleans?" Chris Barber appears with Jeff Healey's Jazz Wizards in the Old Town Hall at Hilton Beach, Ont., tonight, Hugh's Room in Toronto on Friday, the Regent Theatre in Picton, Ont., on Aug. 21 as part of the Prince Edward County Jazz Festival and Hugh's Room again on the 23rd.

Oh, right, Jason Yarde--yeah, I caught one of his freer gigs: the Louis Moholo band at Freedom of the City in 2002. If memory serves it was: Yarde, Moholo, Francine Luce, Veryan Weston & John Edwards. It was a good gig, I thought, & I'm a little surprised that it wasn't released on Emanem's small-groups compilation from that year's festival.

Glad to know Warleigh's was here! I wonder why he records so rarely.... Anyway, just thought I'd say that it's 5 days till this AOTW "officially" begins. Not sure how many people actually have this disc, but it's easily available, & in any case if this thread ends up just loosely discussing Stevens & UK jazz that's OK too. I'll be putting together a report on the disc, though, not least because I have to draft a review for Paris Transatlantic this week so will be spinning it.

The Pettinger bio says that Evans & Coltrane weren't great friends, largely (if I recall) on the strength of Evans' never playing with Coltrane again outside Miles' band with the exception of their appearance as sidemen on a George Russell album.

Tommy Lee cracks the books, uh, sort of Okay, so TV producers made him do it. But the Motley Crue rocker did attend classes and even joined the drum line, albeit with his clothes on and his piercings out, CATHERINE DAWSON MARCH writes By CATHERINE DAWSON MARCH Globe and Mail, Monday, August 15, 2005 Back in 1979, 17-year-old Thomas Lee Bass faced a life-altering decision. There were still two months to go before he could graduate from high school, but his garage band had been offered a recording contract. "Finish school or go make records, tour and rock the world. That wasn't a hard decision for me," says Lee (who dropped his last name when he dropped out of school). "You would not believe how many times I heard, 'You gotta have a diploma. What if this music thing doesn't work out for you, Tommy?' " But Lee told his parents that he was "put on this planet to make music and entertain people." Within a year, he invited them to Motley Crue's sold out concert at Great Western Forum in Los Angeles. "It's, like, 16,000 people in there. I remember the house lights coming on and I could see my parents out there. Both of them had huge smiles on their faces. "For me that was the definitive moment of like, 'Now do you guys get it?' And they got it." And now, it would appear that Lee gets it. Twenty-five years later, his gluttonous appetite for sex, drugs and celebrity sated, it seems he has acquired a taste for higher learning. Last fall, the 42-year-old rock star spent a semester at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He studied American literature, chemistry, horticulture and played drums in the marching band. Was it for real? Not really, but it's fun to watch. Lee went back to school because TV producers asked him to (and Journey's Steve Perry said no). The adventure became a six-part comedy-reality show, but it's more comedy than anything else. Lee was never enrolled at UNL; he just attended classes. He also never lived on campus, despite how his very funny search for a compatible roommate plays out. (How else could Lee get away with a dorm-room makeover that included a huge, flat-screen TV, video games and La-Z-Boys?) Tommy Lee Goes to College premieres tomorrow night on NBC and CTV. If the incongruity of the title doesn't grab you, maybe the rocker-out-of-water concept will. Tommy Lee is one of the baddest boys in rock, playing for one of the most hedonistic metal bands in an era known for its excesses. Motley Crue took off in the eighties and sold more than 40 million albums. Lee played drums, naked much of the time, and when the metalheads weren't on stage, they were backstage downing Jack Daniels, shooting heroin, and having more sex than most men ever dream of. They were even out-partying Ozzy Osbourne; Ozzy dropped the band as his opening act during the 1983 Bark at the Moon tour. For Lee, marriage (to a Penthouse pet for 30 days, Heather Locklear for seven years and Pamela Anderson for three years, until he was jailed for hitting her in 1998, and they have been on and off again ever since) didn't slow him down much. Parenthood (Brandon, born in 1996 and Dylan, born in 1997) just changed the fun (he once gave Brandon a bath in cherry Kool-Aid because it was his favourite drink). Lee is a heaven-sent celebrity for the tabloids. His mother can't stop reading them, and it drives Lee crazy: "She buys all of them and will call me up and say 'Hey, I heard about . . .' And I'm like, 'Mom, you've been buying those . . . magazines again, haven't you? Stop!' " So imagine his mom's relief when she found out he was going back to school, even if it was just to tape a TV show. "She was trippin'," said Lee, on the phone from Utah, where Motley Crue is performing, after a six-year break, as part of their reunion tour. The series begins with Lee giving his mom a kiss and promising to get good grades. (Despite the fact he didn't actually enroll, UNL still graded his work. Lee is tight-lipped about his marks. Even his Mom has to wait for the finale to find out how he did.) He drives up in a shiny red Shelby Cobra and nods, signs autographs and gives the occasional hug to stunned students who can't believe Tommy Lee is on their campus. These scenes are priceless, and likely the only unrehearsed bits of the entire series. There were a few professors who didn't like the idea of Lee, a convicted felon, making a TV show at their school. What kind of an image would Lee bring to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, they asked. They were overruled by the school chancellor; prime-time advertising on a national network was too good to give up. Guess you can't blame the academics for grabbing a piece of Hollywood PR. Lee is doing it too: If you listen, you'll hear him singing in the background. The theme song is taken straight from his just-released album and many of its songs make up the show's soundtrack. Coincidentally, Lee's autobiography was released around the same time he started at UNL. So, in an upcoming episode, watch as Lee's American literature teacher uses Tommyland -- which opens with a dialogue between Lee and his Johnson -- as a class text. Walt Whitman. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Tommy Lee. Whatever, Lee dug it. "It was kind of cool to be chilling on that New York Times bestseller list and having people in the class review my writing." Any criticism? "No, everyone actually really enjoyed the style of the book," he said, sounding just a little surprised. At least that was one book that Lee was familiar with. His teacher gives him the gears about catching up with the class and he said he did, eventually, read one of the books he was supposed to: "It was [called] something like Women of the Dunes? Was that the name of the book? When I got there, they just threw all this stuff right in my lap and I was playing serious catch-up. . . . There just wasn't enough time in the day -- you're making a TV show and you're supposed to study at the same time?" Even joining the drum corps proved troublesome, and that's something Lee expected to ace. He used to be part of the drum line in high school, but it's been decades since he had to read sheet music. "When I play drums now, I play by heart and by feel, I just do my thing. . . . It took me a while to refresh my memory on time signatures and note values." Eventually he "rocked it" and learned the routines. "They've got the hot-chick beat, when a hot girl goes walking by we play this really sexy salsa beat, and then we've got the mullet beat, when a guy in a mullet walks by." But there was no way the UNL drum major would let Lee play at their legendary football games until he looked a little more Nebraska, a little less L.A. "They were so serious about your appearance, it was really regimented. I had to take my piercings out and cover up the tattoos. I had tattoos on my hands so I had to wear gloves." A turtleneck covered the lip tattoo on his neck. For a guy who used to play naked, covering up had its appeal: "For a minute there, I got to not be Tommy Lee, I got to just be part of the Nebraska drum line. It was like, no tattoos, I'm just like everyone else."

I assume the Screen Actors Guild membership is because of his (playing) role in Altman's Kansas City.... or has he been in anything else?

Sorry, but I wanted to start this one early given that I'm not sure how many people already own a copy...!

p.s. Warleigh is amazing on Stevens' Chemistry. I believe this was available at one point on a twofer from Konnex, but I'm not sure if it's still in print. In many ways I'd like to replace my LP of this as it's got a really bad case of print-through, which I'd hope the CD remastering might correct......

There's a review of New Cool here-- http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/jazz/reviews/jo...s_newcool.shtml Oh, right, there were two vols of Bobby Bradford with the SME on Nessa! Any plans to put those out on CD, Chuck? If you weren't interested in doing it yourself I bet Martin Davidson might be interested......

Yes--there aren't too many later Stevens albums: a few with Derek Bailey (Playing, One Time, & that one with Frode Gjerstad), plus the last SME disc A New Distance. All of them excellent (I haven't heard the one with Gjerstad but have all the rest). Stevens died in 1994. He was a major driving force in UK jazz, mentor to an incredible number of notable musicians. His bands at various points included Trevor Watts, Derek Bailey, Allan Holdsworth, Dave Holland, Kenny Wheeler, Ray Warleigh (great, underrated player--most people here will at least know him through his work with Nick Drake), Evan Parker, Courtney Pine.... There was I think more than one disc with Bobby Bradford but the one akanalog has in mind is Love's Dream on Emanem. I haven't heard it yet, but am told it's excellent.

Then you haven't heard Iskra^3 or The Grass Is Greener...... But aside from those two, yes, everything I've heard on the label has been A-1.

Just a heads-up to say that I've put forward John Stevens' New Cool in the Album of the Week forum--link here. Just in case people here wanted to pitch in (I know that the AOTW forum is sometimes a bit of a backwater on this site).

I'd like to see this picture again soon. I just read a bio of the director, Howard Hawks. Apparently, Krupa came up with that routine on the set and Hawks decided to include it in the movie. Hawks was famous for encouraging actors to improvise and for tailoring roles to the actors as the film was being shot. Kinda "jazzy." ← Oh, the Todd McCarthy bio? Yes, been poking around in that a bit: very interesting to learn a bit about his methodology. -- Incidentally, which was shot first, The Lady Eve or Ball of Fire? There are a couple of bits in Ball of Fire which seem to glance off the Sturges film (in particular a memorable bit of dialogue involving apples).

I was thinking a while about what to pick for the AOTW. So many of my favourite albums are either such obvious choices that I didn't see the point in devoting a new thread to them, or else were too obscure or were out of print. My initial thought was something by Mary Lou Williams, in part as a spur to myself to pick up Zoning (as I was hanging out this past week with Zita Carno who plays on a few duets on that album). But I still don't have a copy of that one, & while I could name another Williams disc in my collection, I got to thinking about other things. I've instead decided to go with John Stevens' New Cool, from 1992. This was issued on bassist Danny Thompson's The Jazz Label, which seems to have died out as a going venture though I think copies are still floating around. But it has in any case been reissued this year by Emanem, with a bonus track to boot. John Stevens, drums Byron Wallen, trumpet, fluegelhorn Ed Jones, soprano and tenor saxes Gary Crosby, bass I thought this disc would be a good pick because: (1) it's easily available from most distributors of small jazz labels like DMG, Verge, Cadence, &c; (2) it's terrific music; (3) it would be, I think, enjoyed by pretty much anyone on Organissimo. Emanem usually issues music from the farther, avant-garder end of the spectrum, & though I was tempted to pick something of that sort for an AOTW (e.g. SME's marvellous A New Distance, also recently reissued) I wanted something with broader appeal. New Cool is very different from Emanem's usual roster: it's hardswinging Ornette/Trane-inspired freebop that will delight pretty much anyone interested in modern jazz. Probably my favourite of Stevens' "straight" jazz output that I've heard, with the exception of Chemistry (a 1970s date which is I think currently o/p). Anyway, this is just advance warning, in case people want to track down a copy before discussion starts, if they haven't already got it. If it turns out few people have heard it, I'd be equally happy if the thread turned into a more general discussion of Stevens' music. If you haven't heard Stevens at all, I think this is a good disc to start with.