JSngry

Yeah, the only reason I can stand pat with my LPs is because Dusty Groove has more or less consistently had old sealed or NM copies of, not the entire catalog, but a significant portion of it, for sale over the years. Diem carped. If not for that, I'd be in, just for the tenor players. Hell's Tubular Bells, some of it is! Anybody know the province of Honey Dew? That label seemed kinda shady, what with all the Elvin live stuff and all. Don't misunderstand me, I bought some of it out of the cuttout bins, just sayin'...

Ok, Birthday comes pretty close. Really close.

Scoffers gonna scoff, but I want to hear the results, done well, hopefully.

I'll be damned if I've heard of a band that had such a miniscule yet obvious between the hits and the album cuts. And they were trying, you know, these albums weren't just hits plus filler. Every now and then, yes, but very seldomly. Like the old Capitol LPs used to say: File Under: Missed It By JUST That Much

Reece did another album, for Futura (with John Gilmore!) that I think is in line with his Bee Hive date. I like that one a lot too. Now, here's one of his I've never heard, on Honey Dew. Never heard it, but it sure looks interesting. Looks to be Reece + the Lookout Farm rhythm section + Steve Grossman. Anybody heard it? https://www.discogs.com/Dizzy-Reece-Possession-Exorcism-Peace/release/3385090

If you're going to get it at all, now's the time, remember? That Dizzy Reece side is killer, more like a Strata-East session. I think that's a "must-have" no matter what the format. Me myself, I'll not be getting it. I have most of the LPs (all of the one's I want), and would not be without them. If I didn't have those LPs, I'd seriously consider this Mosaic.. But I do, and the music is not of Jordan/Strata-East musical/historical import. But geez, it does have an abundance of outstanding tenor players and tenor playing!

yeah, football.

Yeah, I get that. But for me, the song works best when the coyness is removed from the delivery of the lyrics. To me, that's a deeper feel than anything a band can put underneath.

Oh, there's no "swing" to it. Mr. Sinatra was past "swinging" by then.

Anybody remember Jazz magazine from the late 70s? They ran a blurb about Schlitten instituting a profit-sharing plan at Xanadu, and then a while later another one about cats actually getting paid out of the plan.

It works best as a middle aged manic-depressive's booty call: That's not any kind of seduction, that's a dude looking for pussy. Soon. If not now. Sorry to be so blunt, but....that's what it is.

We discussed this in 2005! Here's the personnel, definitely a "family business" thing going on, and thinking about the still-ongoing debate about the lack of really impactful Black Capital, here were people trying to instill it and do it. Self-determination, self-definition. Clifford Jordan (flute) Stanley Cowell (piano) Bill Lee (bass violin) Billy Higgins (drums, percussion) Muriel Winston (voice, vocals, recitation, piano) and Children's Chorus: Becky Childs, Shirley Childs, LaVerne Gilliam, Joy Lee, Natalie Roche, Theresa Roche (chorus) But still, an album that has yet to grab me, but damned if I'm selling my copy. History is sometimes its own justification. And really, the notion of Tadd Dameron writing "pop songs" to be sung, not that unusual, really. Is it "good"? Hell if I know, hell if I care. "Good music" is for suckers!

Oh, I LOVE that Jayne Cortez!

Muriel Winston!!! That's am odd album, an all Todd Dameron program, but all Tin Pan Alley type love ballads. I keep coming back to it every few years to see if it clicks...it never does. But otoh, Todd Dameron too often is the victim of a reductionist driven repertoire, so this is a reminder that he had other things on his mind as well. A regular commerce-centric label from that time would not likely entertain that notion or program, nor should they.have. But there was a sense of a specific cultural perspective in every Strata East project that spoke to the desire for self-definition that sometime might or might not be available through standard outlets. That doesn't make a bad record good, but it does go towards intent, and intent is always something to consider sooner or later.

Yeah, this.

About Strata-East in general, and this set in specific - there will never be a Strata-East Plays For Lovers set. or a series of Strata-East Plays The Georgegershwinjeromekernrodgerandhartzcoleporterandallthoseotherguys. That's not accidental, ok? That was quite intentional.

I don't recall In The World ever being "easy to find"?

I was bitching about my Mosaic voice mail experience being full-frontal clown-show, and now I'm highly strongly advocating for one of their sets. Either I'm bi-polar, or else I'm evolved enough to process multiple realities simultaneously.

Were they recordings made specifically for that box, or compilation of other Columbia Ives things?

Not as it appears: http://wilburwareinstitute.org/events/

For that matter, so does Ed Blackwell. And usually so do Clifford Jordan and Don Cherry. Remember, despite the set's title, only Glass Bead Games is a true "Strata-East" record. Everything else is stuff that Jordan had produced himself before that label came into being. Strata-East just released it. It was a few years in the can by the time it got out, and this Ware session, it was decades. The Blackwell-led date is just now getting out.. So to talk about this set in terms of "Strata-East as an overall label, that's not particularly accurate. Not at all accurate, actually. For my money (which I have spent, and which was put where my mouth was), this a lot more the type of set that I appreciate Mosaic for than Bing Crosby or Rosemary Clooney, again, both of whom I really dig, but not in a Mosaic way. Hey, Wynton Kelly away from Creed Taylor, Orrin Keepnews, of, even, Don Schlitten. Kenny Dorham in 1969. And when not KD, Don Cherry, not that the music is better suited for one than the other (point being made, certainly). Tootie Heat on half, Ed Blackwell and Roy Haynes on the other half, together at the same time! When not Wilbur Ware, Richard Davis. Julian Preister unencumbered. Everything unencumbered, players just playing, which is not a responsibility that just anybody can be given, there has to be discretion.

Wilbur Ware always interest me.

From that historical standpoint, worth noting that Jordan produced many of these sessions pre-Strata-East, for a label that was to be called Futura or Frontier or some other F-Word. That's how I understand it anyway. Point just being that whatever quirks there are in terms of recording quality (and some people are apparently a lot more bothered by that type of thing than others) look at the people on these records, look at the time-frame, and then consider how many of them were being documented at all, never mind in totally unfiltered contexts like these. None of these people are trifling musicians, and none of these sessions were sanitized for your protection or to catch your ear on the radio. Nobody had a new star to push or fads to capitalize on or images to cultivate or controversies to exploit. These were just people who had lives in the music. Lives, ok? Not just careers, lives. If there was an agenda, it was to document what those lives sounded like when left to their own devices. Not everybody's going to hear that, but ok, hear what your life sounds like, options abound, it's a big world. But this is for sure one very real part of it. I get differences in taste, and I totally get differences in socio-cultural fields of vibrational sensory orientations, but the notion that this specific set of music is a "quirky" choice is itself pretty darn quirky, to be honest. And that's giving the fullest benefit of the doubt Quirky? Genetic code.