JSngry

How many hits did Jay McSchann have between 1945-1975?

"Hits" meant airplay as well as sales. I really don't know how/if "Just Friends becmase a "hit", but it seems to be more or less unanimous that it did.

I thought Bird had a pretty big hit with "Just Friends"."the biggest hit of his career" goes the story.

Ok, let's play your game - how many hit records did Freddie McCoy have? I know he made a lot of records, but how many were hits (by whatever standard it is you're using to define the word)? Oh, there's this: http://www.billboard.com/artist/302451/freddie-mccoy/chart

How have you not noticed Jonah Jones records all these years? The covers were designed to appeal!

Given the almost identical totals for children's & jazz & classical (and between the last two, I wonder how much of an overlap there is?), I'm kinda expecting some kind of trend towards the reissuing of "vintage" children's records to eventually emerge. I know they've been blogged pretty thoroughly at least once. Some kind of coffetable book with the cover prints and then one or two CDs...the ultimate in Boomer nostatlgia indulgence. What's left, really? "Fro creative children whose parents want them to love, understand, and grow with good music" Tell me there's not your jazz and classical market of today.

Yuri Gagarin Alan Shepard Afronaught

Joy Reed Dr. John Tydings Gentlemen

Hall Overton Charlie Chan My Worthy Constituent

otoh, if you can find any REAL Blue Note 45s, carpe diem and have some fun tonight!

http://rogerbourland.com/2007/01/07/2006-genre-album-sales-report/ From 2014:http://s0.thejazzline.com/tjl/uploads/2015/03/nielsen-2014-year-end-music-report-us.pdf GENRE BREAKDOWN – TOTAL CONSUMPTION (SELECTED TOP GENRES – ALBUMS + TRACK EQUIVALENT ALBUMS + STREAMING EQUIVALENT ALBUMS) Genre % of Format Total % of Total Consumption Albums Tracks Streams CHILDREN 1.0% 1.5% 0.3% 0.4% CHRISTIAN/GOSPEL 3.1% 3.6% 2.8% 1.6% CLASSICAL 1.4% 2.1% 0.5% 0.3% COUNTRY 11.2% 11.8% 12.0% 6.4% DANCE/ELECTRONIC (EDM) 3.4% 2.0% 4.6% 6.8% HOLIDAY/SEASONAL 2.6% 3.6% 0.9% 1.1% JAZZ 1.4% 2.0% 0.6% 0.3% LATIN 2.6% 2.4% 1.8% 5.0% POP 14.9% 10.8% 21.1% 21.1% R&B/HIP-HOP 17.2% 13.9% 19.1% 28.5% ROCK 29.0% 33.2% 21.3% 24.7%

Guitar Watson Wah-Wah Watson Joan Watson

Tell 'em to skip the time machine (or at least save it for something better than going to record stores, yeah, get some badass fiberoptical internets and a 50 gazzilion terabyte hard drive, and then take control of their own collection - and then have money left over to direct entirely towards deserving product that is all about the good faith.

Hey, wish I had known you were there as well! Didn't post anything in advance because I had a set of personal variables that could have negated the trip. And then we had some winter weather on Friday that thankfully left like it came. But as it ended up, I was able to ride down with Joe Milazzo and his delightful wife Crystal. Trips both ways were a pleasure, and the event itself was, as you state, profound. Plus - balloons! Tell you what - next time you see somebody that you think might be me, come on over and say hi. It either will be or won't be, but if it is, I'll talk your ass off if you let me.

RIP

One thing I think that WAR is addressing is the pursuit of a more accurate performance metric in the face of the vanishing balanced schedule. Now more than ever, performance needs to be evaluated from a global rather an individual context. Used to be that if a guy played 10 years in the American league and had a .300 average, that gave you a good idea of his ability in that specific context, and that could then be used to ascribe value (although based wholly on past performance). Now, the same guy over 10 years, he might still hit .300 for those years, but .300 relative to what? Sure, relative to all players, but not all .300s are created equally these days, sometimes a .295 hitter will serve you better under certain conditions than a .300 hitter, and that's stats like WAR is trying to get at, a portrait of more objective, real-time/fluid global look at performance rather than just looking at the back of a baseball card and then negotiating a contract. And yeah, make no mistake, data is power, so don't think that management and labor both need to stay on top of this lest one get the upper hand over the other for no real good reason. Nothing wrong with calling bullshit where bullshit can be rightfully called, and nothing wrong with standing firm on firm ground. Too much money not to.

I have never before gotten free artist-branded uninflated balloons at a concert, and I do not have great expectations of ever doing so again. Piping on the icing of the cake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_seventh

That works when the talent level of an "average" player stays the same relative to the entire talent pool every year/decade/whatever, which is does not. Skill sets evolve, talent pools strengthen and weaken, somebody who could kick ass today could take a time capsule either forward or backward and find themselves either even more or even less kickassable. WAR is probably not a good "fan stat" at this point, and may never be. But it is not "utter nonsense". It's an imperfect - and hopefully still evolving - performance metric of an individual relative to a general population. Most stats just measure the individual alone, and then the results are compared. With WAR, the general population is a factor at the beginning of the calculation. That's different, and that has the potential to be quite meaningful. Consider driving records. If you're not all that great a driver but drive in a low impact traffic area, your driving record could make you look like the best and safest driver ever. But take your driving habits in relation to all traffic areas, not just yours, and maybe you're a bad driver after all, maybe it's your environment that's kept you out of the hospital, maybe your driving is really not that good at all. I've not had experience with these little driving monitors the insurance companies will try to give you to see what your driving behavior is and how "safe" a driver you are, nor do I know what their baseline is for "safe driving" when they look at your driving data. But I could easily see scenarios where, once enough data, refined data, is collected nationally, a national minimum of "replacement level driver" is established. How sharp are your turns? What is your average stop time? How soon do you signal before turning? What is the average distance you leave between cars? Etc. Of course, driving is not baseball, but the notion of comparing an individual's performance relative to a collective performance instead of a set of individual outcomes is not without meaning, even if the methodology is far from perfected. And personally, I very much like that something as "rigid" as metrics can be so fluid in interpretation. Metrics really don't mean a whole hell of a lot with context, and the deeper and broader the context, the more - or less - meaningful is the metric. As an evolutionary conceit, I think it's inevitable - and hopefully wonderful - that we are essentially attempting to expand our consciousness with the tools at hand. Of such things are progress made, except when they aren't, but that's what happens when you've yet to determine a Global Replacement Level Reality...so...strap it on and Science Up, World!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_over_replacement_player

Happy Jack Hungry Jack Rebbie Jackson

BOOM!

Good, good stuff!

That's more true when you're 25 miles from home than when you're just 90 feet.

I look at it as a work in progress, really. The fact that there's different methodologies is telling, but so is the notion that they're all trying to evaluate the "worth" of a player in a more objective (or at least, less subjective/emotional) manner. What remains to be seen is if anybody really wants that, or if indeed it will ever be possible to be totally objective about anything involving "value". But even if eliminating the subjective proves to be neither possible nor desirable, I don't think you face eternal death by fine-tuning perceptions about what "is" really is. Just, you know...allow that moving forward sometimes involves getting it wrong and getting it right. Like the man said, you'll know when you get there, and really, do you ever? yeah, if Phil Rizzuto had spent his career with the St. Louis Browns, would we today even know who he was? Of course, he didn't and of course we do. But... Perceptions is a tricky little imp, that it are.