JSngry

Edison Lighthouse Howard Rumsey John Worster

Maybe he's jamming with them System Dialing guys, ya' think?

Denardo, eh? What kind of a band does he have now?

Chelsea Bridges The Golden Gate Quartet George Strait

I started out not liking or caring, moved into liking that little window around the Topographic Ocean thing, that was more or less Fusion (and determined Fusion at that, no halfass posing!), and have long since set up shop in Good But Not At All Relevant To Me Land. Seems like I can get every part of what they do (that I like, anyway) in better/fuller form more efficiently and effectively elsewhere. Having said that, yeah, good band, great players. Just not one I feel. But HOF material, yeah, definitely!

Donald Trump Paul Ryan Joe Newman

Florina Perez Tony Perez The Big Red Machine

Longtime Listener First-time Caller Lurker

Found an addition! Oliver's on one cut, playing obbligatos on "Easy Living". Hardly revelatory, but a nice moment on an already nice record.

Not particularly...A general mention or two as point of origin of some of the usual suspects, not much more. It's mostly a book about records, radio, bookings, and the people who made all that work.

The Timeless All Stars Timex Group USA Timon of Athens

Finished the book this afternoon, and have to say that the "snapshots" that are the form of the book tend to get a little more annoying when they move into the actual (as popularly considered) music of the book's title..chronologies are either condensed or left hanging to be taken back up later, There are also some curious de-emphasizings of the entire Joel Dorn/Atlantic era, a really brief look at Ramsey Lewis that doesn't get taken until the book until the narrative reaches the 70s (Ray Bryant's Argo/Cadet gets an earlier and more detailed look, nothing against ray Bryan, he deserves it, but, really, who sold more records to Black Audiences for that label, Ray Bryant or Ramsey Lewis?), a curious reference to Charles Earland as the last great organist to record for Prestige or something like that, which I was like, uh...Leon Spencer, perhaps? He's barely mentioned, which seems odd...)And a curious habit of referring to anything that references funk or latin musics and/or employs electric instruments other than guitar and organ as "fusion"...the last feature profile in the book is of Grover washinton, Jr. It is a kind and understanding one, and worthy of the man, but...it refers to all his records as "fusion". So I guess when "jazz" was intersecting with one kind of R&B it was "Soul Jazz", and then when R&B itself evolved, the jazz that intersected with it was "fusion? Not sure if /I get that...Also almost no, really, no mention of Ahmad Jamal. and I know very well that black people bought a LOT of Ahmad Jamal records when they came out OTOH...a totally accurate portrayal of CTI, why it happened, how it happened as music and as product, with the simple truth that Creed Taylor's genius lay in greating setting for jazz artists that treated them like pop singers, and that they advertised in Essence (how many jazz history book come from a perspective that is even aware of what Essence magazine is?) and some cool inside baseball stuff about things like the impact the discontinuing mono had on jazz record sales, stuff like that. And plenty shoutouts to worthy producers such as Ozzie Cadena & Esmond Edwards, as well as noting that the alte 50s & early 1960s saw Black Men (producers, A&R) having control over who recorded jazz records and how those records got made than at any time previously, and that these records were made to sell to Specific Black Audiences, not just Jazz Fans. No doubt an essential book, if not a definitive one (that would require a lot more granular look at individuals and places than this one book can hold, and given how people are dying off and real estates constantly redefining, such a book may well be impossible?). For fans of the music and the social fabric which spawned it (and/or for those who inherited it either directly or indirectly), yes, read it. It's delightfully square-on look a very particular reality i.e. - about half the book is about the evolution from Race Music to R&B to R&R and not once is Elvis Presley mentioned...Deems Taylor Award on those grounds alone imo! The guy might have some quirks, but he tells no lies, nor does he make shit up in the interest of mythology. Hooray for Bob Porter!!!

pg 122: ...Duke Ellington...the departures in 1951 had forced changes upon Ellington. The rhythmic innovations introduced by Louis Bellson priovided the band with fresh inspiration. Upon Bellson's departure, Ellington tried Butch Ballard and Dave Black; and each, while competent, could not provide the spark that Ellington was seeking. Sam Woodyard, who followed Black, was the answer. Woodyard had worked with organist Milt Bucker before joining Ellington in July 1955...he gave the Ellington band the strongest backbeat it had ever had. If the "big beat" was what Ellington wanted, then Woodyard could deliver...In many ways, the arrival of Woodyard heralded a New Testament Ellington band. The term "big beat" here is used in reference to the Alan Freed era of R&B/R&R, and Freed gets some light shone on him in this book for his various big band involvements - and the people involved, most of whom came from black dance/big bands of the pre-bop type. Also looked at is Basie's involvement with Freed, as well as Morris Levy's involvement with both Freed and Roulete, where Basie was produced by Teddy Reig, him of the earlier R&B records. None of this is really labored on, jsut ittle "oh by the way" dropping of facts that keep adding up with every page. This matter-of-fact declaration that Sam Woodyard gave the Ellington band the strongest backbeat it had ever had..well, yes. HELL yes, in fact! Why has it taken until 2016 for this to be noted and put into context? Dots being connected for a general audience at last! Hooray for Bob Porter!

There's a profile on Paul Williams that not once notes the similarity between "The Hucklebuck" and "Now's The Time", focusing instead on Lucky Millender's "Blues In D"...has that ever happened in a jazz book? Also, as of page 72, Ralph Bass has been mentioned as many times as Duke Ellington, Teddy Reig almost as many times. This is not a book that really "sets fire" to the critical orthodoxy in terms of literary style, but not more than 2 or 3 pages go by that I see something and I think wow, this guy's going there. And he keeps going there. Still lacking anectodes/personal recountings, a LOT of reliance on record producers and sales charts, and that's good for what it does, but there's more to life than data. Still, there's a picture being painted here that needs to be painted...not even painted, more like some photographs being found and collated...in terms of jazz books as we have come to know them, this is pretty radical, and so far, enjoyable.

Ok, I see what's happening here...this is not a book about "Soul Jazz" per se, this is a book called "Soul Jazz" that is (mostly) about its subtitle, "Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975". so, if you're looking about an entire book about Jimmy Smith, Johnny Lytle. and Baby Face Willete records or some such, this ain't it. This a look at some of the jazz musics in and of a community, and as such, a look at all of the musical tastes of that community are considered so that the places of the jazzs therein are given more fuller contexts. Here are the chapters and page $s to give you an idea of how the book is buil: Preface - Pg IX Introduction - Pg XI Race Music- Pg 1 Illinois Jacquet - Pg 47 Rhythm and Blues - Pg 57 Gene Ammons - Pg 105 The Big Beat - Pg 113 Hank Crawford - Pg 149 Soul Jazz - Pg 157 Grant Green - Pg 201 Funk and Fusion - Pg 211 Grover Washington Jr - Pg247 The Producers - Pg 255 I just finished the portrait of Illinois Jacquet, and, yeah, somebody writing this kind of thing about Illinois Jacquet in a freakin' book is beautiful. Expecting the same to be true about Gene Ammons & Hank Crawford, and, possibly, even, Grover. Readin to this point has still been mostly/entirely factual/data, but not in an "encyclopedic" kind of a way. More like, these things were happening at the same time, and in this context. Context, that's what this book is doing, to this point, really well, providing context for Hal Singer and Illinois Jacquet, and Savoy Records and King Records and Sonny Til and just all sorts of things that individually might not seem like much, but in the aggregate, yeah, this IS where the "is" of all this was. Nobody gets a lot of ink, really, but otoh, Bob Porter name-checks Henry Glover and makes it a point to say that no, you don't usually hear about Henry Glover in the history books. If it's a more personal/inside approach you're looking for, read Johnny Otis's books. Hell, read them anyway. But this bob Porter book, read it, I'll say.

Book arrived in the last hour, started reading it...so far it's not telling me anything I didn't already know, but in a very pleasant, readable way. And I love the irony that a white guy writing a book about jazz (this type, anyway) as explicitly Black Music is probably gonna be hailed as making a valuable contribution while at the same time noting that a lot/most of the music and artists covered in this book were either under-recognized or overlooked entirely in their time by the same community/communities that will likely be making these hailings today. Irony on toast, please! The sharpest point for me so far (and I've just barely gotten into it) comes in the preface(!): SOUL JAZZ is devoted to a time that has long since passed. The musicians, the clubs, the radio stations,and the record labels are all memories now.The best way to experience the music as it was is on recordings. Well, uh....apart from the fundamental contradiction inherent in the notion that it is even possible to experience anything that "no longer exists" "as it was"...I think his point is that this was music that sprung organically from a people, by a people, and for a people, and that those of us who were coming to it from the outside will always be doing so, no matter how much we embrace and allow envelopment, and that the only for for that to ultimately not matter is to just shut up and accept that it does. Amiri Baraka routinely took a lot of heat for saying such things "from the inside", and about a broader set of musics (and sociologies). But lord knows, Bob Porter appears to be totally comitted to telling the truth here, so let that fall where it falls. Otherwise, the book seems to be mostly capsule/bio-driven, which is ok for me, because the general premise is established at the start, and from I can read, the bios all are presented in that context. Don't seem to be a whole lot of anecdotes. for or second hand, and that's a disappointment (if that's how it really is, like I said, just barely cracked it today). But yeah, this is going to be a fun read, if for no other reason than it's a book that feels like The Recovery Room or Club Arandas back in the day, the whole damn thing, the bandstand, the music, the conversations, the clientele...the people, all of them (and this is true for all musics, imo). The best way to experience the music "as it was" is through memories of things that really happened, things that you saw yourself, then work from there. For everything else, there's MasterCard.

Neat record!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Sense_(UIL) Leave it to Texas to make math a competitive sport! I was involved in this in the 8th & 9th grades. Also kinda learned to work a slide rule during those years. So...geekdom was not a question of "if", just "how". Whether or not one "likes" math is entirely a personal matter. Whether or not one aggressively ignores it to the point of creating some kind of deniability of it is a question of one's contribution to the collective rationality/sanity, such as and to what degree such a thing actually exists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WSHvbGM6oE

Thank you all. The day was nice, hope that is the norm going forth for all of us!

Updated shipping notice received, now due Thursday!

Supposed to be here Friday!

...I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. Stop it Bob, you're killing me!