JSngry

Now who will fight Mr. Tooth Decsy? The private Ali, I did not know. But the public Ali was one of the great men of his time, and was a personal inspiration, especially after he was allowed to compete again. When We Were Kings is epic. RIP

Johnny Guitar Watson Johnny Guitar Johnny

Listened to two more Etta Jones albums made with Nelson's participation, HOLLAR! & From The Heart. HOLLAR! is a collection of results from 1960-1962 and hangs together as an Etta Jones album very much in the mold of her later Muse dates with Houston Person. Nelson contributes 2-3 solos, and good ones they are, but nothing to really impact the album away from being what it is without him. That distinction falls to a quite boisterous 1962 version of "Nature Boy" with a very aggressive Jerome Richardson that is unlike any other item in the Etta Jones discography of which I'm aware. From The Heart.is a much more Nelson-impacted affair. Personnel listings to the contrary, there are horns on all but 2(?) cuts, and strings on some of those. The arrangements on this 1962 date are nowhere near as adventurous as those on the previous year's So Warm. That one seemed to be aiming at Sinatra/Riddle Only the Lonely territory and only sometimes/partially made it, with blame going to both singer and arranger...and producer, really. This one works much better (if not perfectly, there are still moments where the flow goes weird, even though it always getws back on track) because there's a better fit between singer, arranger, and repertoire. Seems to be aimed at the then-current worlds of Dinah Washington & Ray Charles, which fits Jones so much better. Nelson's arrangements still carry some bite, but never become inappropriate for the singer and the target. So Warm is definitely the more interesting record, but From The Heart is definitely the more on-target, all things considered. I had never heard of either (nor of HOLLAR! for that matter) until the last few weeks. All have proven to be interesting additions, although HOLLAR! exclusively as an Etta Jones album. After hearing these two albums of Nelson backing singers and then going back over some of the other singer's albums he had a hand in, it seems to me that the one singer who got the most advantage out of his backings was, perhaps Ironically, James Brown. Soul On Top is a mostly magnificent album with mostly uncompromising arrangements and completely uncompromised vocals. Would that those elements had always been present in the Nelson's collaborations with singers

The Notable Glasses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_(surname) Billy Crystal Zutty Singleton

Brett Maverick Mustang Sally Rabbi Pinto

Stranger On The Shore Strangers In The Night Billy Strange

Yeah, there's a lot of sound on Siesta. The Miles/Marcus Miller things were not trivial undertakings. They might not have been consistently brilliant, but they were not trivial.

Tokyo Rose Ballet Russe Betsy Ross

And it's most magic when the car drives itself!

Clarence "Steal Away" Carter Michael "Get Away" Jordan Nancy "Run Away, If I Were Wise I'd Run Away" Wilson (presented by Cannonball "74 Miles Away"Adderley feat. Mr. Joe "In A Silent Way" Zawinul)

She herself might not be an addict, but she might be enabling one. That's always sad, but it is what it is.

Flintstones L'il Critters ImmunoRaptor

I know I have a burn...and it's in the Mosaic, no?

Colby very quietly off to a 5-0 start, this guy, either left for dead or else always there, seems to be nothing else. The Inner Colby Lewis lives forever until proven othrrwise.

Think I hsve it maybe? Have to look. Not looking to become a completist, not really wanting to, not everything with the name attached is golden, by any means. Still, sometimes things happen without intent... Finding myself getting increasingly WTF?-you over these few choruses: just enough unexpected notes and accents to create a quiet balanced imbalance, if that makes any sense.

Frank Fay Charles Lindbergh Mel Gibson

Jim Rice Bobby Wine The Drinkard Singers

Dee Dee Sharp Didi Conn D.D. Lewis

Sorry Charlie, Starkist doesn't want tuna that play in tune, they only want tuna that taste good.

glis·ten [ˈɡlis(ə)n] Sleigh bells ring, are you listenin'? In the lane, snow is glistenin'

Sonny Liston Sleigh bells glisten

Copland...don't really like Copland, to be honest. Don't DISlike him, just find him kind of...pleasantly lacking. This piece was no exception. I mena, it was "good", and I did enjoy it, certainly won't shy away from exploring it in the future as opportunity arises. But...and it could have been played better, honestly. Might have been Reed Betrayal, and we've all been there, but...if you're playing a composed piece and you know what's coming and you know where trouble is starting to arise with your equipment, I think you ought to improvise a little and find a way to work around that. That might sound harsh, and maybe it is, I mean, hell, this is live music and sometimes shit happens that you just cannot control. But anyway, pleasant but not really satisfying performance on the Copland. Mahler, though, holy shit, what kind of extended paen to angst is THIS? Holy shit, brother murders brother, dead brothers murdered bone gets turned into a despairing flue, nobody lives happily ever after, hell, nobody even lears a tragic lesson, even the castle collapses. This is not what we as Abrahamic cultures come to expect, we expect at least some level of justice, or redemption, or lesson, but no, not hear, what happens here is simple - everybody dies and then they're dead. Period, end of story. I intentionally avoided doing advance review of this one because I knew it was highly vocal and I knew there would be subtitles. I wanted to experience it "cold". So, yes, this story keeps unfolding, and there's a frigid kind to be warmed, a lovely flower in the woods, and a pure-hearted soul who's murdered by his brother, where is there NOT redemption to be had in this setup? But no, BOOM! Castle collapses on everybody and that is that. I was more than a little taken aback. And not least of all because the music was so freakin' brilliantly composed and executed. Lord have mercy, van Zweden can do Mahler, and he's gotten his band (and last night, the chorus and soloists) to do it just the way he wants it. I've come to really dig Mahler once I got past past memories of Leoanrd Bernstein's Columbia/NYPO recordings, it's not all special effects boombahCRASH, there's meat there, and no need to hurry either. This was a magnificent performance and, given the story it told, a certainly unexpected one! Driving music to and from was the new Henry Threadgill Pi album. The Copland paled as a folloup to it, but leaving the hall after that Mahler thing, it seemed like a great wave to get on to keep on going. So, yeah, Threadgill, Mahler, van Zweden, great night.

That's a great quartet, imo, and you assessment of the difficulty of the music is quite correct. Difficult to simply play correctly, even more difficult to play correctly and with a "natural" feeling (or, if you will, a "swing"). Younger groups such as this have the advantage of never knowing this music as "new", it's always been there for them, so performance can begin to focus more on interpretation and less on just getting the damn notes right. Listeners such as yourself (and me, actually) who might have been put off by the apparent "coldness" of this area of music might be well served by hearing it played live and played well but younger (but definitely expert) groups such as this. The spirit lives! Heard last night: https://www.mydso.com/buy/tickets/jaap-van-zweden-conducts-mahler

Just my opinion, but the better parallel to Concord as a standalone jazz label might be Norman Granz' Verve, not Pablo.

"Reach out" is a term I first encountered in the corporate world, and then only after leaving the night shifts for the daytime. At first I thought it was some kind of a joke that everybody was in on, but nooooooo..... Apparently the connotation is that you are the one doing the reaching, and that you are doing so as a gesture which will signify the need for the reach-outee to be there, it's all about recognizing the value of others and connecting as a TEAM, nobody succeeds in isolation, but there must be a consciously proactive move to break the isolation, so, REACH OUT! god that world is so full of its own shit...trying to make the corporation the community, noting that you spend more time with your coworkers than you do your family without irony or disgust, just as justication for expanding the trend to make it "feel" more humane in the process. All I can think of is that putrid Diana Ross song, yuck. Reach out and touch somebody's hand, eeeewwwww. In the other example, although, I think a distinction has to be made about chronoplacement of the expressions. If you're leaving my place and I tell you to bring this cake home with you, well, that's kinda jacked. However, if I'm on the other end of the phone with you, or if I'm going to meet you later at your house, then bring this cake home makes sense, because then we are looking at both ourselves and the cake in terms of where it will be in the future thanks to our actions. If we do not bring the cake to the desired future location, we will have no cake, and what will we have taken is a lesson about the need to get the damn cake to where it needs to be by any means necessary. Although, it's just cake, hardly a dig deal, not like pie would be. Same thing with the books, if Little Johnny's teacher asks him where his books are, he will say that he forgot to bring them. His mother will have told him to NOT forget to bring them, once again proving that listening to your mamma is gonna be a Best Practice far more often than not.