JSngry

Much appreciate that, Karl.

MG -OSNS had a hit single with "Way Back Home", and did have some guitartage, was by The Jazz Crusaders, but to me was a pretty unfocused album overall. Great single, not a particularly good album, imo. Pass The Plate, same thing but with no hits. Of tangental/irrelevant interest is that both albums had Joe Sample tunes that would show up on the Bobby Hutherson San Francisco album. Hollywood is an odd one. MoWest was definitely Motown-related, but so was Chisa at one time. Blue Thumb ended up as part of ABC, maybe always was(?) in terms of where the money came from...not sure about that. But Chisa moved to Blue Thumb, correct. That's outlined here: http://www.bsnpubs.com/motown/chisa/chisa.html Here's an image of the back cover of Hollywood http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=1508797 or, if Discogs phots can show up: What Hollywood sounds like to me is either a leftovers album, a contractual fulfillment album, or maybe something that was going to be released anyway but got held up as Chisa proper dissolved/rebranded and Motwon got this Crusaders session as part of the settlement. It's fun, and has gotten better in hindsight, but it was on the shelves more or less concurrently with Crusaders 1, and that sucker was the one where it all came together, if you know what I mean, transition over, here we go. Or so it seemed...more transitions/changes were to come, for sure! But Hollywood, definitely still "transitional" relative to Crusaders 1. Sounds "older" Funny to think how Larry Carlton might have been the pivot factor here...that guy gets a lot of guff in some quarters, but you look at what he did in his "brekathrough" years as a session player, how many different people he did it with, and how well he did it, hey...I think props are due, serious props. I mean, how many people could be crucial solo voices for both The Crusaders and Joni Mitchell? Although...Joni/L.A. Express is still part of the Crusaders/LA studio/crossover continuum. But that's another thing altogether, Joni Mitchell is probably not generally considered Soul Jazz.

I thought a lot about putting 'Understanding' in. It's not supposed to be a list of incredible albums, though. I decided that the impact of Harold Alexander playing with an organ band wasn't really any more serious than Harold playing with Pucho & the LSB a few years before (which I also didn't put in). Shirley got in with the Cookbooks and 'Hip soul', which was the first album she made with Stanley - less than a week before 'Dearly beloved' which also had no bass player. Remember, to be influential and important, a lot of people have got to hear something quite a bit or it won't spread and I don't think that was true for anything on Strata East (or Black Jazz, for that matter). But the impact of Stanley and Shirley was one hell of an impact. I put the Crusaders first album, 'Freedom sound', in there. How can you decide that the twenty-first ('Crusaders 1') or twenty-second had more impact than the first album in a huge body of work? The first one stated clearly the principles which the band continued to follow. There were certainly better albums from them; 'Lighthouse '66' does it for me. But I'm not looking for good, great or even awesome. MG Yeah, the first two are important to me personally, but I get your point about broader impact. The Crusaders thing, (and I did get the album wrong, though, it was Crusaders 1, not 2nd Crusade. My bad on that one) I think in terms of market (as well as musical) impact, Crusaders 1 was/is more than a simple continuation of their previous sound. It was a commercially sucessful reimaging of it, and you probably didn't get those really big hits to come if this one didn't work like it did. if I'm rembering my chronology, that's the first album that really broke through commercially with(and really, the first one to feature) their new "Crusaders" sound featuring grittier funk grooves and dominant electric guitar as a part of the group's sound (geez, Arthur Adams, Larry Carlton & David T, Walker all on the same record!). "Put It Where You Want It" got plenty of airplay in this area, and I think, nationwide. The Chisa albums gave us the last Jazz Crusaders album as well as the first Crusaders album, and they were certainly "transitional". But neither of them had the new Crusaders sound with the guitars all up in there.like Crusaders 1 did, and that was the sound that got them up on top in the 70s. And Blue Thumb either was or soon got up in with ABC, so you had the successful marketing to go with an attractive new (or if you prefer, "updated") sound. Doing research simultaneous with remembering reinforces my perception - Check the charts, this one cracked the Pop Top 100 and made it to #29 on the R&B charts. There was no turning back! http://www.allmusic.com/album/1-mw0000337111/awards Read all about it - in Billboard! http://books.google.com/books?id=MAkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=crusaders+%22put+it+where+you+want+it%22+single+billboard&source=bl&ots=g6yqI6LGpZ&sig=VTIbFExFveLDPHspCi9wpz2dlBU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ev4JVPKiMMmxyATh6oHoCA&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=crusaders%20%22put%20it%20where%20you%20want%20it%22%20single%20billboard&f=false Your honor, allowing for a misremembering of album title, the defense rests.

Important? Depends on your criteria, I suppose, but Patton's Understanding was that for me. Harold Alexander playing like he did, on an "organ record" GOOD GOD! And Shirley Scott's This One's For Me...no bass player, no production artifacts, just Shrirley, Harold Vick, & Billy Higgins. Or does that not fit the bill of "Soul Jazz" per se? Gotta be some Black Jazz items on there...Powerhouse, maybe? Crusaders! Pick one! 2nd Crusade, maybe, the one with "Put It Where You Want It".

"Underrated", hardly, but overlooked...the two Bayete albums, which form an interesting "fuller picture" of the whole Bobby Hutcherson Head On/Hadley Caliman Iapetus thing...and for an appearance by Fred Berry on Seeking Other Worlds.

Indeed. Nuance is not just what you get when your uncles remarry.

Trane had a tremendous crossover appeal. All the "hippies" knew Trane.My Favorite Things was a pretty big seller, and it wasn't all jazz people buying it. It was a big part of the whole 60s zeitgeist thing. And then, of course, A Love Supreme crossed over, and that sealed the deal. Sorta the same thing with Ravi Shankar...don't know if he was on the pop charts or not, but World Pacific was putting out a buttload full of Ravi Shankar records in the late 60s...but did hippies buying Ravi Shankar records mean that everybody was digging into Indian music , that the market was open to all kinds of offshoots, not just one guy playing ragas? it just means that they had heard Ravi Shankar somewhere (he played at Monterrey, remember) and decided that he was a meaningfully worthwhile lifestyle accessory. What ended up happening, and god love 'em for it, is that impulse! built on that to build a legitimate post-Trane legacy..at least until the corporate structure shifted and put an end to all of that. Truly The House That Trane Built. But do note that "avant-garde" in the 70s was an evolving propostion becoming less and less about the pure "energy/fire" music of the mid-60s. But that's impulse! and that's the '70s. And here you accidentally made my point for me. That is what is called "getting in on the ground floor". Great record executives try to stay ahead of trends, or at least recognize them as quickly as possible. When the critics are lauding, you best move your ass. In other words, if this had simply stayed an underground thing that the critics ignored (or if they had all gone down the John Tynan rabbit hole), Alfred Lion wouldn't have been recording it just because he thought it was important to document. That's just a silly Wikipedia quote. Well, now you're getting closer to it. Of course, Lion thought the music was important, and of course he hoped it would sell some records. But recognizing the true importance of an artist & then wanting to present them on your label in the marketplace because you feel that theirs is a worthwhile music deserving of an audience is nowhere near the same as waking up one day and saying oh shit look at downbeat, this avant-garde stuff is taking over, I better get off my ass here before everybody stops buying three Sounds records and I go broke I GOT TO GET ME SOME AVANT GARDE RECORDS ASAP, I mean, those are two wholly different propositions.. Allusions to feeling "left out" or deperation moves or whatever do not take into account Alfred Lion's dedication to quality, and his seemingly perpetual refusal to put out product that he himself did not believe in. Of course, Lion was coming to all of this from somewhat of a "reactionary" standpoint. It took him a while to grasp the meaning and importance of Monk, for crissakes, he came into the game a deep "trad" guy after all. So he weighed evrythng new against his rooting. But, like any "progressive conservative", he was open to change, and would get behind it once convinced of its value. He was not the only "old guard" jazzperson to come to hear the continuity of the tradition in these guys in a what now seems like a relatively soon time. It's worth noting that Blue Note's "avant-garde" records were almost all done by it's established roster. Signing Cecil, Ornette, and Cherry....that's not going on an AG binge just to have product, the streets were "teeming" with AG people waiting to be discovered if that would ahve been the game, that's an acknowledgement that these are leaders of their time doing important work within the tradition, and they should be heard on my label. If I were to put money on it, I'd put it on ego more than profit being the motive. Again - nobody's suggesting that he was making these records expecting to lose money, but the implication that he made them becuase AG was "hot now" so they would move product like Jazz Beatles is just...not a credible argument to me. To use the Goddard Lieberson model again, Cecil, Ornette, these were "status signings", meant to enhance the overall catalog, not to get out the hits and generate the cashflow. The hope is to keep the product out there for it to find its audience over time, not to throw product out there to fly off the shelves. The one strategy is of long-term investment with delayed payout, the other that of a sure thing cashflow generator. It's not a question of do you expect to make money or not, it's a question of how you expect to make it. Failure to take this into serious account reuslts in a distorted picture of what was going on. The musical effectiveness of these records is certainly debatable, but seeing the motives behind them as any sort of cluelees reactionary panic move is just not based in the known realities of the particulars. And really really really - Lion selling and then leaving the label changed everything.

Coltrane died in 67. And those were all (except one) Impulse! albums by Trane, his widow, and his right-hand front-line man. Impulse was well-positioned to sell their records. And again, impulse! after Theiel left was a different label. impulse! agressively marketed their new music roster, but also brought in some Californian tihngs too, a very interesting subset of the LA scene of the time. However, Alice & Pharao were both moving into a more overertly" "spiritual" music, which was not at all the type of "avant-garde" of, say, Marzette Watts, or even Cecil Taylor. Love Will Find A Way was on Arista, produced by Norman Connors iirc, and was pretty much a pop album. I love it, actually, it's got the great single "As You Are", but it's not relevant to the discussion here at all.

Elvin % Thad together EDIT{ Whoa, Jeff, same page same time on that one... I kinda think the Teo Macero side is worth some listening too...Teo was playing jazz tenor and not thinking of the instrument as "jazz tenor", if that makes any sense...lots oc "classical" informings in in his voice...intersting, if not necessarily "underrated" in the sense of whoa, you need to know this one. And he's not as overtly Warne-ish as he was early on (although even then, he had his own slant).

Albert Ayler Barbra Slim Shady

I've got the US Verve issue (found used in Fort Smith, Arkansas of all places ca. 1988)...sometimes you wish records could talk, because there's got to be some kind of a story there), but not a deep-groove. Check it out...you might want to look at this, if you don't already know it (I didn't): http://books.google.com/books?id=0TkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=Parabolic+alan+shorter&source=bl&ots=xALUPTOed9&sig=SccN-ktu3SQYSZgKLtuJxiYTU5c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mAYJVP7zDoGoyAT4gYKwBw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Parabolic%20alan%20shorter&f=false That's pretty much an alternative history of the record right there, true or false. Whole nother recording date, wow, and totally contradicted by the CD issue (which contains that for me pretty incredible story about Rashied Ali getting into it with Esmond Edwards). The idea that it was never supposed to be issued but a few copies found their way into the bargain bins fits with Chuck asking Bill Fenohr if any copies existed without a DJ sticker on them, becuase he never saw one without one (this was on Board Krypton, iirc). Bill said, no, he had the slicks for it, so it was inteneded to be released, anyway, they were taking orders for it. But how many orders he filled for it, I don't remember, or even if he mentioned filling any. Makes you wonder if there was so much disinterest that Verve dumped their pressings immediately w/o anything getting into stores. My copy does not have the DJ sticker, but it does have a nice clean round hole punched out of the lower left cover. So make of that what you will. It's a mysterious record, but I will take any Alan Shorter there is. I loved that guy's work, the little of it there was. Too bad he lost the Publicity Wars to Eddie Gale... :alien:

Yeah, I've had a headache all day long...work has been a pain here as well, so this is constructive avoidance. Here's a thought - Eddie Gale on Liberty-Era Blue Note vs Alan Shorter on MGM-era Verve, Frances Wolff vs Esmond Edwards, the battle of the avant-garde trumpeters...what kind of pissing match was that? Who got there first, and who said, oh shit, they got X, I better go get Y to keep up? I'll see your Ghetto Music and raise you an Orgasm! HA - I got a Black Rhythm Happening! AAAAARGH, You got me there, CURSES! I jest, of course, becuase, well...it's funny to think about it in those terms. Most times a record's origins are somewhat obviously traceable, even if only by reverse engineering the known networking of all concerned. But those two guys, those two producers, those two lables, all in about the same timeframe...wow. The mind reels...I mean, ok Esmond Edwards surely knew Wayne & Alan both, but jeez, that does not explain Orgasm, much less Orgasm on Verve. The Eddie Gale BNs are perfectly logical presentations by comparison!

Would love to hear it!

That's tempting, even almost at that price...in some ways Fresh is still my favorite Lowe album, and this looks to be right in there with that. Maybe if I pick up a good wedding gig (file under be careful what you wish for) I can use some of the proceseeds to get this to wash the dirt off...

Especially unusual as post-Lion BNs. Wolff is credited as producer on Ghetto Music, with no producer being listed on Black Rhythm Happening (which is some more "Entertainment From Transamerica Corporation"). Wolff was doing mostly (but not only) the Lonnie Smith/Grant Green/Lou Donaldson-type stuff, but would likely have met/known Gale from Unit Structures...and he did take up with Ornette after Lion left. But I've heard it said more than once that his heart was in the organ band/neighborhood bar type stuff, that was he really was really feeling. Still, yeah, has Gale ever told the story of how he got that deal? Gotta be a story there. Lots of people on those two records, lots of people.

Black-note Transamerica? My label says United Artists (cover says Liberty, of course)...I've got some other things that say Transamerica, but this isn't one of them. Another variance, perhaps? That's interesting about the blue label NYIN, gotta be a story there, it and Love Call didn't hang on too long, relatively speaking...my Love Call is an old school Blue Note Liberty label, but the back cover says it all - "Blue Note Records - Entertainment From Transamerica Corporation". And it's a cutout!

Yeah, my Conquistador is a "black note" UA, finally found it used for four bucks. It stayed in print, just wasn't stocked nearly as readily, at least not in these parts. Most places I looked in would have Unit Structures, Silent Tongues, and, maybe, Looking Ahead. I think maybe they liked the cover better on Unit Structures. Can't blame them for that! Always seemed like when I was in the mood for Conquistador, it was not on the shelves, and when I wasn't, it was. Go figure. The key to what you say is "if you wanted to get your hands dirty"...not everything stayed in print, and not all rack-jobbers kept the same inventory. You had to hunt, as you know, in some unlikely places. Some "special orders" from a local mom and pop would take, like 24 hours, some would take 2-3 weeks, and some never came in at all. No way to predict it either, I special ordered that Bird Onyx LP from some car stereo place in Longview, Texas across the street from the liquor store where I worked one summer, they also "sold records" and had a sign, "Don't See It? We Can get It". I mean this place was about the size of a hot dog stand, and they got it in, like, overnight, less than 24 hours. What kind of a rack jobber that services hot dog stand-sized car stereo places in Longview, Tx is gonna have Onyx inventory on hand (in 1974!) to hot-shot over to the store? That one always WTF?-ed me, still does. Something like New York Is Now, I've only seen first pressings of that, and I got mine in a cutout bin, a remnant of the Liberty Purge. Don't know how or why, bookeeping manuver or actual optimistic sales projection (thre's an actual "business expense" angle to this that only somebody who's actually done it, like chuck, can fully appreciate), but Impulse! seemed to be good about not deleting catalog for a very long time. Also not sure if everything was re-ran equally, but again, investment in deep catalog can pay off in quantity and over time, or used to, if you have the resources to stay afloat long enough. As can getting your hands dirty.

Funky.

Record club editions! Fantastic! Do you know which record club they were made for? The "big three" I remember were Columbia, RCA, & Capitol. A little later, Record Club Of America (no obligation! EVER!). Come to think of it, Record Club Of America was where I got my first Trane record, Transition...funky ass pressing on the second side of it too, but that's ok, I only played Side 1 anyway. Would also like to know how many of those record club editions actually got ordered vs how many were pressed...that's an economic issue that has nothing to do with music...again, write-offs...

You'll be glad you did. Hemphill was a boss.

Never saw a purple/yellow. Interesting. Would like to know the numbers of each pressing, and whether any edition got more than one run. That's one that, if I saw it retail at all, it was one copy, and when it was gone, it was not restocked. What about Everywhere? Not sure, but I think I've only seen that one in black.red. Did either of these get the MCA gold-stamped on the cover treatment? I often wonder if they did the whole catlaog like that, kinda like one last fling/dump/whatever.

Again, sir, you are correct. I can only hope to someday have your keen, concisive grasp of the obvious. My mind gets too cluttered with all the follow-up scenarios & corollaries to be of much use to anybody, especially myself. Mentor me, Scott. Please mentor me. Show me how you do it.

Geez, you're right Scott. That's just how it works, exactly. A straight linear process, read the review, buy the record. Works evertime, simple as that. My bad, sorry. I always try to complicate things.

No, Jim does't say no, Jim says know. I've read the old magazines, checked the old album sleeves, read the old Schwans, and most entertainingly, lived in the old cuttout bins to see how it all played out. Let's not confuse "relevant in the press" with "relevant at the cash register". Ask the AG jazz musicians of the time - any of them, of any ilk - how many records they were selling and how many gigs they were getting. And then ask Ramsey Lewis or Gene Harris or Lou Donaldson the same question. Coltrane, outlier, and for pretty obvious reasons. Shepp, probably the same, but for different reasons. Anybody else, hey, remember that 3rd pressing of Three For Shepp? No? And let's not confuse Albert Lion recording Cecil Taylor with John Hammond recording Prince Lasha, Burton Greene, Sonny Murray, etc. For that matter, let's not confuse Albert Lion recording Cecil Taylor twice with Albert Lion recording The Three Sounds eighty bajillion times. And for sure, let's not confuse Compulsion with Grass Roots.

While we're at it...let's look at Contemporary. They did Cecil, the debuted Ornette, and they had a good set of Sonny Simmons with and without Prince Lasha. Was any of that simply driven by the hopes for a big payday? I'm cynical about a lot of things, but hell - Les Koenig recorded two albums of Vernon Duke's classical compositions (they are nothing like his pop sonmgs, btw) and released all those Andre Previn records. I'd never discount the advantages/motivations of tax-writeoffs, but when somebody loses money on something they believe in that they pretty much know is going to be a no-go sales-wise, hey. More power to them, for all of it.