JSngry

Heard from the seller last night....says that he'll ship the item today and send a notice when he does. Fingers crossed. Never got a shipping notice, sent another email, and received an apology, along with an assurance that the item had been sent as previously stated, and to just hang tight. Well, sure enough, the item has arrived. The seller might have dropped the ball on communication this time, but not on delivery.

DL as well, and save the head for stock, please!

Nice, thanks!

Jim, I'd like to ask of your point of view...looking at Coltrane's recording career chronologically, is there a session you can pinpoint where you'd say there's a clear depiction of the mature Trane sound, where if you look at the session before, you'd find him still searching? In other words, which is the session where you'd say that, sometime between the prior session and this one, Coltrane had that "eureka" moment that led to his full development? I don't/can't really look at it exactly like that, because the quitting of drugs and the heightened musical focus seem to occur at more or less the same time, as did the Five Spot gig with Monk, and who's to really say what drove what, or if it was all of a piece. But by all accounts, Trane really, really started catching fire/locking in/whatever during that gig with Monk in the summer of '57. Blue Train is a good indication that he was pulling it together, especially compositionally, but I think the first record where it's kinda "no turning back now, couldn't even if you wanted to" in terms of his leader dates is Soultrane, from early 1958. But the Red Garland dates with Donald Byrd from 11/57 are pretty hard to ignore as well. It's really a jam, but Trane is really taking charge there, as much as the format allows. Soultrane, though, that's still pretty much a jawdropper of a date, imo. The vision and confidence are all in place there, as is the execution. With those times, and this guy in particular, records only tell a part of the story. There was so much going on live, and record dates were so often not the "projects" they are today. Guys would just get in the car, go record a session, leave, and get back to their lives, whatever those were (and whatever else might have been going on, it was a time when playing as often as you wanted for as long as you wanted was not a dream, it was a way of life). But whatever was happening before Soultrane that might have been partially captured on record was fully captured there, that was where the new bar was set afaic. The chronology here http://www.jazzdisco.org/john-coltrane/discography/ is fascinating to follow, not least of all because you can see how Trane was still making records for different leaders in a variety of contexts for a variety of labels under a variety of conditions. The contrast between what happens on the 12/57 (so soon after the Byrd/Garland session) Blakey Bethlehem big band date (kind of a mess, I think) & the 9/58 George Russell big band date is amazing. Both "studio big band dates", not working groups, and/but/yet with totally different results. The Blakey date has been released with all the alternates, and frankly, it sounds like Blakey is just not ready for the charts, and the players seem to grow weary of waiting for him to get it together. Trane is relative reserved on this, and I don't think it has anything to do with anything other than the date was not really going well in general. So if you look at that date at the end of 1957, as where Trane had "progressed to"...uh...no. The Russell date, otoh, was full of chart-reading pros who were also fine jazz players. Trane only had one spot, and the story is that he asked for time to go off by himself to "get his changes together". It took a while, and people were wondering wtf was going on with this cat. Well, they found out when it was time, because that solo is full-on Trane of the time. So much music in that solo, just the first four bars, the lead-in alone, there's more meat there than most guys would play all night combined, but it just keeps building and opening up. No walking any of that back, none of it. (btw, that's another thing that Trane was really getting devastating at then, opening a solo with a phrase or two that was just like WHOA...."Wabash" from the Cannonball date is like that too, the opening phrase is killer, I actually need to...recover from it to get to the rest of the solo). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoVrPH-gL9g And then a few months later, there's a Ray Draper date on Jubilee that has Trane being there and playing "well", but if you've never heard it, you might as well have heard it, if you know what i mean. Yet, I consider that a "money" gig (or maybe a favor?), and if you use that to look for any kind of "charting progress" goes, well....maybe that would not be the best idea. So it went, but by early 1958 he was back with Miles (he had been fired before, remember, the Monk gig was kinda a "rehab" gig for him in many ways, musically and personally a "new beginning") and once that happened, the BOOM kept on BOOM-ing. Now if you really want to hear Trane creating the future in real time, literally getting there before anybody else , that's Paris w/Miles in 1960. that's some scary shit in terms of how unambiguously...over the then-present is being made, right there in front of itself. But that's what I mean about records not really being the whole story,. That concert was not a recording date, and if a few things happened differently, it would be just another rumor/story/whatever. As it turns out, it survived, and now we know. And although there are many outstanding recordings of that tour that have survived, Trane does not unleash on any of them what he unleashed in Paris, at least not in as much quantity, duration, and intensity. But as to the original question, Soultrane, although as you can see, that's a very qualified answer.

Reed Timmer Cain Velasquez Rico Carty

Pete Barbuti Barbarella Professor Frank Shields, creator of Barbasol

And that's what's got me curious! Who is the record company of record (sorry...) for this particular item?

Yeah, that stuff has been around, even before the internet & PD windfalls. But I think the first actual release of it was on Le Jazz Cool (there was a review in The Jazz Review, iirc), and I have a hunch that Le Jazz Cool was connected to Doris Parker. Before or after Charlie Parker Records, I don't know, but I think before(?). so maybe she just didn't have the legal skills to connect all the dots to secure a firm ownership. I recall a few casual comments over the years that Doris had these Bird tapes and was determined to get something out of them somehow, since she didn't really get anything from Bird. Maybe Le Jazz Cool was her first attempt? I also seem to recall that the ESP Bird album was the first of a planned series that never really progressed...they also did Billie & Bud(?) & Pres(??)...I should maybe get busy on reading the ESP book, maybe that's in there, what that was all about. And that might be another topic for examination - how many of today's fiercely protective guardians of estates actually talked to Doris Parker and learned from her about how to lock it down before it gets out and never comes back? Maybe none, but it's a question worth asking, I'd think.

With he benefit of hindsight, "early and unformed" really means "still strung out". Trane had already been playing a good long while by the time he hit with Miles, and as the live recordings of him with Dizzy & Hodges show, was already quite proficient when in good (or at least not too bad) shape. Very good player in a conventionally (at the time) "modern" style, with just a very little hint in his sound that this was THE John Coltrane. But hey, the cat could play a gig, for sure. That's another reason why the Prestige material as a whole is so rewarding, you can hear when he's on, hear when he's off, and (in both cases) hear him struggling to get past the conventional bebop "bob and weave" phraseology until finally, BAM, he gets there, the so-called "sheets of sound" phase, which of course continued to evolve up until the end. So..."unformed"...maybe, in terms of what was to come, but in terms of what was really going on, not so much "unformed" as "re-forming", although nobody except the real insiders who had been knowing the guy would have realized that. I love Benny Golson's comment (in Cadence, maybe?) to the effect that nobody saw that coming, that for years, Trane was considered by his peers (mostly in Philly) as somebody who was just trying to work it all out, same as the rest of us, and then all of a sudden, WHOA.

The Archies Archie Whitewater Sam Burtis

The Cole & Martin cuts were regular Capital cuts, not broadcasts. So Capital (whatever it is now) would still get something for those, correct? Now, the Bird thing was originally a broadcast, yes, but it was also released on Everest, which I thought was done in conjunction with Doris Parker & Aubrey Mayhew in a kind of a "beat the bootlegggers" move (although it was never released by them on Charlie Parker Records...if my historical studies add up right, that material was first released on Le Jazz Cool, a perceived(?) bootleg label that nevertheless claimed sanctioning by Bird's estate in notes reprinted exactly on the Everest issue...lord only knows what kind of a shady bloodline exists there and/or how much of it remains today...but it looks like the Le Jazz Cool albums (yes, there were more than one!) were all released on Everest, as was much of the Charlie Parker Records catalog)). I thought that might have established at least some kind of shaky "ownership", but looking at my Savoy LPs of the Roost materials from the 1980s, it looks like nope. They get no credits for anything anywhere, not even as "Sources". So hey Macy's shoppers, if you're in there before 12/25, ask for the Bird Discount, money they're saving by having this "unowned" recording in their rotation. Might not be more than a cent or two, but those pennies add up over the long haul! I dunno, this back cover looks like Savoy to me:

Morten Andersen Mountain Thomas Mutton

So whatever Capital is now didn't get anything for those Dean Martin & Nat Cole songs I also heard?

7/130, probably won't look good on the back end, but that's the cost of doing business these days, so...I'm glad to see that my team is still willing to do reasonably smart business. It's not a stoopid-dumb deal, for sure (hopefully....), and Choo over Nelson Cruz is an upgrade (immediately and ongoing), Adding Fielder & Choo keeps that elusive "window" open for 2-3 more years, which seems to be the name of the game these days, getting that window to be open.

Duffy Jackson Buffy The Vampire Slayer People Who Enjoy A Three Musketeers Bar Because It's Fluffy, Not Stuffy

Doing some last minute Christmas shopping @ Macy's this evening, walking through the store and all of a sudden I hear Bird playing "White Christmas", the Royal Roost version (well, that would be the only choice, duh), in full, w/KD and all that, and I say to LTB hey, that's Bird, and she says huh, oh, yeah, I guess so and I get a little loud and say no, you guess so, I KNOW so, this is a fact I'm saying here, at which point some old guy looked at me wondering WTF?, so ok, move on from that, but - who'd be getting paid from that? Berlin Inc., Harry Fox, of course, but who owns the Bird recordings now, exactly who would be getting paid on Bird's end for getting the airshot into Macy's? It was on Charlie Parker Records, and then on Savoy once, but...is somebody besides the writers publishers getting some money for this, like, the people who own the rights to the recording itself? Or is that just kinda floaty o'dotey these days?

THIS!

Spencer For Hire Charles Elmer Hires Blossom Dearie

Speaking of Trane as a sideman, not on Prestige, but easy to overlook, and you lose should you so do! "You're A Weaver Of Dreams"...you can tell, I think, when somebody really knows the lyrics to a song.

So #3 is not Bags? Must be Harry Allen, then!

I'd say you can buy the whole shebang with confidence. There's a few dates here and there where things don't quite click (none of the leader dates, though), and even then, it's very "reality based", and it's probably more cost effective to just buy in to the aggregate. The really cool thing about Trane's Prestige date (aside from following his development) is the tunes. I think it was Bob Weinstock who commented that Coltrane was an asset to any session because he knew a lot of tunes, as in, a lot of tunes. And it sure seems that he did. You get some of that on the Atlantic stuff as well, but..."Love Thy Neighbor", who played that, before or after? Somebody, no doubt, but that's not a tune to call with a pickup band, usually, unless you know going in that they got some deep repertoire. I don't know that I've ever seen it in a fakebook, ever, and the few people I have heard play it, you ask them how they know the tune, and they say, "Trane".

Us3 Just The Two Of Us Neither One Of Us

Good for Reed's daughter, and we all know that results are inconsistent, but that's "political" only in the sense that it would be if I said that I like the whole mandatory electronic medical records thing because when I go to a variety of doctors, I don't have to lug papers or otherwise get delayed by hard copy bog-dom. Ok, some people are getting freaked out about that because of perceived privacy issues, and some people are bummed out by it because they have doctors whose ability to work with anything network-y is at best...limited. I understand on both counts, but all I can say is that it works for me, or has so far. I don't think that's as much "political" as it is I'm just recounting my personal experience, not trying to start or end a debate. Somebody asks, hey how are you, well, if I just got done at the doctor and everything was coordinated like it's supposed to be then hey, just fine, had a good experience at the doctor, thanks for asking, how about you? Don't tell me I'm not fine when I am, and I'll not tell you you're fine when you say you're not. Then it would be political, or even worse, meddlesome.

I see no overt politicism in the article, just a reflection on the man's personal style relative to a jazz paradigm, same as we had scores of articles about Reagan's personal style relative to Hollywood, cowboys, etc. Believe me, if Ishmael Redd wanted to get "political", this is not what it would look like.