JSngry

Yeah, but Garvey was a douche.

If you're interested, a Sam Thomas thread has been started:

Guardian Angels? Any idea how the association w/Klemmer came about, or for that matter, how Klemmer came onto the Chicago scene, and in what way did he leave it?

His is very much a "neighborhood" sound, if you know what I mean, in the sense of speaking with a strong accent in distinctive dialect. In other words, he sounds like his roots are in blues-based musics, not "standards" and such. I love guys like that...the things they hit on are so...non-cliched. B'Nois King from around here is a player like that. He'll play bebop, R&B, deep blues, and all in the same voice. You can't help but listen.

Jim, if you don't already have Involvement, you might want to pick it up. Thomas only plays on four of the seven cuts, but Jodie Christian plays on the other three, always a plus, and the whole album is solid. And Thomas' solo on "Passion food" is no fluke. His playing on the other three cuts is equally ear-catching.

He played pretty damn good defense, as I recall. May or may not be enough to swing the vote, but just sayin'. Damn fine player. I was a fan then, and a fan now.

His playing on Involvement, John Klemmer's first album, has captured the imagination of a few current BFT-takers, myself included. I was prompted to pull out the album, and yeah, he's pretty unique on all four cuts on which he plays. Which leads to the question - Sam Crawford, eh? Chicago Jazz Mafia, the floor is all yours, please.

Sam Thomas obit: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-09-08/news/8801280864_1_sun-ra-mr-thomas-gene-ammons More about Sam Thomas: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-09-06/entertainment/8502280335_1_arranger-good-time-music-band

Ok, it is a cut from Involvement, "Passion Food". AMG has the time and title wrong. And the wrong samples for several tunes. Also, the Verve CD transposes sides one and two as listed on the album itself. But the liner notes discuss the music in the order that the CD presents the songs. Which I can tell you, because I'm looking at and listening to it right now, because I own it...the Mike Weil Syndrome strikes again! Sam Thomas on guitar, Melvin "Funky Skull" Jackson on bass, and the GREAT Wilbur Campbell on drums. Klemmer has always had a pretty identifiable sound really, especially his upper register, so yeah, I figured it was him, and never really strayed too far form not feeling so. My downfall was twofold - trusting AMG, and not checking my own collection. Lesson learned, hopefully.

Just couldn't find anything on AMG that matched up, that's all. But my initial reaction was in part this: Now I gotta go back and look at Involvement again, because that's the one I thought it would be on.... Damn Al, you TOUGH!

Run, Buddy, Run was the sitcom, iirc. You will want to hear this comedy LP, thrust me. http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2010/03/oooo-but-its-good-the-jack-sheldon-comedy-lp.html

I guess I'm used to finding other things to do while waiting for something that's not going to happen instantly.

Why would i want this? If I already own a CD, I can rip it the way I want it ripped. And if I already have an mp3 of something that I want in better quality and/or to meet my own ethical responsibilities, I will buy a CD. I must be missing something really basic here...maybe the death of CDs, the impending death of the desktop and cellphones don't have disc drives? What else? Obviously I'm not the target market for this program.

Dude, who do you think you are? Hank "The Voice Of Reason" Mobley?

http://www.sbnation.com/longform/2013/1/10/3857198/barry-bonds-mlb-hall-of-fame-voting-steroids

I think it was even more a personal/human demeaning than a musical one to which he objected, although it could just as easily be argued that at that time and place there was no distinction to be made between the two for a lot of people. A tuxedo on John Coltrane in 1963 and a tuxedo on Wynton Marsalis (to use but one example) in 2013 signify totally different things, if you ask me, and/or if you know what I mean. And all those Roy Brown (to use but one example) songs about getting so drunk and being so low down and no good mean- and meant - something totally different to a guy surrounded by/feeling trapped by (en)forced human degradation than they to do a causal partier/spectator, now and then. From there, the math is pretty easy.

What do you have against soul? Seriously, I can't even look at it like that. It's Pop Music far more often than it is anything else afaic. When it's anything past that, it's because somebody wanted it to be, not because it was going to be anyway.

Sounds to me like you're wanting to argue more with the critics of the 1950s than anybody here. I think a lot of us would, but..they're dead. And most of us are closer to being dead than we are to having been born, so maybe the time to do that is in the future. Or not! As for Rusty Bryant, yeah, he was a fine straight-ahead player, as was Red Prysock (although not as "schizophrenically" so), but the artistry of so many of their "honking" (a jive term if ever there was one as it pertains to their type of R&B playing, SO much more to it than that) solos comes in the ability to speak a superficially "limited' language without relying on just "licks". Jay McNeely didn't really have that ability (or if he did, he kept it pretty well to himself). I hear Rusty, Red, some of those other guys, I hear full sentences, punctuations, questions, answers, implications, all of it, in just 8,12, or occasionally 24 bars. I hear Jay McNeely and it's like reading a billboard. And ok, if there must be "art", let it be this - the ability to speak - or do anything, really, even taking out the trash - with more than just a basic regurgitation of basic licks. After that, all bets are of on anything other than life just going on, one way or the other.

This whole "art" thing anyways...it's tired. People change their perceptions as time goes by, and their expressions change along with their perceptions. People who like the changes use it to call/justify the expression as "art", and those who don't like the changes play the "art" card in order to uphold their "classical" (or whatever) values. I call bullshit on all of it. All there really is is craft in the service of perception. I think it's fair to say that the keener the craft and the perception, the less easily dismissed the perception will be, especially as time goes by. And funny how the sometimes the broader the perception, the more specific the expression, and sometimes the other way around. And sometimes not. But "art"? Yeah, whatever. You got truth, you got reality, and you got commerce. Where the hell "art" comes into that mix is not something I'm particularly concerned with at this time.

I don't know what that means, since I'd have to know what an "art form" is, as well as where the elevator stops and begins for each "level". Sure Rollins was an artist. But so was Rusty Bryant. If Rollins played at a "higher level", it's because of personal decisions he made, not because he played "modern jazz". Hell, I'd rank Rusty Bryant as much more of an "artist" than, say, Frank Foster. Whatever that means. This whole "higher level" thing is a red herring, anyway. Higher than what? Going from where to where? But by the same token, let's not pretend that there are no empirical differences either. Sonny Rollins not played a helluva lot more notes (and spaces, and tones) than Jay McNeely, he considered and allowed more possibilities in his music as well (and yes, there were possibilities that he did not allow for, maybe even denied, but of whom is that not true?). Whether or not that's a "higher level" or not is, again, subjective (at best), but to deny the difference is more than a little flat-earthish. The earth is not flat. It's not exactly round, either. But it's definitely not flat.

Gabor had that "out of tune in tune" thing going on big time, like this guitarist does. Later Tiny Grimes was like that, too, in a different way. But no, the tones aren't particularly similar. Billy Butler seemed a likely suspect to me as well, but I can't find any match. That tenor player is the wild card. I think it's their date, and it still sounds more like John Klemmer than anybody else to me, but even that's not 100%. It's somebody who's not afraid to bend notes in the upper register in a Hodges-y manner, but who also isn't afraid to tackle a nine bar form and whole-tone scales. You would think that would narrow it down, but NOOOOOOOOO....

In terms of pitch (I would say "tuning", but that has different implications for guitar, I know), it most sounds like Gabor Szabo. Tone, though, not so much? And from Al's clue...if not John Klemmer on tenor then maybe Tom Scott? But I don't know of any collaboration between them that would sound like this.

Check it out at 1:39-1:40 and again at 1:54-1:55 and finally at 2:10-2:11..it's not exactly spring noise, but it's more than just straight reverb, it's some kind of percussive carry-over to the sound, and spring sound is as close as I can come to describing it. It's like the strings are being hiw so hard they're shaking the amp or something!

FWIW, I've never really found Jay McNeely particularly "satisfying". Joe Houston, either. Both guys make better baseball cards than they do baseball players, if you know what I mean. Gator, otoh, often hits a sweet spot. Rollins, obviously, some other sweet spots (and yes, it is "more", although it ends up being as much of a dead-end to assume that "more" is going to be universally "better" as it is to think that "more" is 100% subjective). Point just being that when a discussion gets reduced to "types", you got to start "choosing sides", and hell, there are so many sides, I'll have all or none, thanks, although if push comes to shove, you can go ahead and take Jay McNeely & Joe Houston. I will say, though, that the notion of "entertainer" is in no way an absolute one in any way, and not wanting to walk the bar in 1953 and wanting to reach a "wider audience" in 1973 and going so far as to have a polished presentation and put on a "show" in 2013 involves at least as many unrelated elements as they do related ones, so to think about 1953 in terms of 2013 (or vice-versa) will get you right back to where you started, which is probably where you want to be anyway, if that's how you're going to argue it. At some point, it all becomes schtick to some degree, be it the "entertainer", the "dignified artist", the "get down" extrovert, the "serious" introvert, all of it. Once you're in front of the public, you have to be some "thing" if you want to stay in front of them. Nobody's going to come out to hear an anonymous sound, or to see an anonymous figure. People who realize this end up with careers as public performers. Those who don't don't. Or end up as teachers or studio players. In the end, it's all good, really, so long as no lies are told. And to that end, let us distinguish between lies and bullshit.

Superb!