JSngry

w\Joe Henderson; Roland Hanna, Richard Tee & Billy Cobham

w/Frank Foster, Joe Farell, Dave Liebman, & Gene Perla. Produced by Francis Wolff & George Butler.

Don't worry, you should do that.

w/Thad Jones, Hank Jones, Stanley Clarke, & Louis Hayes

Never knew this existed. Is Vaughn Meader in this picture? Always thought the First Family stuff was pretty lame, actually. No satire, just sitcom-safe jokes with Kennedy accents, though I always liked the distribution-of-bathroom toys bit and the punch line: "The rubber swahn is mine." This is a lot darker than that. Between '63 & '71, Meader...uh...."went through some changes"... To summarize the album, Jesus comes back, starts out being rejected as a freak by all but the hippies, then gets an agent who spies novelty appeal. Then he becomes a star, starts speaking his mind, becomes uncommercial, and finally gets killed/assassinated. More commercial potential dead than alive. And yeah, it is funny.

w/Blue Mitchell, Bob Berg, Slide Hampton, Cedar Walton, & Billy Higgins

feeling a mite feverish for some reason....what better time to make objective judgments? The usuals, etc. here we go: TRACK ONE - Effects, yes. Arrangement? More like backgrounds in search of an arrangement. Soloists are predictably (and almost boringly) virtuosic. In its own way, Kenton-ish, you know, the whole NEW!!! thing that really ain't, but ssshhhhh - don't tell them, they're having a good time thinking that it is. I will say this, though - any/all of those effects are written & played gorgeously, which is why in the end I'm pissed of that all they end up being is effects instead of part of a really nicely written chart. Maybe this is atypical of this writer/band? TRACK TWO - Nice enough tune, kinda Woody Shaw-ish, scored & played well. Trombone player is really pissing me off. LEAVE SOME SPACE, BITCH!!! Damn, I hate motherfuckers who just blahblahblahblah, no space, no nuance, just on and on and on and on. They're a good player, but not so good a musician, at least on this solo. SHUT UP, ALREADY. Bass player is really solid, gots that FAT sound, yeah. After all, it IS a bass...and I'm liking the drummer too. WHOA! Who's this tenor player? His basic "style" is not one for which I ordinarily care, but DAMN, the cat's really, really playing some music in there, so style be damned. AQll inall, kill the trombone player & you got a pretty nice cut. I think I could dance to it, even, so hey! OH! It's a Dave Holland group. Robin Eubanks & Chris Potter. Eubanks has been playing well enough and long enough not to do that shit, c'mon... TRACK THREE - Now, this is Kenton-ish! And that is Billy Harper...Tolliver's band, right? I mean, ok, I love Billy Harper, and I love Tolliver, but this is kinda gimmicky, imo. It's a "big band" gimmick, sure, bringing your tenor player down front for a feature paying tribute to one of the alltimegreatones, but hell, Billy Harper is a great one all hisownself, and I know he loves Trane, we all love Trane, but....c'mon, ya' know? Then again, it's a tough market today's one is, so I guess you give 'em any place to hang their hats that you can find. But it's ok, I guess. TRACK FOUR - Like that opening duet, nice. Then the chart, and...it doesn't really swing, sounds old/tired/something. Nice writing, though, really nice. Not much in the way of melody, but the scoring is cool. And this bari player, who is this? He/she got some spunk now! Tenor player reminds me in a way of George Garzone, which ain't a bad thing at all. And then it's over, and really, couldn't a small band have made just as much music, and possibly better? TRACK FIVE - Getz w/Clarke-Boland. Great record. Boland's last project, right? He damn sure went for it, eh? But you know why this works? Balance - it's not all just "reaching", you throw some Getz/melody/smooth in there and both extremes throw the other into relief so you can appreciate them. That's something I wish more people would think about - balancing of elements. Hell, just balance in general. TRACK SIX - I liked it at first, the blend in the saxes was eerie, almost, and the trumpet duet started nice but then got kinda cliche-y. Then the composition proper...I started not liking it, mainly becasue it sounded too derived from Migus (Black Saint, in particular), but then...yeah, they held their ground & I started to believe. Then it began to dissipate, but...not too much. all in all, a noice enough piece of music, and if this is somebody young, I would want to follow their development. There's a voice in the making here, possibly. TRACK SEVEN - Lacy, obviously, "Pannonica", but damned if I hear an international large (or in a couple of cases "large-ish") ensemble anywhere in the mix. Oh well! Lacy was an ensemble unto himself. Damn....he is so inside the music here (always, really)..from here you can only do different, not better. TRACK EIGHT - Abdullah? Ibrahim? or Weston? Randy? A Plunger Extravaganza? Either way, there's better to be had, but this is far from "disposable" either. Is that a trombone or a French horn? Plenty mellow, the whole thing is. Oddly enough, the writing reminded me of Pat Williams in spots (meant as a compliment). Not sure why it ends that way, but...it does! Some interesting music here, Bill. Thanks!

Grover Washington, Jr. Junior Samples Sampson

Cadence (the Archie Bleyer label, not the Bob Rusch one). And there was a Volume 2, lest we forget.

Well, the really good ones were usually $2.99, but, yeah, right place, right time, fersure.

w/Buddy Colette, Jim Hall, Fred Katz, & Carson Smith

Billboard - September 9, 1972 What were they thinking? Any of them?

About 75% of everything I bought out of the Treasure City cutout bins between 1971-1974. All I knew was "jazz" and prices as low as 3/$1.00. Examples include Blakey's Indestructible, the Joe Harriot Jazzland sides, some Chico Hamilton PJ stuff, Ornette's New York Is Now, Joe Daley's RCA side, George Wein on Impulse! w/Pee Wee Russell & Bud Freeman, etc etc etc.

What that is?

Speaking of Vaughn Meader, anybody ever heard this one? It's an album-length comedy about...you guessed it. Pretty funny (and cynical) stuff, and no way did it get any push in 1971... but if you see it, carpe diem.

The original King LP (and the bast bang, pardon the pun, for your buck of all the similarly-themed albums, imo) 1. Big 10 Inch Record - Bullmoose Jackson 2. It Ain't The Meat - The Swallows 3. Annie Had A Baby - The Midnighters 4. Wasn't That Good? - Wynonie Harris 5. Don't Stop Dan - The Checkers 6. Lovin' Machine - Wynonie Harris 7. Silent George - Lucky Millinder 8. 60 Minute Man - The Dominoes 9. Somethin's Gone Wrong With My Lovin' Machine - Robert Henry 10. The Walkin' Blues - Jesse Powell and Fluffy Hunter 11. Keep On Churnin' - Wynonie Harris 12. I Want A Bowlegged Woman - Bullmoose Jackson 13. Rocket 69 - Todd Rhodes 14. Mountain Oysters - Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis

He thinks that an interviewer kept waiting for 2+ hours gives a flying fuck that he was practicing? Hell, he thinks that a "jazz magazine" gives a double flying fuck about anybody practicing other than it gives them somebody at whom to target advertisements?

FWIW, my intended focus of this thread was comedy records, not just records by standups. The Robin-Doud album in the opening post is a great comedy record, but not a "comedian" in sight! Of course, the thread will go where it will go. Just within the last year, I finally got to hear this one, after years of only hearing about its reputation: 1959!!!!!!!

Yeah, let's go back to the obvious - does your computer have a network card?

...if not all at once. Oh well! Onward! Been "revisiting" some nearly forgotten faorites of many moons ago, and found that two still pack laugh power in spite of their unquestionably "dated" content and style: and It dawned on me that America (which is all I know about, other countries please expand the scope) has a history of recorded comedy that is rich, diverse, innovative/stoopid. sublime/tasteless, as its people. Such as... Wickedly funny recordings in spite of any number of things to have second thoughts about...again, much like America. It seems like the "modern era" of comedy records began with the Bruce/Sahl/Berman trio (and in that order of ascending popular acceptance at the time) & continued to, when...Dice Clay? Bill Hicks? Int he interim, comedy records sprung up out of everywhere by everybody (or so it seemed). There must have been an audience. So, if it pleases the board, let's begin looking at, not comedians, but their records, and with the same attention to detail as we do musical records, which is to say, all over the map!

Gene Chandler Gary Chandler Greg Chandler, M.D. Dr. Chandler is a research fellow in the DCRP and BCRP. He comes to us by way of Canada. He graduated with a Bachelors of Science degree in Physiology from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He completed his medical degree at McGill University in 2003. After that, he went to the University of Toronto for his Residency in Psychiatry, which he completed in 2008. In his fourth year, he served as Chief Resident at Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Chandler has a particular interest in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in the care of mood disorder patients. http://www2.massgeneral.org/allpsych/depression/staff/previous-staff.html

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