JSngry

I voted for the duets w/Brown. Late Ellington has always been special for me, and this is quite late. Plus it's full-frontal piano late Ellington. Do you have Live At The Whitney, though? That one is beyond category. Ultimately, though, they're all good choices and you'll end up getting them all.

The Mack:

Hell yeah.

All I can say at this point is better Organissimo that Organissi-NO-mo.

Lately, this has been good to them dogs:

Better to ask how the drink will be over the fair! (American beer joke...)

Hey, I bet it was good bucks. More power to him for that! I always used to get a little "record collector's tingle" when Harry Anderson would produce some long OOP Verve side on an episode of Night Court. This was back beofore the reissue boom, and even if it was Mel, it was Verve & it was vinyl, so hey!

You mean have a rapper sit in?

Wow, I did miss that. Musta been a hoot! Did he sing "Mountain Dew-ery"?

Essential listening, imho:

Oh, it's really not all that "dramatic", unless and until we get into the realm of "art" and such, where peoples intent seems wuite often to be to distinguish themselves from their peers rather than just having fun being who they are - and that latter image is an also-easily expoited "type" as well, so it's best to assume that NOTHING is real, that it's all conceived with the intent of picking your pocket, and just give your money to the whores who make your dick the hardest in the name of love. Well, maybe that's not the best thing to do, but it sure might be the safest...

I totally missed that... Details please!

Oh HELL no! People do all kinds of insincere shit at all kinds of levels jsut to get a gig, keep a gig, get an audience, keep an audience, whatever. And people go to great lengths to cover that up, often to themself... Ask yourself this - have you, or has anybody you've ever know, been insincere to score with a chick? You know how easy that comes to a lot of guys? Andeven if it don't come eas naturally, how easier it becomes after you've done it once or twice? Never mind how "business ethics" operate. You know, "nothing personal, this is just business", like hey - no shit. Well, it ain't no different in music. Not even the "serious" type. Another illusion shattered?

Obviously I'm not a musician, but taken from the listener's point of view - isn't this normal for listeners of all music? 10 listeners will have 10 different experiences listening to an artist play something. It's all about their past experiences, likes/dislikes, baggage, etc. No? Sure, but can you see why that would engender cynicism (or cynicisms) and other "losses of fiath" in somebody trying to be "honest" in their music?

Well, the kicker was the band. The folks I thought I was really "spiritually alligned" with, had every reason to believe that, they didn't even have a clue. So much for that illusion...

And that's the built-in contradiction that too often leads to everybody concerned fooling themselves - the need for what the "product" represents and the product's ability to actually deliver it on anything even vaguely resembling a semi-consistent basis are fundamentally at odds. The result? A lot of the self-justifying vocabulary that Clem references, and a lot of the self-justifying ideolgy that goes along with it. Because not only does nobody want to admit that if you're talking true "moutaintop" level inspiration that it only comes every once in a while, nobody wants to neither put forth nor sit through the abject, foundering, frightening....emptiness that comes with trying to get there and not making it, at least not on a regular basis. It's real as hell, it is, but it ain't for the faint of heart, and it sure ain't something to sell for public consumption.

Beautiful player, truly beautiful.

Well, yeah. Threw me for a loop, that's for sure... But it's ultimately personal. I only bring it up to advance the point that maybe we all oughta be more objevctive about what so much of this music "is", which is quite often a simple (or not so simple) plying of craft for the pleasure of the practitoners and those who enjoy the results of the craft. Real "art" (or inspiration, or spontanaety, or whatever) comes far less often than (almost) any of us are willing to admit. That was, I think, Clem's broader point, and I wanted to highlight that aspect rather than the specific "finger pointing" of his post, which although a primary weapon in his persona's arsenal, sometimes obsures rahter than illuminates that point.

Fair enough, and objectively, yeah. But... Don't want to be a killjoy, so hey - the guy had incredible chops and frequently surrounded himself with top-shelf talent. Beyond that, it's all "personal". I will say this though - the Capitol(?) sides he made in the late-60s, where he did "jazzy" versions of then-current Top 40 hits, are actually kinda fun for me, kitsch fator aside (I mean, he does that Georgie Fame Bonnie & Clyde song & instead of real gunfire in the middle, somebody got the bright iea of using what for all the world sounds like the sound of a rotary phone dial spinning!). There's obviously some thorns in his rose-colored glasses, and they're obviously interfering with his vision through same, and it's not at all an unpleasant thing to listen to, contrasting as it does to his usual shooby-dooby-doo-ness World Of Perpetual Hipness. By all accounts, the guy was quite often a real bastard in real life. I wouldn't have minded hearing some more of that in his music, actually.

Wholeheartedly seconded. Shawn got me hip to this side of Jerome R, and it was a real eye-opener for me.

Dells sound fine. Recorded January 1972 in Chicago (brrrrrrrrr...., COLD), and all is well. Nothing really "earthshaking" here, but otoh, nobody makes records like this anymore. Don't know that many people who could...

Clem, persona-imbued as his point may be, is correct. One of the big reasons why I decided to back off the playing, get off the Artisitic High Horse and become a Regular Guy for a little while (if not longer, we'll see..) is that I woke up one night and realized just how premeditated and programmed my music was becoming, and how the handful of people who were really digging it were digging it based on what they thought it represented and what they thought they were hearing as a result, which may or may not have been the reality of what it was that was getting played. The final straw that broke the drink's back was when one night, early on, I realized that I was simply playing shit by reflex and for effect. There was no real "inspiration" or "spontaneity" or anything else that the "free improv" crowd (fans and musicians alike) love to think is the raisin detter of this stuff, and will go to any lenght to hear (unless they got a grude to bring, in which case, they won't hear it no matter what). So I intentionally palyed nothing but the old "bag o'tricks", conspicuously so, I thought, in a way that was all about self-depreciating self-mimickry, a way to say, hey, this is ALL I got, whatcha'll think NOW? Folks loved it. The band REALLY loved it. Thought it was some of the best playing I'd ever done. Made me kinda sick, to tell the truth... But hey - no biggie, same as any other music, same as any other life. If everybody concerned would/could be honest about it, hey, fine. We could all get on with the business of entertaining and being entertained, and life would be so much easier. But no - we are not entertainers of a pretty damn high calibre looking to share some feelings and hopefully elevate your spirits or otehrwise connect on a real level, we are CREATIVE ARTISTS CHANNELLING THE ALMIGHTY MUSE, BOW DOWN BEFORE US, and no, we are not an audience out for a night's worth of fun, we are LOVERS OF THE GREAT ARTS, A BREED APART FROM THE MASSES. Well hell, does it really gotta be all that? Really? Hey - genius is real. Art is real. Inspiration is real. Real-er than a mutthafukker. But they're as rare as one too. If you "need" that shit in your life, you're gonna make it up all the time rather take it as it comes, and then whatcha' got if not a self-created illusion of constant "art"? Anything real about that? It's not enough to have turned me into a full-blown navel-gazing self-denying Tristanoite, but...

Ok, Stepney...on "Close To You", not only does he do a pretty cool reharmonization, but he tags each A-section with this totally sly breakup of the time into a bar of 5/8, one of 4/8, two of 6/8, and finally one of 3/8. That's 24 beats, four bars of 6/8 (or 2 of 4/4 broken down into triplets), enough to keep the form stable interms of math and ultimate feel, but also just enough sideways to make you say WTF if you're listening and are oriented towards hearing stuff like that. Of course, if you're not, then it'll just fell like a really groovy beat, and that's the object of the game. But so is getting the "other type" of listener to pay attention. Sure, it's only pop, but hey...take away an intersting and literate middle, and all you're left with is a top too unrooted to be of use to anything but itself and a bottom with nowhere to go but further down. Sound familiar?

Beautiful smiles need no justifications!

That smile of hers is quite beautiful, but if you're hongry, hey....