JSngry

Binky Griptite is one of the greatest show business names in the history of the world.

Yes, worthy of Jim McKay.

My grandfather on my mother's side was named William Fritz. He died when I was seven, but if he had lived long enough, I could have started calling him Yusef Ahmad. And then I would be the dead one.

Yes, Denver. And now he's dead: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...6lr%3D%26sa%3DN

He just retired from touring after doing about ten years with Herbie Mann, returned to his home town (Can't remember where that was). Denver?

Is she the lady who sometimes wears a ballerina outfit on her gigs? I've heard good things about her from people I trust.

You think it was just a lucky coincidence that George Fenniman asked Buckley to sing a little bit of "A-Tisket..."? I don't.

"Feeling comfortable" in a particular bag is not necessarily something all musicians want at all points in their lifes.

Kurds Elizabeth W. Hey Little Miss Muffett

Have you ever heard the album? It's....uh....loud.

Kenton/Wagner/Richards They say these type things come in threes...

Oh god man, don't let them hear you say that. They'll take it as a challenge and actually do it.

No man, what I meant was that on any given big-band CD, KNTU will pick the cut/cuts that sound most like what the Lab Bands want big bands to sound like. Those two cuts I heard fit that bill to a tee, especially "Buddy Boo", which was one of my first jazzloves in the original Chico Hamilton incarnation. The original was nice and coy, this big band version was bright and obvious. I'm sure there's other, less... blatant music on the album. Oh well. The only time I listen to KNTU any more is on Sunday nights, for the House music show. That they do right. I've been a fan of Collette in general, and highly recommend his "oral history" cd (2-cd set to be specific). An invaluable document.

Opal Nations (of Pewburner Records) Opaz Opie

uh-oh-OH!

I heard "Buddy Boo" and one other thing on KNTU for a couple of days last summer and kinda thought that the band overpowered/overplayed the writing. But that was just two songs, and KNTU, propaganda orifice of the Lab Band Mafia that it is, would be prone to programming something like that anyways. Are there ballads? I'd like to hear that.

Much more than I paid for mine too. Then again, almost anything is more than $1.99 out of a cuttout bin...

Another thing about Trane in '56 is that his tone wasn't fully under control on anywhere near a consistent basis. And that I do attibute, largely, to his personal problems.

As a long-time fan/advocate of For Losers, I actually happy they didn't. That album holds up very well on its own as a "concept album", and the outtakes, while decent enough, are nowhere near as successful, either as individual performances or as contributors to the concept vibe of the album as released.

I dunno man. '56 Trane is pretty rough at times. More than a few moments of reaching for something and making it by just this much (and a few moments of missing it by just this much). If that was all we had, we'd probably think of him as one of those guys who was heading towards greatness but didn't get there. Intensity & heart, yes. But not without some technical struggles that are probably less obvious to us now that we have the hindsight than they were at the time. A lot of those struggles were due to the rhythms of his lines, which were really looking at some unusal and/or compressed groupings of notes into the four beat bar. Whereas Bird did it by floating over the time, Trane seemed to be driven to do it by diving right into it, head first, caution be damned. We'd had charging phrasologists before (Hawk, Byas, Lucky, etc.) but their groupings were always neatly subdivided. Warne was into the floating asymmetry, but truthfully, early on you could still hear a bit of residual metronome in him (which, of course, he would eventually gloriously and triumphantly transcend). Sonny, the leader of all things tenor in 1956, was doing the Bird thing, just putting his own (strong and deep) perspective to it. So Trane was really getting into uncharted waters here, I think, and he was very much learning as he went along. Rough spots were inevitable, and his "personal problems" of the time didn't help any (although I think their influence might be overstated to some degree. But maybe not). Whatever happened after he cleaned up, whether it was just the increased clarity of a sober vision, or whether that clarity was a happy coincidence with the juncture in a muscian's development when things you've been working and working and working on finally come together, it was indeed a leap forward. And really those sudden leaps forward were typical of Trane. He had another one with/around Giant Steps, when his "3 on 1" approach opened him up to all sorts of harmonic freedoms, another one in 1965, when the whole "classic quartet" reached what I think is by far and away it's fullest & deepest realization, and finally again w/Interstellar Space, where...everything came together. Now, if all we had was the Trane of 1956, what would we have? The things w/Miles, a few PC dates, and a few more Prestige sides. On none of those is his playing fully formed (the date w/Dameron is probably his cleanest playing, but it's also his most calculatedly controlled. I'm sure he respected the occasion and wanted his shit to be right). Certainly one can hear the passion, the intensity, the searching, and the moments of brilliance. But I don't think there's anything there that, if that was indeed all we had, would make us say. "Man, this cat was a MOTHERFUCKER!" I tink it would be more like, "Man that Coltrane cat was deep. Shame he didn't get to do more, I bet he'd have been a motherfucker." Fortunately, this is all irrelevant, isn't it.

Quite the flexible musician, seemed to be open to most anything. Gotta love that.

And oh yeah, I love BJP too, very much, always have and always will. One of the hippest organists (hell, musicians) ever. Agree that his depth is often and easily overlooked. It's just that everytime I hear these "Some day so-and-so's greatness will be appreciated" things, I just gotta wonder what difference it's gonna make when/if it is this/that much after the fact. I mean, on the whole, people still aren't hip to the true depth of Bird, and if one day they ever are, what difference is it going to make except that more people will be hip to one of the premier geniuses of the 20th Century - who died in 1955? Life goes on. Those who know proceed accordingly. Those who don't, hey. Either way, ain't no turning back the clock and making a wrong right and then starting over.

And then what will happen?

I like this one, in spite of a little residual Concord "flavor remover":