JSngry

I think the day will soon come when people who use dude in conversation will seem as silly as those who once bought Mitch Miller records. Dude, that time has long since come, which is why I dudify with great regularity. Hopefully the cynical irony will be lost on those for whom it is intended. Otherwise what's the point?

The Navy stuff is, yeah.

Chic was badass. Listen to the bottom and not the top.

Was Jonah on vacation last month?

Trane in the Navy was indeed rough, but Trane with Hodges is a man at work.

Heaven On Earth , actually.

Was he playing then?

I have "problems" with that one mysef. Too "cartoony" for me. But Tenor/Fallen Angels is the real deal.

That sounds quite daft to me, Jim. Most people live in second hand houses, but my present house is new; I paid the building firm; it paid the designer/architect. When I sell it, I want the effin' money - why should the designer/architect be paid again, and again and again and his descendants and heirs for the next one or two hundred years? (It must have been a bloke, my wife says, because he buggered up the design of the kitchen.) MG Sounds like a bit of applying the economics of one industry to another. Designers/architects don't get paid royalties. They get what in musician's terms would be considered "session fees", renumeration for a specific job performed. Now, if you're proposing that musician's session fees be raised to thae point where a relative handfull of jobs a year provides for a comfortable income, well hey - I'm all for that! But get ready to see a dramatic drop in the number of albums recorded and released. How many $12.50 (retail) CDs do you have to sell to create the gross of one $125,000 house? 10,000. How many non-popular CDs sell 10,000 copies? Not many. So the scale and terms of "employee" renumeration are adjusted in lines with likely revenue. Or else, have designers/architects get paid a minimal session fee and then have them wait for a payment of the nominal percentage of the sale price. Let's see how well that one goes over. And how many building firms do 10,000 jobs a year, year after year? Not many, if any. So the scale and terms of "employee" renumeration are adjusted in lines with likely revenue. Apples & oranges we have here, if in extremely simplified form. Each industry has an economic model which better serves its individual needs and realities. A bit of tweaking to the current system with the goal of putting a bit of extra change in the pockets of the laborers isn't necessarily daft, I would say. Having said all that though, a system to pay reduced royalties on used sales isn't something I' m going to crusade for. It would just be a nice little something extra for the musicians who, after all, are the only ones in this game (besides the labels) who (theoretically at least) approach the enterprise as an investment (after all, what are royalties other than a return on a speculative venture?). Some artists choose to waive royalties up front in return for a larger session fee. That's their perogative, and in many cases it's a smart move. But for those who don't, hey, why not look to get a better return from your investment, especially at a minimal cost to the consumer?

When I joined BMG ten years ago, I studied a website which was devoted solely to the record clubs from a consumer's point of view. It said that the standard recording contract signed by the artists calls for the artist to receive one-half the usual royalty for discs sold by the record clubs, except that they were to receive no royalty for discs given free by the record clubs. I take that to mean that the artists receive one-half royalty for each Your Music sale. However, when BMG offers "Buy one, get two free, then unlimited $2.99", the artist receives one-half royalty for the discs sold at $18.99 and $2.99, but the poor guys who were arbitrarily selected to be the two free CDs don't get paid anything. I've heard otherwise, but I hope you're right!

I have these: Warne Marsh - Ne Plus Ultra Steve Lacy - We See: Thelonious Monk Songbook Steve Lacy - The Way Cecil Taylor - The Eighth and recommend them without hesitation.

Well see, that's the funny part right there - nobody with any sense is really thinking of her was a "jazz" singer. That's a marketing ploy, and if you bought into it, even to be offended by the notion, you're a sucker. Natalie herself talks a lot about making "jazz records", but I don't know that she's seriously considering herself a "jazz singer". If she is, she's a sucker too. What she is is a damn good singer, period. And what she's been doing, and doing rather well, I think (even though, again, it's relevancy to my lifestyle is vitually nonexistent), is making records that are a throwback to the "adult pop" of yore. Jazz is in the mix, maybe even be the primary esthetic, but it's still pop. I myself have absolutely no problem with that if for no other reason than the results have mostly been good adult pop, and I'd much rather have good adult pop than bullshit adult pop. I hate to see people blinded by marketing bullshit at the expense of taking music on its own terms. If you listen to a Natalie Cole records of the last few years through the expectational prism of"jazz", well, yeah, it's pretty lame (but then again, so are most of the supposedly jazz records being released). But forget about jazz (an increasingly easy proposition these days) - what you got is a singer with good chops singing good songs with good arrangements and good players. Nothing deep about it, but nothing wrong either. Buttloads of shit like that getting made like that today (as always), and it all comes down to how good the singer is, and how well they handle the material in the context they're put in. I'll take Natalie Cole over Krall, Monheidt, Caryn Allison, Lorraine Feather, damn near all of today's crop, simply because she's a much better singer. All the criticism (whining is more like it..) I hear of her from the Jazz Cave is that "it's not really jazz". Well DUH. I don't hear anybody say that her phrasing is bad, or that her pitch is bad, or that her range is limited, or that her voice is thin, or that she mangles the words. I don't hear that because you can't say it unless your ears are full of the Jazz Hate. Much to my surprise, I'll even take her over Gladys Knight's recent Verve "jazz"album. No way that Natalie is a better singer than Gladys, but damned if Natalie doesn't fit into the material & context better than does Gladys. "Jazz"? Yeah - who's a real female jazz singer today that's either not older than 60-something or waaaay uinderground or tied to some sort of "image nostalgia"? Gimme some names that won't make me laugh. This type of jazz is pretty much dead & has been for quite some time. It's all pop now. It's just being marketed as jazz. Wake up & smell the formaldehyde.

There's no "Giant Steps" on here. It's Trane w/his Navy band, and the results are strictly for scholars and/or fanatics only. The Hodges stuff is really cool in its own way, but again, mainly for scholars and/or fanatics. Also - this stuff has been circulating among collectors long enough that you shouldn't have to get it from a straightup bootleg label, through emusic or otherwise.

Well, not exactly. The labels still make a piece off of the Yourmusic/BMG type sales, but the artists don't. Again, not a problem since it's stipulated to in the contract, but in terms of the immediate distribution of funds, the artist sees the same results eitehr way. Long term, it can be argued that the monies the labels make from these type sales goes back into the company as general revenue, which in tem keeps the company profitable, blahblahblah. Bottom line for me is thi - whatever "path" one takes in the pursuit of obtaining recorded music, just do it with your eyes open and make sure that at some point in the chain the right people get the right amount of money somehow. Beyond that, it's a free country. Carpe diem.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't "clubs" like YourMusic, BMG, etc. log the items they offer for sale as "promos" & therefore deprive the artist of royalties from sale of said items? No stones being cast here, I'm as big of a bottom-feeder as there is, but.... That is true. BUT the artists have signed these royalties away as part of the "promotion package" in their contract. No value judgement here. Nor here. If we wantto frame the issue in terms of "what the artist signs on for", then the matter is clear - reselling previously purcased CDs is part and parcel of the normal "lifespan" of such an item, and surely part of what the artist signed on for. Making a burn for distribution isn't. No problems, & case closed. Except... I myself recieve a fair number of burns from friends as "preview" type things, and if I deem some of them worthy of my investment, I'll go right out and get a real copy, as well as sharing my enthusiasm with others, which hopefully leads to yet a few more sales. Non-sanctioned burning as a promotional tool works, but there has to be integrity at work in both intent and action. That's very much a matter of personal character, and no law can either create or enforce character, although they certainly can create the appearance of a "popular consensus" which is not to be underestimated. Still, those who color outside the lines with principal will not be denied, nor should they be. And truthfully, I'd have no problem whatsoever with a system being enacted which uses tracking technology to create a database of used sales, which could then be used to pay royalties at a reduced rate. The additional cost to consumers surely wouldn't be more than a few cents per item. Used is already a deal, so big whoop about a few cents more.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't "clubs" like YourMusic, BMG, etc. log the items they offer for sale as "promos" & therefore deprive the artist of royalties from sale of said items? No stones being cast here, I'm as big of a bottom-feeder as there is, but....

The thing about buying used is that there's enough money changing hands that it allows for the possibilty that the brick-and-mortar might be able to stay in business, which in turn creates an opprtunity for the "social" aspects of music buying such as impulse purchases (which may well include non-used items), surprise discoveries, bumping into somebody who hips you to something new. meeting hot chicks who get horny when they see you with an armload full of OJCs, you know, all that good stuff that keeps the juice flowing. All in all, a fair enough trade-off in the macro-economics of the macro-industry, I think.

And as MAria cole, she recorded an album for Capitol after Nat's death. Natalie broke on Capitol as well, so let's not be naive about the "family connection" thing. It's a business, and you use what you got. Apparently nobody told Freddy, but look at what that got him...

True enough, and it's a distance to go that probably nobody, including herself, expects/wants/needs her to go other than "jazz purists", who seem to be under the naive illusion that the labels used at this level of the industry are about anything other than marketing. Or that there's a snowball's chance in hell of there being any "real" jazz singers around today residing more than a block or two away from the underground who don't have at least one eye on the pop world at at least some level. Same as it ever was, and the beat goes on... In the meantime, Natalie Cole has been as good as anybody else in this illusory world, and better than most. And frankly, depending on who produced it, I'd be more interested in hearing her do something "contemporary" than I would another go 'round of Songs For People Who Missed Them The First (Or Tenth) Time Around. She's at the age now where doing anything "cutting edge" probably ain't gonna happen (and truthflly, even in the '70s, as good as she was, she wasn't aiming at that type of thing), so what we have to look forward to is another album of music that's designed to be lightly, pleasantly, & honestly engaging w/o being empty and/or cynically manipulative ear candy. Same as her R&B stuff, same as her "jazz" stuff. There's an honorable enough place for that, and I'd rather it be occupied by somebody w/her skills and taste than by singers who really don't have a clue (or half the skills), of which there are many. Because at this level, it's all about "pop" and marketing, and the music is just the product. And like any other area of commerce, you can have good (or even great) product or you can not have it. Duke said it best - it's my job to make the records, it's your job to sell them. Or, if we prefer, that there's only two kinds of music...

Again - she was a star, a big star, long before she got into this "jazz" stuff. Do the homework. And althogh it's not something I care to own, the songs from her album before this one weren't bad at all. The arrangements were great, and she's a damn fine singer. Helluva lot better than any other "pop star"'s attempts at this type of material. Her Daddy Nostalgia is kind of lame, but other than that, she's done pretty good with this material, better than Krall, Monheidt, you name'em. Again, regardless of genre, the woman is a damn fine singer. "Jazz people" can be really clueless sometimes. Anybody who thinks that all she is is a halfass wannabe playing on her father's name falls into that category.

Thank you trane fanatic!

Y'all gotta be kidding me... Natalie Cole was quite the R&B superstar in the mid-70s. I wasn't paying too much attention to the "crossover" market back then, but I'm pretty sure she crossed over into the Top-40 on several occasions. "This Will Be", that song on the e-dating commercial, was her first hit, and it was a big one. "Inseperable" was another. She also made the cover of Rolling Stone when she first broke (they dubbed her "the next Aretha" or some foolishness like that). And her version of "Pink Cadillac" was a staple in cover bands I played in for many a (long and wearying) year. So yeah, I had definitely heard of Natalie Cole before the "Unforgettable" thing. She's a damn good singer. I have next to no personal interest in her more recent work, but she's a damn good singer. Now, where's that "jazz behind", and where did she leave it?

Amazon has TheClarinet Album & Homage to Billie Holiday: Body and Soul, both of which are exquisite. Lately I've been into Poets of Jazz, a duet album w/Renato Sellani. If you ever imagined Ben Webster as a clarinetist slightly touched by Bird making a ballad album, this one's for you! Of course, if you've never imagined Ben Webster as a clarinetist slightly touched by Bird making a ballad album, don't feel bad. But seriously, Scott has sometimes had a quirk of getting "squiggly",sometimesto good effect, sometimes not. Little if any of that here, just plenty of deeply personal phraseology and tonal manipulations. Very, very soulful stuff.

WHOA!!!!

Jimmy Smith - Players Skeeting George Braith live @ Augusta - Two Hole In Ones! Dexter Gordon - Clubfoot Art Taylor - A.T.'s One-Off