JSngry

Dave Ed Bob

http://www.theslowskys.com/

Triple H The Doublemint Twins SWF

Jack Black Black Uhuru Jess Unruh

Mike Figg Prunella Scales Les Jazz Modes

Mr. Ed Wilbur Sweatman Sweet Sweetback

From as recent as 1999, there's the Delmark side he made w/The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. He's obviously hampered by the embochure issues, but nevertheless works with and around them to deliver some deeply felt, highly focused playing. There ain't that much there, but what there is is serious. Yeah, he sounds like an old man. But hell - when you get right down to it, he always sounded like an old man, at least in spirit. Now that he's becoming one (69 as we speak), it seems all the more appropriate...

No, but saying that comes pretty close.... As for that "essential" compilation, I for one would leave room on it for "Blue In Green" from Blue Ballads, as well as a few Steeplechase duet things w/Parlan & a cut from a mid-70s album on Marge he did w/Joe Lee Wilson. In fact, I could easily make a full disc of "essential" post-60s Shepp, if one's intent ws to show him at the top of his form over the course of his career. I'll even say that no matter what the era, Shepp's been a wildly inconsistent player. Not all of the Impulse! work is gold by any stretch of the imagination. (And exactly what are we talking about anyway - the last ten years, or post-1960s? There's a huge difference, especially since he spent the better part of the mid-late 70s churning out album after album that documented his coming to grips with change playing. Those are for the most part some dire documents indeed, and it's not until later in the 70s, when he finally got over that hurdle, that things started to come back around. And then you got the embochure issues of the latter years which slowed him down both musically and professionally.) If you don't really care for most/all of his post-60s work, hey, no problem. To each their own. But to say that there's a lack of "passion" to even the best of it is, to me, to suggest a definition of "passion" that fits a preconceived notion, a notion that perhaps doesn't give waht I would consider to be the necessary consideration to all the various changes wrought by time. Because afaic, if Shepp was still playing in 2006 like he played in 1966, he'd sound really stupid. That was then, this is now. If 40 years of life doesn't do something to a man, hey, whazzup with that? And if you can't deal with those changes in a meaningful way and give their own validity, what good does it do to live that long? No, Shepp's inconsistency has been there from the git-go, and it'll most likely be there until the end. I'm not about to claim otherwise, nor am I going to defend all the lackluster, rambling work he's done (from any period). What I will claim is that when Shepp is on, he's capable of some deeply moving playing. That was true in 1966, and it's true in 2006, even if the "style" of playing now might bear but a superfical resemblence to that of then. Unless, of course, one chooses to define substance in terms of style, in whole or in part. That's one's perogative of course, but it's not something that I myself particularly care to do.

Sonny Liston Walter Piston Annie Sprinkle

Well yeah, "uneven" is putting it mildly. But recognizing that and making a blanket dismissal are two different things...

Frank Sutton Vince Carter Will Cordero

http://www.cannonball-adderley.com/filmo/hymn2.ram

You sure you got a grasshopper in you ear?

What you find often depends on what you want to look for. Shepp's a significantly more subtle and nuanced ballad player now than he was in the 60s. I love his 60s work as much as anybody (and perhaps more than many), but ballads of the type he plays on this album can't help but benefit from the broadened perspective of life experience (including learning more about the subtleties of playing melody and changes), and Shepp brings that increased life experience to the table as openly as he brought his political passions to the table in the 60s. If love, life, and money don't turn you around every now and then and make you reconsider some shit as time goes by, well, that ain't much of a life if you ask me. So yeah, if you're looking for "angry" tenor or something like that, this stuff might well sound "blase". But if you're looking for soulful, nuanced, mature ballad playing that goes straight to the heart and speaks of and to a mature life, hey - it's definitely here. As our Fearless Flyer implies, it's all good to me when it is in fact all good. And Blue Ballads is exactly that.

Hey - I've heard a lot of standards, but by no means all of them. And the one's I've heard, I don't always remember. This is one of 'em. Evan's got it right - "I Can't See For Looking" it is. I pulled out the Red Garland Solar album and confirmed it. Looks like it was a tune originally done by Nat Cole in the 1940s. Sorry for my screwup, but glad that we all now know what it is!

Is that side still available?

J.G.? There's a ballad medley of Paul Chambers doing "Don't Explain", Wynton Kelly doing "Autumn Leaves", Trane doing "What's New", & Getz closing it out w/"Moonlight In Vermont". Then there's a splice to a perfromance of Trane & Getz toghether on "Hackensack". At sometime during the splice, Kelly got up from the piano bench and was replaced by Oscar Peterson. I suspect the tape was edited by Rosemary Woods.

The Burger King Hamburglar G. Gordon Liddy

Carole King Carola Gray Ray Hair

It's not any standard that I've ever heard.

Never on CD. Personnel is Bu Pleasant, Harold Vick, Atlee Chapman (trombone), Ted Dunbar, Mickey Bass, & Freddie Waits. Recorded 3/17/73 by Michael DeLugg, Produced by Larry Fallon. One of those sides that satisfies deeply (and perpetually) w/o a lot of obvious dazzle.

Just finished playing this cut 5 times in a row, and yeah, this cut is the shit. If you got the CD, give it a listen. It's a motherfucker. The attention to minute detail is as immense as the groove is big. And, dare I say it, it's totally Ellingtonian (in the non-literal sense). Pop music per se is not the enemy.

Yep.

Tom House Johnny Unitas Meenakshi Devidas, Ph.D.