JSngry

Yeah, I've gone back and read the thread, and all I can say is wow. Never would have suspected that that kind of music would have come from that guy. I only know him through his commercial work, which was always very tasty but nothing like this. I've also heard those sides praised over the years, but looking at the personnel, I was expecting something....different than this. So I passed them up in all their incarnations. My bad, it would seem.

Tomato Bluenote Mark At Verve Slim

One latecomer checking in. Disc arrived this afternoon. Just finished the first listen, and am on the second go-round as we speak. I hear a theme, and it's "I Fought The Law & The Law Won". And whose fault is that? Theirs and ours both, I'm afraid. But let's not go there, not now. The damage has been done. TRACK ONE - The tune's a little too nebulous for me to grab on to immediately, and once I did, it proved to be slight. Nice components, but no real overriding central design to it, nothing that takes shape and creates a sense of "there". But that's just the tune itself. The playing by all is marvellous, with the bassist in particular creating that "there" in the soloing. Maybe there is a there there in the composition and I'm just not receptive to it. Could be. Or maybe the tune is intended to be just a skeleton which the players are called upon to flesh out. Could be. Or maybe it's just a slight tune made up of nice devices that everybody plays really well on. Could be. No matter. I got a very real sense of group playing by a group of obviously well-seasoned or better players. Good enough for me. TRACK TWO - Sounds like some Paul Winter thing, or maybe Oregon (but piano? I dunno...). That sounds too much like an oboe to be a soprano, although I know some guys who aren't happy until they get the soprano to sound like an oboe. Oboe's a bitch to learn, but it takes so much effort to make a soprano sound that much like an oboe that you might as well just take that time and use it to learn the damn oboe anyway, if that's the sound you want. Anyway, this is good stuff, altough it's soming from a "world view" with which I myself have very little to relate to. But that's cool. I hear their passion and their sense of beauty, and that's good enough. Very real, and very benevolent, so there's no sense of repulsion on hearing this. It's a place that I'd not mind taking a day trip to, but come sundown, I'd probably head elsewhere, if you know what I mean. It's a big world, dig? And we don't all have to inhabit the same zone for it to be a beautiful one. TRACK THREE - Ok, this one is better than the recording wants us to hear, but maybe not as good as it wants to be. The tune is good, but the lead voice is pulled down in the mix, which takes the focus away from the melody. Too bad, as the melody is real enough, but not "strong" enough to stand up to being placed in the aural "background". I like how the feel on this is neither funk nor swing. It could go either way, and sometimes does. And sometimes it's both at the same time, which is really cool. I like how the bassist and drummer are hip to this and play with it like that. Very cool. Soloists are not too distinctive, though the pianist plays with a nice degree of Silver-like specificity, if not too much inner fluidity in terms of his phrasing. A little "episodic", but I think that he is feeling it. Competent players, to be sure, but I get a sense that the tenor player (still pulled back in the mix for god knows what reason) is more into making the changes by whatever "system" he plays by than with actually addressing the composition on its own terms. That's something that really bugs me, not just here, but everywhere. The neutering of the music is the producer's/engineer's fault, but the way the tenor player approaches the music is his own. This guy sounds like he'd rather be off at a session somewhere running Trane licks than dealing with making this particular piece of music into something meaningful on its own terms. You can do both, but you have to want to accept the reality that by doing so, you're playing for the purpose of communicating with real people and not just slumming by bringing your Trane shit to every gig you get. Big difference. It's not that he plays "badly" or "inappropriately" either. I just hear it like when he "holds back", it's not because he's feeling it as part of the music, he's doing it because he feels that he has to. I hear something "off", either resentment about communicating with a sparser vocabulary, or perhaps an insecurity about doing so and being able to say something by those means. Or maybe he's just having one of those days. It happens. But whatever it is, it keeps the music from being all that it could be. It's certainly good, very good in fact, but it could be more. And I think that everybody involved wants it to be. But I don't know that they know how to get it there. And frankly, the more I listen to the tenor player, the more he pisses me off. You learn to play the instrument that well, and this is what you do with it? WTF, dude, what's the problem? TRACK FOUR - Dammit, I have this side, but haven't pulled it in years and can't for the life of me tell you who or what it is. Pretty sure it's from an "artist produced" label, although not Strata-East. But I'm not putting any money on that. It's got a charm to it. Very benevolent in spirit, perhaps naively so. But given ths choice between naive optimism and belligerent cynicism, my overall preference is for the former. Fewer instances of innocent people getting damaged, although perhaps that's just postponing the inevitable. Anyway, these guys have heard "My Favorite Things" and apparently feel that they can build a better world with what they find there. Good for them, and they'd probably be right if they weren't so damn optimistic. But if they weren't, then what would they be? Sellouts and/or dark souls just like the rest of us? That's no good, can't make things better by keeping them the same, can you. And therein lies the dillemma... Oh shit, it just hit me who this is - It's The Visitors! Well, ok, that explains everything. God bless 'em. TRACK FIVE - Don't like how it's recorded, but love what's being played. That melody "speaks" in a strong, decidedly non-Tin Pan Alley way, if you get my drift. These guys "get it" in a way that the group on Track Three was only trying to. Maybe they're older and wiser, or maybe they're just better people. But yeah, this is the kind of shit that you can reach people with and still get your personal musical point across in no uncertain terms. Gotta love that. No condescending, no "dumbing down", these motherfuckers are in the pocket and they love being there. And they play their ass off while there. Take a lesson, all you neurotic virtuosism fetishists - you can play for yourself and for the people at the same time. Dammit, you should! And yeah, that's defintiely George Adams. As on the previous cut, that explains everything. 'Nuff said. TRACK SIX - Interesting. Kind of a Booker Little-ish take on what a jazz composition could/should be, and I like that. "Songs" are cool, beautiful in fact, but they are what they are, and if you want to be more than/different from that, then hey, you gotta move on. Solos return to the blues form, which is at one level a copout, but on another level not. Sounds like early Woody Shaw on trumpet (somebody else who "got it"), but other than that, I don't know. The playing is all solid, even if there seems to be an underlying rushing quality to the time. What strikes me the most about this one is the opening and closing themes. You can hear them looking beyond the status quo for a more accurate vision of themselves, and that's the name of the game afaic. TRACK SEVEN - This is nice. No idea who or what it is, but it rings true to me. Laid out very well, paced very nicely, with a really good sense of overall design. Not at all predictable, yet the lack of predictability results in freshness, not disorientaton. Trombonist plays like I like to hear the thing played on these type thiings - brassy, boldly, directly and like a trombone instead of like a tenor! I'd like to have heard it go on longer, but not having any idea what the record was all about in terms of concept and/or budget, I'n happy with what it is. I like how there's no sense of rushing to get somewhere. It unfolds at its own natural pace. One of the two big "surprises" of the disc for me. Can't wait to find out who it is! TRACK EIGHT - Hey. There it is. The world at large is still not ready, worthy, and/or capable of handling the reality that springs from this truth. And a lot of us who are at least partially ready, worthy and/or capable aren't necessarily equipped to deal with the reality that they aren't. So here we are. TRACK NINE - I'm wanting to say Billy Bang, although I'm not at all familiar with this piece. But it sounds like him to me. Again, I like how the piece unfolds and develops at its own pace, and how there's both time and form present at all times w/o either one of them calling attention to themselves. You hear them as a result of the music, not the other way around, and to me that's the name of the game. Great playing on this one too, not just instrumentally but conceptually. Music like this is only going to have as much life, space, breath, whatever as the players allow it to have, and these players are all highly attuned to that fact. They all improvise compositionally as well as emotionally, taking the story of the opening theme and developing it with the skills of a fine novelist. The drummer in particular gets my attention for his empathetic and totally in-the-zone sympathetic reactivity, as does the trumpeter's ability to create a rather "busy" melodic line that nevertheless has logic, space, and symmetry. Very, very high-level musicality on display here by all. The other big "surprise" of the disc for me, and an item that I'm intersted in obtaining for further exploration. This BFT was nowhere near as familiar to me as Randy's previous one was, but it was just as provocative and enjoyable. I've been on a BFT hiatus, but Randy "nudged" me into participating in this one, and I'm glad he did.

Nothing wrong with the Mavs that discovering their gonads won't go a long way towards fixing. And if last night's game hasn't left them swollen and aching in that particular region (and if Avery doesn't add a little emphasis of his own therein), then there is no hope.

I don't exactly know the answer to that, but I have about 15 versions, and the earliest happens to be a vocal version- Irene Kral with Buddy Collette, circa 1957 (from "The Buddy Collette Quintet" on Studio West). Next earliest in my collection is Sarah's recording for Roulette in '62. I've got Chris Connor & Maynard Ferguson from 1961 on Atlantic. Great Willie Maiden chart, one of his very best. This site http://www.franlandesman.com/code/biogs/franbiog.html tells the story of how the song came about. Tommy is co-composer Tommy Wolf, the Crystal Palace a club in St. Louis (read about it here: http://riverfronttimes.com/issues/2004-03-...ature_full.html ). Fran Landesman is, of course, Fran Landesman. Ok, the singer is really named Jerri Winters, and the label was Fraternity. Here's the album: Gotta love that cluttered artwork... Track listing: Another page from the same site http://www.franlandesman.com/code/biogs/wolf.html mentions that the song was also recorded by Wolf for an album of the same name on Fraternity in 1957. The Kral/Collette recording was from a broadcast, right? So the song was definitely "in the air" in 1957. but if you can believe the above, Jerri Winters (of whom I've only marginally heard) was the first to "officially" record it. The song, and the whole nexus of performers and songwriters who were creating & propagating material of a similar attitudinal bent, is a unique sub-chapter of The Great American Songbook (and probably doesn't qualify as such!). You've got songwriters and performers who still were functioning in the traditional social/functional modes of their respective occupations, but they had all heard bebop & cool, and it had a blatant effect on their music. Coming as it did at the beginning of the Rock & Roll era, most of that material was and still remains remains somewhat "cultish" relative to earlier popular song. but it's definitely a unique body of work. Sounds like a possible future project for ghost of miles. Paging!

36 calls for a 40!

A damn near perfect record.

Reissued on a Drive archive CD, I believe. A fine side, to be sure. And talk about unpredictable - he plays "Birdland"!

Not the exact phrase I would use, but no argument otherwise. If the guy has any problems on/with his instrument, I sure don't hear them.

Esquerita Little Richard Big Dick Cheney

Jim Wynn Anna Loos John Gnagy

When all is said and done, is there really any other kind?

I hear it most in his mid-period tenure w/Cannonball, the Capitol stuff that's mostly not yet been reissued. But it's more of a "conceptual" influence than a "specific" one.

Brian Blade Grassella Oliphant Walt Whitman

Mooloopia!

ZOOP!

You're not alone.

Wendy Wilson Wendy O. Williams Dr, Charles R, Drew

Coocoocachoo!

Jim Lang Bob Eubanks Chuck Barris

I'd like to hear Keith Jarrett cover a Steely Dan tune.

You're not alone.

Conrad is so right. Wait til ya hit 50, right Jim? Yep. You gotta be prepared to hit back.

Eartha Kitt naked and horny 30-40 years ago. I'd pay good money for that souvenir. Other than that, the album of previously unreleased festival performances from a few years ago was pretty nifty. Got any more?

Gerald McBoing-Boing Papa Oo Mow Mow Jomo Kenyatta