JSngry

Talk about conflicting emotions, my last day of high school, the day I had lived and prayed for for many years, the day that I would officially be able to escape everything that was evil in my life (at least up to that point...), was the day that I woke up to hear that Duke Ellington had died. I went to school anyway. Duke would have wanted it that way. Although, Gonsalves probably would've advised me to skip and get high. THAT came later...

I've got this one on the way: http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?...yle=music&Bab=E We'll see what it has and how well it's annotated.

Compared to what?

Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. But only a stoner would care.

Yeah.

I'd say it was Leo Smith.

Ok, you want straight reaction? Here it is - first listen to this disc is as I post. Let's see how it goes... TRACK ONE - Ra on Horo? The bassless quartet? That sounds like Gilmore, fersure. Hell yeah! Michael Ray can PLAY! As could they all. TRACK TWO - Ok, a Miles boot. "Riot". What can you say? Some of the greatest music of the 20th century. Or maybe of all time (except that I've not heard all the music of all time to make a fair comparison. But I'll take my chances...). This is NUTS! Don't think I have this show, I'd remember this. Fuck Wynton Marsalis. TRACK THREE - ANDREW!!!! My favorite album of his, period. Gilmore is SUCH a bitch on this side. Hell, they ALL are. Found this album in the Treasure City cutout bins when I was 15 or 16. Made me an instant hit with the chicks. Check out Joe Chambers, MY GOD! Defintiely a desert island side for me. Perfect music afaic. One, but only one, of the above sentences is a lie. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which one. TRACK FOUR - Gold, silver and gold... And Green. Some more perfect music. That opening lick of Hutch's solo is one that comes to me out of the blue at almost any time and place for no good reason, and has for years now. Larry..yeah. jesus christ, that's as good as it gets (not that that's the only way it gets that good...). Giants used to walk the Earth, folks, remember that as we grow older, and don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. Many will try (and aRE trying). Fuck them and keep it real. It's better to be diappointed by the truth than to be thrilled by a lie. ELVIN!!! TRACK FIVE - Sounds like a Haden tune. Or maybe Bach. Whatever. Let us pray. I mean that. Ya' know Cary, I can tell (I think) that you've spent a lot of time in the country. Outdoors. At night. When it's QUIET. Listening. To everything (and at night, outdoors, in the country, when it's quiet, there's a lot to listen to). Keep that. It'll serve you well. TRACK SIX - Mingus. Memories of praying. In the city. When it's not/never quiet. But needs to be. So Bill makes it so. Or so he hopes. Of you. TRACK SEVEN - Something Blue Note, a nicely different set of changes. I have this, what is it, DAVIS CUP? After a while, they all start to blend together, which is cool, because then it's not about the records anymore, or the players, or the tunes, but just about the feel. And feel is the name of the game. TRACK EIGHT - DRAMATIC stereo coming out of my PC speakers! On a piano trio! Ellington-ish in result, if not in means. Might be Herbie Nichols, I've kinda not listened to him for a while now and gotten "off" on what is and isn't him. But those aren't really his type of changes... Elmo Hope? Hell, you got me on this one. But it's a good'un. TRACK NINE - Now THIS could be Herbie Nichols. Whether it is or not, I'm not sharp enough to say. But I'll put a burger on it that it is. Aw hell, a burger and fries! Pretty sure that that's Max, so make it double meat, ok? Ok, it's played long enough. That IS Herbie Nichols! Feed me! TRACK TEN - His Majesty, King Baby Face. Damn, even when giants walked the earth, the non-giants were still pretty damn big. Something else to remember as time goes by. TRACK ELEVEN - Moontrane! Nice and brisk! O...k...yeah, I know what this is from. An obscurity made even more so in it's near-stillborn cd form. This bad boy needs to be reissued asap and kept in print for perpetuity. Ask for it by name. Often. Michael reads his e-mail ya' know! Bobby's going through those changes like they were butter and he was a hot knife in the hand of a very patient starving man. That's how it should be. TRACK TWELVE - Ah, the (formerly) mystery-organist album! What's the name of this tune, Samba somethingorother... Always reminds me of "A Lot Of Livin' To Do". It's the bridge where they seperate, changewise. Oh well, lots of mysteries, but not as to whether or not I like this cut! Think about it - those three cats just showed up, set up, laid down an album's worth oof tunes, packed up and split. All in a few hours. No, it's not that easy, but if this album was sorta produced oon the fly like it's rumored to have benn, then maybe this time it was. And we still get great pleasure and deep satisfaction from the results of those few hours of relatively casual work. Try doing that today. Hell, try getting that today. It's doable, but it takes WORK now. Such is the world in which we live. TRACK THIRTEEN - Maria Schnieder? No matter, I like the writng a lot more than the playing, both in the solos and in the ensembles. Oh well... Hey, that's another great ride you've given me. I owe you one, I guess. Next time you come to town...

Had a listen to Disc One last night, and another one as we speak. Usual thanks and disclaimers apply. And no AMG-ing! TRACK ONE - Hell if I know, but that's some fast shit ("Bebop" aka "Things To come") . Too fast, really, for anything other than a challenge, Not too many cats have been able to really be creative playing changes at that tempo, and these folks ain't amongst them. But - they all hung w/the tempo, and that may have well been the point, whether or not they'd admit it. OTOH, really nice recording. Sounds like a Contemporary thing, so I'll guess Victor Feldman. Drummer's really crisp, might be Shelley Manne. No doubt all involved would be a lot more creative at a slightly slower tempo. But sometimes you just gotta see waht you can do! TRACK TWO - "Green Chimneys". NOT Monk. Might be that Walter Davis thing, which I have, but haven't really internalised enough yet to say for sure. But too many non-Monkian elements (and too decidedly "modern" ra ecording sound) to be Monk. As a "personal reflection" on Monk, it's very nice. TRACK THREE - "Ask Me Now" as performed after Globetrotters games. Trumpeter is definitely Lester Bowie-inspired, might even be him, but I don't think so. TOO traditional. Might even be Clark Terry out on a limb (the Terry/Bowie link goes strangely unnoticed, it seems to me), but not likely. Sounds like it might be James Carter on bass clarinet. I think they were playing this one strictly for grins, and grins they get from me! Fun stuff. TRACK FOUR - No idea. AACM-ish. Often, this type of thing is more fun (for me) to be involved in playing than listening, but still enjoyable for the various percussion colors/textures. Percussion offers unlimited possibilities, and these are some of 'em. Not bad, but not "special". Works very nicely in the sequence of this disc, though. TRACK FIVE - Ah, tenor geeks! A variant of "Airegin". I dig how they take a page from Sonny by playing the head in such a way that the changes aren't revealed until the blowing begins, ala Newk's "John S." But if you go back and listen, you can hear that the head follows the changes, just in a non-boppish (very Trane-ish via Liebman/Grossman, actually) way. This has "New York Tenor" written all over it, but w/o the tight tone and straighter phrasing that so many of those cats use. First cat might be Lovano, second might be Garzone (a severely overlooked player, btw). My preference is for the second player, no matter who it is. This kind of playing is kind of a dead-end, ultimately, but it's a dead-end that has much to offer on the way. My man Pete Gallio lives for this kind of thing, and could probably tell you exactly who it is in 4 notes or less. Me, all I can do is guess, and maybe, maybe. buy the side when I find out for sure. Is that DeJohnette on drums? TRACK SIX - What a COOL tune, and what a GREAT vibe for it! No idea as to who or what, but if late-60s Brian Wilson had of been making stoned-out jazz records instead of stoned-out pop ones, they would sound like this! So calm and passive on the surface, so OUT on the inside. LOVE IT! Love the SOUND of the cut, how everbody involved gets the mood and plays to it throughout, down to the mixing. TRACK SEVEN - Psychedelic! Kind of like a joint acid trip between Chico Hamilton and Jimmy Giuffre. Kind of annoying for half-hearted listening, but if you can get into that lysergic perspective (naturally, of course!), it's very nice, unfolding slowly but surely. Close listening reveals a sure direction from beginning to end, although that direction is in no way made overt. Very disciplined music-making, actually. There's a core to the music that everybody plays off of w/o actually playing. I dug it. TRACK EIGHT - Might be Herb Robertson doing his Don Cherry (he does a very good one!). Tight! These cats are all on the same page, playing a concept as well as a tune. Again, very SOUND-conscious music making. Nice. Really dig the bass/drums hookup. Sounds kinda like an "intellectual" take on Ornette and Tristano all roled into one. In a good way. You can dance to it, but you're most likely to think about dancing to it, and enjoy doing so. Again, VERY taken by the bassist and drummer, individually and together. TRACK NINE - I recognize "Main Stem" and Kenny Burrell immediately, but that's it. Burrell is the epitome of "understated mastery". The guy can go wherever he wants to go and fool you into thinking that it's someplace normal. Well, sometimes it is, but sometimes... They had a SOLID groove going until the drummer started hitting the rim on 4 behind Kenny. That shit does NOT work, hardly ever anyway. But they recover nicely. VERY nicely, actually. Kind of generic solos from bass and drums, but the vibist is somebody not hidebound by bebop orthodoxy, which is definitely to his advantage. Not Hutch, but somebody with a bit of the same "stretched" ethos. Mighty interesting! TRACK TEN - "Fleurette Africaine". By Burton & Coryell? RCA? Don't know this particualr version, but those are two pretty identifiable voices, especially together. Not Roy, so it must be Moses (another overlooked master, in his own freaky way). Overall, I don't much go for the Gary Burton, but this earlier stuff, what I've ehard of it, works just fine. Him & Coryell (and Moses, if this is him) were young, white, and not worried about it, which in the jazz of the late-60s was a pretty radical attitude. Pat Metheny, etc. starts here. Again, I dug it, and wouldn't mind checking out some more RCA Burton if it's all like this. TRACK ELEVEN - Gil Evans meets Oliver Nelson for an Andrew Hill ECM date? Don't know, don't have a clue, but there's a mood to this thing that makes it hard to ignore. So much nuance to all the playing, in both ensemble and solos, the players seem to be sining more than playing, and I like that a lot. Actually, this sounds familiar in a lot of ways, but not in such a way that I can put it all together into a cohesive guess. TRACK TWELVE - Well, yeah. I hear ya. Whoever you all are, I hear ya. Might be McPhee? Might be the Parker/Drake tandem. I don't know. But I hear 'em. TRACK THIRTEEN - And I do. Deeply. And with nothing but eternal love and gratitude. As I'm sure Walter Davis did. TRACK FOURTEEN - Sounds like Thad Jones on the intro. GREAT chart! The vocalist sounds like it could be anybody, but only an anybody of a particular time, place, and attitude. I could almost go Ra on this one, it's got that ragged-but-right thing going on. Or, from a completely different place, something Mingus/Macero/Debut related. But I hear a few Arkestra-specific tonal voices poking through in the ensembles, and the piano solo is defintiely not anything "traditional" so w/Ra I stay. Beautiful. TRACK FIFTEEN - DEFINTIELY Stan Getz w/Gary McFarland. I'd know that sound anywhere! Unless it's BOOKER AND BRASS. But I've never heard that one before. TRACK SIXTEEN - Keith Jarrett on a blind drunk? Pretty sure I've heard this before, might even have it, but again, can't call it. Might never, and might not. But I bet the drummer's from New Orleans. Wow, that's a LOT of music, much of it totally new to me, and all of it good. Thanks for the ride!

Yeah, I like that Smythe thing, same as I like the Barbara Long Savoy side. What can I say, I got a thing for singers who don't fuck up a good groove. Not as common a thing as you'd think... otoh, I don't know that that makes for an "attraction" to the public at large.

Pops Poopadeaux.

Damn. This ain't getting any easier...

Got it!

Allen, why do you think that Percy was seemingly so reticent to step out into the spotlight? I'm excited to learn that there's so much more Percy France on record to discover, and that it is apparently of such high quality. Like I said, I only knew of him from a few things, none of which show him playing as sublimely as he does on this recording (and from the sound of it, these others) . Something new to learn, that's why I love hanging out in places like this!

Completely anecdotal evidence - every, and I do mean every, African-American jazz fan and jazz musician I've met who was around during those days has/had a fair sampling of 60s Hank in their collection. So my guess is that he was a steady, if not spectacular, seller. Seems that he probably had a reliable sales base.

Tell it to Manfred. But quietistly.

Whatever happened to Percy France? Hell if I know, but I took advantage of a chance to get this obsucre item on the Endgame label, and HOO-BOY, what a treat! It's a live thing (probably a bootleg, but I hope that at least France himself was the source, if that makes any sense...) from New Rochelle, NY, summer of 1980. Accompaniment is by Dick Katz on piano and JEff Fuller on bass. Selections are all "old favorites". So what's the deal? I'll tell you what the deal is - Percy France is PLAYING! I only knew him from his odd BN turn or two and some Bill Doggett stuff. A good player, to be sure, but one of many. I figured he'd just disappeared or something. But apparently not! The Percy France heard here is a superb player in the Hawkins through Byas vein, w/a tough of Jug thrown in as well. GREAT sound, agile chops, a keen harmonic ear, and a beautiful flow of ideas. Nothing at all "innovative", but DAMN this is some fine tenor playing in a style that hardly exists anymore (at least not this organically). The cat plays long, and the cat plays well. Dick Katz is a treat too, drawing upon his fertile imagination and deep bag of stylistic knowledges in equal measure. At times, he sounds like he's channelling Jimmy Jones harmonically, but mostly he's just going whereever his muse takes him. Which is to some pretty interesting places (he threatens to turn Tatum's "Willow Weep For Me" intro into a boogaloo, but stops just this short of it, which cracks me up). He and France genuinely seem to enjoy the surprises that the other provides. Jeff Fuller basically doesn't get in the way, which is actually a compliment. I'm not going to say who I bought this from, but if they have some more copies for sale and want to speak up, here's hoping that they do. And if this is in fact a bootleg that Percy France, Dick Katz, and Jeff Fuller got squat for, if somebody can tell me how to reach them, I'll gladly send them some money. This is a fine program of music. Highly recommended to fans of old-school, pre-bop modern tenor playing, all-encompasing pianists, and BN trivia buffs. Now, whatever happened to Percy France after he did this gig?

So Right!

No. You made too much noise.

I finally got around to watching my copy of the Ray DVD. Although I agree with Jim in the fact that the deleted scenes are effective and add to the depth of the film, I am VERY unhappy with the "technical" aspect of this DVD. Before you buy this, be aware that it is not a seamless "extended" edition like Lord of the Rings. As you are watching the film, right before it goes into an extended scene, these white music note icons come blinking on the screen (very annoying), and then you get a pause (while a new title loads) and then it goes straight into the extended scene, which is grainy, has bad sound, and just poor overall presentation quality. When the deleted scene ends, again the 2-3 second pause, as it has to re-load back into the main film. What's happened here is that the technological shortcomings of this DVD have destroyed the continuity of what could have been an effective extended edition of the film. Why couldn't the filmmakers have spent a bit of extra time and money, restored the deleted scenes to the same quality of the regular film, and created an option to watch a true extended edition of the film that actually would make for a good experience? I have never before seen a DVD release that has taken this cheap route before. Instead, we're stuck with this thrown together crap heap of a DVD that takes some really effective scenes and just cheaply and unartisticly throws them into the mix. It didn't work for me, and I'm very disappointed. I will stick to watching the theatrical version in the future. I didn't notice the poor quality you mention, but do get the pauses. I don't like them, but I'll take'em until something better comes along. The added scenes really do make it a better movie, I think, pauses or not. I just process it all after it's over, and process the pauses out. But mileages on that technique obviously vary. I wonder how much of this is due to genuine budget constraints. The director's commentary repeatedly mentions how the film was made w/o any major studio backing, and that the big-money guy (forget his name) was a "moral conservative" who insisted on a PG-13 film. Sounds like maybe the DVD budget was already in place before anybody knew how well the film would do, and funds were not unlimited. Maybe. How well DID this film do at the box office anyway? I know it was a hit, but it came and went from the major theatres here before I could get a chance to see it, not more than 2 months or so. And it's not yet made the dollar-house circuit either. Don't know all that much about how the film industry "plans" the life-cycle of a film, but I definitely pick up the vibe that nobody was sure that this thing was going to be any kind of a big success and proceeded accordingly. More's the pity.

Ralph Stanley/The Stanley Brothers The Louvin Brothers.

Jim Marshall. Wonder if it's the cat who used to play for the Vikings, the Wrong-Way Corrigan of the NFL?

Well hey, think about it - from Curtis Counce (a story that begs to be told, if you know what I mean...) to Merv Griffin to Louie the Lighning Bug, with all sorts of stops in between, what kind of a life IS that, anyway? Been hearing some Sheldon on KNTU lately, assume that's what it is. Yeah, he can still play. The Uptown side is good too.

That was John Litwieler, who also posts here.

The tunes themselves are very good. But there's lyrics, LOTS of lyrics, of a metaphysical bent, as well as many trappings which could be deemed "commercial" in nature, if not in execution. If that raises suspicion and/or concern, then it might be best to stay away. I dig the stuff, but will be the first to admit that it ain't gonna be for everybody.

Jack Sheldon.