JSngry

Yeah, "Blue Xmas". That's a great tune, but Dorough's delivery of it virtually defines "disconnect" for me.

Yeah, Frishberg's got the distinct advantage of being a genuinely clever lyricist, and a somewhat "urbane" vocal style. But Dorough (and this is strictly when he sings jazz, btw) sounds to me like a darkly private Mose Allison joke that somehow got made public, and at face value.

Oh, Dorough's a talented cat alright, and in lots of different ways. It's just his "jazz singing" proper that give me the willies. That unidentifiable "twang" in his voice is pure emetic for me. Worked great on kids songs and such, but tell me you can't listen to "Nothing Like You" w/Miles and not wonder who and why the hell?

Cables on "Poinciana" (from Sonny Rollins' NEXT ALBUM) is my singlemost favorite Rhodes moment, if for no other reason than the sheer sound of the thing. But that's just such a damn fine recording of all the instruments, period - David Lee's cymbals on that one tune alone earn him admission into Drum God-dom if you ask me, and you can hear the wood on Bob Cranshaw's upright (sic!) like it was a freakin' sequoia. And then there's Sonny's soprano...yeah. Warning, thugh - the CD remastering doesn't capture the full sonic pallate of the old LP. Now here's a surprising (perhaps) Rhodes favorite - Barry Harris playing "Good Bait" on a Xanadu album. Very cool, at least soming over the AM radio, which is the only place I've heard it. But again, the sound of the thing was just too hip to resist. Electric piano (at least how I like to hear it) has/had that "cloud" to it that's sort of the aural equivalent to the tinting used on the B&W photos of the old BN covers - it serves as both a mask and an indicator, a signal that things may not be exactly what they seem to be on the surface. And no, it's no substitute for accoustic piano, which is why I think a really "cleaned up" Rhodes sound is not cool in the least. Give me the distortion, the muddiness, the clinking hammer-on-tine sound, the slightly imperfectly tuned tines, the buzzin, give me all of that (with a double does of tremelo/vibrato/etcetero), and make it speak the language that such sounds speak best. Then you got something! I dig the Rhodes immensely, and the Wurlitzer too. But the Wurlitzer didn't have as strong/fat/whatever sound and structure, so I don't think it held up as well to more "energetic" playing. But it was a soulful sounding little booger, yes it was.

Well, he does have a following, so mine is obviously not a unanimous opinion, but, yeah, I'd say you were.

Dang me!

Swank? The devil you say!

And Dave Frishberg as well, although he's written some ok tunes, I guess. But for me, the list of worst begins w/Bob Dorough. Loved his production work with Spanky & Our Gang, though. Very nice stuff. But as a singer? #1 Worst says it all for me. So why's he not on the list?

England swings like a pendulum do.

No.....

Hasn't been reissued that I know of. My PM box is almost always full, emptying it is an exercise in futility. Sending e-mail through the board is the way to go.

Used to buy from him in the 1970s, back when prices were sane. Has he died?

That Esther Phillips is the sleeper of the bunch. Trust me.

I have it on good authority that a UNT guitar instructor, a devout Methenyite (in the worst way, if you know what I mean, and if you don't you're either very blessed or one of them yourself ), was at that gig and was so, uh....unprepared for the music that he spent a good portion of the evening in the men's room throwing up. I kid you not. We need more music that makes irrationally happy people throw up.

(sigh of resignation....)

So it seems!

Apparently lots of people of people studied w/Tristano at one point or another, for whatever reason, Bud Freeman being one of them.

I bought that Stamm album on the cheap a few weeks ago, and it's pretty wack.

Any list of this type that excludes Bob Dorough is one that I refuse to take seriously.

Actually, I think there's a New York bias in the rest of the American jazz press, like it's still the center of the jazz world or something. Dream on. In New York, if you're lucky, you can hear Joe Lovano. In Chicago, it's Von Freeman. Take that, extrapolate it outward, and case closed afaic. New York's still the center of the jazz industry, no doubt, but I'd venture to say that you could hear more interesting music on a regular basis more frequently elsewhere these days, and Chicago would definitely be towards the top of the list (and quite possible at the top of it) of places to do so. Although "interesting music" means different things to different people, so let me say that what I hear coming out of NY for the last decade or two very often doesn't qualify. But that's just me.

70s and beyond? SYMBIOSIS and LIVING TIME.

Joe Lee Wilson's one of my favorites. One of the few "true" jazz singers of either/any gender, no "pop" overtones or trappings at all. A thing he did w/Shepp on Marge called A TOUCH OF THE BLUES is fantastic.

Problem is, when I find out where I am, I'm already somewhere else looking at it.

Went to Coal Grove, Ohio for Thanksgiving w/the mother-in-law.

Naw, you get a secret option for reaching 10,000 posts. Jsngry might not have noticed it yet... I think I just did.