JSngry

It's kinda Weather Report-y in some ways, if you can believe that. Giuffre heard the coloristic possibilities in sythesizers, decided that it was good (or had the potential to be), and decided to check it out himself. Good stuff, especially at that price.

The Art Pepper cover that never was:

They arrived yesterday. Tonight I put on headphones, block out the sounds of payment procesing, and FEAST on Ellingtonia. Rat on!

Burt Bachrach belongs on that list too, AFAIC. Maybe Stevie Wonder & Elvis Costello too. Who else?

This is GREAT information, folks. The Organissimo Community at its finest. 'Preciate y'all!

Paul, I see your point, and agree with it to a certain extent, but on the other hand, now that Monk has passed from us, it is inevitable that he will come to be treated as the historical figure that he was, and that means, for better and/or worse, biographical investigation/speculation. The Gourse biography gives some pretty vivid quotes re: the drug use, sources cited IIRC. But if my memory also serves, it's perhaps relevant that such indulgences on Monk's part didn't really begin in earnest until the 1960s, long after his "core" work had been done. This is also the time when the mental "issues" began to surface. Draw your own conclusions about that, if you like. Is any of that relevant at all to the brilliance of his music? No, of course not, and I share the distaste for any attempt to link the music itself to such matters. Like all genius, the work speaks 100% for itself, and is really all that matters. But the nature of history is to look beyond the work and into the person responsible for it. That often turns up uncomfortable facts/speculations. Personally, I think that it's incumbent upon the serious listener/fan/scholar/whatever to keep the biographical facts seperate from the actual work, except when a direct correlation can be proven. In Monk's case, I've yet to be even remotely convinced that such a correlation exists.

Has Carla Bley ever mentioned being influenced by Raymond Scott? I hear a subtle connection in some of Scott's original themes on this one. Not really familiar with his other work, other than by reputation and the occasional sample. Gonna have to change that...

As soon as you do, please let me know!

Ok, I have a copy (as in COPY) of that one. No personnel or anything. But ok, he's cooking there too. Is Mr. Brooks an expatriated American or a native European? If it's the former, does anybody have any details as to what he die in the states before moving and for how long?

It has been: http://www.dustygroove.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap...&GO.x=16&GO.y=7

Elvin Jones Milt Hinton Kenny Burrell Eddie Costa Sam "The Man" Taylor Harry "Sweets" Edison "Wild" Bill Davis Jean "Toots" Thielemans This according to http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00...5267632-2769751 What an INTERESTING record this is. Not really "jazz" per se, but BFD. There's so pretty individual and advanced thinking going on in these charts (to say nothing of surreal humor), and with players like this, you know that the execution is going to be true, and swinging (ELVIN!). Highly recommended for those who like this kind of stuff. Best price I've seen on this so far has been The Bastards. Of course.

Somebody played me a 1965 cut of "Bye Bye Blackbird" by some singer named Nuria Feliu that had Booker Ervin on it. She's singing in some language that I don't understand and can't readily figure out. I guess it's nice enough while the chick's singing, pretty "lightly and politely", if you get my drift. but when Booker comes in and starts to moan and holler, this Billie/Billye Brooks guy just starts sticking his foot up everybody's ass and SWINGS LIKE A BEE-AHTCH. Good God Almighty! So who is this m-fer anyway?

STRANGE picture! Mr Ellington looks like a midget with big head and short arms. You should see it LP-sized - Duke looks like a momma's boy who's done made his mommy happy.

Excuse the inclusion of quotes from two different posts, but here is the crux of the matter as far as I'm concerned - Monk's mental illness had nothing to do with his music, AFAIC. The "provable" manifestations of his illness came much later in his life, when he became non/borderline functional. Before that, what we got was the genius, pure and simple. Although it's tempting to read traits of the latent/incipient/whatever illness into his work throughout the years, that sets up the unintentional/unfortunate consequence of looking at his life's work through the lens of "clinical" analysis, and I just don't think that that is a good idea. It's not that far a step from doing that to evaluating all creativity from a mental health angle, and that's a really nasty can of worms to open. I know that that is in no way your intent, Tony, but in these days of psychotropic medications being invented and distributed like so many after-dinner mints, it's nevertheless a valid concern, I think. Once society begins to view those who have "eccentric" perspectives, artistic or otherwise, as people who are acting out their inner mental "irregularities" (can't think of a better word, although one surely exists) in a postive/self-theraputic manner, things could get awfully ugly. Look, I'm no "genius", not by the longest of shots, but I've always been somebody who had one of those "different" perspectives, and who has not been afraid to explore/act on on them, creatively and otherwise. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had my "sanity" questioned, and not just by people who are obviously "clueless". And yes, I've had my "ups and downs" emotionally, but no more so than many people for whom unquestioningly following the same routine every day of thier life, the "normal" routine, is not a choice, but a congenital imperitive. As far as I'm concerned, "mental health" is a pretty subjective field far more often than not. My personal opinion is that it is something that should be evaluated solely in terms of functionality, not "perspective". Dysfunctionality pops up across the "behavioral" spectrum, as does creative insight, but if there's any direct link between the two, I've yet to see it. Frequent intersection, yes, but I also know a lot of blondes who are truly dumb, so what does intersection have to do with anything? Societal conditioning leading to a pre-ordained result sometimes? Well, yeah. And maybe the same thing applies to those with beyond the norm "creative" skills as well - the dysfunctionality is a result, not a root cause. Sometimes. Monk really showed no signs of not being able to function until later in his life. Before functionality became a problem for him, what were we getting in his music - an attempt to "keep a grip" or sheer genius-level insight into the multi-leveled inter-relationality of reality expressed in tems of harmony, time, timbre, etc.? I myself have to believe that it's the latter. "No harm, no foul", as they say, and if Monk's functionality was not an issue to others or to himself, all "eccentricities" aside, where's the reason to suspect any kind of "illness"? If mortal tragedy, a car accident, a murder, whatever, had ended his life in, say, 1963, would anybody, including family members, had clinical "issues"? Probably not, I'll say. Why would they? They'd just say that he was a genius with eccentric tendencies. And they would be right, because that's all he was until then! "Latency" must be classified as nothing but speculation (idle or otherwise) when it comes to stuff like this, I believe. We all are latently mentally ill. This I truly believe, from the most off-the-wall eccentric to the most staid model of behavioral consistently. It's not until we reach the point where we cross the line and become dysfunctional that that illness must be considered and examined as an illness, because that's the time, the only time, that it truly is an illness. Looking for "signs" before it does can turn up anything in anybody. It all depends on who's looking for what, and who gets to define where the boundaries are. You're not sick until you get sick, and anybody can get sick under the right combination of circumstances. If we want to say that Monk had a uniquely precious tonal/spatial perspective all of his life that became "cloudy" due to various factors, including mental issues, which may or may not have forced him to "work a little harder" to keep in touch with it in his later years, I'm more than fine with that. But if the "argument" is that the way he acted out on that perspective at every point in his career was formed by a mental illness of some sort, then I will have to respectfully but resolutely disagree.

Just curious, Tony. Are you unequivically equating having an "altered" (ie - observedly different than the norm) "emotional landscape and viewpoint" with mental illness?

I zm very reluctant to recommend anything by Leslie Gourse, but her Monk bio goes into a good deal of detail about this, and sources are credited. I'd have a hard time believeing that this much specificity was totally fabricated, even by her. Again, this is not an atttempt to dwell on the sensationalistic and/or morbid. If it's true, then it belongs to history, and should be treated as such. My personal feeling is that a genius of Monk's calibre would "find a way" for tht genius to come out no matter what the circumstances of their life. Somehow, and with whatever tools were at their disposal. If Monk's fate had been to have been a plumber, I bet you he'd ahve been the damndest plumber in the history of the world.

As this story reveals, not too well, at least internally...

I dunno. Maybe you need to conundrumial instigation to get the diagnostication synchified. Worked for me, but then again, it might have just been a mountain making a hill for the mole to get to the other side of. Who knows?

Hope is on the way!

Jim, I have the one that came out on Felsted w/Howard McGhee... may still be in print. Are those actually Brooks compositions, though? My bad. I meant to say "Tina Brooks' performance of the Connection score ". Sorry.

Whitney Houston should make one...

A very clever strategy, Mike!

Anybody got the side w/Tina Brooks' Connection score ?

The font suggests early 70s Impulse!. They released a series of B&W promo posters to record stores around 74 or 75. Don't remember this particular one, but that don't mean swuat...

I'm pretty much with you most of the way on that one, bro, but I gotta back out for MILLION DOLLAR LEGS.