JSngry

In the best of worlds, there would be a Boris Rose Mosaic series, with everybody fully and rightly compensated. It would go on for years and blow most people's minds.

Claus Ogermann gets a lot of flack from "jazz purists" for his work, but I think he's a most inventive and original writer. He's never been afraid of the "fat" chords, and his technique of creating/resolving dissonance through the juxtaposition of moving and sustained parts, although definitely not his "invention", is one that he's stylized into a deeply personal "stamp". He's no different than anybody else, and sure, he's done some some "too light" work over the years, but his writing on the first Sinatra/Jobim collaboration virtually defines "creative elegance" afaic, and that's not at all an isolated example. I still need to check out Farnon, Phil. I keep hearing words of the highest praise from too many people I respect to let him go unexplored too much longer!

Sauter wrote some really great stuff for Benny Goodman's early 40s band, some really great charts. READ MORE ON AMG. The Sauter-Finnegan orchestra (co-led by Bill Finnegan, another great writer of the same era) was a bit of a gimmicky farce in my opinion, but still, Sauter's (and Finnegan's) work on their own is among the very best of it's type. His chart on "Perfidia", a vocal feature for Helen Forrest, is just TOO damn hip! (Although it's a type of hipness that might require some "technical" knowledge to fully appreciate, stuff like voicings and subtle chord substitutions, that's exactly the type of thing that seperated the men from the boys in this type of writing. But an "educated" (i.e. - experienced and discriminating) listener, although perhaps not being able to describe in technical terms everything trhat's going on, can surely HEAR the differences and pick up on the nuances of everything he does in these great charts.) Rene Hernandez was one of the archetypes of "salsa" and wrote too many great charts in the idiom to mention, especially for Machito and Tito Rodriguez. His writing was very often "jazzy" in flavor and always retained the rhythmic essence of Afro-Cuban music. Odds are that if you hear a "salsa" arrangement for a larger group (including somebody more "progressive" like Eddie Palmieri), you're being touched in some form or fashion by the work of Rene Hernandez. A seminal/archetypical figure, AFAIC. Maiden stayed w/Maynard until the late 60s, and his writing can be heard on the Roulette. Cameo, and Mainstream recordings by that band. A particular favorite of mine is his take on "All The Things you Are", recorded by Chris Connor, Maynard for their Atlantic album DOUBLE EXPOSURE. That's as hip a piece of writing as you'll ever hear. Another one is "Tinsel", done by Maynard on his Mainstream COLOR HIM WILD album. It's a ballad, but it's also a 12 bar blues (which actually took me a few years to figure out, so striking was the construction!) that is a masterpiece, imho, bold and vulnerable simultaneously, with a genuine melancholy throughout that few writers for Maynard dared/cared to explore. Maiden then went w/Stan Kenton for a while, where he contributed some sublimely inventive and swinging charts for a band that, as periodically happened in the Kenton orb, was actively interested in such things. The thing I like about him is that his writing is almost always full of a blend of dry-but-light humor and deep harmonic sophistication. He was a niche unto himself, truth be told. Overton's work w/Monk (and he also did the writing for the concert that Columbia recorded, location escapes me at this moment. Philharmonic Hall, maybe?) is really all I know, but that's enough, ain't it?

Hold off on that one - Fresh Sounds (a completely unrelated label, of course ) has a set coming out that will include this stuff AND the "Dixieland" stuff that was Lacy's first recordings, and it's going to be a "memorial" to the recently deceased great one. And I'm sure that the Lacy estate will be getting some kind of compensation from this "well timed" release...

You noticed that too?

ska BLEE dop!

Photo of Eric, intended to finish off last night's gallery, but delayed when the squirrel collapsed...

Yeah, really.

Any idea how one would go about finding all those outtakes from the Capitol sessions that were issued by the Sinatra Society (or whoever they were)? Those came and went before I got the bug...

When it comes to materials like this, my personal feeling is that this is one instance where nobody should have any compunction whatsoever about copying and distributing the material amongst true fans. Beat the bootleggers at their own game - even one purchased copy is fair game for countless numbers of copies to be distributed to true fans. Doing it this way gets the music to those who love it, and it also means substantially less income for the thieves (and I'd have a hard time thinking of somebody who raided a dead man's home in search of tapes to issue as anything other than a thief). The corrolary to this, which was made clear in the distribution of the Ayler tree material a while back, is that if you get ANY bootleged material through means such as this, you then have a moral obligation to purchase it when it is released through legitimate means (legitimate to me meaning paying money to the estate of the artist). Although I greatly enjoy Tosh Tanaka's Marsh releases, knowing now how he came about the material, and how he's avoiding/screwing the estate, I will no longer look for "real" copies of them, and will instead gleefully pursue burns of them form friends, and will gleefully provide same to same. And I will even more gleefully purchase "real" copies if and when the material is released in a legitimate and ethical fashion.

Fully open gatefold:

Partially opened gatefold:

Back cover (when closed):

The Prestige gallery!

Maybe he got magnetized.

Well, if by family, you mean "Family", then maybe....

I've got that one. It's on Moon, right? Track 3, "Crreation" is one of the '65 Half Note tracks, and a Trane piece that there is currently no documented studio version of. It's alos one of the most "famous" and beloved pieces amonst hardcore Coltrane collectors.

That's Paris, 1965, the one I have on the Affinity LPs. Yeah, start looking.

That '65 Half Note stuff is amazing. All of the live '65 Trane stuff I've heard has been amazing. My buddy Pete Gallio thinks that '63 was "the" year, and as a Coltrane fan/fanatic, somebody who has lived and breathed every note that Coltrane ever played (that he can get his hands on, anyway) to a degree that mere mortals can only fantasize about, his opinion is not to be taken lightly. But as for me, I think it was '65.

That one's not a live date. Originally a Mercury studio date w/Ball. Trane, Mr. Kelly, PC, and Cobb. Very nice. If you're like me, you'll want them all, so go for what you can get now and start looking for the rest. But fwiw, if that Live in Paris (Le Jazz) is from 1965 (I've got something similar, I think, on two Affinty LPs), then jump on that puppy asap.

You go get'em now, ya' hyeah?

Commerce Street in my hometown, Gladewater, Tx, ca. 1952. Not much has changed on this street in the last 52 years, except for the cars and the businesses that occupy the buildings.

Mighty fine stuff.

Assuming that claims of his fradulence are either unrue or somewhat exaggerated (an assumption I don't have enough information to make, one way or the other), I really dug the work of Walter "Gil" fuller w/Dizzy's 40s big band. Nobody has capture the true bebop flavor for a big band setting, imo. If he didn't do the work, as some have claimed, whoever DID do it has my undying admiration. But favorite arrangers overall? Too many too mention. Collecting their recordings and studying their work is kind of a hobby of mine, as I'm a somewhat thwarted arranger myself (not enough time/readily available opportunity, to learn the finer points of the craft the way I'd like to - through trial and error. Someday...). For the sake of this thread, I'll differentiate between "Composers" and "arrangers", and go by how well I like how the arranger in question was able to put their stamp on somebody else's material. Some favorites not yet mentioned (I think...): Oliver Nelson Nelson Riddle Claus Ogerman Fletcher Henderson Sy Oliver Eddie Sauter Rene Hernandez Duke Pearson Julius Hemphill Willie Maiden Hall Overton and too many more to mention.

Indeed, although I got a little irked last night when AP Network News (radio) refered to him as "zha-KAY", said that he was famous for his "trademark porkpie hats", and then added that he was the inventor of "the style of jazz known as squealing".