JSngry

Maynard's always been good about letting the players in his band do their thing w/o a lot of outside interference. Sure, he has to LIKE your thing before you get the gig, but once you get it, he really gives you room, and that's a lot rarer in big band circles than one might think. So, YES to Maynard, just on principle! (...and can we get LIVE AT JIMMY'S reissued in this millenium?)

Ok, here's some condensed perspective: If you want to hear great Jackie McLean (great as in "anybody into the base of jazz that this music springs from can tell that this is quality music of more than superficial importance"), then stick to the Blue Notes (and some of the Steeplechase dates, and the Triloka dates, and the date w/The Great Jazz Trio, etc.etc.etc.). Now, if you want to know why those dates are so great for reasons other than "They're GREAT!", if you want to dig deeper into the music and get some perspective (ironic, isn't it ) as to how the "obvious" greatness came to be, and mayben even the very nature of that greatness, well, you need to dig a little deeper, and that means checking out some of the Prestige, and Jubilee stuff, as well as Jackie's work w/Blakey and Mingus. And that's true for most any artist in any medium that "matters" to one's self. Hey - not everybody feels the want or need to dig too much deeper than knowing that something is great (or good, or whatever), and those people are content with having that knowledge and appreciation. That's cool. I'm like that with a bunch of stuff myself. But jazz is not one of those things, so when I see Jackie's Prestige work being dismissed as "for completists only" and words of that ilk, I feel obligated, as a person who really DOES value perspective in appraising, and more importantly, enjoying, music, to step in say that that may be so much bullshit, especially if McLean is a player that one wants a fuller understandong of. Because perspective does not consist of merely knowing what is good or not, or from knowing what is better than what, it comes from knowing WHY such is the case, and it comes from appreciating that which is not as great for what it IS just as much as for what it is NOT. No, you certainly don't need to spend your last dimes on Jackie's Prestige work, nor do you need to clear your shelves of all the gold to make room for it. That would be a bit much, unless Jackie is REALLY your man in a way that few others are (and I know some cats for whom this is the case). But - if you dig Jackie well enough to wonder about who he really is, where he came from, blahblahblah, in other words -if you want to have some PERSPECTIVE on Jackie McLean as man and musician, how can you NOT check out at least some of the pre-BN work, and how can you NOT dig at least some of it, if for no other reason than for the perspective (there's that darn word again!) it yields on his later work? There's some good stuff there, and if "good" is not "great", so what? If all you want is "great", you can save a lot of money and time, and if all you want is TRULY great, in the broadest sense, then you can narrow your jazz collection down to a relative handful of recordings, and your collection of EVERYTHING man-made down to such a size that your elderly grandmother could take care of it's maintainance w/a few minutes every other month or so. But where's the fun in that? The call for macroperspective is definitely a good one, but to think that it can be developed w/o a parallel microperspective is a concept that I find amusing, simply because one cannot funtion effectively w/o the other (that's residual macrobiotic training popping up - can't have a front w/o a back, and the bigger the front, the bigger the back). Of course one can go too far in either direction and lose the balance (and the perspective), but for my money, the development of one enhances the development of the other. Not as condensed as I had planned on, and still just my opinion, but still right.

It is. Trust me.

I can't imagine anybody who loves the BN stuff not being, at the very least, intrigued by the Prestige dates. They're certainly not as mature or fully realized as the BNs, for the most part, but there's more than a little meat to be had, even if it is raw and bloody (and some meat is good that way, if you know what I mean). To overlook or disparage this material is perhaps to miss "the point" of the BN output entirely. Suitable for a Readers Digest Condensed Jazz Appriciation Course For People Who Don't Think They Have Time Or Interest, but not much else. If you're into that type of thing, good. I'm not. That's just my opinion, but it's right.

Bobby was TV-Ready, and Jack was just a Good Ol' Boy w/a Weber (and a restaurant....), but if I'm eatin', I'm goin' to Jack's. They did another grilling show, w/Bobby and "guests", that mocked the very concept of Grillin', much less Chillin'. Foo-foo all the way. Now they're bringin' the show back, still all Bobby. BOO! BRING BACK JACK!!!!!

I think all of Jackie McLean's music is worth checking out, from the earliest to the latest. Like Larry says/implies, it's all part of the story. We might all have our favorite chapters out of a book, but who just reads those and not the others?

Al Klink it is then. My bad.

I've always liked this one.

My memory attributes that quote to Artie Shaw, but I could be wrong.

Do the letters "RCA" ring a bell?

Some great Davis on the Lacy Candid.

Yeah, Crash seems to be Smith's band of choice for performances in that area. He probably comes out ahead being their guest rather than bringing his own band. Not a bad choice at all, really. It's a good fit, based on this evidence. Lonnie in particular just GOES for it (wonder if playing w/a bass player opens him up in any way?) The chemistry is good, and everybody plays enough outside of the box to keep it fresh AND funky. Guess that makes if funky fresh!

Dr. Lonnie Smith shows up on this new live date by this Canadian band as featured/guest artist, and if he steals the show, it ain't by all THAT much. I'd never heard/heard of Crash before, but they seem like they got it going on pretty nicely, particularly altoist Cory Weeds & drummer Bernie Arai. No wimpiness or by-the-numbers redundancy here. Nothing radically new either, but BFD when the grooves are true, and here they are. Everybody came to play, and play they do! The Doctor is in EXCELLENT form, and the album includes a few of his raps w/the audience. Good vibes, good grooves, and, yes, good greeeeazzzze. Crash web site, w/a link to purchase: http://crashisfunky.com/ Recommended - a very low profile release that'll do you right more than will most of the name brands. Carpe diem!

The thing for me about the Vegas-era Prima stuff is 1) it's tighter than a gnat's ass yet played with verve and elan - clever, by no means predicatable or cliched arrangements (their version of "Skin" is just plain nuts!) executed with all the fun of a good bar band; and 2) the shit is New Orleans ALL the way out the wazzo. Some people don't know that N.O. was as big a seminal influence on R&B as it was on jazz. In Prima's 50s stuff, though, it's right there in front of you - Butera (who btw was WAAAAAAYYYY ahead of the pack as far as white guys playing R&B sax with a real feel/concept) plays "Trad" clarinet licks with the tone of a greasy bar-walker (snf vice-versa!), and a tune can go from a dirty shuffle into a "dixieland" collective blowout in the drop of a hat, and without you really noticing it if you're not thinking about it. But there it is! Some of the stuff that band did was silly, insipid, corny, whatever, but the best of it rings true to me as genuine "folk" music (the musical/cultural melting pot that was/is New Orleans) that got lucky and was able to be packaged for mass consumption w/o losing any of its essence, at least a good enough percentage of the time. And I can tell you with 100% certainty that there are still people around from that time who LIVE that vibe, musically and personally, and who always have. It's real.

Tony, a question, please - why do ADD & ADHD get lumped together so readily? It seems to me, having dealt with ADD w/o the "H", that they are two different things. ADD is just that - a problem focusing, period. ADHD seems to be a problem focusing brought about (or at least accompanied) by hyperactivity. Some similar symptoms, but are they really the same thing? What's the official line on this these days?

Hmmph. Water crickets as opposed to sea roaches...I dunno.... "Mud Bugs" is the term of choice, thank you, especially when consuming them by the pound.

I have a gut feeling that things like environment and diet don't actually cause ADD/ADHD (can we keep that distinction?), but it just seems logical to me that if a person is already "leaning" in that direction that those factors can certainly facilitate either the manifestation or the tendencies of the disorder. It just stands to reason that laws of momentum and such would apply here - if a tree is loosely rooted and leaning east, a strong west wind is going to make it lean even more. similarly, if a person is already more active and/or more easily distracted than "normal", a diet of sugar and rapid fire TV shows isn't going to settle them down and/or help them develop their focusing skills. GIGO, and all that. Which makes the use of amphetamines as treatment all the more curious/miraculous/whatever. The way I've had it explained to me, the person w/ADD is somehow (biochemically?) lacking in whatever it takes to get the typical "speed buzz", so they just get the advantages of the amphetamine - increased focus and alertness - w/o the other effects. Anybody who's dabbled in speed knows that it can make the mind incredibly focused, at least until the buzz really kicks in and you just get hypergoofy. People w/ADD don't have this problem (they have another one!), and can take the speed w/o the adverse attitudinal effects. I'm still worried about the longterm effects of giving amphetamines to kids, though, even in managed doses. That stuff, no matter how pure, ain't exactly mother's milk...

Crawfish still look nice.

Never knew about these records, and really only "know" Norris out of these three players. Jim - you say Bean was "influential". How so? Tone? Vocabulary? Articulation? Hairstyle? Seriously, he sounds like somebody I need to know about. Details, please!

Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West?

I dig this album ("High Water"). Interesting, and rewarding on repeated listenings.

Post-It Notes?

Seven Steps To Heaven?

PETE!!!!

5-Card Draw, Jacks or better, nuthin' wild. Period. Anything else is just a game.