JSngry

Tenor player from Houston, relocated to Canada. A good friend shared some cuts of off two of his albums, and I'm most intrigued - the guy breaks no new ground, yet he sounds absolutely like nobody else. Kind of a Bill Barron-eque type vibe to his playing and writing, yet he sounds nothing like Barron. "Advanced Post-Bop" would be as close to a description as I can muster based on what I've heard so far. Can't find his albums for sale online, but haven't yet checked w/Cadence. Desperately want to "do the right thing" and buy them legit if at all possible/feasable. Any information on this guy and his recordings would be greatly appreciated. He's the kind of "unknown local heavyweight" that I really enjoy discovering, somebody who's at once "in the tradition" yet totally idiosyncratic. One thing's for sure - there's MEAT in this guy's music! So, anybody heard of Billy Robinson?

Before I was 5, I had just about worn the grooves (ok- groove) off a RCA Victor 45 of Jim Reeves' "Billy Bayou". The 2nd most heavily played 45 of those years was "The Chipmunk Song" b/w "Almost Good", the B-side getting more play, although not by much. If 78s count, I had a sheetload full of Childrens Record Guild issues (favorite was probably the various "Adventures of Muffin" sides) and Little Golden Records, which, yeah, later came out on 45s. My folks made the conversion for me. Guess I was programmed early! Favorite LGR 78 must have been The Adventures of Rudy Kazoo, favorite LGR 45 was probably a tie between Mr. Green Jeans singing "Waltzing Matilda" and Shari Lewis doing "Hi Lilly, Hi Lilly, Hi Lo" (sp?). I started buying Pop 45s when I was about 10, albums at 11, and stopped (for quite a while) by the time I was 13 and into jazz. Favorite 45 during those years is too close to call, w/Beatles singles being disqualified, but I had a thing for B-sides - "Straight Shooter" by The Mammas & The Papas (flip side of "Twelve-Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon)" (only later did I realize what the song was really about), " (It Ain't Necessarily) Byrd Avenue" by Spanky & Our Gang (flip of "Sunday Will Never Be the Same"), quirky, off beat pop stuff.

Same cat. God bless him for capturing/preserving what he did. God damn him for how he did it. You're in "the business" Ray, surely you're no stranger to unambiguous ambiguity?

Easy - buying the Lubinsky, because sooner or later SOMEBODY will come after his ass (or his estate's ass) and win SOMETHING. The more you fatten him up, the riper he is for the pickin'. CRuel and manipulative, yeah, but that's showbiz baybeeeeee. Failing that, it's still buying the Lubinsky, because that demonstrates that the profitability on the part of the original label is not being devalued by the knockoffs, which means that said label is more likely to be swallowed up by somebody, which may or may not lead to Scott getting a belated but deserved (morally, not legally) piece of the pie through a variety of "collateral" methods. Failing THAT - it's STILL buying the Lubinsky, because the image of an artist like Scott is not well served by countless LITTLE JIMMY SCOTT'S GREATEST ROMANTIC SLOWDANCEFLOOR CLASSICHITS compilation CDs on Butterpimple Records cluttering up every damn clearance bin in the know world for the low price of 25 cents, or some such. Having a product available on a "real" label, hower, is an opportunity for profile in the marketplace, so if Lubinksky were to pimp his Scott shit like he SHOULD have done in the first place, Scott might get no money, but he gets profile, which can be translated into $$$$ easier than not if you don't fuck yourself over by signing up w/another anusdrizzle like Lubinsky. Fortunately, this is just a hypothetical scenario!

HA!

What if Sonny Rollins had never been dubbed "Sonny"? Can you imagine "Ted Rollins" or "Walt Rollins" or "T.W. Rollins" or "T.Walter Rollins" or "Teddy Rollins" or "Theodore Rollins" having the same life and making the same music? No! It HAD to be "Sonny Rollins"! These things happen for a reason, I say...

Although the wedding dress auction is good, I thought the "ass kicking" auction was an all-time classic. Indeed! Anybody "save" that one in some form or fashion?

Now what would be REALLY interesting is if BN would legitimately issue that bootleg of the Prince New Years Eve gig where Miles sat in. A fascinating document, that is. Sort of a nice "bookend" to the BIRDLAND 1951 side in some ways...

My metrics tell me that Krall has more than once exhibited uncertainty about how to handle sustained vowels. For me, that's the "make or break" for a singer of standards. Do it right (or at least confidently), and you soar (and this applies to "jazz" and "non-jazz" singers alike). Do it wrong, and YUCK (ditto). It's not been a consistent factor in Krall's work, but when it IS there, it makes me very, uh.... "uncomfortable". Still, the woman is not a poser. Not at all. I just think that they put her in the oven w/o the benefit of proper seasoning.

Dakota lives!

The work of EVERY saxophonist (Hodges AND the section) on "Blues For New Orleans" guarantees them all a place of immortality in my heart.