JSngry

I got to thinking yesterday - everybody, myself included, views Chick Corea as an "important jazz musician", but based on what body of work? For me, it'd have to be the period from TONES FOR JOANS BONES (and, ok, the sideman years w/Blue, Mongo, etc. as a prelude) up to and including the firstedition (w/Airto & Flora) of Return To forever. That's a pretty epic arc of development, I think - from a really distinct "advanced inside" style of playing and composing, going DEEPLY into free improvisation, and ending up with a set of delightfully meaty, lyrical compositions (see Stan Getz' CAPTAIN MARVEL for just how meaty they could be, see the first two RTF albums for just how lyrical they could be). To me, that's Chick's most significant legacy, the stuff I keep coming back to for further exploration and deeper satisfaction, the material of that arc. But that was a long time ago, and the whole fusion RTF, the RTF-era solo albums on Polydor, and all the later projects have their devotees as well. None of that stuff really sunk in with me, for the most part (there are exceptions, though), but the following for it is large indeed, and it's a following that might not be all THAT interested in the stuff that I hold as "definitive" Corea. No real answer or point here, just a topic for a possibly interesting discussion: when you hear the name "Chick Corea", what's the first image/sound that flashes into your mind?

If I've got my chronology straight, Basie went from Verve to Roulette and then back to Verve, right? So, how long was he with the label this second time, what years, and what were the albums? Also, any clue as to why? Hadn't Granz sold the label by then? Also, did he go straight from Verve to Dot, or was there a stop in-between? As always, thanks in advance!

Now if it's Joe TRIO we're talking about, give me BARCELONA and take it from there. The only lags I get on MONTREAL is when Joe's not playing. Definitely one for the Patented Pete Gallio "EFT" (Edited For Tenor) treatment.

SOUL MANIFESTO is the sleeper in the bunch AFAIC. A LOT better than I was expecting it to be. But you GOTTA get AFRICANE & POETRY.

Yeah, that sounds right. The LPs were going for $3.99 as I recall.

Was the wine elderberry or muscadine?

I done been to the site, I done heard me some samples, and I done gonna be ordering me them 45s next week. Maybe from Dusty Groove (the BASTARDS!) if thier price is better than the label's. Oh yes I am!

You ain't from these parts, are ya', boy... Seriously, I got REAL lucky back in 1970, when I was first discovering jazz. Apparently, Liberty had done a HUGE catalogue purge in either '69 or '70 (I looked it up in a Schwann years later, and the pages were virtually solid with black diamonds (and how's THAT for geek talk, hmmm?) and the cutout bins were chock full of Blue Note, Pacific Jazz, World Pacific, etc, for DIRT cheap. I bought INDESTRUCTABLE in 1971 for $1.99. How long was it before it was EVER made available again? Later, when WB dropped their distribution of ECM, all of a sudden you could buy damn near ALL the catalog for, like, $3.99 per. Same thing when Strat-East went under - Peaches had that stuff out the wazzoo for a bargain price. Let's hope this pattern doesn't repeat itself w/Fantasy. But if it does, be ready to pounce and spend. These are the lessons that time teaches you. Carpe diem!

Can't....stop....listening....to....this...CD....

He came later, in the Ken Barry/Mayberry RFD years, years we'd all like to forget.

Depends on if you have an endorsement deal or not...

I find it interesting (although I can't quite say how) that the "split" of fans between "who do ya' like better - Shaw or Goodman?", a split which is usually pretty revealing (Ray Charles came out for Shaw in his autobiography) got replayed on the same instrument a decade or so later between fans of Tony Scott & Buddy DeFranco. For the record, I'm with Shaw & Scott, and it's not too terribly close in either case.

Look on the bright side - if and when the company gets sold and the inventory liquidated, it'll bring forth another Golden Age of cutout bins, the likes of which we haven't seen in decades. Bottom Feeders, start your engines!

If you get these two, you'll be hooked for life.

Yeah, this is prime Joe, loose and uninhibited. Highly recommended, even if I'd prefer another drummer to what Al Foster is doing here. But that's a minor quibble.

Mercer's written a book, and in it, he says that his father made sure that Mercer never wanted for anything, but that he also made sure that there would be only one "famous" Ellington.

Got it, & I plan on checking it out tonight. But if it's like y'all say, about as "eloquent" as I'll be is saying "This is a BAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDD MUTHAFUKKER"! Why cloud the issue?

Yeah, but he's not on the record. From Pass, who was unknown at the time, the next "biggest" name and talent was Arnold Ross. From there, it's all "good" players, which is, of course, good, but I think that sometimes some people think, "AWWWW he coulda been a contender if he hadn't gotten all fucked up off into that shit", whne in reality, maybe he'd have been no better a player than he was anyway, he'd have just had a stable life, maybe a family, and maybe some money in the bank. Sometimes I think the reason that some cats get into the shit is because deep inside they know that they're never going to be "great", and it kills them (it shouldn't, but expectations are high, and none higher than the ones we set for ourselves), so they create this whole other thing as a smokescreen, a diversion, an avoidance mechanism, mainly for themselves, but also as a "sympathy ploy" for outsiders as well. If you can get others to believ that you "could have been", they'll never suspect that no, you couldn't. If that sounds dark and harsh, well, how dark and harsh is it to be strung out and have your whole life revolve around shooting some shit every cuppla hours?

Well, yeah, I mean, I knew it was going to be good and all that, but the whole thing w/the retro packaging and the faux-60s King studio sound and all that other stuff had me thinking in the back of my mind that this was going to be funk-once-removed, if you know what I mean, and in kind of a way it is, although there's not that sense of "skipped a generation or two, trying to get it back now" that turns me off faster than a dog shitting in my picnic basket 5 minutes before lunchtime. I never feel it as being "clever" or "ironic" or "conceptual" or any of that other post-modern bullshit that make life such a miserable fukkin' bore sometimes. No, this shit is deep, DEEP, funk, and it's real, and it ain't got no other "layers" of subtext to it, not that I can tell anyway, and all I can say is UNH....WICHA BAD SELF, which says it all. Y'all but this record and tell me what you think. With all the greaseheads and funk dumplins we got on this board, this one oughtta be in damn near everybody's collection. I'm serious.

But if it wasn't a friend, I'd just take the business elsewhere, where you know it's appreciated and you're not being viewed as just another cog in this individual's self-centered machine. And... Always forgive, but never forget.

Never owned it myself, but I had a high school buddy whose older brother had it, and we listened to it a fair bit back in the day. It's good. Not great but good, and good in the kind of way that you don't mind it not being great. Just remember that not all junkies are "great" players. For every Frank Morgan or Art Pepper, there's about a hundred cats who would have never been more than "good" even if they had stayed straight. No different than the talent distribution in any subculture.

..but dammit, I do. A LOT. If you want the funk, here it is. "Retro" or not, this is it. Damn.

Say Hey! I'm a big Mays fan, always have been, always will be. The guy had charisma, and was an incredible player. One of the biggest adreneline rushes of my life came in 1965, when my Dad took the family to our first MLB game, the Astros vs the Giants. It was the first season for the Astrodome, and just driving up to this THING was a thrill in itself. The old man was frugal in those days. He had to be, I suppose. We never wanted for anything, but we wasted nothing, and his philosophy was that having "the best" if you couldn't afford it was foolish, so we always got "the best we can afford", which seemed kinda stingy to me at the time, but seeing as how he got through his entire liffe w/o EVER having any debt other than house and car loans, seems pretty damn smart to me now. The point is, we bought "Pavillion" level seats, which were the indoor equivalent of the bleachers - outfield all the way, and no cushioned seats, which the Astrodom made a big deal of priding them selves on. $2.50 a ticket for adults, $1.25 for my sister and me. Well, hell, I didn't care. I'm just hoping I don't piss my pants from excitement. So we go up to the ticket booth, buy the ticketts and go on into the Dome. There was a huge concourse with usherettes in gold lame "Astronette" suits all over the place. You couldn't see the damn field until you walked inside a good ways, Well, when I caught my first glimpse of open (albeit indoor) sky, I REALLY began to buzz, and a few steps later finally revealed the field itself. And the first, I mean the VERY first sight I saw was Number 24 of the Giants tossing the ball around in center field. Oh...my...God... I hope I never forget that day. The avitarr itself is Mays' 1966 Topps card, #1 on your First Series Checklist, and it's a card that I have NEVER owned. 1966 was the year that I dove headfirst into card collecting, and the '66, along with the '69s, are some of my most favorite Topps cards, probably for sentimental reasons. But I had almost every card in the First through Fifth Series (in those days, the various Series got released in sequence over the course of the season. The Sixth was an iffy affair, and the Seventh was mystical in the extreme, seeing as how they NEVER made it to the stores, at least not in my part of the country. When I discovered mail order in December of 1966, the FIRST thing I ordered was some Seventh Series cards, and I swore then that they looked DIFFERENT, that they had an aura to them, like documents of some secret world in a parallel universe). Today, they all look about the same, but that just goes to show you that kids know more than adults about SOME things... Anyhow, I had all the star cards except the Mays. I COULD NOT land Willie. I had 5 or 6 Mantle (I think Mays was a SIGNIFICANTLY better player than Mantle, btw), 3 or 4 Koufax, beaucoup Clemente, Drysdale, and about a million Tom Treshes. Well, I was getting desperate, and my buddies knew it, so the only trade offers I got for THEIR Mays duplicates were things like "all your Post cards, you buy me a pack a day for a month, and I get your bike every Saturday", cold-blooded shit like that. So I went 1966 Mays-less for years. Mail order was no better. Even immediately after the 1966 season was over, the Mays card was going for $1.50, and my allowance was a quarter a week. Those Seventh Series cards were three cents apiece, so... Fast forward to about 5 years ago in Roanoke, Va, and a visit to the in-laws. They're having a card show in the "good" mall there, and as I'm walking through the vendors reliving old thrills and laughing at how stuff I used to have coming out the wazoo was now commanding REAL MONEY, I stop dead in my tracks - there it was, and for only $65.00! The corners were all worn, and there was a slight crease down the middle, but hell, IT WAS THE CARD AND I COULD AFFORD IT! AT LAST! So I'm getting ready to approach the vendor, and all of a sudden, I get a vision of my old man shelling out $7.50 for a family of four to see a ball game, and I say, "WAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTT a minute here...." And I decide to not spend almost ten times that for a baseball card. But DAMN it's a beautiful card. Look at this: Look at how Willie's holding the ball, with a firm delicacy that only comes with absolute command of and comfort with the tools of one's trade. Same thing with the glove - SO relaxed, yet so ready to do WHATEVER it needs to do. It's like watching Miles hold his trumpet - the body language tells you all you need to know. And that top button unbuttoned and laying open so casually yet so stylishly, that black sweatshirt, that hat worn EXACTLY right... This was a cat with STYLE, ladies and gentlemen, a style that is rare in any walk of life, and definitely a style that could not be ignored, even by those who despised him because of it. So that's the "story" behind the avitar. 'T'is almost The Season 't'is, and I'm feelin' it. Enjoy!

You should see what ELSE goes into your world famous chili recipe when the sax section is around and you're not looking...

It's likely to be weeks before he sees this, what with it not being in the Politcal forum... Just kidding - Haspy Birsday Tooya'!