JSngry

One of my true heroes, this guy is. Hope all is well with him, and if not, hope it's as well as it can be.

Chris, did you just say somewhat the same thing I did? I'm not sure...

Excerpts of this arrangement, w/Brookmeyer rehearsing the band, show up in some TV show that was part of an ongoing series that aired on A&E about 15 or so years ago. Sorry, don't remember anything more than that. Great chart, though. "Dark" indeed, and rich too.

McDonough once compared "The Queen's Suite" to the work of Henry Mancini. He's not deaf, he just lives in a world totally different than mine. For me to debate his points would be futile, because our realities are not the same. He's comfortable in his, as I am in mine. More than that leads nowhere. Fast.

Not really familiar w/Lou's total discography, but is it safe to say that this is the album that marked the shift from Lou the "serious bopper" to Lou the Populist? No matter - it does what it set out to do, according to Lou - get a groove that "the people" can dig with no interference, and it does so superbly. Proof yet again that quality and widespread accessibility need not be mutually exclusive.

Well hell, he got to see the Mingus gig I missed. Lacefield talked about this incredble tenor player whose eyes rolled back in his head when he played. George Adams wasn't quite on our radar screen yet, but defintitely was when CHANGES 1 & 2 came out soon afterwards. Cannonball playing w/a lit cigarette vs George Adams' eyes rolling back in his head. I'd say we're even!

The Savoy has more than the IAI, at least in LP versions. The IAI includes two trio tracks w/o Gilmore (and different bassist/drummer) from a later date, and omits a few of the earlier tunes to do so. But the IAI has been out on CD (I think) and the Savoy hasn't. If you have the Savoy issuse, hold on to it!

Basie wasn't doing much American recording then. I think his contract w/Dot had expired (see also the earlier "Straight Ahead", the introduction of the talented-but-ever-generic Sammy Nestico, as well an album of selections from "The Happiest Millionaire" w/guest soloist Illinois Jacquet(!) )). AFRIQUE was a one-off, and every bit as much of an Oliver Nelson album as a Basie one (and a damn nice one at that). BASIE ON THE BEATLES was done on the Happy Tiger label, which was hardly big time (two pretty poor albums by a Van Morrison-less Them was as "big time" as they got). The band spent the latter half of the 60s in recording limbo, doing, other than short stints at Dot & Brunswick (where they supposedly backed Jackie Wilson on an album - I have it, and it could be damn near ANY band...) doing one-offs that were mostly "pop" in concept, if not in execution (the band's identity and sound was deeply entrenced by then, and any material would do, or so producers seemed to have thought...). AFRIQUE got a bit of attention upon release because it was a "serious" jazz outing. It wasn't until Pablo got started that the Basie band again began regularly recording "non-gimmicky" albums. Interestingly, much the same can be said of Dizzy Gillespie - look at his American discography between the Phillips/Limelight years and the Pablo years. Same thing - lots of one-offs, short stays at small-ish labels (in his case, Perception), and not always "ideal" settings.

Perhaps. Proceed, Mr. Braxton.

Most likely THE reason. NOI was extremely hardcore back in those days. When I went to a few similar events in the 70s, I got in, but only after intervention from friends. It's a rather serious scene even today, but not quite as "absolute" as it once was.

THAT one I caught. Couldn't tell you the venue, though. It was an old movie theatre that had been converted into a nightclub. My & my buddies sat in the balcony - great sightline and perfect sound. It was Ball, Nat, George Duke, Walter Booker, & Roy McCurdy, if I remember correctly. Program was a perfect mix of styles, something for everybody, all of it played with grit and sincerity, and all of it complimented by Cannon's inimitable M.C.-ing. Consummate professionalism, and "entertainment" in nothing but the very best sense of the word. Unforgettable image of the evening - Cannonball literally smoking through an insanely fast "Autumn Leaves", playing a no-holds-barred solo (I think a lot of people are still asleep on how far "out" the guy often played in his later years) with a lit cigarette between the first and second fingers of his right hand. That's the kind of cool (or possibly, Kool...) that you don't see any more, for better and for worse, I suppose...

No doubt, and an indictment of our times if ever there was one... I'm still doing LPs on this stuff. Does the RVG have the added stage patter, and if not, where do I have to go to get it? (favorite Rollins announcement is from that Dragon thing where he says, "Good afternoon, jazz fans, this is Sonny Rollins...", like he's Red Barber doing a Dodgers game. Priceless...)

Oh my God, YES! "Ida Lupino" in particular is one of things of which it does not get better than.

Good luck doing a line off of THAT one!

Don't know specifically about old Prestiges, but I've got a bunch of old 50s vinyl with sleeves llike that. It's not rice paper though, more like wax paper. Same here. Don't have "a bunch" though. But yeah, it's like wax paper without the wax, that kinda stuff. And didn't a lot of the early-mid 50s things, 10'-ers in particular, come with no inner sleeves?

Gale & Tee are dead, otherwise it would be great indeed!

Listening to it as we speak. I dunno...it's all right, but it...kinda sounds like...Norah Jones...

Tell me more, please...

Yeah, I suppose these days it does, but when I got into jazz, it was in an area where "classic" Blue Note was only available in the cutout bins (BLACK BYRD, Bobbi Humphrey, etc, otoh, were damn near everywhere), so I got seriously into Free Jazz, West Coast, Big Bands, Prestige, & Impulse! about 5-6 years before I got my Blue Note jones, which when I finally did get it, I got it hard. Those other styles, labels, and albums were a lot easier to come by for me, and the music "fit" really well. So I've never really had the Blue Note/Hard Bop "myopia" you so accurately describe. That music means a lot to me, obviously, but it's always been part of a bigger musical whole for me personally. But, relevant to this thread, that was a different time.

And Stuff Smith.

http://www.counterpoint-music.com/specialties/durwood.html Durwood Douche is actually jazz pianist Dick Shrieve. The song seems to have been around for several decades and is apparently a "cult classic" in cabaret and other circles. If you don't pay attention to the lyrics, it's actually quite beautiful. Does Organissimo need a new ballad in the rep? It has also been recorded by one Sharon McKnight under it's "official" title "Why Me, God?" Perhaps that's the version heard on the link on Carrouthers' site, I don't know. And btw, if you like THAT site (and have Real Player), try this one: http://www2.bitstream.net/~tgg/tgg/ Perhaps even funnier. No - DEFINITELY funnier. But that's relative, if you know what I mean. Trust me.

Was in the Houston area in the summer of '73. Ellington was in town, doing a week at a hotel, but we were visiting relatives, time was tight, so was money, and my Dad wouldn't let me drive in Houston by myself. Less that a year later... Migus played Dallas, at SMU, in the fall of 1974, ny freshman yeat at NTSU. No publicity. NONE. Found out about it the day after from the (sadly) late Jim Lacefield, who just happened to be in Dallas the prior afternoon and overheard somebody mention it. He went straight over to SMU, and was one of, he said, about 50 people in the auditorium. Pretty sickening (in several ways) news to get at 8 A.M. in a beginners piano class, I tell you...

My kinda broad!

You hear a "connection", though? It fascinates me how you can hear the same thing in different contexts, and if you don't pay attention you can go on thinking it's two totally different things when really is the same thing!

Hugh Lawson, right? Another Workshop Jazz album not yet mentioned was a really nice group of 4 cuts led by pianist Earl Washington, w/Franks Foster (caught JUST getting into Trane, it sounds like to me) & Wess, Thad Jones, Henry Coker, Ed Jones, and Sonny Payne (playing small group jazz very nicely, thank you). The album's called REAL JAZZ, and is Workshop Jazz 202, if you're keeping score at home... But it's a weird album - there's two other cuts on the album: one that's a totally inane teeny-bopper "twist" type instrumental that doesn't even sound like the same band, and one, yes ONE, cut by a totally different group consisting of Washington, trumpeter John Neely, tenorist John Avant, Herb Brown, & Walter Perkins doing a "Blues March" clone. Don't know if this hints at another session led by Washington, of it this group just cut the one song as filler for this album. Maybe the Basie guys hit it and quit it, if you know what I mean, and some filler was needed for a full LP. But yeah, the Brooks side is good!