JSngry

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!

Hell, in this economy, everybody's just working ON the weekend!

Its catalog/vault items New jazz that is either "conservatively progressive" (meaning that it might displease some folks, but it won't scare anybody ) or a continuation of the label's (mostly) Wolff-led years "Rare Groove" style And Singers that a lot of jazz people have dug over the years. Remember, Mose Allison has been with them for a while now. Don't know if he still is, though. We've also had Lou rawls and Dr. John, and I'm sure there's been others. You got Dianne Reeves too. Thank God it's not Dianne Schurr! Actually, it seems like a pretty diverse-yet-coherent agenda if you ask me. Music that is comfortably different and is either "jazz" or "today's non-smooth-jazz-listener-friendly". Not too much of the new stuff thrills me, but I doubt that I'm their target demographic either. And, of course, there's Norah Jones, who I really don't think anybody had a clue was actually going to become a freakin' Pop Star. I think they saw her as an interesting jazz/country hybrid, not too terribly dissimilar from some aspects of Mose, albeit several generations removed in style and substance. But they heard something "different", something of musical interest that didn't fit any then-established pop niche and was closer to jazz than to any "commercial" format at the time. Credit Lundvall's veteran expertise with knowing how to fully capitalize on that Pop Stardom when it began to happen, helping the Blue Note bottom line to no end, and possibly saving EMI from some deep shit. Not for nothing did this guy used to be head of Columbia!

Count Basie w/Lockjaw, Eric Dixon, Marshall Royal, and Norman Jones, Shreveport, Louisiana, Sunday, December 13, 1970. The trip to Shreveport to see the band was a birthday present. I was about to turn 15 and had been into jazz for about 4 months. Didn't know who anybody was but Basie. My Dad recognized "April In Paris". The whole experience freaked me out. Ths shit was LOUD! The musicians were cooler and hipper in demenor in comportment than anything I had yet to even begin to imagine. And I thought that Dixon & Jaws were the weirdest (in the best possible way) shit that I had ever heard, weirder than Zappa, Hendryx, & "Revolution 9" rolled into one. STILL think that about Lockjaw... Oh, to have a time machine and be able to hear what I heard then with the benefit of what I know now... During that concert, what had begun as an enthusiastic curiosity became a purpose in life. Two weeks later, I bought my first jazz album. A few days later, I bought my next. Three weeks later, I got my first solo in Stage Band. And so it went. And goes.

You know, I got really upset when Total stopped making oatmeal, but Al Green on Blue Note doesn't bother me one bit. Hell, if they want to reactivate Pacific Jazz and do a Brian Wilson solo album, that's cool with me too. Possibly even more than cool, depending on the results... It's all music, and it's all business. You want "purity" and "vision", look somewhere besides a corporate entity. Or even better, compare Blue Note to Verve and send Bruce Lundvall a note of thanks.

That AMG blurb leads me to ask - what OTHER forms of "vinyl trickery" are there?

Surf the net, watch TV, and eat. ALWAYS eat.

Now, if you want to hear some deeply moving Getz (and "deeply moving" is a quality I think he didn't consistently bring to his playing until his last years; just my opinion), try this one: If "When I'm Called Home" don't get to you, you probably can't be gotten to.