JSngry

So I'm guessing that The Three Stooges never gained too much a following in Fiji, eh? (hmmm... "Foothold In Fiji", sounds like a Wayne tune from the Blakey days... )

We are our own lightbulb? If that's the case, I think I need a stronger wattage...

Yeah, but having a "Soul Woman" on the cover a la LET IT ROLL woulda sold a heckuva lot more!

Dude, how'd you make that post change places?

Another totally valid question is this - does Andrew still have these charts?

That's a totally valid question, I think.

I'm not a stickler AT ALL for tight ensemble work if the lack of "precision" comes from everybody feeling the parts confidently but differently. Ellington is the definitive example of that for me, as are the Mingus-led big band dates. It's not "tight", but it is TIGHT. But that's not the feeling that I get from the ensembles here. It's more like they got the notes, they got the phrasing, and they got the feel, just not all at once and not at the same time, if you know what I mean. Same thing with some, SOME of the solo sections (and it's the ones that gel completely that make the ones that almost do so frustratingly beautiful). It's almost like Moses viewing the Promised Land. They're ALMOST there, which is why I feel that another rehearsal (or maybe just another few takes) would have pushed this group over the edge into total Nirvana. But yeah, I'm happy enough with it as it is too. I can (and will) use my imagination to make this what I fully want it to be, and it won't be hard AT ALL!

DEFINITELY! What I wanna know though, is this - what the HELL are they doing on "Soul Man"? Sounds like they just took the hook and said "That's enough, we'll take it from here!" Shoot, if you're gonna do it like that, why bother with crediting the source? Call it an "original" and pocket a few extra bucks. I don't think anybody would be any the wiser, given how tangentally (at best) related to the original this performance is.

I'd forgotten how GREAT Fathead plays on this album. Goodgawdamighty does he have it goin' on here. The whole side pretty much cooks. It's near classic Lee of this vintage, replete with the Cedar/Billy no-missing-the-point assertations that this music is first and foremost about RHYTHM(S) and all the good things that can happen when you approach jazz from that angle. Again, Ron Carter is the weak link (sorry if I seem to be picking on him, but it's just that he's SO good when he's on that when he's not, it's REALLY aggrevating to me). He actually starts to DRAG in a few spots, the equivalent in this circle of players of farting during a silent prayer in church, but Billy hits a few subtle rim shots on 2 and 4, just enough to send the message (and it's really embarassing to hear when you know what's going on), and then it's back to business as delightfully usual. A DAMN good record overall, and Fathead...WHEW!!!!

RE: CARAMBA, "Suicide City" is one of the baddest tunes Lee ever recorded. TOTALLY hip composition, and the band nails it. I like the title tune a lot too, but especially when I can let go of my surroundings and just zone out on it. It's one of those pieces that isn't anything too terribly special unless you can get DEEP into the groove of it, and then it all comes together in a wonderfully stoned way. Side Two (sorry, I'm an LP guy with this one too) doesn't do as much for me. Good, but slightly routine. In this way, it's CHARISMA in reverse for me. But I'd recommend both of them. No reason not to, none at all.

This is the album that earned me a spot of notoriety amongst a few good friends because I bought it, brought it to a listening session, did a series of samples, and proceeded to bitch that there wasn't enough tenor playing on it. I don't give a damn who's date it is, if Hadley Calliman's on it, I WANT SOME TENOR! Seriously, it's ok. Nice version of "Sunny". I totally agree with Dan's assessment. But it would have been a HELLUVA lot better with more tenor on it!

In the spirit of this board, I'm not reading this thread until it gets RVG-ed, JRVG-ed, or TOJC-ed.

A day late and a dollar short, but Happy Birthday indeed!

Whatever is more than "whole", that's what I'd say, yeah. -_-

Put me down for ACCENT ON THE BLUES, one of most favorite records PERIOD!

This is good stuff. Frustratingly so, in fact, but a significant release, I think, and one that whets the appetite for further unreleased Hill BN sessions from this period (knowing full well that a lot of them probably ARE not even as remotely successful as this one). Of course, it's futile to play "what if" and "why didn't they" with a session that's over 30 years old. What happened happened. That time (and some of the players) are long gone, never to return. Still, this music is so tantalizingly close to being fully realized that I have to ask myself some questions. Like: What would have happened if there had been time and money for just a little more rehearsal time to tighten up both the ensembles and the overall group feel? Nobody really folds on the ensembles, but very often I hear that the "gel" factor is ALMOST there, but not quite, and that goes for the overall feel during the solos too. It's not like it's far off in the distance either, it's like it's ALMOST RIGHT FREAKIN' THERE! Just another day of concentrated rehearsals and this stuff would have been TOTALLY happening and probably could have been released at the time. I don't know if that would have happened if the-by-then-retired Alfred Lion had been running this date or not, too many variables, a lot of them economic, to say for sure, but DAMN, hearing how good this stuff sounds this far along just makes one drool at how it would have sounded with just a bit more preparation and comfort by all concerned. What would have happened if the bassist had been somebody besides Ron Carter? Or even more intriguingly, what if Hill would have gone the SMOKESTACK route and used TWO bassists on this date, Carter to anchor, and somebody else to poke and prod? The mind reels, it does. Carter is DEFINITELY more into the music than he was on GRASS ROOTS. He interacts and frames some, but it usually sounds to me like it's under duress or something, like he's got it stuck in his mind that this music needs a bassist to just hold it down and keep it down (and in fairness to him, we don't know if somebody - Hill or Wolff - told him to go at it like this. One never knows...) Not that I'm complaining - compared to his appalingly moribund performance on GRASS ROOTS, he sounds positively frisky here, and he DOES get into the spirit of things often enough. But it always feels like he's doing it in spite of himself. Nevertheless, he ruins GRASS ROOTS for me, and he does no such thing, not even remotely, here. I just think that another bassist, or ANOTHER bassist (imagine this music played by a fully rehearsed, totally comfortable unit that was anchored by TWO badass bassists!) would have kicked the whole thing up the notch that differentiates damn good from truly great. What would have happened if Joe Henderson had been the tenor soloist rather than Joe Farrell? Don't get me wrong, Farrell plays great here, a quantum leap from his work with Hill on DANCE WITH DEATH, and his doubling skills make him all-around MVP of this date (the first thing I thought when looking at the listings was, "Damn, by the time this cat got paid all his doubling fees (a requirement for all Union sessions), I bet he made more from this gig than Andrew did!"), but still, his solo work is not a little influenced by Joe (as was common with a lot of players of Farrell's musical and professional stature of the time, the guys who had the chops to play any and all studio gigs, but still kept their jazz chops alive, frisky, and ongoingly evolving), that I keep thinking that they already got a big band, what's one more cat, ESPECIALLY if it's Joe Henderson, even if it's only as a soloist? Farrell satisfies, but Joe would have sated. I'd make a similar comment about Joe Chambers vs Lenny White, but dammit, the young Mr. White came to play, and if he's part of the "not QUITE gelled" factor, he balances it out by refusing to give in to the elder Mr. Carter's ambitions of stillness, and that alone is reason enough to keep him on the gig in my fantasy redo. Brash has it's place, ESPECIALLY when playing with Ron Carter (see: Tony Williams...) But hey, enough of the pointless nit-picking and crying over spilt milk, such as it were. The album we have is all there is, and it's EXRTREMELY satisfying on its own terms. Hill's writing is superb, the soloists are all into it (btw, you can tell Dizzy Reese from Woody Shaw by their tones - Woody has the "brassier" tone by far), and as a document of a severely UN-documeted (so far) period of a major artist, PASSING SHIPS qualifies as a "must have" in my book, and should be cause for celebration by all fans of Hill, Blue Note, and creative music in general. The shortcomings (relatively speaking) are real enough, but so are the strengths, and so is the not inconsiderable significance of it's existance. I'll be checking this one out for quite a while, probably forever. Joe Bob says HELL yeah!

Lovin' it still. Gladden & Young were one, and any/all mental and physical blocks had been removed. This stuff flows like few things do, straight from inspiration to execution, no middle man. Trip Merchants INDEED!!!

Better than I remember it, actually, although Lee is probably the leat interesting player on here (which IS how I remember it). George Coleman is in excellent form throughout, better than usual, I think, and the rhythm section kicks nicely as well. Still not a standout, and the material overall is no cause for celebration, and it STILL pales to it's companion session (although not as much as it did in the previous grouping), but I'll bump this one up a notch on the ol' estimation-o-meter. One thing that helps, I think, is that they seem to have removed a LOT of the reverb that was on the old LP release (based on my memory anyway, so it's probably EXACTLY the same, but I don't think so), and that gives the playing more presence, more up-front immediacy. Since the playing isn't so superbadass that it transcends all sonic liabilities, the removal of a layer of distance makes a crucial difference, at least to me. I found myself enjoying and feeling this session in a way I never have before. So hey - mission accomplished Blue Note!

All but THE FLIP arrived yesterday, and it should be here tomorrow. Is it just me, or are they using smaller type on the back covers and the part of the back insert that you see through the front? If the audience for this stuff is mostly middle-aged guys, the only thing I can figure is that Rudy's going back into optometry and this is a way to round up business.

This was a group that ws greater than the sum of its parts, I'd say, and perhaps most importantly, a true group, due to Mulligan's arrangements. He was a fine player, but I've always enjoyed his writing more than his playing. The writing for this group is superb - inventive, daring in its use of dissonances (check out the ending tag to "Makin' Whoopee" for a good example), and quite often rule-breaking (such as having the bari voiced above the trumpet). Nobody really got more variety of sounds and textures out of a simple two-horn front line than Mulligan, at least not for quite some time. Factor in Chico Hamilton's minimalistic yet sometimes totally wack drum punctuations and the willingness to let the varying bassists stand totally alone in spots, not for a solo, but for a part, and you get a sound that was pretty radical for its day, and onethat still sounds distinctive. Chuck's "sewing machine" comment is dead-on - this was not a group of heavy duty improvisors who pushed any improvisatory boundaries. If anything, they were somewhat retro (I believe the term "bopsieland" was used on more than one occasion to describe them), and yeah, the whole thing just chug-chug-chugged along. But that's not what draws me to this music - it's the sounds themselves, the way that the whole group weaves in and out of itself within that constant chugging. Nobody leaps out, they just kinda jog back and forth, yet within that sameness, there's a LOT of movement going on internally. A very "wholistic" group, I think. Again, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. I don't find it to be anything life-changing, but there's more than enough going on to intrest and entertain me for any number of pleasurable stretches. It's real, and it's still different, and that's enough to make me grin. Favorite tune? "Walkin' Shoes". Why? Just because. It's that kind of music, and that kind of a band.

Shorty Petterstein?

New Reissue copy of the LP for 12 bucks: http://www.dustygroove.com/jazzlp2.htm#43985

The thing about Rouse I've often pondered (and for no good reason, really), is how much of his true self he found in Monk's music, how much of it he sacrificed, and is there really a difference? I mean, the guy was in NO way the "best" or most inventive tenor player Monk ever had. He had a comparitively limited vocabulary, and was prone to repeating entire phrases during the course of a solo, especially when he stretched out (there are, of course, exceptions to this). Taken at face value, he could often be called boring at times. Yet somehow, SOMEHOW, it works. There's an organic quality to Rouse's work w/Monk that the other tenorists didn't always have, like this was as much HIS music as it was Monk's, that in spite of his "limitations", he still got the core of the music and that THAT mattered more than what he actually did with that core. It's weird, and I don't claim to even begin to understand it. Personally, when I want to hear a Monk record, I'll usually go for something with Rollins on it first and go from there. But when I HEAR those tunes in my head, away from a record, it's invariably Rouse that I hear playing them much more often than not. Wierd. There's SOME kind of mojo going down there. It figures. Monk...

It's been seeming like when I first get on that everything moves fast, but after the first 5-10 clicks, it starts going slower and finally comes to a halt. If I exit the site, it might take a few times to get back on, but when I do, the pattern more often than not repeats itself. So I'm wondering if somwhere in the chain there isn't a "traffic controller" of some sort that's inadvertantly been set to discourage people from just staying on all day and taking up whatever it is that viewers take up- bandwidth, server connections, or what not. Wish I knew enough to make a more educated guess.

I dunno, man. CORNBREAD's a bitch!