JSngry

Super Nova.

Indeed, a true masterpiece. The pairing of Criss and Tapscott was an inspired one, and the results have a very real "flavor" that something like ""Up Up & Away" just can't accomodate. That's not a slam on "Up...", just an observation as to the power and the nature of Tapscott's material.

Thoise who think that Coles had "limited" or even "poor" technique should check this one out. GREAT record with a version of ''Duke Ellington's Sound of Love'' that doesn't make me scream obscenitites or hurl furniture in revulsion at the desecration of a sacred anthem, not as easy a feat to accomplish as you might think.

Hey Mr. Ties - thanks for the scope on that cut w/Joe. I didn't even know that such an album existed! But that doesn't answer the question I posed with my first guess - what the hell happened to Wallace Roney?

I just got off the phone with Zager & Evans, and MAN are they bummed.

I'm embarassed to say that I do. I SHOULD be able to call this cat, so don't make the hint too easy, ok?

!!!!

So that Brecker vs Trane thread on AAJ was SERIOUS? Geez, I thought it was a put-on! My bad!

Dammit Jim, not while I'm drinking coffee! I feel like freakin' Danny Thomas all up in here....

OOOOHHHHH-----MISTAH KAAAAAATTTTTUHHHH!!!!!!! I've not had the money to keep up with the series that what I think the correct answer to #8 (see link) comes from (well, I have, but I've had more pressing needs, musically and otherwise), but perhaps that might be a good place to look...

#3's gonna be the death of me, I swear. Is Ronnie Scott a good guess?

Lafayette Leake was a MOTHER! Johnny Johnson gets all the credit for being "Chuck Berry's pianist", and that is proper, but when I did a little research and realized that the Berry hits that had all the REALLY flashy, New Orleans-esque piano on them had Leake on piano and not Johnson, that got my attention. I'm wondering if this would have been a "blues-jazz" date, an instrumental equivalent of something like John Lee Hooker's IT SERVE YOU RIGHT TO SUFFER on Impulse!, or some of the Jimmy Witherspoon albums? Toots is a great player, but I dunno, Chicago blues????? Maybe that's why it was never released - seemed like a good idea at the time, but.... I'd like to hear it though!

Jim S - do you have a side career in cryptic crosswords/puns/anagrams? Keep 'em coming -- I got this one just from your clues, without the CD! Thanks, but I barely have a MAIN career, much less a side one, unless you call working the overnight shift in the payment processing department at a major mortgage company because my wife got laid off a "side career". I don't - I call it a familial obligation, at best! Seriously, thanks. I just have a love of words, that's all.

Been there, done that, and regret to inform you that there is only one violinist on the version of "How High The Moon" on this cut if the AMG review is to be believed: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&u...l=Ajc6htrplkl6x HOWEVER - There is another option that I SWEAR was just posted on AMG in the last 48 hours, and here, sir, I believe we have our winner: See whatcha' think...

The only theme I can discern w/o having total knowledge of "who and what" is that there seems to be at least one non-American-born per5son on each cut, which makes #3 REALLY perplexing now, and also has me wondering where Eddie Lang was born...

Hey, that's the REAL school you're fixin' to order!

All this talk about Billy's "eccentricies" (in the best possible way, of course), should remind us that he was the drummer that Ornette turned to when Blackwell became unavailable, and the drummer who was with Ornette when Ornette "broke" in New York. After Blacwell became available regularly, he sorta became the "offical" Ornette drummer many people's minds, and his ongoing participation w/players in that circle, as opposed to Billy's ongoing participation outside that circle, seems to have cemented that perception in many minds. I remember when I first started getting hip to the greater Blue Note catalog, which was a bit after I had gotten fairly heavy into Ornette (entirely a matter of what recrods were available in my area). I'd see all these records with Billy Higgins and think, "What's he doing playing with THESE guys?" No doubt that sounds funny to people who think of him first and foremost as the classic, or one of the classic hard bop drummers, but that's how I came to it, and I think that goes to explain some of these quirks that people are delighting in. Billy was always more than "just" a hardbop drummer. By the same token, he might also serve as the "portal" that some hard bop buffs can use to get into Ornette, at least earlier Ornette. His work on "Una Muy Bonita" alone can hook all but the most recalcitrant!

Get ready for some intensity!

Ditto, and welcome aboard Tom!

Give'em what you want them to hear!

#3 is REALLY bugging me. Now I'm not sure that it's Wardell... WHOEVER it is, it's somebody who was playing bebop when it was still new. I seriously doubt that this is an early hardbopper (my initial Foster pick notwithstanding) or anybody later, and that goes for the entire group. The pianist is deep into a Bud/Elmo trip w/just a tinge of Monk, and the drummer could be Roy Haynes, maybe Klook, but probably not Max. But it's the tenor player who's eating my lunch. I KNOW this sound! I'm loathe to guess early Jimmy Heath, but it could be, becasue after Wardell, you got Moody, Jug, & Dex as the "usual suspects", and of's not any of them, and Heath fits the bill, although I've not heard but just a little of his early tenor work. If this turns out to be something recorded after, say, 1954 or so, by somebody who was just breaking into the scene, I'll be shocked. It MIGHT have been recorded after that, but only by "survivors". And if it's anybody who wasn't there for the real bop deal, then it's a DAMN good forgery.

Right then and there, but it's cool if somebody asks to hsve either the whole tune or certain passages replayed any number of times if it's something they think they SHOULD know, but can't put their finger on. In that spirit, I'm getting nervous about my Wardell call. Can't find any online samples of his that match. I oughta know who this cat is, and I'm gonna feel like an idiot if I get it wrong, unless it's some lessser-known guy who copped a lot of stuff from Wardell.

Who?

Damn. I've GOT that side! Haven't had it long enough for it to "sink in", though. Glad it's sunk in enough to KINDA be a reference point, if only a secondary one.

Nah, Dorn had his own sound - that dry Atlantic thing with pianos that are almost in tune!