JSngry

Well. I don't know about the viloence, but The Ballpark In Arlington has certainly been a cesspool of horror lately...

Are Victor Bailey, Bobby Bland, Ralph Burns, Terri Lynne Carrington, Charlie Mariano, and Bill Perkins THAT hard to find?

It coulda been worse. They could have looked for the next Peter Cincotti. Why bother? Sign Buddy Greco instead! I don't know how much voice Van has left these days. but BN has shown a knack for turning out GOOD pop=oriented stuff with a jazz base. Dr. John's Ellington thing was superb in this regard. I've dug Van's best work hugely, and will not be upset by this move unless the record really sucks, which I seriously doubt it will. And if Norah can do a cameo on something like "I Wann Roo You", well, how can that be BAD?

Got this e-mail after my order of 29 was reduced to 20: Please accept our apologies for the stock outages on your order. Unfortunately, without a "real-time" inventory on the site, sometimes we'll get two orders for a single item, both customers will be notified that it is available, but the item will go to the first customer who ordered it. This seems to happen especially often with the Black Saint/Soul Note titles, because they are so popular. It's not unheard of for one copy to come back on a return and for us to receive five or six orders for the single copy. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns, and, again, we're sorry for the stock outages. Best regards, Justine Seidel Internet Manager Allegro/CyberMusic Surplus I've had no problems with CMS/Allegro other than this recurring one, and truthfully, it happens at lots of sites. "Real time inventory" seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

Easy - playing for the people. It's a hazardous by-product of coming up in a community and a time where "everyday people" hung out in jazz joints. Now that they don't, jazz is a lot healthier. No doubt... Ok, Shelley can be a ham sometimes. But he knows it. TOTALLY knows it. The thing is, he genuinely LIKES connecting with an audience. If some of the means he uses to do so are "questionable" from an "artistic" standpoint (and I'll not argue that point), that's just a part of who he is. Like I said, he's one of the most real people I know, and reality is seldom, if ever, wart-free. Especially the reality of playing for, not to, the people. If they made Freezone in a 50 gallon drum... Personality "quirks" aside, the cat can play "real jazz" fabulously anytime he wants to. ANYTIME. Too bad you missed some of the jam sessions he's led recently in an Exposition Park club. No BS, just music. But that's a different scene than a restaurant masquerading as a jazz club. If he feels either the personal or financial need to cheese it up sometimes in certain circumstances, I don't begrudge him that one bit. Not me. It's his life, his career, his bills to pay, and until he loses his core (and believe me, he ain't NOWHERES close to doing that. In fact, if there's somebody one can safely say will probably ALWAYS be who they are no matter what, it's Shelley Carrol), he's alright with me. MORE than alright, in fact.

The last two times I heard him play in Dallas say COMPLETELY otherwise. Please tell me you're joking, Jim. I have no idea what you're talking about. Does he grandstand and/or go cattin' sometimes? Sure. But THAT'S part of the tradition too, like it or not. To come from that background and NOT get a little, uh, "exhibitionistic" sometimes would be fraudulent! It's real music, not a recital. As someone who has spent a moment or two hanging with Shelley away from "the stage", away from "fans", just musician and musician, let me assure you - he's as real as they come. Realer than most, in fact!

Yeah, "Blues in Maude's Flat" is a lesson in tenor playing all by itself. Yusef understands the tenor.

Oh my god...I think I just got a woody! Well, why don't you use that Woody and get a little trim?

Just lost a next-door-neighbor who over the course of 10 years went from "eccentric" to just plain nuts to tragically unfunctioning. Had a sympathy and tolerance for her for quite a while - she had become a single mom 3 years into us knowing her (despite her stories/alibis to the contrary, I suspect her husband left her becasue she was just too freakin' wierd. He saw to it that the kids were taken care of though). She seemed harmless for quite a while, and she was. A mess, yes, but ultimately harmless. But... The truning point in her downward spiral came about 5 years ago when she began having visons from God, which were encouraged by a group of Russian Orthodox immigrants who could always count on her for a place to stay when the job scene got rough (whether this encouragement was genuine or manipulative, I honestly can't say). Well, one day, my daughter and some of her friends came into the house TOTALLY freaked out. It seems that this lady had told them that she had had a vision from God that our town, or block in particular, was so evil that God was going to destroy it with a tornado. She named the date and the time. HER house, she said, would be spared, because she was God's messenger. The night before her predicted date of destruction, she rented a big truck and moved all her stuff out (yes, I thought that was ironic too) and moved her family into a Motel 6 in our town (I noted the irony in that too). Of course, nothing happened - i was a beautiful peaceful night. But I saw a note on her door, so I checked iut out. She had left her house open as a "sanctuary for the victims of God's wrath" (TOO much irony there...) and invited them in to help themselves to the facilities. Well, somebody called the ex, who promptly found her and had her committed. Somehow, she passed all the psych exams and was home (WITH the kids) in about a week. The last time I spoke with her was a few days after she got home. She asked if she could use my e-mail to get in touch with the National Weather Service. Seems that she was convinced that there had been tornades in the area SOMEWHERE, and she wanted proof. I told her that my computer was down, sorry. After that, she never spoke to any of us again, for which I shed no tears. Believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg with this woman. The ex stopped paying support when the kids reached 18, and it wasn't but a matter of weeks before she had to leave, to go God knows where. I felt sorry for her at first, but she refused to even consider the possibility that she needed help, medication, both, or more. Can't help somebody who won't do anything to help themselves, and who somehow has figured out how to get by the legal/psych systems. Just got to make sure that they don't hurt YOUR loved ones.

Looks like most of the Bill Dixon stuff is gone too, which is REALLY bummin' me.

It was the 70s - they were everywhere.

Oh, he hired them, but they usually didn't stay too long. I've never heard Kenton accused of racism, and I have no reason to believe that he was a prejudiced or bigoted individual on a one-to-one basis. But he did have the reputation, confirmed by many, of having rather far-right political views of the John Birch Society variety, which during the majority of his career must have put him at some kind of odds with a lot of the organized Civil Rights movements. He also had a thing about creating a "white" type of jazz, reflective more of European "classical" influences than blues/swing/etc. That didn't stop him (or perhaps more accurately, his arrangers), from copping liberally from Lunceford, Ellington, Be-Bop, Afro-Cuban, etc., but that was his story and he stuck to it.

At least 2 that I know of - "Slugs" and "Destiny's Dance" (Chico Freeman). LOVE that tune! Add two - THE FLOWERING by Charles Lloyd, and Roy Brooks' THE FREE SLAVE.

How many version's of "Wilpan's Walk" are there? Cecil's late 60's/early 70s work with Pharoah and Sam Rivers remains a defining characteristic of those artsts' work from that time, as does the recorded sound of his bass (in no way "natural", but a very effective "color" for those artists and for that time). McBee has never really been a "name", he's just stuck around and kept playing a bunch of great music with a lot of great players. Sounds like a plan to me.

Here's a pretty wothless "review", but at least it's an announcement: http://www.ejazznews.com/modules.php?op=mo...order=1&thold=0 Street date 8-23, according to B&N.com, which has samples up for every cut: http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/pro...6-2003+16:05:02 Don't know that I'm rushing out to buy this one on Opening Day, but those w/more of hunger for Big Band than I currently have might want to check it out.

Yeah, the clubs all want to have bands to cover the overflow from the jazz shows.

Oh, Daddy's got MonEy time this weekend already. Giggage awaits. Where was he in July when there weren't nothing happening? Keep us posted about future ER bookings, though. PLEASE. I can make Austin pretty quick.

In my opinion, it's the latter. The material is basic even by blowing session standards. Dangerously close to The Autopilot Zone, at least how I hear it. Hawes sounds pretty good though.

My bad - it's PHANTOM NAVIGATOR that has the 1949 cartoon on the inner sleeve. The album I cited gives Wayne co-credit for the "concept" of the front cover.

If you can come across an early pressing of this LP: the inner sleeve will be a reproduction of a comic that Wayne drew in the late 1940s, whilst a teen. Pretty darn interesting.

Belated B-Day wishes to a HUGE Grachan Moncur fan! (notice I didn't say "III" )

Just a reminder. This shit ROCKS! (& Baby Dodds' SOLO recordings(!) are so far ahead of their time that it ain't funny)

Shelley grew up in Houston. Don Wilkerson, and to a lesser extent Arnett Cobb, were his mentors. Unlike a LOT of younger guys who go for that old-school thing, Shelley comes by it COMPLETELY honestly. Great player, beautiful cat.

Got it yesterday, listened to it at work last night, and will have more to say, but my FIRST impression was, "What the hell IS this?", and in a totally positive way. SOMEBODY was not living a drug-free lifestyle, it sounds like to me...

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