JSngry

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!

You gotta respect the guy's ethics in not betraying the "secrets" of his clients even as you wish he had been a little less ethical every time you hear some of the results of him doing so. What I want to know now is who created the "Muse sound", the one that's got so much reverb it's almost traumatic? Some of the late 60s BNs have it too, but not as much as the Muses. Is this the "Bob Porter sound"?

Great stuff! Lon, I did not know that "Joe Gentle" was Yusef Lateef! Learn something every day, eh? Those who dig THE SOURCE are STRONGLY encouraged to pick up LOST AND FOUND on Rhino. It's got 5 cuts from Scott's second, still unreleased in toto Atlantic session, and they are uniformly superb, at least every bit as good as THE SOURCE. The disc is filled out with five tunes from THE SOURCE, so ther is some duplication, but so what? It's more than worth it.

I felt that Bley's book was really "in his voice", that he wrote with the same spirit and in the same manner which he plays. Sly, oblique, etc. Maybe not good "history", but good "art", if that makes any sense. The Rollins book was, as Mike said, pretty worthless except for the direct quotes, which I often found QUITE valuable. His Trane bio was even worse. How does this guy get a gig anyway? Rhetorical question...

Perhaps you've heard Dolphy's version? Or Ira Sullivan's?

Yeah, I for one take these Blindfold Tests "seriously", on a strictly personal level. I LIKE running ideas through my head until something clicks, and then trying to extrapolate from that. But I like crossword puzzles and the like too, and this is just another way to put those tendencies into play. The listening group we had here w/Jie Millazo, Shawn Dudley, and Andrew Griffith regularly featured blindfold tests, and it was fun to both squirm and to cause squirming. Kind of a game, but also a good intellectual exercise too, bringing all one's non-playing musical resources to the fore and keeping them sharp. Not everybody takes music THAT seriously though, and for that, they should be thankful! Bottom line for me - everybody's going to have their own way of approaching this, and if I know exactly what something is, I don't want to spoil it for those who like to do a bit of sleuthing. I'd be a little bummed if somebody spilled the beans too soon on something I felt that I almost had figured out, so that's where I'm coming from. There's fun to be had any way you play!

Allright Dan, this is my last clue about the track I'm 100% certain of. This guy is the leader of it, but it's not on this album. Now, that you got 2/3 of the "translation clue" do the other third (subhint - no translation required!) put the whole thing in quotes, and do a Google or AMG search for the album title. I'm only being so coy because two of the soloists involed are literally "household names". When you get it, you might feel like ttaking a train ride, because you'll be feeling kinda' blue.

Hint - The Big Jazz -translate it to French, lterally, in this exact same order. That will give you the album name. Listen to the tenor player again, and know that he was employed by the trumpet player at the time. Then use the rest of the clues in an acrostic-type manner. One more hint - when you realize who at least two of the featured players are, you're gonna trip that you didn't get them. But don't feel bad. Happens all the time with blindfold tests. The tenor player SHOULD be obvious, but then again, I'm calling Wardell Gray (hope so...) Frank Foster, so who am I to say THAT?