JSngry

Sorry, not familiar with Roberta Gambarini. Where can I hear her? As for Torme, I'm not a fan, actually. Great, GREAT chops, totally agile with a great ear, but the emotional "tone" of his work just doesn't reach me at all. My problem, no doubt, because the guy's skills are undeniable. Somebody mentioned Ella too, and this is a sticky one for me, because I'm slowly but surely going from "like" to "love" with her as an interpreter. but her scatting is something I am very much on a "case by case" basis with. She comes out of a strong Swing Era bag with it, and can throw down pretty nifty in that vein, but sometimes it seems to me that seh goes for effect more than content when she scats. Again, that's no doubt my problem entirely, but that's just how it hits me. But GOD what an instrument she had, one of a kind. With scatting, like so many other things, Louis Armstrong set the standard, and as easy as he made it sound, he did it with such a totality of musical sophistication AND emotional naturalness that he actually set the bar INCREDIBLY high, at least as far as I'm concerned. Now, somebody who was an INCREDIBLE scat singer was Eddie Harris, but he was a freak anyway.

I respect her abilities, which are undeniable, but what she does with them has yet to appeal to me personally. For that "wordless vocal" thing (or even "that thing" WITH words) to work for me, the context has to be JUST right, and rightly or wrongly, I'm pretty damn finnicky. Two examples that spring readily to mind are both Ellingtonian - Adelaide Hall on ' Creole Love Call' & Kay Davis on "On A Turquoise Cloud". What I meant by horn-like was the improvisational language that a soloist uses, a language that as the music became more technically involved became less vocalistic in terms of actual vocabulary (although not in terms of inflection and tonal quality). The practitoneers of vocalese, notably the great Eddie Jefferson, could sing the actual lines the horn players played (with words no less!), which besides the often daunting speed of execution required often involved some harmonic play that was decidedly non-diatonic in nature, and therefore a bit more demanding for the average singer who dealt mostly with melodies that were usually not too chromatic or harmonically altered, or if they were, not done so at the speed of an instrumentalist's improvisation. But I don't know of too many vocalese singers who could actually improvise in the manner they sung other people's solos. Jon Hendicks is definitely one who can/could, although most of his recorded work is in either the traditional melodic mode or the vocalese bag (yet another indicator that, important, invaluable even, as they are, records are an incomplete documentation of the totality of this music) - I think he began as a tenor saxophonist, and it shows. Betty Carter had the harmonic ear for it, but she had her owm deeply personal bag, and scatting in the traditional sense wasn't really what she was all about. But DAMN did that lady have an ear!

Oh man, I played Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 1981 with a touring hotel show band (remember when they had those?) that was 50/50 Black & White. We got STARED at constantly for the two weeks we were there, and little kids actually wanted to touch the Black folks' hair. Apparently, they had never seen a real African-American in the flesh, and many of the adults had gotten so used to not being around anything but White folks that the presence of people of color jarred them a bit. Can't say there was any hostility, because there wasn't, but you could definitely tell that the local citizenry was taken aback. With the same band, I played two other stints that proved to be pretty interesting, albeit after the fact. The first was in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where a 3 week engagement became a 1 week engagement, and, without some heavy-duty legal threats from our agent, a 1 NIGHT engagement. Seems that unbeknownst to any of us (until after we left town), Uniontown was a Klan stronghold (so don't nobody think that that's just a Southern thing...), and they were leaning on the hotel management to get us out of there ASAP. The other was in Coer D'Alene, Idaho, where we played out the contracted length of the engagement, but for some reason felt a really "funny" vibe everywhere we went. Well, come to find out (again, after leaving town) that the Aryan Nation was just beginning to make a splash in nearby Haden Lake, and nobody was really sure just WHAT was going to happen. It would have been nice to have known about this beforehand! But then again... It was also in Coer D'Alene that I got to hear some of the most purely soulfull music I've ever heard in my life. We were on break on a Friday night, and walked through the hotel towards the banquet rooms, where we heard a C&W band playing one slow tearjerker after another, with a pedal steel player who was just CRYING like nothing I've ever heard before or since. When the moment seemed oportune, I opened the door to the room to see who this guy was. To my surprise, it was a 40-something looking African-American male wearing a cowboy hat, jeans and boots, looking and playing like this had been what he had been up to his entire life (and, it being Idaho and all, it probably WAS!). Well, I thought, being a Black pedal steel player in Idaho would certainly give ME something to play about, but after hearing a few weeks later about how the Aryan Nation was coming into its own, I realized that, as moved as I was for those few minutes, I had probably grasped only a fraction of what this cat was getting across in his music. The thing is, there's nothing inherently wrong or evil with races and/or cultures sticking together naturally for social reasons. People DO tend to feel more comfortable with "their own kind", it's a perfectly normal characteristic of human nature, I think, going back to our earliest tribal days. The only time it becomes a problem is when the desire to stay together runs up against the need to intermingle (and that need might come about for any number of reasons), and the desire to stay together turns from a comfort and a pride into a hatred and an irrational fear. Civilizations evolve as a matter of couse, and homogeninity (sp?) cannot help but become a bad thing after a while, especially when the opportunity to have "new blood" introduced is consciously resisted. Joe Zawinul once said that if incest is the surest way to weaken and destroy a people, then it follows that the surest way to strengthen them is to engage in interracial/intercultural bondings, literally and sybolically. That maight seem like a typically grandiose Zawinullian pronouncement, but as the "Global Villiage" (itself a not-too-long-ago "new" notion) continues to shrink to what will probably be a "Global Patio", it's definitely something to think about, and should not be dismissed out of hand. We're all going to have to figure out how to get along, and by any means necessary!

Happy Birthday, Baby (and at 26, I mean that with nothing but envy... )!

Might want to ask him how he hooked up w/Ron Horton. One story that I hear is that Horton heard Hill perform w/a band that was not cutting the material at all, so Horton, a huge fan and admirer of Hill's, volunteered to transcribe all his tunes and assemble a band who could execute the material cleanly. One thing led to another, and soon enough, DUSK was born. Like I said, this is just what I hear - you take these tales of "I saved Mister X from Fate Y" with a grain of salt (and no, I didn't hear it directly from Horton, just a good friend of his, so add another layer of healthy skepticism to the mix) and Hill might not tell it that way, but it WOULD be interesting to hear how it came to pass, and what role, if any, Horton has played in Hill's current public "resurgence". It might also be interesting to see if he has any tales about his years travelling under the aegis of the Smithsonian(?). I seem to remember him saying something about years spent "bringing jazz to places where they didn't usually have it", or words to that effect. This was in the years between LIFT EVERY VOICE and SPIRAL. I agree, don't push the "Blue Note Years" too heavily. Guys like this get asked questions like that ALL the time, and most of them have one form or another of stock answers that they deliver to people they expect to never see again, or rarely. Don't know if Hill's one of those guys or not, but it's true that most artists don't like to dwell too much in the past (unless that's all that's keeping them viable today).

Ah, Compost.. I've never heard them, in spite of years of trying to...

No takers? The things are really well put together audio-collages and wouldn't be at all out of place on SMILE, a Turtles B-side, or a Firesign moment of extremity. Pretty damn interesting if you ask me. NOBODY'S listened? C'mon...

Some tangental Jamal trivia to be found in this thread: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...=6&t=1364&st=0&

Oh well, you can't please all the people all the time, I suppose. C'est la vie... Myself, the main thing I really dug was the hookup between the drummer and the bassist, how the drummer combines the Clyde Stubblefield "Funky Drummer" bag with the Roy McCurdy "Mercy Mercy Mercy" concept and how the bassist and him really seemed to be of the same mind from beginning to end and get their groove on pretty effortlessly. I really feel 'em, and the more I listen to the cut, the more I REALLYfeel 'em - these two got it goin' on. The guitar solo was pretty flowing too, I thought, in spite of the dated sounding fuzz tone, and the distorted electric vibes...well, do distorted electric vibes EVER go out of style? :D Seriously, this thing's a reminder for me of what the very earliest "fusion" (well, it wasn't called that then. If it was called anything, it was called "jazz-rock") was all about - jazz players just looking for a different way to play. Like it or not, I think most would agree that this cut has a "swing", an innate "jazz quality", that most later fusion did not have. Now to the details - believe it or no, that's a Hoagy Carmichael tune! On an album originally released on Ahmad Jamal's own label! That pulls $400-$500 on eBAY! With John Abercrombie on guitar! It's a group out of Boston called Stark Reality that was led by vibist Marty Stark (who later went on to play ketboards on the BUCKINGHAM NICKS album), and the album is a CHILDREN'S album called The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael’s Music Shop put together by Stark at the instigation of Hoagy's son Hoagy Bix for a series on Boston PBS. Besides Stark and Abercrombie, the players are bassist Phil Morrison and drummer Vinnie Johnson. Released in 1970 on Ahmad Jamal's AJP label, it's apparently become a Holy Grail for DJs and BeatHeads, and it really does go for 4-5 hundred. But that's about to change, probably, since it's just been reissued on Stones Throw. I found out about this the other night whilst breaking a self-imposed ban on trolling Dusty Groove (the bastards!) and saw this listed. For some reason, the blurb caught my eye, one thing led to another... Due to the overwhelmingly positive response to the clip , here's a photo of Stark Image in action: Here's a link to the story of this "Cult Classic": http://www.stonesthrow.com/starkreality/ And here's the original:

Hey, I'm cool with it as long as you guys aren't bass players on a gig with me. B)

A consistently engaging set that is always fun and quite often profoundly profound. Considering the principals, could it be otherwise? Definitely "essential", at least in my mind. AZALEA!

Or so claims http://home.teleport.com/~jfitz/music/oddb...allarchive.html I don't know about "strange", but there's SOMETHING going on here, and I think I like it. From the site, w/links to mp3 files provided Wee Willie Shantz Kings Bros. Trio Hush Puppy Hush http://jfitz.laughingsquid.net/audio/oddba...shPuppyHush.mp3 Wm. Shanks ©19?? Spot Pub. B.M.I.; (mono 45rpm Mark Twain (St. Louis 18, MO.) 79568) Coo Coo Bird http://jfitz.laughingsquid.net/audio/oddba...-CooCooBird.mp3 Sax. Leroy Harris Wm. Shanks-H. Dixon ©19?? Spot Pub. B.M.I.; (mono 45rpm Mark Twain (St. Louis 18, MO.) 79569) — Friends, you are in for a treat. This record is truly beyond description but I'll try. Can you imagine John Cage jamming with Negativland inside a moving boxcar full of victrolas... or perhaps an old backwoods codger, swigging mash whiskey from a facejar, has been working on these songs for 40 years and he finally got a chance to record them, but the only band he could find was a family of occultists who live at the junkyard. Anyway this record has it all -- prepared sound objects, recording manipulation, sing-speak vocal somewhere between nursery rhyme and shaman ritual, semi-aleatoric stringed instruments, and even a sublime saxophone solo. Even the handwriting on the label tells a story. I can see the original owner writing her name on the label, and then putting the record on her turntable. After listening for about about twenty seconds, she tears the record from the player and slashes two marks on the label, to remind herself "Never play this record again!" She then stores the record in the kitchen and uses it to grate Parmesan cheese. Eventually, after the grooves loose their edge, she props open the screendoor with it. In other words, the condition of this vinyl is saddening. Add that the recording session and process were very noisy and chaotic. However, I did digitally repair the worst of the vinyl damage. Just be prepared to "eat your fried mush", OK? If you know anything about Wee Willie Shantz and company, please contact me. I would love to learn any details. If you know a slab of vinyl stranger than this one, please contact me, because until then, I declare this to be The World's Strangest Record!

This is some cool shit! http://www.stonesthrow.com/jukebox/stark/SR_Dreams.mp3

Allegedly recorded, allegedly still in the can, allegedly at Rollins' demand. Also allegedly in the can at RCA - hours, literally hours (some rumors have the figure in double digits) of unreleased stuff from the Villiage Gate/OUR MAN IN JAZZ dates, again being forbidden from release by Sonny's refusal. Lucille is likely to get some pretty interesting offers when the dark day comes...

Oh yeah - scatting. Most singers should leave it alone becasue they don't have THAT kind of musical knowledge. It's ok for a REAL Swing-or-earlier based singer to do some whompdidomps, but when you get somebody doing an otherwise "modern" presentation and all they can muster is a lot of repeated note blopdeblops or some really basic lickage, it's embarassing for all concerned (except, apparently, the singer...). You want to "sing like a horn player", then SING like a horn player, dammit! Learn some harmony, some theory, SOMETHING. Sing what a GOOD horn player would play, not what a hack would put out in a desperate attempt to get over. Jon Hendricks - now THERE'S a motherfucker who can (could, anyway) do it right. I caught him 3 nights out of a 5 night engagement in Albuquerque back in 1982, and each night he did "Stablemates", each night he scatted on it, and each night he did something different while doing so, improvising with the same harmonic awareness (including extensions, substitutions, and alterations) tonal shading, and rhythmic flexabilty and subtlety that a horn player would. No jiveass blipblopbloodies for this cat - he sung a solo, a REAL solo. Not too many singers can hit it like that, or even CLOSE to like that. But that doesn't stop them...

Something else that's been bugging me the last few years is the trend of marketing what are essentially "cabaret singers" as "jazz singers". I'll not name names, but you know the type - they come out all glammed up just oozing of "sophistication" and take us on a trip throught the Great American songbook, throw in a few "obscurities" just to reinforce their "sophistication", and they do it all with something resembling a jazz rhythm section and without a hint of any feeling for the lyric and/or the melody other than how impressed they are with themselves for singinging such "sophisticated" material. We are supposed to feel special for having the good taste to enjoy such a presentation. Nobody breaks a sweat or sheds a tear, except on cue. Hoopty Damn Doo! I'd be hard pressed to define exactly what "jazz singing" actually is, but much less so to define what it's NOT, and this ain't it.

OK, Phil might be a little, uh, "preoccupied" these days, and Vince's whereabouts are uncertain at best, so who better to ask than THIS guy who, through the abusiveness of THIS guy has the Mono experience every day of his life!

Six of one, apples and oranges of the other.

What's this string quartet thing? (Caveat - the following is totally an opinion piece, regardless of how "factual" in tone it is presented. Just want to make that clear up front) "We" used to talk back in the day about how Wynton would someday have to choose between classical or jazz if he ever wanted to be a "major artist" (yeah, I know...). well, it seems to me that he made the "wrong" choice, because the guy is (or was, anyway), an OUTSTANDING classical trumpeteer. Even more importantly, his whole aesthetic is cast from the "classical" mold - his ideas of tradition, "curriculum", repertoire, apprenticeship (ironic, given his comparatively breif time in that stage), playing the music as it "should be" played, playing down the significance and relevance of fresh thoughts and natural evolutions from "the street" when they come with perhaps less than total conventional technical proficiency behind them, these are all hallmarks of the CLASSICAL world, not the jazz world (at least not the one that I grew up in and around. Today, after 20 or so years of the Marsaillisian "big chill", that's a LOT more open to question...). That's not a dis either - the classical world is built on these very foundations, has been for quite a while, and those foundations serve them well in the perpetuating of a certain era and genre of European "art" music that deserves very much to be preserved. Questions/reservations about HOW this music gets performed, whther or not the goal of value preservation has become more important than music preservation (or to what extent asuch a seperation is possible) and/or whether focusing on preservation rather than keeping the tradition alive and vibrant through focusing on newer works and developements are another matter entirely, but those are questions that many have asked about Wynton's approach to jazz as well, and show yet again how he is, at heart, a CLASSICAL musician in mindset. For years, you heard the rallying cry that jazz was "America's Classical Music", a recognition that at its best, it was indeed "art" of the highest level, and that the music and its premier practitioneers deserved to be treated with the respect and acknowledgement inherent in such a designation. Unfortunately, this proved to be yet another case of being careful about what you ask for becasue you might just get it. I don't think that the idea in those days was to turn the music into a museum piece or an altar to be worshipped at, or to have it represent one specific and narrow set of musical and cultural values. Nor do I believe that the intent was to turn, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, the jazz musician into a "repertory player" in order for him to have a high profile career, to have "recognition" be granted for meeting preset criteria rather than for being an individual who succeeded in successfully bending those criteria to totally personal ends that still had a broader resonance . You want to know what's "wrong" with so much "straight ahead" jazz today, why it just doesn't seem to have the bite, the juice, the suck-you-in-and-not-let-you-loose quality of the older stuff, why there is SO much interest in reissues of that genre at the expense of newer releases? That's what it is - the music has become a "style", a vocabulary with strict parameters of content and execution, the goal of which is to EXECUTE within these parameters rather than to CREATE within them. A subtle, but enormous difference, if you ask me, and a concept that is TOTALLY "classical" in nature. Is it wrong to point the finger at Wynton for this change in the winds, this paradigmatic shift in the music we love so deeply? Maybe not - maybe as the music evolved towards less traditional (ie - "European") goals in both intent and execution it was inevitable that there would be, if not exactly a backlash, a REACTION from the sizable segment of the music community, players and listeners alike, who felt uncomfortable, for any number of reasons, straying too far from "home". I mean no criticism when I say that most of America, and that includes all races and occupations, of a certain age and older approach life (and by extension, music) inculcuated with a certain fundamental outlook that is "traditional" (meaning "European" & "Judeo-Christian") at root. Regardless of how far we might stray from those values, we still view them, consciously or not, as "home", our home base, the ultimate reference point when all is said and done. Nothing at all wrong with that, that is who we are, and to our ownselves we must be true. BUT - time marches on. New discoveries, musical, scientific, "spiritual" (this means different things to different people, but I hope there is at least a general understanding of what I mean), whatever, get made, and new cultural influxes occur in any society that is not totally isolated, willingly or otherwise. That is the very essence of life itself. As these cultural evolutions occur, "we" have the choices of either A) ignoring them (a failed proposition from the start, to one degree or another); B) looking upon them scornfully; C) acknowledging them and their legitmacy without getting into them to some (or any) degree (call it "live and let live" if you like); D) checking them out and incorporating whatever of them we find beneficial and stimulating and leaving the rest behind for those whom it DOES have use and relevancy; or E) abandoning all ties to our current selves and immersing ourselves in these new stimuli indiscrimately in hopes of finding something "new", something that will fill a void that we may or may not have felt all along and are eager to rid ourselves of at any cost. Well, E) usually leads to faddism and trendiness, so most "mature" people don't go that route, and only the most staid individuals choose A) on a regular basis, so that leaves us with 3 methods of confronting societal evolution with some kind of awareness and interaction. For me, depending on what's on the table, C) & D) are the most sane and sensible choices if one care at all about remaining fluid in the flow of existence. But Wynton and Co. seem to prefer B), the method of scorn and active dislike. Which is an honest enough decision, and one which again fits in PERFECTLY with so much of the "Classical" mindset. I can respect those who choose that route even though I disagree with it myself - there's something to be said for having such a strong sense of identity that you don't feel the need for any input from any soure other than what you already have, a deep sense of pride and a reservoir of all kinds of strength to draw upon that is more than adequate as it is, thank you very much. Where I get agitated is when people who make that choice go beyond preserving their own world and get into trying to stifle, destroy even, the newer worlds that are evolving as a matter of natural course all around them, and this, THIS, is what I feel that the "Marsalis Revolution" (or is that "Counter Revolution"?) has more and more come to be about - not JUST the preservation and glorification of a specific set of values (values that are actually quite valid, beautiful, and continuously relevant when stripped of any dogma), but also the suppression (perhaps even destruction) of values that come along that run counter to, or at least modify from without, those precepts held so dear by the "faithful" and the "natives". This too is very much in tune with a sizable segment of the "Classical" community - hearing tales of the battles faced when attempting to program 20th Century works by certain major orchestras, or noting the struggles of contemporary composers to get their works performed, even ONE time, informally, much less presented in a formal setting, is enough to convince me that there is a significant portion of that world that wishes nothing more than to "make it all go away", and by any means necessary, including starving/strangling/whatever the lifeblood/lifeline/whatever of those who would contribute something new. Jazz, a sizable portion of it anyway, has indeed become "America's Classical Music", but in the WORST possible way. If Wynton himself did not actually generate this turn of events, he certainly capitalized on it, and soon assumed leadership, daringly agressive leadership at that, of the movement that grew up around it. However, time is like water- you can't stop it, you can only stall it, and the last few years have seen begun to see a break in the damn. Perhaps just a small crck as of now, but you know how THAT works. Be it the increased interest in "groove" jazz of all degrees of "progressivism", or be it the renewed interest in "free" jazz, old and new, there are signs that the moves that Wynton made to stop what he saw as "deterioration" of "traditional values" will have perhaps served no other purpose than to have him set for life in a position where he reigns over a willingly captive audience of a certain age and older, an audience that will contain fewer and fewer (but, inevitably, some) young faces as the years pass. There's a whole present and future of people who are ALL about being "fluid" (probably to the extent of being detremental, but that's an evolutionary issue that will play itself out in its own due time). The LAST thing they're interested in is venerating and preserving the past as a fixed entity - for them, the past ,present, and future are all sorta the same thing (a perspective that, although most likely actually shaped by "digital reality", is also in tune with the "everything is everything" spiritual "discoveries" that Western society has had on its plate for the last 50 or so years, even if said society has treated it like the brussell sprout that they know they're going to have to eat if they want dessert but go through any machinations necessary to put off until the point of no return arrives). The "fact" that Wynton is so resolutely "Classical" in makeup, personally, musically, in every way, makes one wonder what would have happened if he had devoted his obvious passions and energies, as well as his undeniable technical skills, to the existing Classical world rather than using them to remake jazz in its image. Myself, I think he could have revitalized that whole scene, infused it with a distinctly "New World" perspective that it so desperately needs, and struck a blow for racial inclusiveness of potentially immeasurable significance. But it would have been a HUGE struggle, a battle of epic proportions that could have really, REALLY, taken its toll on him as a person. Nevertheless, had he survived and won (and I think he could have, had he the stomach for it), his triumph would have had the legitimacy, legitimacy of the deepest kind, that his "triumphs" in the jazz realm do not begin to have for many of us. No matter how hard, politically, socially, whichever way, Wynton had to work to get what he now has, it bears the stigma of having been "granted" by the graces of the cultural establishment rather than won against them, given TO rather than won FROM. You could say that, given the choices he's made in light of the battles he COULD have fought, that he took the easy (well, easier, anyhow) way out. That he didn't really pay all the dues that he could/should have, not in light of what his options were. That he took the path of least (ok - less) resistance when faced with reconciling his deepest, truest nature to the choices available to him, at the moment of truth that all people, especially people who aspire to be "creative" in a meaningful fashion, inevitably face sooner or later. That in the grand scheme of things, he "settled". And that, Dear Friends, is about as ANTI-jazz as anything I can think of!

This is the guy you need to ask..

Yeah, the Jamal trios with Israel Crosy and either Ray Crawford or Vernell Fournier (New Orleans Drummer Alert! ) pretty special. Funny thing - in the 70s, a lot of those albums were available in the cutout and used bins with great regularity. I nabbed a few, and have heard most of the rest. Other than a few overtly "commercial" things, it's good, often enough great, stuff, and it's current unavailability is indeed a Crying Shame. What about the earlier Okeh material - what's its status? I bought an old used Epic album way back when that contained some (all?) of that stuff, and find it every bit as good as the best Argo/Cadet material.

k.d. did a vresion of Porter's "So In Love" on the First "Red, Hot, & Blue" thing that was terriffic, and a live version on the Letterman show (a few nights after the airing of the RH&B TV special) that was stunning, full of the sultry melancholia that is often at the root of Porter's "best" songs but that most singers, for whatever reason, seem to overlook, and that the RH&B version only hinted at. Wish I had taped it.

Although it's been decades, literally, since I've listened to them, I remember enjoying HOT HOUSE FLOWERS (great, really intersting string writing) & BLACK CODES FROM THE UNDERGROUND (solid on all counts, imo) a reasonable amount. His first album was pretty cool too - I really dug the tunes and was willing to chalk the somewhat unformed/derivative soloing up to youth. J MOOD was the beginning of me getting turned off of Wynton. The quartet setting, and its lack of a contrasting front-line voice, called attention to what I began to see as the limitations of his playing (limitations that I had noticed in THINK OF ONE & FATHERS AND SONS (yes, I was actually INTERESTED in this guy at one time!)), and those limitations seemed increasingly to the fore with what I heard of his subsequent albums. Couple my growing disinterest in his playing with the anger I began to feel towards him at his pompous, B.S. pronouncements in the press (they really did get worse as time went by, it seems to me), and the whole "empire building" trip that he and his cohorts got into that for me pretty much brought the organic, ongoing evolution of jazz, as it pertained to the general public's perception, to a grinding, screeching, TOTALLY UNNECESSARY halt (and even tried, successfully so in some important business sectors, to set it BACK a few decades), a move that I felt personally from both a career and an esthetic standpoint, and the result is that other than J MOOD and the Vanguard set (which got a fair amount of airplay here, and caught my attention solely for the work of Marcus Roberts), I am totally unfamiliar with any of the albums on this list, and have no desire or intention to change that, probably ever. Sorry!

Nellie Lutcher, perhaps? She's Ravi Shankar's mother, you know.