JSngry

Figuring a mean of about 20 minutes per side, that's more like 12 LP sides, or 6 LPs total. So the idea of a Mosaic set is still desirable for those who want it all. Hell, a straight reissue of the early 70s 2-LP SUPER CHIEF, complete w/original liner notes, wouldn't be too bad as an introductory package. That was a damn fine set.

That would be found here:

You want to hear standards in their original form? watch a bunch of old movies, musicals especially. They're show tunes, and since you can't go back in time to see the shows on Broadway, the movies serve as the next best thing. Just don't be surprised to find out that a shitload of perinneal jazz favorites were introduced by a cat named Fred Astaire... Personally, I think that jazz is more than whatever tunes get played. It's a mindset, and ANY musical turf is fair game. Great jazz vehicles) existed before show tunes ruled the roost (Jelly Roll Morton) and after (Ornette). Standards are beautiful things with lasting appeal, but they're not "pop" music anymore, obviously. Gradually they're comng to be viewed as American Art Song, which is cool, just don't anybody scratch their heads as to why the kids can't hang when somebody starts singing "you are the promised kiss of springtime that makes the lonely winter seem long", if you know what I mean. Hey, I love the standards, truly love them, and consider them fundamental to American culture, past present and future. But jazz doesn't HAVE to have them in order to survive, unless it wants to survive only as a repertoire music. The culture has changed, and so should the music. If trends in pop culture are on a downward spiral (and old fart that I am, OF COURSE I think they are ), it's up to jazz to relate to the tools that are producing such crap and turn them around, to make the proverbial silk purse out of etc. etc. etc. That has been a major factor in the the spirit of the music (and more importanly, it's people) from the git-go, not just in music, but in life. The more that jazz becomes "about" music-for-music's sake than relating to life in all it's aspects, eternal and temporal alike, the closer it inches towards outright death. The corpse may be gloriously embalmed, but you won't have to worry about it stealing your car anymore. Let the jazz mind come out in whatever fashion it chooses (or is chosen by). We got records, and damn good ones too, so let the past serve it's righful function, which is to inspire, not to suffocate, the present. Classicism, I believe for myself, is best participated in in the abstract.

Remember Miles' guest spot on Miami Vice? I think he played a pimp. And then there was Miles' Honda(?) commercial (bike, not car).... Spacey I first saw as Mel Profitt on Wiseguy, a show that for a cuppla seasons was one of the best things on.

Throw in the syndication-only pre-NBC run (w/Harold Ramis in place of Morainis) and you got a deal I can't refuse. That was a TRULY great show, and the home of one of the most eerily accurate yet totally surreal pieces of musical parody I've ever come across - Moranis signing off the station as Mel Torme doing The Star Spangled Banner. Brilliant, as was the entire show.

Other way around, dude, but no biggie.

"Pound Cake" is also used, in slightly altered form as the basis for John Coppola's "Cousins", a big band piece recorded on several different occasions by Woody Herman.

Does this mean that Pepino needs a gig?

Deep's announcing the passing of Jimmy Knepper on AAJ: http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread....=&threadid=1985 Sad news. Knepper was one of the best ever in my opinion. Everybody dies, bur still....

http://www.johnsrealmonline.com/classicnick/index.html http://www.ycdtotv.com/index.html

This from Joe Golberg's JAZZ MASTERS OF THE 50s: "You're writing a CHAPTER about Art Blakey?", tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin asks incredulously. "It'll have to be an awful long chapter. You ought write a BOOK about Art Blakey. He's a rascal. He's liable to do anything, if it's business. I remember, he was having trouble with a trumpet player. He had Ira Sullivan in the band, playing tenor. Ira plays trumpet too, you know. They were supposed to go to Chicago. When this trumpet player got to the airport and saw me there too, he knew what was up, and just turned around and left."

This malady is indeed age-related, and is invariably accelerated/accentuated with marriage and, later on, having children. I've suffered from it for about 20 years now, and have loved every minute of it. Except, of course, when the lovely and talented Brenda attempts a cure.... Oh, BTW, it's also known as "Ozzie Nelson Syndrome" and/or "Terminal Puttering". To those of us who grew up watching 50s domestic-based sitcoms, it seemed like what we were SUPPOSED to do. Little did we know that Steven Covay lurked in our future...

Damn dude, you're the Organissimo Radio Shack today - I got questions, you got answers. Any idea of a year, roughly, or what "Don Wilkerson Production"(s) was? Or why there's an L.A. Zip Code? Now if you tell me that you got that Marchel Ivery 45 from very VERY back in the day...

Along w/THE BOSS, recently purchased from the store that shall remain nameless. "Low Down Dirty Shame", Parts 1 & 2, Tomel Records 101 by Don Wilkerson and his Tympo Five. A division of Don Wilkerson Production (sic) says the label. 3733 So. Western Ave. 90018, Phone 734-9075 it also adds. Runoff area says T-123A (or B), and the pressing plant stamp is a lowercase "d" at an upward left 45-degree angle to a lower case "g" (adding fuel to my suspicion that Dusty Groove maybe has their own pirate pressing thing going on...) Tune is a walking shuffle blues, not at all dissimilar to some early 50s King or Kent thing. Bitingly nasty, somewhat Bostic-esque alto featured between vocal spots, and really, REALLY lo-fi recording quality. So, is this THE Don Wilkerson, and if so, what the hell is this record? Websearch turns up just a few hits, all offering the item for sale. Guess I'll ask Shelley Carroll if nobody here has a clue. but c'mon - surely SOMEBODY knows what this is!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.......... ??????

They all stink like skunk if you don't like'em and smell like heaven if you do. I love'em. All of 'em. They're what humans were designed to eat.

Emotionally, I dig Hank's vibe - cool but with plenty of feeling, and a lack of machismo bluster (not there's anything wron with that, but the contrast is refreshing when it's honest). He projects (to me anyway), a sensitivity and vulnerabilty that coexists in varying proportions with a sheild of inpenetrable (at least up until the late 60s) hipness. The result is an emotional tension that I, and I suspect many others, find compelling and irresistable. Musically, the guy was just SO freakin hip (meaning for me sophisticated and soulful, knowing and feeling, in equally highly developed portions) in every way. His timing was impeccable, his attention to detail (particularly revealed in the later recordings, where what he leaves out is at least as important as what he puts in) second to none, his harmonic awareness SO developed, his tone completely his own, just everything about him was unique and highly refined. To play like he played, in all of his phases, requires an incredible amount of focus and confidence. One misstep, one lapse in concentration or misplaced/misplayed note and you're screwed, big time. Hank was not an extremely extroverted player, nor was he one of those guys who played obviously and dazzlingly brilliant shit. Nor was he one of those guys who was always expanding their pallate. If anythng, he was about contracting his. If you don't "get" him, well hey - you don't get him. Probably a personality conflict between the two of you in there somewhere. Besides, nobody gets everything all the time. But there's plenty of meat there if you can make the connection.

So, is it obsure to all but hardcore Smith buffs? I mean, I'm not a completist or anything w/Smith, but I am pretty familiar with his work. You'd think that w/Benson on board that this one would have been reissued by now and would be all famous and stuff. What's the deal?

Oh yeah, these are superb as well:

Found at this incredible Dolphy site (which has an extensive discography, btw, as well as video and audio clips): http://farcry.neurobio.pitt.edu/Discograph...es/EDIntro.HTML

Dolphy's all over this baby:

Found this one at Dusty Groove a few weeks ago, and must say that I'd never heard of it at all, which considering that it's a live trio date w/Smith, Donald Bailey, and GEORGE BENSON (Nathan Page on one tune), seems odd. Seems to be a late 60s/very early 70s thing, released after FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JIMMY AND WES. Said to have been recorded at Paschal's La Carousel in Atlanta, Georgia and produced by Esmond Edwards. Benson, it says "appears through the courtesy of A&M Records" so this seems to date it in the days when CTI was an A&M thing. Some questions: Was Benson just sitting in on this gig? The appearance of Page suggests that possibility. But what the heck was Verve doing in ATLANTA to record a live Smith date? That suggests the possibility that Benson was touring with Smith, if only for a limited time, and that somebody wanted an album out of the collaboration. Anybody know? Why is this album so unfamilar to me? Is it something that all hardcore Smith buffs know about and are familiar with? I'm surprised as well that it's not been reissued at least once, what with the marquis draw of George Benson. It's a really nice record - the crowd is really noisy (assuming that the noise is real), and the music is mellow yet involved, the kind of thing that makes perfect hip background music. Until you start listening to it, that is... And on a side note, the LP back shows the album before FURTHER ADVENTURES as LIVIN' IT UP, another bib band date arranged by Oliver Nelson and anothe Smith Verve I was totally unaware of. Anybody ever hear it? Opinions? As always, thanks in advance!

I can't stop listening to this album. It gets deeper with every listen. There's so much to ponder in Edwards' playing here, but for me it all comes down to one core point - the man is telling us the story of his life, and telling it masterfully. I keep hearing echos of other times, other players. But it's not some contrived "retro" approach, nor is it a conceptual POV thing like Raasahn or Shepp (and BTW, there are a LOT of things Edwards plays here that could easily be off a late 60s/early 70s Shepp record. But it's not imitative (in either direction), it's just the vocabulary of a certain time and a certain instrument, the lingua franca of a certain breed of musician). It's nothing more than Teddy Edwards playing his life. For just one example, check out how his opening notes on "It's The Talk Of The Town" somehow conjure up Hawk & Prez simultaneously(!), but still sound like nobody else but Edwards. You can't get there just from listening to records or reading books, you have to LIVE it, and Teddy Edwards spent his life living it, spent his life not just playing jazz but BEING jazz. He might have lived that life in (semi)obscurity, but it was a life that was all about music, the music of his world, his time, his people. This kind of jazz is about to be dead, if it isn't already. Oh sure, the "style" will live on, but it will be played by people who came to/by it after the fact, after it was a part of the fiber of everyday life for a community. For me, that's a subtle yet very real difference, the difference between lovingly reading Grampa's memoirs aloud and actually hearing Grampa talk to you himself. And if the people of today spend all their time obsessing over Grandpa, what's THEIR story going to be when THEY get to be Grandpa? The musical and social scene(s) that bred Teddy Edwards is/are all but dead, and now, so too is Teddy. That's just the way life goes - it goes... Actually, as a thriving, vital, community-based scene, it has probably been dead for quite a while now. But there's always survivors, and Teddy Edwards WAS a survivor, one of the type that remained true to who he was up until the very end, one who got to be "who he was", simply by being who he was, nothing more, nothing less, through good times and bad. How many people in any walk of life can you say that about, especially today, when it seems that "creating" yourself has somehow displaced BEING yourself as the preferred way of living? As fine as the other work of his that I've heard has been, Edward seems to reach a rarified peak here, almost as if he was finally at the mountaintop's highest and final peak, that level of total self-awareness and flawless execution that a lot of musicians would gladly die today for if they could just get there one time. He's 100% flawless AND 100% naturally human on this date, and there is a word for those rare artisitc achievements that accomplish this. That word is "masterpiece". I'll go on record here and now and say that in my opinon, SMOOTH SAILING is just such a work, an album that over time will surely be recognized as the precious treasure it is, and one that will only grow in stature as the years pass and those who care about such things realize what a total musical and human triumph it is. What a beautiful album this is.

Taking a cue from the Mavericks & Dirk Nowitsky, Spurs management took to the phones last night, frantically calling all over Germany in search of a certain Coach Heimlich...

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