JSngry

So, if Norman Connors produced a really whack Eddie Harris record that always kept Charles Stepney in mind, could you imaging how cool THAT would be? Well, don't bother with all that mental strain, just check this one out!

The Jhannikakes (Lynn, Lynne, & Lynnista) - Breakfast with The Jhannikakes (Recorded Live!!!) No coffee needed here!

I think she gets a bad rap, overall. The same type of cultural knee-jerk myopia that led to the "Disco sucks" movement. Which is not to say that she's nothing but a "misunderstood genius", far from it. Just that she's not the totally culture-vulturing bullshitter that has been laid on her for as long as I can remember. Just for grits and shiggles, check this out for, possibly, a bit of context: Yoko sounds like freaking Sarah Fitzgerald Clooney compared to some of this stuff!

Yeah, single people, some people who liked to get high every day, and people who wanted to work their way into the Malaco scene, which was definitely easier said than done. Malaco was very professional within themselves. It's with the road bands where it was every leader doing it their way. To be fair, JT always kept a solid core rhythm section. But past that....it was a rough gig in damn near every way. My wife called it right, because now that there was a baby in the house.... Just remember, though, there are/were? people who just wanted a gig, period, because having a gig meant that they were still playing. That's a deep pull to some people, and they don't all line up their behavior to maximize the focus of their energies. I can separate all those great records (and TV appearances!) from the other stuff, because it's the entertainment business, built on image and fantasy, selling a product that in and of itself may very well be of the very highest quality and contain no small amount of truth. Some people can't separate the creation form the creators, to which all I can say is....good luck with that. If you let that play all the way out, you'll never run into storage issues, if you know what I mean.

I worked a lot, for a good while (20+ years), in the local chitlin' circuit. I came to know a lot of people. Like Dan said, this is not a secret or anything, especially amongst players who worked, or hoped to work, that gig. The range of "good gigs" had BB at the very top. Little Milton also was said to be cool, but to what extent, I don't know. Bobby Bland paid well enough, but you could be there one day and gone the next (which is probably why on their package gigs, BBs band was always there, and sometimes to help play Bobby's show). Then then there's Johnny Taylor...oh my lord...I almost took that gig, but our first child had just been born and my wife kinda unsubtly said no fucking way. And when was right - no per diem, pay in cash strictly after the gig (and not very much, either), you paid for EVERYTHING, and no travel allowance with a bus that can and did break down and leave you stranded for a day or two on your own.

"Bar gig" is a pretty wide-open term...I caught Ray Charles doing an entire evening at the Longhorn Ballroom, which was a bigass place, but ultimately, yes, a bar. And the band (a full big band, btw). But working as a solo? I suppose so, if the money was lighter than usual for the entire band. But BB definitely kept a band for year. Salareid with benefits, including health insurance and retirement plan. Now, I also saw Ray Charles in Albuqueque, backed by the Albuquerque Symphony. But he brought his rhythm section for sure. Not sure about the entire band, though, I'm thinking not. This guy makes it sound like BB was primarily a solo act, and that doesn't sound right to ne at all. Or maybe he just wasn't paying attention and the "opening band" really was the BB King band. Now THAT would make sense. I wsa on the chitlin' circuit for many years, and it was not at all unusual for there to be a band set before the min act came out. It ws cool, because that was where you could play something "jazzy", that was actually encouraged, to get the audience loosened up before the star (and when I say star, I just mean whover was the singer whose name was booked, local and/or therwise) came out to do their set(s).

My experience with "dungarees" is that it refers to blue jeans, they type you buy to work in, manual and/or dirty work. We call what the Messengers were wearing "overalls". and they're definitely not leisure wear, at lest not under typical usage. Go figure! Watch an episode of Hee-Haw to check it out!

Supposedly Wynton wasn't having the overalls and told Blakey something like "we need to out out of the field".

The older the hard drive gets, the more decisions we have to make about what to keep and what to delete.

a lot/"lot" of Flying Dutchman records don't have the best sound.

autumn leaves, eh? #cornybadbookjoke

Is this book available yet?

This might be the funkiest that Gary Burton ever got? #ThankyouRoyHaynes #ThankyouSteveSwallow #Thankyoubothforworkingsowelltogether

Valice Ward - Songs of Hope, Songs of Hate: The Valice Ward Story

Sweet Tanya Tippitow - Oh Dear Sweet Jesus

Whoa..

RIP, and thanks for making it count while you were here.

Not the vibrato itself, but the vibrato on the decay into the subtone into just the air, yeah. After a while you get used to it, but when I first heard it, yeah, total mindfuvk, like, where did the note go, that it's not there yet still there, that's some kind of mojo tricksterism or something.

What other choice do ya' have, right?

That Gabe Baltazar thing is obscure!

Hill and Sun Ra spent time together in Chicago and may well have had conversations about "identity", of the benefits, perhaps even the need, to create your own, instead of having one placed on you by external forces. Seems to have been in that particular air at the time.

Reverb is a powerful tool in the right hands. It stretches time and can loop it back on itself. There are "cosmic" implications to this when used with intent. I don't know how it happened on this particular record, but I think it's the tempo, the beat, and the deepest imaginable pocket of same. Microseconds make a difference. To say nothing of having a two note piano figure repeat literally the entire song, even when it clashes with the changes! This isn't a ballad, this is a trance, a trance of intimacy It really is a "magic" record. Just because it's been trivialized by an at-best semi-comatose population is no excuse for not recognizing it.

Dude, have you ever listened to that Flamingos record from inside the reverb? That's about as trippy as you can get, there's an unusually vivid infinity there.