JSngry

I'll not consider Fresh Sounds official, although it certainly does exist in some realm. But bad on whoever did the OJC of that one. That was a pretty unnecessary fuckup imo.

Taylor Wraggler - She's Older Than She Looks, I Can Tell By Lookin'

Has "Lover" been restored to circulation somehow? Or is this still its only issue?

That's a "good" record, one that I've had for ages and come back to periodically, but...I always find it a bit of an underachiever, considering who's on it. YMMV, of course.

Wide Open Spaces

Maybe Cole replied to somebody else's letter about the same review, there was at least one more. But he did offer that reply. It's been a loooong time, so if I'm incorrectly attributing his reply to my letter, that's my bad. Sorry. If your uncle has a collection, follow the trail back to the initial review and then check the letters afterward. It'll be in there somewhere. Come to think of it....maybe my letter was in response to cole's reply to somebody else's letter about his initial review. It ws pretty snippy, that review was.

And he used strings, not mellophoniums!

Jonathan Winters Spring Byington Joanie Sommers

1960-61, iirc

I'm not putting money on this, but I seem to remember the first iteration of the flying V being made for the mellophonium band, The mellophoniums were behind the saxophones. And then when the mellophoniums went, the saxes stayed where they were. Like I said, I'm not putting money on this. As far as recordings, all I know is what I see in the pictures.

Kenton didn't necessarily "invent the "stage band", but once he partnered with NTSU and started having clinics (for both students and educators, two on the whole very easily-influenced types of people, imo), it was game over for more than a little bit. It was funny, our little school, we rehearsed in stacked formation, but for concerts, always Flying V, especially for a contest, because that was a visual signifier how "modern" we were. And all things considered, we were, especially for such a small town. But that Flying V cracks me up to this day because I don't think I saw any pro band use it other than Kenton. But to be fair, it worked for Kenton because of the size of the band and the instrumentation to go with it. That band was loud, but it always was a balanced loud. They went equally high and wide.

He was talking about how much he enjoyed the Japanese liner notes, that's all.

"stage bands" and "Kenton" went hand in hand then.

That's the Kenton "Flying V". No other pro band that I can recall used it.

To some degree, yes. Bob was in a different league than anybody (except Lyle Mays once he started to come into his ow), but he didn't start out that way. He came to NT a year before I did, and apparently his attitude and esthetic was more or less fully formed long before his skills were, and not everybody appreciated that. I did, but many did not. But the dude did the work, all of it, and at some point he had to be acknowledged for the talent and thinker he was. As for our friendship, we were travelling different creative paths for a while, and/but then there was this guy named Paul Holderbaum, an arranger, who had his own library (mostly originals, but some Oliver Nelson charts that he had gotten from ON's widow), and the wanted an "anti-Lab Band" big band, so at some point Bob & I ended up being the tenor players. Bob had been scorned, but his attitude remained intact, so he thought that a fellow tenor player who was into Ayler and Ornette wasn't "serious". But after a few times playing together, he realized that, ok, yes, a different approach, but very serious nevertheless, so we became friends, especially in terms of record collecting and weed consumption. I was never an "A-lister" in terms of his circle, but neither was I looked at as a freak and a stranger either. Then, of course, Bob left NT and did what he did. Fast forward a few decades, and one day I get an email from him talking about how he'd been digging my postings on the old BNBB, here's my number, call me sometimes and let's catch up. Very un-Bob-like, so I let it pass, just responded to the email and figured that would be that. Well, one day the phone rings, and its Bob. Bob was a talker, so I let him talk. But he did want copies of the Quartet Out CDs, which he played for Tom Evered and told him that THIS was who he should be signing, etc. I laughed at that, because we both knew that that was not how it works. But I got a chuckle out of it because it was so Bob, the cocksure attitude in the face of knowing that nothing was going to happen, but just do it anyway, fuck it. He did say that he really remembered me as somebody who refused to buy into the lab band bullshit about how to do ANYTHING. That was nice. Over the years, a few more phone calls, plenty of emails. The last phone call was about his gig in Irag(?) or where ever it was, and the unlimited supply of drugs they had at their disposal. I asked him if there were women to match, and he drily replied that they did not want to play into the imperialist cliché THAT much. All in all, it was a casual friendship, but always pleasurable. And when he talked (which was always, LOL), it was always interesting. Always. Like I said, the guy did the work, and not just with the music, but with the business as well. As a result, he had opinions based on all sorts of "fly on the wall" type observations. A totally unique character, imo. He's missed, that's for sure.

I did.

I was pissed that Bill Cole was whining about the Music Inc. record (the first one, the first big band one) was playing "old music". Of course, I had no idea who Bill Cole, that he was one of those guys who looked at everything through the lens of politics/revolution/etc first. Nor did I realize that using my listening to a Mulligan/Baker/Konitz record at the time of writing the letter was probably not the best example to make my point about "timeless" music, not to Bill Cole, and not about Strata-East. Bill Cole replied to the latter though. Kind of a non-committal, I paraphrase:"you want five stars, you got 'em. but it's still old music", something like that. I had forgotten who Bill Cole was when I read his Miles bio, but once I remembered, it all made sense.

I I got pissy about a Bill Cole review of a Music, Inc. record. ,

If you still have that issue, look at the letters section, I got one published. I was either 15 or 16 at the time. First and only time I had written in. Beginner's luck, and I quit while I was ahead.

Emily Puffindorfer - Ritual Sonata #2

From Memphis to St. Joe?

Finally!!!!

Has Rodney Kendrick come up yet? I thought he was getting a thing happening there for a while.