JSngry

Remember, Jug was in the Eckstine band! so much Prez in there...

If you've not done so already, the recent WR "biography" (can a band have a biography?) is a very worthy read. Not a lot of "musical insight" but a LOT of personal/personality/personnel info that ends up being a really cohesive and compelling tale. That was one hell of a band, no matter the iteration. I saw them live eight times (I think, starting to forget things like this, but it was more than I've seen anybody, ever). Starting with the Mysterious Traveler tour on out through the end. Not one halfass show, no superfluous playing (other than one of Jaco's set-piece solothings, but even then, oh well!). They were "of their time", and/but it was my time, and I think it will be for "all time" as much as anything can be. Just too much substance there for it not not to be. Manahihihoohoo, Return From Forever, all that stuff, limited shelf life just as often as not, a flare or two and then gone. Not so Weather Report. Those were very, very serious people. Serious about the music, serious about the presentation, don't let the "entertainment" trappings fool you. They always came to play, and if the macho/competitive element seems a bit out date now, so be it. It's only so because stuff like this did it all it could be done, like, now you know, move on.

A third for Rushing Lullabies. They're all great, but that one is greaterist!

Definitely a similarity in contents, but the "Texas sound" is a little, for lack of a better word, "broader" in timbre. Not always, but often enough. Still, Turrentine and Fathead have a helluva lot more in common than do Turrentine and, say Rollins. Personally, I think it's a matter of both temperament and practical experience. Turrnetine played in those travelling blues/R&B bands, Sonny didn't. You play that music, you learn the language, not just the words, but how to speak them. But Benny Golson (for one) did. Lots of people did, Johnny Griffin with Joe Morris, exceptional. But Griff & Golson already had their basic "home" sounds to begin with. Is there a Pittsbugh tenor sound? I'm not really aware of one (which means nothing...). Pittsburgh is more of a "piano town", right?

Ammon/Stitt was a touring band (at least for a little while). Illinois Jaquet's band, same thing. James Moody's outfit, same thing. "little big bands" wit arrangements and routines, the whole presentation thing. They worked. To give you some kind of a possible idea....I had a buddy back in the day who said that his mother had an autographed picture of Gene Ammons that he says that she got when he played in Tyler, Texas in the early 1950s. Never saw it, nor ever met her, but that's really not the kind of thing a person makes up, I'd think. Just like the stories about James Brown playing Gladewater, Texas at Reba's Moulin Rouge in the 1960s. In many ways, Black Music is the best documented aspect of Black Life from these times, even going back to the "territory bands". If all you learn about is the records...there's so much more to this music than just the records....

Gene Ammons was popular pretty much from jump (and his two-tenor group with Sonny Stitt was apparently quite popular as a touring attraction). There were a lot of other players playing in that style, though, it was just natural, the climate was right. Late-40s, early-50s, R&B had not yet become "Rock & Roll" (and never did, really, but that's another story...). Ray Charles was never considered NOT jazz, at least not when I knew, but he was never JUST jazz. Once again, Black Music, but not JUST for Black People, at least eventually. And I believe that Stanley did a bit of a stint with Ray. I know he did the Lowell Fulson gig. People like to think that those are different musics from jazz, but from the inside, it's all variations of the same language. Different dialects, different accents, at times even different purposes, but still, the same language. Not to simplify, but it was simply (sic) Black People playing Black Music for Other Black People. And there's never NOT been a market for that! Here's the one review I wrote for All About Jazz (20 years ago!) that kind of touches on this in the course of a record that definitely does: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/vocal-blues-and-jazz-volume-four-1938-1949-various-artists-document-records-review-by-jim-sangrey

Genres, labels, brackets, etc....don't fall for that trap. These were real people in real time, not names on a seating chart. If you limit your perception to parts without considering the whole...that's one way to do it, but is it the best way? Not for me, but YMMV. But look at all the different types of tunes Stnley played over his lifetime, look at all the settings hiw appeared in. Ig there was a Venn Diagram of pre-Free tenor, The one where all the circles converge, that's pretty much Stanley Turrentine. And the less aware you are of all the different circles that are intersecting, the less dense the intersection will appear to be.

No! That sound of his is ALWAYS there, and a sound is that from whence all else issues. It's one of the most identifiable sounds ever. So no - only one Stanley Turrentine, certainly quite capable of having different conversations, but always with and in the same voice.

Not that I was expecting...might not be what anybody's expecting...the general audience response might be, uh, "interesting". But - there's one SEARING Wayne solo on here

I think there was an element of dryness in that Tommy T. comment.

I have a term for music like this - BlueBop. It's a totally organic language and environment. And of all the musics I love, this one is kinda what I grew up with (once I grew out of the Pop Culture Commercial Training Music I was born into...you go from Radio Music into different "crossovers" and then once you get anywhere into "real jazz", this is the most common of common grounds, a truly natural language that doesn't have to "fuse" or "incorporate", it fits into anything because it is everything. You can play it with a singer, you can play it without a singer, you can play it for dancing, you can play it for listening, you can play it EVERYWHERE. Of course, that only works if the community from which it so richly sprung/springs continues to exist...same as with any organic music...and on that point, times change, don't they...

In terms of immediate cash-flow, I'm sure that Jug made that happen. But the classic Miles records I suspect created a sustainable stream of income as well. Is Jug selling now? Well hell, how can he be, what are they offering us? Fucking revisionist cooperate erasurepigs...

Stanley Turrentine played American Black Music. As such, there was many ingredients involved. But to get a total picture of who he "was" - from his time with Max Roach to his slurpy Elektra records and back again...it's all some form and/or fashion of American Black Music. That's where it came from, that's where he came from. That's Where It's At.... So yeah, study your Sonny Rollins, but study your Sam Cooke too. Study your Charlie Parker, but study your Dinah Washington too. Etc. These are not different musics, they're different manifestations of the same greater vocabulary. Study the vernacular singers and there you go. And I guess it goes without saying that he's not the only one. Don't trust anybody who tries to tell you about this type of music and tunes out on the singers. That's just wrong.

I don't think it was released when intended, I think it sat in the can for a while.

Here's one that I never knew about..an OST to a film that never was released?!?!?!?! fwiw...this was the OG Fantasy cover: Fantasy kept that one until (if Discogs is to be believed) 1972! So either they knew they had something that could continue to move units in increasing numbers with a facelift, or else they figured they should be able to move some units with a facelift. I don't know that Fantasy did this for their other catalog items?

When they actually WERE mistakes, don't.

Those who do not like history are doomed to try to rewrite it!

Mr. Clean Irish Washerwoman The Fantabulous Washboard Willie and his Super Suds of Rhythm

Seconded.

Fantasy was selling records before Zaentz, though...People forget that Brubeck had some pretty popular LPs on that label pre-Columbia. Not saying that any of them were Time Out big, they weren't. But a few of them made some noise, the live college ones. The whole "recorded live on campus" thing, that was due to Brubecks's Fantasy records, they set a trend, they sold well enough to do that. And "Cast Your Fate To The Wind", the 45, #22 on the Billboard charts. And buttloads of Mongo & Tjader records....somebody was buying those, enough to keep making more... Th9s does not disqualify that the Charlie Brown Christmas record was not a "slow starter" in terms of sales, maybe it really was. I'm just saying that I'd not at anything that anybody at that label had to say about it (if they said anything at all...) at face value. They were selling something.

whoa...

Jimmy was from Texas. Before the internet made leaving the house optional, this was how the air here sounded at all times, especially if you were listening.

two things - yes, it did take a while for the show to become the tradition that it became. I'm of the age to have watched it the first time, and did indeed watch it the next 5-6 times it came on. The first few times, it was like, oh, cool, they're showing it again. And then gradually it was oh, this is going to be a thing, isn't it! (Sidenote - as a kid in a Christian family, the story resonated with my parents becuase of the message, as well as with the kids becuase it was a cool cartoone). As for Fantasy...I don't think we'll ever know about the books there. Wasn't it essentially a one-man operation as far as ownership? Not saying that they were any more of less, uh...."crafty" than any other such operation, but if they were having a LOT of sales on any one item,...taxes and royalty checks all stem from paper trails, right?