JSngry

That record got a lot of good reviews at the time, but I'm with you, it never got my ear. But it did gain and still has traction in some circles. So...there's something there, I guess. I've got no problems with Hawes' "electric" period per se, but this one seems maybe more style than substance? Can't fault a man for trying, I suppose.

Oh, it's actually arriving Friday! That was what I got, something about it was now released and would be arriving Friday. Yet to actually ship, but that's what they say, Arriving Friday.

I know I got something from somebody (Amazon?) that has led me to believe that it'll be here soon. I'm in no hurry, yet.

It does, I know what you mean. It happened for me with the Brookmeyer Select. Finally got over the glib and found the greater groove. But I've been trying with Richards at least as long as you have and...like I said, nice show, but dinner plans should be made either before or after. Probably after? The one thing of his that has worked, "clicked", for is Adventures In Time, with Kenton. That's just steroids on speed (or vice-vers). Put on your space helmets and fly faster than the speed of loud! Other than that...I too will keep trying, but I don't see it happening. What ended up putting a big strike in the Richards column on my scoreboard, was when I went on a Boyd Raeburn binge a little while ago. The first band, great. The George Handy seized the reigns...interesting, often enough. But then Richards took over and I was like...seriously? This hit-you-over-the-head OBVIOUS, like bad movie music. So...left a sour taste in my mouth, that did.

It's a noble effort, but,,,I'm afraid that what you hear is what you get. Enjoy the show, just know that dinner is not provided.

Please post one full photo of each label"s jacket side by side in such a way that demonstrates this statement. Please put them up side by side in such a way that if I'm thumbing through the shelves that I'm going to have to stop for a second to figure out which is which.

Narrative!

If you like him that much, two words, one record - Planet Love.

Same thing.

Except....Phraoah would occasionally do a thing like that Franklin Kiermeyer date that would scare the shit out of you like it was 1966, only with even more chops. And then, back to normal.

Is Mosaic put of this, finally? It was a Mighty Quinn release when they had it. It may or may not be gone? mosaic web site is "revamped", but before spending JBucks, I'd at least call and see if they answer. If they do, see if that got any lying around collecting dust or whatever their stuff does. It's a really good record!

I am expecting/hoping that Ravi's QC trumps Zevvers'.

How far is Seattle from Palo Alto?

There should be a Goodson-Todman channel on Prime or Netflix or someplace. Full seasons of all the classics and non-classics alike. Not just Goodson-Todman, but primarily them, just because of the sheer volume of product. I can literally watch that shit for hours on end. Especially if the commercials are included. Remember that AeroWax commercial that as a kid sounded like they were firing all holy hell onto that airplane glass? Hearing it now is like, uh....seriously? Is the "Password Whisper" still a commonly/mutually understood conversational device?

Can't be late to a party that never ends, can you?

I was just looking at my Ra impulse!s and thinking how quaint they looked now that all the Evidence and other releases have restored the original packagings (sorta, close enough). I'm keeping them, though. They're like the kids you adopt and then when they grow up they find their birth parents. That's ok, still love them, and not throwing away all the pictures from their childhood. Glad they've found their full identity now.

The Mainieri is...interesting. A snapshot of a time, place, and portion of the scene. Not really my thing musically, but as a document, if you want it, get it. Mainieri was an interesting guy, actually, and always had his own path, which was largely of his own doing.

Dan's probably sick and/or tired of me saying this, but this really is god's work.

Never underestimate the jazzpower of the pool hall!

Dr. Butler was all up in the new stuff that was selling...and their was a lot of it. The "Real Blue Note" as a living label really did not exist except as catalog, Bobby Hutcherson (until he left for Columbia) and Horace Silver (who stayed until the end). There were a few one or two offs early on, but it wasn't a real effort, and it didn't ever gain traction. Again, Bobby and Horace, period. Those reissues...I don't know what role Butler played in that other than maybe signing off on it and having some talking points if anybody pressed him. Something happened at UA, the parent company. I don't know too much about that, other than that they had Don McLean/American Pie and some other successful pop stuff in the first part of the decade, KENNY ROGERS for crissakes, and then a lot of their shit ended up in cutouts, a LOT. So, i don't know. But whatever it was, Blue Note as a good-selling label with all their "New Note" stuff, that had faded away by the later part of the 70s, and the paret corparent was off into doing whatever it is things like that do whenever they do whatever they do. ISomething happened, that's all I know. I might be wrong on this, but I'm wanting to say that the LT series outlived Horace Silver? Pretty sure that the last LTs came to market after Horace's last releases, but I could be wrong about that. But if true, Blue Note v.1 ended it's life strictly as a reissue label! Into which vault material was snuck in. amazing how all that happened, it could/should have just died. And did, until 1984. Three years, ore or less, but...that's was a looooong three years. And, you know looking for a copy of Face To Face or something like that, kinda took on a new urgency, because,, wow, this shit is GONE, right? Gone for good, never to return.

Just saying, if you look at where the company was in the early 1970s, with George Butler as the UA-appointed leader, and then the success of black Ryd. and all that came after that, it's not hard to imagine a corporate label the really didn't give a rat's ass about all that old mucis that never got put out to begin with, wha want's to hear tha?, right? It very easily could have gone down that way. Whyat really turned things around, as I remember it, was Prestige doing those 24000 series two-fers. And then Milestone doing the same thing with the Riverside catalog. Those things were successful enough that they set an industry trend in motion, or so it seemed. I think Columbia was already doing it with older materierial, but this was "modern" music, packed in a then-modern package, with new liner notes and all that. A contemporary product if you will. Everybody got with that program...everybody who could, anyway. So that was the landscape. But even at that, it was kind of a gamble to start putting out unissued material in what was quite blatantly marketed as a reissue program. Blue Note (ie - UA) was making money on their new stuff, so...maybe it was a feasible project one way or the other. But is sure wasn't "The Old Blue Note Springing Back To Life" or anything like that...we'd have to wait until 1984 and Bruce Lundvall for that. The other UA jazz holdings besides blue Note, they all got something out of this as well...Imperial, ACTUAL United Artists, Transition, Pacific Jazz (although...there's a chapter there where if anybody wants to bitch about a short chapter with hideous packaging, there's a totally legit one), whatever label that Art Pepper stuff was on, ec. But the real story in all that reissue stuff as it pertains to "Blue Note" as we know it today was the vault material. That pretty much changed everything, We shouldn't forget that (if we ever knew it), and if we weren't there to see it, we need to tell it. Because today's concept o "Blue Note"...maybe they rested on the 7th day, but on the 8th day, they got busy with revisions.

I was born in 1955, and that's not too terribly different from how I got mine, how all the kids got it. We all had these little tiny but visible scars on the arm from where we got the smallpox vaccine. It wasn't a shot, there was no hypodermic involved.

The "real" Blue note in the 70s was artists such as Mizell Brothers Donald Byrd, Bobbi Humphry, Noel Pointer, Ronnie Laws, Earl Klugh, people doing that thing. That stuff still has traction on some circles too. But the current Blue Note "mystique" was very much in the air then, I know I was into it at some point, probably around 1977 or so, long story....and THAT was what the whole reissue projects played to that. Still, very much a sub-market for "Blue Note". The first packages were indeed reissues (and very worthy ones), but pretty soon, the vault stuff started coming out, and that REALLY fed they mystique, like, WOW, there's MORE Blue Note? And as the corporate parent started to wither and dither, the vault material started gushing out to market, totally counter-intuitive, somebody was doing this in spite of circumstances, not because of them.. Again, look at those Discogs pages and how much got released, especially from, like 1979-1981. Now that they've covered it all up (pun intended), it's very easy to look at it all like, oh, THIS is Blue Note, THIS is the legacy, but...if things had broken just a little bit differently, if those holdings had just sat in the vault without an aggressive, interested set of people turning them loose, it would still be a great label, but the catalog would be significantly different - smaller and narrower, than it is now. Worth noting that around this same time, Cuscuna was also getting Braxton Arista records put out "over the transom" I believe he put it as. Again, just getting as music/product out in the air while he could. Him and his cohorts really were guerilla warriors inside the normal record business. Just saying, what we today see as "Blue Note" is NOTHING like what it was 45 or so years ago, If I can find an image of an early 70s inner sleeve that listed the catalog, I'll post it. And remember, can't stress this enough, the REAL 70s Blue Note was NOT anything being reissued or released from the vaults. Totally different world there. And those "cheap" "ugly" LT covers...those were escapees of...some metaphor. Those were the clothes they had, and they presented well enough to make it out, if nothing else they brought a picture from home with them. If people want to put new clothes on them, like a family of boat people, make them look like they were born here and lived in the burbs all their life, hey, do that. But I've never known a refugee family who does not know their own story, or is ashamed of it. Records are not people, but I see the same dynamics at play. Records ARE culture, they are not people, but what they carry is. That's how I roll with it. The 2-fers were, like, refugees with sponsors waiting, but those LT things....just get grab the family, get in the boat at midnight, duck the bullets, and row like hell until you get picked up.

That would be John Litweiler, a name worth remembering!

I don't know about "uniformly excellent" in terms of "jazz record", you'd probably get a lo of disgruntled pushback about that...but not from me, because...do you get unhappy with a pair of pants because it's not a shirt? After that, though... they're all very interesting, especially in retrospect and especially on retrospect as Cannonball's playing just slowly but surely evolves in both sound and substance. The records are almost all "product", but Cannonball was, I think, cool with that because, quiet as it's kept, Cannonball was very much a Black Businessman as much as he was a Purveyor Of Black Musical Entertainment Art. For him, "commercial" was not a disparagement, it was an aim, and that meant variety on BOTH ends of the spectrum. And while all that was going on, he kept giving Joe Zawinul his head. For every "Oh Babe", there's a 74 Miles Away. Again, quiet as it's kept, there was a LOT brewing on that band. Miles did not own the patent on brewing! Just know what you're listening to and you'll have a great time figuring it all out. Listen for what you think it ought to be, you're liable to be miserable, or worse!