JSngry

All the "noise" about cats being "too good" to play this-or-that kind of music is mostly just that - noise. People need to eat, people need to get paid, people know how all that works. McCoy Tyner took a gig with Ike & Tina Turner - after he had left Coltrane. It didn't last too long, but, still, most players who do this for a living will play a short-term gig if the setup is legit and the money is right. Perhaps interestingly, although a lot of the "too good to play music X" is often associated with the "avant-garde", you'd be hard pressed to find a higher concentration of players that had some pretty significant R&B experiences and then brought them directly and unapolgetically into their music that the Midwesterners of the AACM & BAG. Same for the Fort Worth crew around Ornette Coleman.

So we get a happy version of Let It Be. And then what happens?

Tell me about this new Criterion Collection streaming service, please...what will be the scope of there offering?

hilarious!

We got the fifers, we got the pipers, we got the lifers, we got the vipers...where is Faye Dunaway, please?

grrrrr.....

Started on this one this AM, Post-Space Age Married Man Commuter Car Music (progress?). It's on Jasmine, and for the first 20 minutes or so, it sounds like it's been noise-reductioned to the point of near uselessness. Seems to me that I have a Jasmine Hi-Lo's release that's also go the same issue. Is this common for Jasmine on material of this vintage? Are there other PD (or otherwise) releases of this material that have nice crisp sound? "Doodletown Pipers" does not seem to me the type of piece that was intended to have a bunch of high-end shaved off.

Do you actually know any of these people?

Did not know there was a box of those! I just have one (Vol 4}, but it's a gem, for sure. The last thing on there, "I Can't Give Ypou Anything But Love" is simply extrtraterrestial, the band is so relaxed and loose and swinging at the same time, the studio take is nothing like that, and something like that, knowing that people were hearing that kind of thing real time possibly as much - if not more - than the records...we can all be indulged our reality-based skepticism about the whole "King Of Swing" nonsense, but hey, stuff like this, it speaks for itself. So there's a box, eh?

Why not? Are they averse to learning or otherwise paying attention? Or simply enjoying? God help them if they are!

It is, and to be honest, it's apples and oranges. Quintet, not sextet, and Roy McCurdy(!) not Louis Hayes. My preference is for the later band, and/but I gotta tell you, that's coming from the slow but steady trickle of live stuff that's been coming out. The Capitol records of the time, probably intentionally, don't give you the full punch that this one does. Not even Money In The Pocket, which is a bit revelatory in that sense, doesn't get to what this one does. So much natural energy!

2nd disc of the new box. Has anybody heard the opera Highway 1, USA, from which the two arias are excerpted? I see just one full recording from 2005(!). Would really like to hear the whole thing, if only because a provocative title such as "What Does He Know Of Dreams?"...that's got a lot of implications...who is he and what is he to you? And what is motivating this question?

That Bob James is just one hot mess, ain't he! Who'd have thunk?

The CD, with the epic uncut "Escapism".

Well, there you go, I didn't know that pre-history, especially that the ESP record predated Mercury. Learn new things every day, thanks!

Roy McCurdy, y'all, ROY MCCURDY!!!!!! It's worht noting that lesser players would get intimidated by his unintimidated intensity, but no, not these guys, they thrive on it. It's a beautiful thing to hear/feel. Also Zawinul, people might have ambiguity about him in general, here especially, but it's one of those things where if he wasn't hanging, espcially in the comp, you would feel it right away. And you don't, not for a second. He's more than hanging, he's like everybody else, he's come to play! Recommended!

wow, I remember a lot of Carmen McRae records and a lot of Groove Merchant records, but I don't remember these two? What's the deal with them?

hmmmm...that's often a sign that they picked up a bulk lot somehow. I'm going to have to go out and see about that! Thanks for the heads up!

Well, yes and no,,, First album (for Mercury) was "advanced inside" But then, he did the ESP record, of which I am not overly fond, and yeah, THAT one was out there. But then he cam bac inside and the rest is history. I'm thinking that after the ESP album was when he did the Sarah Vaughan gig. I did not know until fairly recently that he was a discovery of Quincy Jones. Connecting all those dots from Mercury to Sarah Vaughan to CTI, that all makes sense. The ESP record, though, is immensely WTF?-ish, and even if I don't like it, I still LOL at it being a Bob James record. It's nice to know that the guy went there.

My point is just that I had never heard it before. Now I have. And that's about it. It's a good revord, neither Moto nor Romano were exactly... overexposed, so mission acomplished there. But will I ever listen to it again? Probably not? One, done, had my fun.

Jack Tracy was working with Limelight, and had done albums for them with Gene Harris, Les MCann, Art Blakey, a.o. Looks like in 1967, he got on with Liberty and the Pacific Jazz/World Pacific team, and Liberty is probably who put him on blue Note for however long he was on there (he also did Coldwater Flat). How that pertains to Jack Wilson specifically, I don't know. But Wilson had a reputation as a "musician's musician", so between that and Tracy already working with McCann and getting ezposure to the LA thing, I can see that hookup developing. As it pertains to Blue Note specifically, that's at least 50/50 irrelevant at that point. It was all Liberty there for a little bit.

Wild now, but think about then - Eric was a young LA guy (did he have a family then), a serious, studious musician trying to establish a professional career. I don't know who the contractor for this gig would have been, but, you know, you're young, looking to work, you get the call, you do the responsible thing and take the gig, right? If he would have died in a car wreck on the way hoe, it wouldn't be wild at all, Eric Dolphy playing on a Platters gig, who the hell is Eric Dolphy, right? Oh, this is funny - apparently we've had this discussion here before. We've all forgotten!

I knew him from his big band work, mostly with Buddy Rich, and was surprised how much Joe Henderson influence he had absorbed. The session as a whole is kinda "top-shelf second tier" to my tastes, but lord, with everything else that's been reissued, this one surely should have been.