Niko

are you sure that Hamilton was Lee's uncle? For instance, here https://www.si.edu/media/NMAH/NMAH-AC0808_Hamilton_Chico_Transcript.pdf it would have been quite logical for Hamilton to mention this, when he's discussing how his son Forestorn Hamilton Jr was the manager of Love and the name Arthur Lee pops up...

Sven Regner, singer and guitar player and front figure with a highly respected German indie rock bands of the 90s (Element of Crime), their German language albums starting with Damals hinterm Mond form one of the most impressive bodies of work within postwar German language popular music or something like that... just like most of my friends, I have heard their most popular songs hundreds of times and can easily sing along with something like this just like we could sing along with many Tom Waits songs... I guess the two have similar fan bases in Germany... at some point, Regner started to write novels, people were skeptical as usual but at least the first one turned into a bestseller, Herr Lehman, that was celebrated for it's portrayal of Berlin ca 1990... he also wrote a script for the movie version of that book, which was a highly successful movie over here... and like I wrote above, after all those movies, novels, audiobooks, rock albums, many of which were both brilliant and huge sellers... he had built up enough of a standing with his major label that he could release an awful album of jazz standards featuring himself on trumpet...

Have you heard + Plugged Nickel John Abercrombie or Ralph Towner?

Thanks, Mike!

Is this one good / what's it like? I've seen this many times but never knew what to make of it

Thanks Mike! I really like the album with Griffin which was my introduction but also the two in the Amy Select and Something's Happening... still looking for the rest...

Duane Tatro

Gétatchèw Mèkurya is another of those legendary names, I think he's amazing... here you can also read a scan of the liner notes to his issue in the Ethiopiques series

The Duke John McLaughlin or Stanley Clarke?

Bassist Gary Mapp who recorded with Monk was also a police man (it's in Kelley's book) ... I like Oliver Nelson's playing a lot on some of his early recordings like the two Prestige albums with Dolphy (especially Straight Ahead) and also "Meet Oliver Nelson" with Kenny Dorham and Ray Bryant Don Patterson - Mellow Soul

I'd been wondering what I could play to commemorate 60 years of the Berlin wall today... Might also go with Brandt later, right now I'm still in the Patterson Stitt orbit

have played most of my records with Don Patterson in the last few days, including of course those with Weeden... Feelin's is fine (and indeed not hard to track down on LP) but my favorites are Boss Tenors in Orbit (with Ammons and Stitt) and Low Flame (with Stitt) on Jazzland... I have Low Flame on a twofer which combines it with another favorite Stitt album of mine, Shangri-La by Stitt/Patterson/James without Weeden

there's a great Steve Coleman Interview where he talks at length about Stitt, telling e.g. this story: " I’ll tell you one story I saw with him. There was a saxophone player in Chicago, Guido Sinclair. Normally, local saxophone players, they have certain things they can do really well. But they’re not really very broad. I mean, not usually. There’s usually a reason why they’re local, to put it that way. But this guy had certain keys that he could play in, like really, really fluently. He had these certain little phrases and things like that. He kept his fingers really close to the keys, it looked like his fingers weren’t moving. One time I saw him with Stitt. Here the guy was whipping all over the place. Stitt was kind of a gladiator kind of guy. So they were playing, and this guy was whipping all over the place, so Stitt saw what was happening and he analyzed the situation. And the next tune he just called off something that he knew the guy couldn’t play on. He didn’t even know the guy real good but he could tell, he knew just by listening to the way the guy played that he wouldn’t be able to handle this. So he called off a tune which was a normal tune but he started off real quickly in a key that he knew the guy couldn’t deal with. The guy fell out of his place, all of a sudden all the speed and everything came to a complete stop. And Stitt was still able to do all the Stitt shit. [...] Stitt just tore this guy apart in public. " what comes out clearly in that interview is that Stitt was a local player and an inspiration to young SC but apparently also to young local saxophone players in Detroit and elsewhere - while DG probably did a better job at connecting with the international jazz fan... what also comes out is this very self-centered attitude - to Stitt, the best concert is one where he looks great while everybody else looks really bad... I guess in a concert this type of attitude can work out but you don't record a perfect album with that attitude...

I searched a little bit yesterday... found almost nothing about the label... but Nancy Steele and Sheila Jordan did work together a bit later on (they were "heading the show at the Robber's Roost, 68th St and Madison Ave" for about two weeks in May 1963)

the Magnificient Goldberg actually does mention it on the first page... besides that, yes, it's one in over 120 - been playing Patterson/Stitt albums this morning, I already own 12 or so but there are still gaps... in a way, this omission is also a sign of when this was written 14 years ago - the first cd reissue that was easy to get over here had just come out (this one) and many people were less into vinyl than they are now...

that one's a favorite...

interestingly, for the poster, they gave the cover some type of 1980s makeover:

Hannes Zerbe - Blech Band "Blech" is for "brass"... an album that proves that the spirits of Eissler, Weill and Ayler were alive and well in early-80s Eastern Germany... 16 horns (including 3 tubas) plus rhythm featuring international guest Willem Breuker... my copy came with a promo poster and an additional document in (poor) English and French, all provided by the government institution that was in charge of organizing the international tours of the country's artists...

Helmut Sachse - Hannes Zerbe streaming this one via youtube... a split LP that was recorded in the first month of my life... it's a logical week for exploring more of this Easter stuff as we're approaching the 60th anniversary of the Berlin wall on Friday

thanks for the tip with youtube... on his webpage, he lists a tribute CD for baritonist Henk van Es (Interstellar Soul Control) but somehow I never found it (guess I should write to him)... anyway, a few month ago, Noord put two tracks from that CD on youtube (along with a text that says a lot about who van Es was besides being the second sax player on that Soulbrass Inc album) here and here...

Lasse Werner & Bernt Rosengren ‎– Bombastica! 1959-60 Bombastica! is the title of first tune and of the original Jazzland release of this album, an "attempt to highlight contemporary Swedish jazz composition," but in my book it doesn't describe the music well at all... to me, the whole things sounds more like extremely talented fans trying to create something like Mating Call or an imaginary John Coltrane Prestige album with Al Haig at the piano... works nicely for me

thanks! not 100% sure whether it's fair though René Thomas ‎– The Real Cat one of the great CDs in the Jazz in Paris series, compiling a 10'' album and two 7'' singles from the mid-50s that were probably extremely hard to come by for a long time before this here came out... the music seems very much modelled after the Stan Getz Roost recordings with Jimmy Raney or Johnny Smith... the biggest selling points are Thomas on guitar and (on the album tracks) Urtreger on piano...

Ingfried Hoffmann's Hammond Tales realizing only now that the title is alluding to the Offenbach opera "Tales of Hoffmann" (and probably the books, too)... there's not that much Rene Thomas on spotify - but there is some, including this album... basically, this is Klaus Doldinger's rhythm section of the time (Hoffmann at the organ, Helmut Kandlberger, Klaus Weiss) with Thomas taking Doldinger's place... Thomas does find places to shine... but in 1963 the hippest organ playing was still happening in the US... in the coming decades, Hoffmann would become the eminent composer of music for children's TV shows on German TV, deeply influencing multiple generations (including me)... and the traits that made him excel in that business may well have the same traits that led him into some dubious choices here... basically, you get the impression that he is picking his organ sounds to impress 5 year olds as effectively as possible... not a bad album at all but Thomas' organ albums with Louiss and Bennett are better...

René Thomas ‎– Hommage à ... René Thomas TPL on Vogel was the last René Thomas album, which makes this one, recorded five days earlier on February 21 1974, the next to last... this was recorded for the radio show Sesjun [and by now my Dutch is good enough to understand that this is pronounced like the English word ... "Session"] which means the sound is much better than on the Vogel album... why the label decided to market this record as if it was some type tribute album is beyond me... it's Thomas himself playing a program of his usual songs with one of the classical Dutch rhythm sections of that time period (Rob Franken on electric piano, Koos Serierse on bass, Louis Debij on drums)... as much as I love Jacques Pelzer, Rein de Graaff and Han Bennink... this is much better than TPL...

Thomas Pelzer Limited - TPL a lucky score a few years ago since the badly damaged sleeve (persistent stickers from its former life in a public library) pushed this into my price range... if this was as good as it looks on paper, it would be completely amazing - Rene Thomas and Jacques Pelzer are Belgian favorites and the rhythm section of Rein de Graaff, Henk Haverhoek and Han Bennink is hard to beat in general... but somehow, the album is recorded incredibly badly for a studio album from 1974... with the piano and drums being almost inaudible behind the bass... and somehow, I lack the imagination what this music would be like if I could hear it properly