Niko

https://www.discogs.com/master/3454421-أحمد-Ahmed-Giant-Beauty

"he ended his life by jumping out of a hotel window" is not the conclusion that Jeroen de Valk reaches in his excellent book - his most likely scenario after talking to many people is that Chet was sitting on the window sill and then fell... Not saying that what your father in law saw wasn't real (that particular police station must have been an interesting place to work anyway), but it seems fair to say that he saw mostly the low points of a life where the highs and lows lie a lot further apart than for you and me... I agree with Д.Д. that Chet did better in the 80s than pretty much any comparable junkie musician and legions of sober ones; and that there is not much reason to believe that he was particularly unhappy in those years even though there were certainly moments where he would have wished stuff was different

Indeed, I just listened to Doug's Prelude and there is no trumpet or cornet to be heard, neither Cherry nor Dorham. Noal Cohen's discography also doesn't list him with the soloists for the track (even though he includes him in the session personnel) https://attictoys.com/clifford-jordan/clifford-jordan-discography/ but, indeed, it sounds as if Cherry was not present on that track...

that's what a guy who turned down the job and left the music business for a, well, criminal career (link, video) said... somewhere in the book, he points out that a turning point for him was the humbling realization that from a purely financial viewpoint being Miles Davis is fine but being Charles Mingus is not any more attractive than many, many other non-musical careers out there... but the Rollins job really didn't sound too attractive financially, also compared to other music jobs he had... I guess he had this expectation that playing with Sonny Rollins was the big time, which it was in some ways, but not in others

what I found illuminating was the passage about the Sonny Rollins tryout and the very modest salary offer in Charles Farrell's autobiography (not that much jazz content in the book because there wasn't a lot of money to be made)

happy to subscribe as well but I would strongly advise against making this anything more than a voluntary option... registering here is already quite an achievement these days it seems - so we shouldn't add a second hurdle of having to pay 50$ after making it through the registration before one can start posting... at the very least, I would give people the first 100 posts for free (wonder who the last newbie was to make it past 100 posts... I bet it was some time ago)

Thanks!

Thanks!

agreed about Revelation, I tend to buy them when I see them... That Frank Strazzeri album is a nice one

Time for detective Zev Feldman to enter the picture...

Just playing this Thornhill album and rereading Mike Zwerin's memories of touring with Thornhill against it (here, starting with "Claude Thornhill loved confusion.") In particular, Zwerin remembers that "Arrangements written for full sections were being played by only one trombone, two trumpets, four saxophones, and a now guitarless rhythm section, plus the essential French horn". But for this album, there's a full big band again with some studio pros like Frank Rehak, Urbie Green, Barry Galbraith...

there must have been hundreds all over Europe... recently, I read a nice newspaper article about the Dutch village of Velsen placing a memorial for its former citizen altoist George Johnson (who'd played with Buck Clayton, Don Byas etc)... here's a nice article about drummer Al Jones I found recently https://jazztimeeurope.wordpress.com/2019/06/12/profile-al-jones/ mentioned in there is Lou Bennett, which reminds me of Rhoda Scott... and so the list goes on...

That shop has the most frustrating opening hours... I do get to Paris for work from time to time but so far it never overlapped with the days the shop is open... (That said, I can choose between at least two shops in walking distance that stock Sam Records which I guess is quite a luxury)

not a very informed opinion, but I am really happy with this Jack McVea compilation, it runs through like an album and has a nice gatefold cover with good liner notes and pictures

for me not, as others said: this is a chance to hear some spectacular Joe Henderson and Jack deJohnette, and to hear them really well; I'm not someone who pays a whole lot of attention to the bass, guess my biggest quibble is that I'd want to hear the piano at bit better at times... but the sound quality is still better to my ears than on any Charlie Parker bootleg I can recall... I wouldn't use it to test a new stereo system.

listened via spotify yesterday and agree, during the bass solos it's good, otherwise, I could mainly feel it but not that much more...

That was one of my first three or four CDs, not sure if I still have it... A good compilation fwiw

One Clarence Bullard is listed as producer for the English LP and the other Burns album on discogs

Thanks indeed! I usually borrow my better half's hairdryer and then heat up the stickers before/during peeling and that works reasonably well... But I wouldn't say it's like magic

good one, with box sets, I've known for quite a while that they don't work for me, with those fancy books learning is a bit slower

thanks! your conversation reminded me that yesterday I did order a book about record covers (this one, in Dutch) and that the confirmation/payment email probably landed in my spam... which it did (that book was available on archive.org for a while, maybe still is, focus is on cover art of Dutch editions in the 50s and 60s, a lot of it jazz... and what is actually nice is that it's written by someone from he cover design industry who felt like he'd participated in something special... so it's a bit like the book that Tom Hannan, Reid Miles and all those people never wrote afaik) for the record, I did get the Sun Ra book, and even though it's a wonderful object I don't think I really needed it after all ... it won't make me buy better records... the brit jazz book was a bit tempting but not quite as much as the J Jazz one... will definitely regret not getting the J Jazz book at some point down the road... the question is how much, and so far the risk seemed manageable... Good look on your job search!

https://aviary.library.vanderbilt.edu/collections/2137/collection_resources/137619 this one looks like it might have been put together by Allen Lowe (Joe Albany, piano, Jeff Fuller, bass, Sir John Godfrey, drums, Dicky Myers, alto sax)

Of course, I know Zimmer Frei but never heard about the Fanzine... I could imagine that part of the problem is that it finishes Bill Russell's unfinished Bunk Johnson book, using his research... Which may have created a psychological barrier to editing the material more radically...

the copy in the public library in Cologne that I read as a kid had a fairly self-produced feel, I do remember it was printed in Belgium (and bound with the plastic things you get at a "copy shop") so I guess that was the 1977 original edition... (nowadays I have a British edition from the early 1980s which, I guess, is the edition that most people had until recently) I got Lee Collins' autobiography "Oh didn't he ramble" and the Bunk Johnson biography by Mike Hazeldine and Barry Martyn recently at a used bookstore... the Collins' autobiography is easily recommended if you find it, an interesting life turned into a sequence of entertaining stories, most of them not from the center of jazz history - but that's not necessarily a minus. The Bunk Johnson book is nice to have but not necessarily fun to read... It feels like the authors report more or less all the information they have, leading to an incredibly uneven pace in the story. The book begins with an inconclusive chapter on whether Johnson was born in 1879 or 1889 with many arguments given in favor of both positions... Generally, not a whole lot is known about Bunk's early years and there is little the authors could do about it... For Bunk's career between, say 1920 and the time of his rediscovery around 1940, the amount of information is about right. Then, Johnson fell in with a group of fairly pedantic people who carefully documented all of his movements... And, to their credit, I can totally see why they followed Johnson so closely, after all they were fans, they did loads of stuff to advance his career and to them things unfolded in real time... The fault - if there is one - is clearly with the authors of the book... At some point around page 70 out of 250 densely printed pages, as we reach the final eight years of Bunk's long life the pace gets incredibly slow... You read where Bunk got his chicken sandwich, went on a detour for a drink, met the cousin of someone he hadn't seen in 35 years... when I first read a page like that, I expected something totally remarkable to happen next - say, he declares war on Japan - because why else would you document a particular day in such detail... but, instead, Bunk plays a concert that's not well attended and doesn't arrive at home until 8am... and no, not every day in Bunk's final eight years is documented in that much detail but many are... less than a hundred pages to go but I am not sure whether I'll be able to finish this book...