garthsj

.... and don't forget to add... "win awards for best design of the year!"

A week of Braxton??? Are you insane?? ... or are you trying to drive me toward that direction??

This is what we are talking about ... as I look at the well thumbed pages of my copy and see the red check marks next to the album titles, I can proudly claim that I once owned 181 of the 200 LP albums listed. (Most of the things I did not have were in the "avant-garde" section ... Taylor, Ayler, Sonny Murray, etc.). I need to go through it and see how many of these I now have on CD ...

Kevin ... I believe that Jordi Pujols has gone "legit" in recent years ... I very much doubt that he would want to take on the Sony Corp. by blatantly stealing this album. Also ... who did the remastering, if that is the truth? He has licensed many albums in the recent past, so let's hope this falls into that category. Also, I wasn't clear about your comment ... you would NOT buy it if the album contained license agreements? Garth, the eternal optimist!

I am giving everyone a "heads-up" to listen to this album over the weekend, so that we can start deliberating in earnest on Sunday. Forgive me for selecting such an obvious album, but I am surprised that one of the seminal contributions to the development of modern jazz has not been discussed before. This is an album that should be in every collection, so I am hoping that we will have a lively discussion of its strengths and weaknesses, and NOT all just a paean to this icon. I will post some comments on the album made by major jazz critics, such as André Hodeir. I encourage others to find critical reviews of this album when it was first released, remembering that while these tracks were recorded in 1949 and 1950, it was only released in 1954 as a 10" album as part of the "Classics in Jazz" series on Capitol, after the initial release as a series of 78rpm singles. It was only in 1957 that the 12" album appeared, with three additional tracks, and was titled "The Birth Of The Cool" ... So ... let the games begin ....

Just to alert those of you interested. This great album, originally on Columbia, is about to be reissued by Fresh Sounds, in what they claim is a remastered 24bit edition. I certainly hope so ... This album is HIGHLY recommended ..... I assume that DG (THE BASTARDS!) will soon have it in stock. FSRCD 381 MANNY ALBAM - BILL RUSSO- TEO MACERO- TEDDY CHARLES - Something New, Something Blue Featuring: Art Farmer, Donald Byrd (tp); Frank Rehak, Bob Brookmeyer (tb); Phil Woods, Hal McKusick (as); Al Cohn, Frank Socolow (ts); Bill Evans, Eddie Costa, Mal Waldron (p); Teddy Charles (vb); Addison Farmer, George Duvivier (b); Ed Shaughnessy (d) Outstanding sound. Digital remastering in 24 bit high resolution. Recorded in New York in 1959, "Something New, Something Blue" was designed as a vehicle for four arrangers, Teddy Charles, Teo Macero, Bill Russo, and Manny Albam, who each contributed an original composition and a new version of a blues standard for a medium-size ensemble which included Donald Byrd, Bob Brookmeyer, Mal Waldron, Ed Shaughnessy, Bill Evans, Mal Waldron, Art Farmer and others. Tracklisting: 1. Night Crawlers - Manny Albam 4:09 2. Tin Roof Blues - Manny Albam 6:48 3. Blues for Amy - Teo Macero 4:44 4. St. Louis Blues - Teo Macero 4:30 5. Swinging Goatsherd Blues - Teddy Charles 4:16 6. Blues in the Night - Teddy Charles 4:42 7. East Hampton Blues - Bill Russo 5:47 8. Davenport Blues - Bill Russo 3:41 Tracks #1-4: Recorded in NYC, May 15, 1959. Art Farmer (tp), Frank Rehak (tb), Phil Woods (as), Al Cohn (ts), Bill Evans, Eddie Costa (p), Addison Farmer (b), Ed Shaughnessy (d) Tracks #5-8: Recorded in NYC, May 15, 1959. Donald Byrd (tp), Bob Brookmeyer (tb), Hal McKusick (as), Frank Socolow (ts), Mal Waldron (p); Teddy Charles (vb), George Duvivier (b), Ed Shaughnessy (d)

I can confirm what Kevin says .. the Japanese version of this set is in stereo, and the range is not that wide, but clearly on the first cut Watrous is featured slightly on the left channel, and Pepper on the right. It is a beautiful recording ... as were the original LPs...

As one of the "older" members on this board, I would like to add my 2 cents here ..... I have been a fan of the this group since their first iteration as the Milt Jackson Quartet in the early 1950s.. and then through the Prestige period, and latterly the Atlantic, and finally Pablo periods. I must have just about every CD they issued, Japanese and otherwise ... so obviously, I am a very big fan. I respect the range of views expressed here, and while I don't agree with many of them (wouldn't life be boring if we all agreed on everything), there is something magical in the way these four men can affect my emotions. For me the MJQ are always of interest as thinking music, not as subtle background. If I lie back and listen, really listen to what they are doing, the interplay, the quality of the improvisations, Lewis's incredible comping (melodies in themselves) behind Jackson, Kay's range of sounds, Heath's hard swing and melodic solos, and, of course, Lewis's incredible way of swinging the hell out of just a single note, then I am transported into a different realm. For what it is worth, I think that the MJQ are underappreciated for their improvisational qualitites. There is so much emphaisis on their tonal presentation that what they are actually improvisationally doing gets lost in the shuffle. The best way to really understand this is to put on those earphones, close your eyes and listen ... It will rock your world. For starters, I suggest you take this challenge with either "Blues on Bach" or "The Final Concert" ....

This was published in today's L A Times: March 17, 2005 Larry Bunker, 76; Respected Drummer By Jon Thurber, Times Staff Writer Larry Bunker, a drummer and percussionist who played with a who's who of jazz giants and fashioned a busy career as a film musician, has died. He was 76. Bunker died March 8 at Queen of Angels-Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from a recent stroke, said his wife, Brandyn. A native of Long Beach, Bunker was musically inclined from an early age and was self-taught on piano, accordion, drums and saxophone. In 1946, he was accepted into the U.S. Army band and played drums and piano while serving at Ft. Ord until his discharge in 1948. In the early 1950s, he played with trombonist Howard Rumsey at the fabled Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach. From then on, he played with the top names in jazz, including saxophonists Stan Getz, Art Pepper and Gerry Mulligan, and guitarist Barney Kessel. He was also a member of singer Peggy Lee's band. He joined Bill Evans in 1964 for one of the pianist's better trios. In an interview with Down Beat magazine in 1964, Evans called Bunker a "marvelous musician." "He plays excellent vibes as well as being an all-round percussionist, and being so musical he just does the right thing because he's listening," Evans said. "He really knows music, feels music - and is a superlative drummer." Throughout his long career, Bunker was a highly sought-after studio musician for movies who worked with a number of leading film composers, including Henry Mancini, Alfred Newman, Miklos Rosza, Jerry Goldsmith, Johnny Mandel and John Williams. His first film was "Stalag 17" in 1953 and his last was "The Incredibles" in 2004. He also was a timpanist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and, according to his family, performed on more than 30 Academy Awards programs, including the 77th in February. In his later life, he listened primarily to classical music. According to the late critic Leonard Feather, Bunker's avocations included collecting and restoring antiques, repairing instruments and making custom instruments. In addition to his wife, Bunker is survived by his daughter, Tracy; his brother, George; and a granddaughter.

I thought that some of you might be interested in this audio review by Kevin Whitehead on NPR's "Fresh Air" last week. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4531416

We were a teenage group of real jazz nuts in far off Cape Town, South Africa, and Charlie Parker was a mythical God to us. Even to us fifteen year-olds, he was the fountainhead from which all else had sprung (our knowledge of jazz at that time was based largely on that found in liner notes). I distinctly remember being in bed early on the morning after his death, and reading a small piece in the Cape Times about the "death of a famous jazz musician in New York" the day before. I was stunned and later that day, after I informed all of my jazz buddies, none of whom had seen the piece in the newspaper, we went to Frank's house and played several Parker albums. For whatever reason, I distinctly recall the joy I received that afternoon from hearing his version of "Star Eyes" ... I still do. The most intriguing memory is that right after lunch at my high school, the famous phrase "BIRD LIVES" appeared in rather large letters on the student's washroom wall ... word spread and we made excuses to go and see it. No one ever owned up to doing it (I wish I could take the credit), and it remained there for several months, before being whitewashed over by some uncaring custodian. As an aside .... for many years, written minutely in the grouting of the tiles above one of the urinals on my floor at the university, was the legend "Bird Lives" ... hmmmmmmm .. I wonder who put it there? After several years of comfort staring at this affirmation, one day I was intensely disturbed to see that someone had added the word "Larry" to the front of the message! I tried removing it, but was never too successful, so I switched to another urinal. Now that I am in an entirely new building, and have a new washroom, the fiftieth anniversary will be honored in suitable style tomorrow when no one is around.

I have just received the news that Larry Bunker has died. He was one of the great west coast percussionists, appearing on many important dates. I will post more details when I know them.

I would agree .... but in general the world just moved at a slower pace then ... and this shift in "rhythm of life" has been noted by many social and cultural critics ... Marshall McLuhan's concept of dominant media shaping the society and culture is accurate here. In the last thirty years the average length of a news story on television evening news has gone from nearly two minutes to less than twenty seconds today!

The subject of the continuity between theater and the emergence of the movies is a topic of much discussion among students of early film. The first thing to remember is that there were many different "forms" of live theater, arcing from the formal presentation of opera and dramatic presentations all the way over to the other end of burlesque, and everything in between such as operettas, revues, melodrama, and vaudeville. In my own research, as well as many others, a clear relationship can be established between the increasing realism found on the meodrama stage, and the content of early movies. In some later melodramas there were sections which had 20 minutes of visual action without any dialogue (a man climbing upward to rescue a baby from an eagle's nest ... later made into an early movie, starring D.W. Griffith!). In a production of "Ben Hur" in 1899, the theater critic Hilary Bell made a wonderfully prophetic statement when he wrote: "In the play we see merely several horses galloping on a moving platform. They make no headway, and the moving scenery behind them does not delude the spectators into the belief that they are racing ... The only way to secure the exact scene of action for this incident in a theater IS TO REPRESENT IT BY MR. EDISON'S INVENTION!" ( Ben Hur has had, of coure, three very successful film productions over the years). Anyway ... I was referring to more formal theatrical productions, but let me quote a study in Boston in 1909 which showed even at that early age, that of entertainment seating, formal theater accounted for 13.5 percent, while movies and vaudeville with movies accounted for 85.4 percent. (Opera acounted for 1.1 percent). Movies had very quickly become THE major paid entertainment throught the western world. At a time when the average weekly wage was about $8-10, theater attendance was expensive, about 50 cents to $1.50, while movies ranged from 5 to 10 cents. Many social critics decried the high costs of the legitimate theater. Melodrama was considerably cheaper, ranging from 15 cents to $1. Hmmmmmmm.. I should just scan in an entire chapter from my book, or from a highly recommended book I edited as part of a series on the History of Communication, Richard Butsch, The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television 1750-1990 (N.Y. Cambridge UP, 2000). .. as I said earlier, this is a fascinating (to me anyway) subject ... with much work yet to be done!

Allen .. instinctively one would think that your observation was a very logical conclusion. However, the fact is that less than 5% of the population went to the live theater at this time ... for the majority of the population the movies were their theater , their "democratic art" so to speak (although the film industry was never really democratic, and the irony of the title of my book escaped some critics). So, for the large bulk of the movie audience, their "conditioning" had been shaped by years of movie going, not their theatrical experiences. I do agree that the migration of stage actors, directors, and others from the theater did have an influence on the structure of early sound films, but the technological limitations, limited production costs (especially in comparison to today), and desire to feature the strength of stories and stars were the major factors. Berigan is also right in pointing out that different studios had different styles that affected the appearance of their films. I remember very clearly being at an academic presentation early in my career where a poor young scholar attempted to present a paper about Warner's "dark style" ... when one old, vastly experienced film maker pointed that that Warner's were simply too cheap to fully light their sets, and this is what gave their early sound films that peculiar framing look ... I was glad that was not me!

You raise an interesting point here. There is NO indication that there were fewer censors (although I am not sure which level of censorship you mean here ... the Production Code Administration (PCA), the 13 state censors, or the approximatley 120 local municipal and county censor boards strewn throughout the country?) However, while "moral" censorship became less of a focus during the war, this was due to a combination of factors. After December 1941, Hollywood geared up for war movie production, and this shifted the emphasis obviously. (During the period 1942-1945 "war movies" averaged about 30% of all movies produced in Hollywood ... ref. Jowett, Film: The Democratic Art, p.318) .. The major concern shifted to the censorial activities of the Office of War Information (OWI), ensuring that these war films were accurate, patriotic and contributed to the war effort in a positive way. Hollywood hated this form of control and appealed directly to the president, and eventually by 1944, the OWI was emasculated by the Congress with a very reduced budget. If you go through the files of the PCA you do not get a sense that efforts to enforce the Code were any less during these years. (Joseph Breen, the head of the PCA, was not going to let a silly thing like war stop hm from enforcing his Catholic view of morality!) Just ask Howard Hughes who was trying to get approval of "The Outlaw" during this period! HOWEVER, your comments have stirred my academic interest .... it would take some sort of fairly extensive analysis to determine whether other censorship boards were more inclined to be lax in their efforts during the war. This is a distinct possibility. The questions surrounding the making and exhibition of "The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek" deserves a posting of it own, which I will do later today. It is, indeed, a unique film for its time ....

I hate to disagree with Allen on this, but his answer is not entirely correct. First, editing and cutting in the twenties and early thirties could, and in some cases was as sophisticated as that found today. However, audiences were conditioned to see longer scenes, with less camera movement and with less cutting than we are used to seeing today (this is known as the MTV effect). It must also be considered that in the period 1929-1931 the technical issues of sound movies were still being worked out, and this necessitated a much more static camera. (See the scene in "Singing In The Rain" with the microphone in the flowers). The costs and nature of the actual production process must also be considered, as these films were deliberately made with a very limited number of set shots. Story and stars were everything to the audience of this period, and there was little incentive to dazzle them with directorial technique or special effects. Slow takes, lingering closeups, and lengthy speeches were quite normal in American movies up until the 1970's. When I show some of these films to students they always remark on the difference in pace and rhythm in comparison to today's movies, and many find them difficult to watch because of this. The history of film is a fascinating subject (after all this is how I make my living), and much more complicated than most people imagine. For an excellent primer, may I suggest the following book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/023...0581866-0523862

Herewith the result of the second offering from the Leon Leavitt collection. Vinyl prices are going out of sight! http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?View...since=30&rdir=0

How can you not be enthralled by a virile hero, with a winning, crooked smile, wearing green tights, swinging down on a vine, landing on a log, and saying in an Australian ("Tasmanian," he always reminded people) accent, "Welcome to Sherwood Forest M'Lady"? Add Alan Hale Sr. ( father of "The Skipper") as Little John ... and Basil Rathbone as the Sheriff of Nottingham. The great sword fights on the castle stairs, the archery contest, and Olivia De Haviland radiant as Maid Marian. And, Oh! The COLOR! Pretend you are 12 years old, grab that bag of popcorn, suspend your disbelief, and sit back .. YOU have yourself a winner here! I may watch myself ... for the fiftieth time.

On the day after .... facing reality, and enjoying life ..... THANKS to all my friends who took the time to send me good wishes ... I do appreciate the comradeship found on this board ... and the love of the music which is so obvious here. Now, if only we could convince the rest of the world how beautiful this music can be ...

This review just appeared in Kirkus Reviews. I will still read this, and judge for myself ... WITH BILLIE Publication Date: 04/05/2005 Publisher: Pantheon Stage: Adult ISBN: 0-375-40610-7 Price: $25.00 Author: Blackburn, Julia Hitherto little-seen research about Billie Holiday is put to ill use. It may have seemed good as a proposal: the acclaimed English biographer and novelist Blackburn (The Leper's Companions, 1999, etc.) would look at jazz singer/icon Holiday through the eyes of previously unheard witnesses. But Blackburn's book is lazy, lurid, superficial and more than a bit of a cheat. True, the late Linda Kuehl's early-'70s interviews, which serve as the basis for this work, have never been mined extensively, but Donald Clarke made use of Kuehl's choicest stuff in his 1994 Wishing On the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday. It quickly becomes clear why Kuehl's own editor had misgivings about her draft biography: the witnesses -- ranging from Holiday's childhood friends in Baltimore to musicians, pimps, dope dealers and the drug agents who saw her meteoric rise to fame and precipitous fall from grace -- focused on the most sordid aspects of Lady Day's saga. Precious little is provided about her music, save in the bright remembrances of the late pianist Jimmy Rowles, while many thrice-told tales appear about her alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, bisexuality and masochistic romantic relationships. Though the sales pitch here is that new voices will be heard, the reader seldom actually hears them. Most chapters are clumsy paraphrases, and what's verbatim is often unilluminating. Moreover, Blackburn is simply the wrong writer for the job. She betrays a nearly complete lack of knowledge of the cultures and vernaculars of jazz and drugs -- a failure that dooms a project like this one from the get-go. She also pads her heavily footnoted text -- which is riddled with gaping holes due to the shortfalls of Kuehl's research -- with flatly written and hardly incisive chapters, drawn entirely from secondary sources, about figures as important to Holiday's life as saxophonist Lester Young and as peripheral as actress Tallulah Bankhead. It isn't certain that the world needs another book about Billie Holiday. But it's definitely not this one.

WOW! Thanks guys ... What a wonderful surprise to find all of these messages ... totally unexpected. But I did want to mention that I have registered for gifts at Dusty Groove (The Bastards!) ... my wish list can be found there. I plan a day listening to DeFranco, Tony Scott, and this interesting "new" clarinet player, Mort Weiss, who at age 70 has just started playing (and playing well) again. I am thinking of getting my clarinet out of mothballs, except my dog runs for the backdoor everytime I start to practice! What a great group this is .... I get far more enjoyment from youse guys than my colleagues at the university, none of whom are jazz fans. (You can sample Mort Weiss at SMSJazz.com)

Mark, mais oui! There is a Taschen store not very far from my place and I drop in from time to time to see if that new Claxton book has showed up. Heard good things about it but want to have a first look at it! C'mon Big Fella, I am certain that is not the only reason you hang around the Taschen store .... Our local Half-Price stores carry these books, usually at a nice discount, and they are hard to resist. This one caught my attention on the weekend! How come I missed this stuff in the 50s?? The graphics are just amazing ... http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/...facts/03815.htm

I also too the plunge on this one .. must be the 18th version I have had. I agree with Medjuck; the music sounds great, but the documentary is a little disappointing. Better to read Ashley Kahn's book on the making of the album. Still ... the price is right, and this album is such an icon how can any self-respecting collector ignore it? I will now hold out for the holographic version recreating the actual in-studio performance.

There are many of my favorites which have already been listed .... Now, if you were of my vintage, developing your jazz tastes in the mid-fifties, then there is one live concert that would have made this list easily .... For sheer, unadulterated jazz as fun, try Charlie Ventura's 1949 "Bop For The People" Concert in Pasadena, CA. With Conte Candoli, Boots Mussulli, Benny Green, Ed Shaughnessy, Jackie and Roy, etc. Boy! We LOVED this baby, and now that it is available in its complete form for the first time, it is even more exciting. Highly recommended. Get the full concert on the Ventura Proper Box, which is worth owning in its own right. WARNING! This concert is highly contagious!