garthsj

As John said, this is a fine album, played with verve and confidence. Phil Nimmons is a wonderful clarinet player, vastly underrated because he has spent all of his life in Canada. He released two albums on Verve, both of which are worth owning. I must confess that I did not know that this had been reisued on CD ... I just bought a copy for a pittance ... check here... don't pick the first one, as I already did! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=music

Hmmmmm .. not us single guys ..... how about playing the Pepper select at 2:30 a.m. this morning at full tilt? ...

This is an issue that lots of personal resonance for me. I have written and had published five books, edited close to a hundred, and been the editor of three book series ... and after all of this I am still not sure of the business model for many publishers. I can say that in the last ten years there has been an increased emphasis on the infamous "bottom line" ... and yet, there are always some publishers who are willing to take a chance on a book that they know will not make a great deal of money. I have dealt with major publishers (Little, Brown), aggressive academic publishers (Sage), and university presses (Cambridge, Minnesota), and there is one common factor among all of them ... once that baby is born (all books are like babies to their authors) you are basically on your own! Every publishing quarter a certain amount of money is set aside for promotion, and you have to fight for your share, but the bulk of these funds go to the books that the publisher feels will give the greatest return. (My first book was up against Lillian Helmann's "Scoundrel Time" .. so what chance did I have at Little, Brown?) Yes, authors fill out those information sheets requested by the promotions and marketing department, but they seldom translate this information into action. Getting reviews is one way that promotion departments help, but even there the author often has to provide the list of potential review venues, and the names of prospective reviewers (I wonder how many reviews are set up in advance?; I confess to doing this at times.) I have known many authors to spend their own money on promotion efforts. Back in the mid-eighties one young author of a wonderful book on the effects of television published by Oxford U.P. hired a woman working out of a basement in New Hampshire to do publicity for him. The result was a number of very prestigious awards, all sorts of radio and newspaper interviews, etc. Like Larry Kart's experience, all Oxford offered him in return was a hearty "Congratulations" ... no offer to reimburse him the $4,000 or so he spent out of his own pocket. The book continues to sell, so I am sure that he has made it back .. but still ... With the advent of the internet there has emerged new possibilities to market books ... I wonder, for instance, how many extra copies of his book Larry Kart has sold as a result of just this board .. not a great number in the grand scheme of things, but certainly more than he would have just relying on reviews and the battle for shelf space in Borders. In my own case, my most successful publishing efforts has been with an academic publisher like Sage, which has a very aggressive mail marketing program, targeting the primary user group ... there you have the classic potental for sales success ... a consumer looking for a product, and a supplier offering a choice. Finally, the quickest way to an immediate payoff is to get your book in some sort of book club ... Pity the Jazz Book Club is no longer in operation, but then I am not sure that was a very financially successful setup at the time. Yes .. it is a wonder that the publishing business still continues to operate .. and more books than ever get published every year!

Don't be so discouraged ... Here is something to think about ..... The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. Hunter S. Thompson

Here is mine ... Here is your completed order: ID________Name/Title____________________Format___Price____Quantity___Total 81626j Pepper Adams & Jimmy Knepper _____ CD 12.99 1 12.99 --- Pepper-Knepper Quintet 374715j Conte Candoli ____________________ CD 11.99 1 11.99 --- Modern Sounds From The West (Best From The West Vols 1 & 2) 359127j Jim Hall _________________________ CD 11.99 1 11.99 --- Jim Hall Featuring Buddy Collette -- The Unreleased Sessions (Swinging Shepherds/Porgy & Bess) 363897j Phil Woods _______________________ CD 4.99 1 4.99 --- Song For Sisyphus --- (NOTE: CD case has a small cut out notch.)

DIE, YOU DEVIL!

WOW! DOUBLE WOW!!! I have just listened to disc 3 .. what I call the "Omega material" which was originally released only on Omega tapes ... the only jazz taped album I ever purchased ... perhaps that is why it sounds so great. Carl Perkins on piano is just fantastic. I have had several iterations of this music since the mid-fifties, and I have NEVER hear it with this much clarity and presence .... So far this is a great set .. by far the favorite among all my selects. I have just one complaint ... the answer to which is obvious -- space ... but what a pity that they could not have included that album with Marty Paich on piano originally on the Tampa label. I would love to hear a remaster of that album.

Banned? BANNED? Who.. me???

No Brad .... they ship according to your membership number ... the lower the number the greater the privileges you get! Mine is #1293 ... what's yours??

From the Unscrupulous Blackmarket Department: FOR SALE: A CD of "BASRA" by PETE LAROCA. A rare Blue Note album, now censored and withdrawn for political reasons. $645 or nearest offer. G.W.B.

Stan Freberg's wonderfully funny (and accurate) takes on jazz musicians on many of his satires are worthy of a thread to itself .... as that frustrated pianist on "The Great Pretender" says ... "dig, like Garner, Shearing man!" .... or the equally frustrated jazz drummer on "The Yellow Rose of Texas" who keeps playing jazz breaks ... Very funny stuff even fifty years later ....

I would like to know what "jazz kitsch" you secretly have enjoyed over the years. Stuff like those Jackie Gleason albums with Bobby Hackett, or George Shearing's "White Satin" ... or Martin Denny's "Exotic Sounds" .. complete with bird calls ... "Tiki Music" ... Go for it gang! Confession is good for the soul! In my case I had/have a great fondness for a series of albums that the pianist Paul Smith did for Capitol called "Liquid Sounds" ... I have never been able to find those in CD format ... anyone else a fan of this stuff?

No Kenny G's to be honest, but I did have a Lonnie Donegan on the Dot Label, and lots of George Shearing with strings on Capitol! This was "make-out" music from the 60s .... I think that this will force me to do something I have wanted to initiate for some time .. a real "guilty pleasures" thread... NOTE! I just started this thread in "Miscellaneous Music" ....

Hmmmmmmmm... if you can't think of any, well there are many "good" Jewish jazz musicians listed in this thread ....

Oscar's version of "SAX NO END" on the "Exclusively .... " set always makes my friends trained in classical music from the UH music school sit up and take notice .... his rolling thunder just gets better and builds chorus after chorus ... it is a sight to behold! Of course, it is this incredible display of sheer technique (as well as swinging) that annoys many jazz fans who dispute the quality of Oscar's improvisations ... Allen is not the first astute jazz expert that I have encountered who finds dubious merit in O.P.'s playing ... As a bragging aside ... when I finally sold all of my LPs ... I had 103 Oscar Peterson albums .. by far the most of any musician in my collection ... Ellington was second ... and trying to be a completist for both Art Farmer and Buddy DeFranco, these two followed ...

My Pepper Select (together with the Woody Herman) arrived this morning. I feel justified in selling my original "Pepper Returns" on Jazz West several years ago for nearly $400 to a Japanese collector on eBay. The remastering is superb, and certainly better than fifties vinyl in this case ... It is amazing to me how wonderful some of these fifties "west coast" albums sound with remastering today. Even without remastering Pacific Jazz and Contemporary albums sound so far superior to East Coast labels at the same time, of course IMHO ... so flame away!

John Norris and I became good friends during the years I lived in Toronto (1960-1970) ... and remained so ... I did the odd record review on occasion. I remember visiting John's apartment on several occasions and just being in awe of that immense collection of albums, which he filed by Catalog Number! I bought a lot of vinyl from John and Bill Smith during their years at various record shops, and then with their own place ... John was more receptive to all kinds of jazz, while Bill was much more into free jazz (both playing and talking about) even during that early period. I distinctly remember a somewhat heated discussion that Bill and I had about the merits of Art Pepper, when Bill in exasperation finally exclaimed .."all he does is play the damned changes!" ... How could I top that? I hate to see Coda become a Canadian version of Jazz Times!

For me the exciting news (according to Jazzmatazz and CDUniverse) is that Verve will be reissuing the great Harry Edison album "Sweets" on April 12th ... ever since damaging my original vinyl album when it fell behind a radiator when I lived in Canada I have wished for a replacement ... one of the all time great Verve "swingers" ...

I had exactly the same experience. Bought it on some cheap Decca subsiduary label then got what was I think a Decca re-release. Don't have it any more but wold like it on cd. Think it's got both Phil and Quill on it. Manny Albam's version of West Side Story was originally issued on Coral (57207) in 1958; it was later reissued on Decca (4717 -- with a different cover as I remember) in 1964. The Decca version was in both mono and stereo, the original Coral version was only mono. (There might have been another reissue somewhere along the line). One of my guilty pleasures is a fine Manny Albam release on Impulse ... "Jazz Goes to the Movies" (Impulse 19, 1962). This has a particularly "stirring" arrangement of "The Theme from "The Guns of Navaronne" ...

BUT -- that reminds me of a fellow music student from my college days, a cellist, definitely Jewish, whose last name was, believe it or not, Goy. So nu? Well .. if you had the cossacks riding through your house every couple of weeks, I am sure that you would change your name to GOY too ...

Allen ... you be bad!

Basically I have had good service from Caiman .... but recently, ever since ordering a CD (John Lewis) from them on Amazon (France) they have been sending me email letters about my orders in FRENCH! I need Brownie to help me out here .... I really would like to know more about this company; for instance how large are they internationally; do they really have a warehouse in Florida; what is their relationship to Amazon?

I also just discovered that one of my favorite deceased musicians, the late baritone sax genius, Bob Gordon was born Bob Resnick .... another to the list ...

At some point in his later life Shorty Rogers converted to a rather evangelical form of Christianity. I am still trying to nail this down more definitively (it is the historian in me!), but I have come across this fact several times in the past. In a lengthy interview with Ross Tompkins in 1984, this is what he had to say about his faith and his work in "The Church": "As for myself—I would say that the West Coast era was a certain peak, but I just put myself in the hands of the Lord as far as my life and my career are concerned. I just expect things to get bigger and better, and to be led into a more prolific, more productive part of my life. I believe that’s what’s going on; I think that’s why I’m here. I didn’t say: “I have to do this,” but just as when I got out of high school and when I got out of the Army, things were waiting for me, that’s the way I see it happening. The religious faith I have now is something I’ve grown into during the last five years and seven months. It’s the best period of my life. I’m writing some music for the church; I’ve written three cantatas for a hundred–voice and a hundred–and–twenty–voice choir, plus a big orchestra we put together. And who’s in the church band? Pete Candoli, Bob Cooper and some of the other guys. Some good jazz things are happening too! It’s sacred music, but more or less in a way that I’m having fun with it. In church before, they would never have any ad lib solos—now it’s really cooking, with some great players. It’s as good a band as any I’ve ever had—nothing like the old bass–drum–and–cornet–style church band. If that’s the direction the Lord wants me to go in, I’m not going to argue, because it’s not only fun—it’s palatable to me and to the people I know who love jazz, and it also serves the purpose. I think it’s an area that can afford to be looked into a lot more." I totally agree with Larry (as I most often do) that in Shorty's total demeanor, from his playing style, to the choice of the titles of his compositions, he was clearly the product of a Jewish cultural upbringing. Earlier in that same Tompkins interview he describes how he requested and received a trumpet as his barmitvah gift. Funny ... he doesn't look Jewish!

Did we ever really define what we mean by "Jewish" in this thread? I am a Jew by virtue of a Jewish mother and grandmother (her name was Esther Cohen !!!) so I am totally accepted as a Jew, but some of the names on this list might have been of Jewish heritage, but were not practicing Jews .. Shorty Rogers for one .... Sammy Davis, on the other hand converted to Judaism (I am not sure how seriously he practiced his religion) ... So, do we have a definition? This is, of course, an issue that preoccupies much of Israeli culture and internal politics ...