Teasing the Korean

Pre-Covid, I wondered how a passenger line would do if the train itself were the destination. Restore a classic Budd streamlined passenger train to its 1930s/40s splendor, use old EMD E units for engines, serve high-end cuisines and cocktails. A Zagat-rated restaurant on wheels. Have a dress code. Run it on the weekends for a few hours to and from wherever. You get to look at the scenery and hang out and drink in style. It probably would not have been feasible even before Covid. It will never happen now.

Mambo Beat: Mambo Beat The Late, Late Scene Night Hawk Minor Moods Malibu Beat Emerald Beach Live A Little Night Ritual Ti Mon Bo Elegua Chango Birdland After Dark Lotus Land Yesterdays Night Beat Carioca Tito 'In Yambeque: Yambeque (Mambo Yambu) Take the "A" Train Four Beat Cha Cha Cha (Part 1: Original Master) Four Beat Cha Cha (Part 2: Out Take) Swinging The Mambo Mambo Buda Mambozooka Habanero Cuban Nightmare Cuban Fantasy Mon-Ti Cuero Pelao Caonao El Bajo

Will do. Good luck with the renovations!

Everywhere West! The Way of the Zephyrs!

Since we have taken a break from this discography, may I add that there are two excellent compilation CDs of Puente's jazzier 1950s stuff. Both come from RCA's late-1980s Tropical Series: Mambo Beat: The Progressive Side of Tito Puente, Vol. 1 Yambeque: The Progressive Side of Tito Puente, Vol. 2 Both discs are all instrumental, and are composed of things with jazzier ensemble writing and (primarily) Latin rhythms. As someone who owns most of Tito's RCA 1950s albums, I can say that the producers did an excellent job of cherry picking the money cuts. I believe that some of the tracks that were included were singles only. Curiously, the "Night Beat" album is well represented, but other notable albums in these styles get only a few tracks, including "Puente Goes Jazz," "Top Percussion," and "Tambo." Perhaps the producers wanted these collections to focus on hidden gems and serve as companion volumes to the jazzier albums.

Now reading "All Aboard with E.M. Frimbo."

HEY, MUSICIANS! Do you want to know the secret to a swing feel? I learned this during my expensive freshman year. I could charge you for this, but in the interest of promoting jazz, I am offering this FREE OF CHARGE! Here's what you do: Get a metronome, and set it to subdivide the quarter notes into triplets. Then, instead of playing straight eighth notes, play your lines with eighth notes alternately landing on the first and third beat of each triplet! Set your metronome accordingly, and practice your scales this way! Ascending: C- d-E- f-G- a-B- c-D- e-F- g-A- b-C. And voila! You are SWINGING! This means that the notes you play on the beats last twice as long, and are thus twice as important, as the notes landing between the beats, but hey, we are not all created equal. Now, as have I, many of you may have probably transcribed solos by your favorite jazz artists, and you may have gotten the idea that a swing feel is actually much more complex than this: eighth notes with a triplet feel, eighth notes with a straight feel, eighth notes landing somewhere between the two, accented notes, unaccented notes, the push and pull between playing on top of the beat and behind the beat. A reasonable hypothesis, but you would be wrong. Just practice your scales with the quarter notes subdivided into triplets, and under no circumstances deviate from this formula. Soon, you will be swinging like the pros! A valuable lesson I learned from my university jazz program, prestented here as a public service. Yours in swing, TTK

The vocalizing IS part of the music.

The early 1980s was an interesting time for jazz. Jazz was fading from the popular consciousness, but it still had a shred of cultural relevance. Many jazz legends were still living, recording, and touring. Two successful Broadway shows were built around the songs of Fats Waller and Duke Ellington. Miles Davis, for better or worse, had made a highly publicized comeback. Wynton M., for better or worse, was getting mainstream press. A cowboy in Wyoming or a farmer in Iowa could tune into "The Tonight Show" any night of the week and hear a few bars of Ed Shaughnessy or Conte Candoli. Within university jazz programs, it was also an interesting time for jazz. Students were naive enough to dream out loud of moving to New York and getting a record deal. And many faculty would have been old enough to have rubbed shoulders with jazz luminaries. And some of these faculty seemed bitter that they had not "made it" - despite the fact that they had landed coveted, cushy university gigs. Among the latter was the professor I will refer to as the Name Dropper. "Did I know ____? I lived with him for a year! I taught him 'Here's That Rainy Day!'" "I split a gig with ______. I played Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; He played Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. He became famous; I ended up teaching here!" Upon flubbing a chord while attempting to demonstrate something with Tadd Dameron's "Lady Bird:" "What is that change?...Of course! Tadd would KILL me if he heard that!" When a student pointed out a similarity between Bill Evans and early McCoy Tyner: "We were all influenced by Bill." And my favorite: "When John Coltrane played with Miles Davis, he couldn't stand Red Garland's piano playing. This was not widely known: Only a select few of us who were close to the quintet knew this." Maybe this was the Name Dropper's way of demonstrating to his students a lineage to the masters. But to me, it came off as sad and pathetic. And the line about "I ended up teaching here" was a real blow. My parents were paying big money for me to learn something, not to listen to the Name Dropper's jive-ass bullshit.

Or as Monk would say, ugly beauty!

I've often said that Thelonious Monk wouldn't make the cut for the competition established in his name!

A woman wearing a short skirt and thigh-highs combined with Kenyon Hopkins and the "Wild One" EP is a pretty potent cocktail! For all the stoopid things I'd done in my life, I knew better than to #$%@ up this relationship.

For one of my classes, I had to compose and arrange a tune for the ensemble. I wrote a tune that was deliberately designed to have a 1950s gumshoe sound. This was intended as an homage to my beloved "TV Action Jazz!" by Mundell Lowe, which my Dad owned and which I'd loved since I was a kid. It was my first arrangement, and it sounded pretty good. The professor made a small suggestion - actually, a good suggestion - but then added, "Careful, you don't want this to sound like a Shorty Rogers tune." At this time (early 80s), west coast jazz was not in vogue at all, and my only exposure to Rogers had occurred via the Monkees, in particular the "Wichita Train Whistle" album with Mike Nesmith. Whenever the jazz faculty dismissed an artist, that was usually a good indication that the artist was worth investigating, so I added Shorty Rogers to my list of verboten jazz artists to one day explore. (Sun Ra was another they liked to laugh about.) I did not check out Rogers after I left, because I could not listen to jazz for 4 or 5 years afterwards. Many years later, when I started dating the future Mrs. Korean, we were driving in her car with her tape of the "Short Stops" collection, which includes Shorty's first two (excellent) RCA albums and the incredible "Wild One" soundtrack EP. I thought about that professor and wondered if he had ever heard this music. This was jazz that you could actually imagine someone getting laid to, something that jazz had not been able to accomplish for at least 15 years at that point (smooth jazz aside). The jazz police failed once again.

Great stories so far, thanks all! One thing that really set me off on the wrong path with with my university experience was this: Considering this school's stature, they did an absolutely awful job assessing skill levels of incoming freshmen. Like a lot of kids, I was way ahead in some areas, roughly where I should have been in others, and behind in still others - reading in particular. Because I was not fully vetted, I was enrolled in 2 classes I sleepwalked through and another I really struggled with. The ensemble groupings seemed random. Maybe that was deliberate - learn to play with people who were much better and much worse than you - but it seldom if ever led to anything satisfying. There was no discussion of music on a macro level: what is the structure of the tune, the contours of the melody, what is the vibe we're going for, what is the group sound we're seeking, why we even like jazz in the first place. It was all about solos fitting over changes and whether the 8th notes "swung" sufficiently - and the faculty got that concept entirely wrong.

So here is what happened with this LP: The Clef LP referenced by kh1958 had the full second suite on side 2 - six movements - along with two standalone O'Farrill tunes, "Havana Special" and "Fiesta Time." So when the genius who compiled the budget Verve reissue had to trim two tracks, he could have trimmed the last two tunes and left the suite completely intact. Instead, he trimmed two movements from the suite. That's showbiz, folks!

You are welcome. The first "Afro Cuban Jazz Suite" is IIRC complete. The second suite is available in its entirety on the Verve 2-CD Chico O'Farrill collection titled "Cuban Blues."

Testing the waters to see if there is any interest in this topic among musicians. If you were there, you know precisely what I'm talking about. If so, I would suggest that we leave the names of the universities/professors/students anonymous, to protect the guilty. As I wrote in another thread, I had a scholarship to a highly regarded university jazz program and left. I literally could not listen to jazz for years, and nearly sold all of my jazz LPs. Luckily, I held onto the LPs, but I simply had to get rid of that Smithsonian jazz box set we were required to buy. It was giving off bad vibes. My entry points back into jazz were the Nat King Cole Trio, and my Dad's copy of "TV Action Jazz" by Mundell Lowe. I was cured, all right! ________________________________________ Like George Bernard Shaw, I often spice up my conversation with quotes from my own works. In this spirit, I share this post of mine from another thread: Since this is a jazz list - and in recognition of Lou's passing - I will tell a personal story that has to do with Lou Reed and jazz: In the early 1980s, I was a freshman majoring in jazz at a university that, at the time, had a reputation for being one of the best universities for jazz in the U.S. As a part of my music scholarship, I had to work two hours a week at a desk dispensing keys to practice rooms. I chose a Saturday or Sunday morning slot, probably 10am to noon. I would typically bring my boom box with me. This was not only for listening to music, but - more importantly - to drown out the cacophony of 50 simultaneous readings of 50 different Charlie Parker Omnibook solos creeping through the cracks of 50 practice rooms. One morning only a couple of weeks into the semester, I brought a cassette with "The Velvet Underground and Nico" on one side and "White Light/White Heat" on the other. A student I knew stumbled through the front doors. He was an older student - a junior or senior - who had been assigned something of a leadership role in the freshman/sophomore ensemble in which I was enrolled. He comes to the desk to get a practice room key, and he stops and listens for a minute. He asks, "What is this shit?" I reply, "The Velvet Underground." He listens for a few more seconds, then he says, "Man, you shouldn't be listening to one-chord crap like this, you need to be listening to Wynton Kelly and Red Garland, so you can get that swing feel, not this shit! Why are you listening to this?!?" I just looked at him. This kind of got the semester off to a bad start for me, and became emblematic of everything I hated about the university jazz experience. I ended up leaving and majoring in English at a different university. It was probably four or five years before I could ever listen to a jazz record again, it was that bad. Thank you, Lou Reed.

Thanks! I also have both of these. The content of the bottom collection is similar to that of the "Original Mambo Kings" CD, minus the side of Chico O'Farrill tunes. The top album is a reissue of O'Farrill's two Afro Cuban jazz suites, but this release omits one or two of the movements from the second suite. IIRC, it omits the second section, which is one of my favorite parts. As you probably know, there was a weird trend in the US in the 60s and 70s, in which producers of reissue LPs would lop off a couple of tracks, so they could save a few pennies on publishing.

Well then I may just take you up on that!

Would anyone have interest in a thread in the musicians section in which we share our jazz police/university jazz program stories?

Ha ha!

At my school, black music mattered to the jazz police if it dated from roughly 1942 to about 1967. From there, they jumped to ECM, which I've never really explored, but which appears to be primarily white (not that that is a criticism). The early 80s were a weird time for jazz education. A lot of the legends were still alive and even working; the Marsalis rat pack was getting started; jazz still had a shred of cultural relevance; and the faculty were bitter that they were not as famous as Miles.

I had "Unit Structures" in high school, along with some of his Arista Freedom albums! I used to play them in the dorm on high volume to annoy the jazz police!

I was using the phrase "jazz police" in the early 1980s when I was enrolled in a highly regarded university jazz program that absolutely made me hate jazz. I left there and I couldn't listen to anything jazz related for several years. The Nat King Cole Trio were the gateway act that brought me back.

It is strange that Verve did not do a Machito set similar to the O'Farrill. I think I asked here years ago, and then forgot, but how did those tracks end up on Pablo to begin with? I know the Art Tatum Granz tracks ended up on Pablo also. Would Verve have been prevented from doing a comprehensive Machito set while the Pablo was in print?