Teasing the Korean

How rare is this? Currently, there is one copy for $639 on Amazon.

I have one more that I forgot about: The Robert Farnon album on Decca/London Phase 4. Not really jazz, but with a swinging orchestral space-age sensibility. It is on a twofer CD with the Phase 4 Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, both of which I consider to be proto-space-age bachelor pad music.

A couple of years back, Quartet Records in Europe released the film soundtrack to Last Tango in Paris. The LP that was released concurrently with the film, as was typical at the time, was a re-record. Because it came out under Gato Barbieri's name, it naturally focused on his contributions. The CD gives us a full picture of Oliver Nelson's contributions also. It is a really great album, although it had many short tracks with lots of space between. I had to load it into Audacity and crossfade many of the shorter tracks to make it listenable. The Oliver Nelson albums that get the most play around my pad are Zig Zag, Skull Session, and Blues and the Abstract Truth (minus the dreadful yee-haw track). Still waiting for his Six Million Dollar Man music.

It is really incredible that there were so many of these albums. I'm guessing that many were made to cash in while the film was in production and anticipation was high. Is there another film or musical that inspired this many knock-offs? West Side Story must rank pretty high. But do any surpass P&G?

Thanks. I don't have that album. This track doesn't sound like any of the Andrew Hill that I have.

I have a Blue Note Rare Grooves compilation that contains a previously unreleased version of "Soul Special." Does anyone know anything about this version or the session for which it was recorded? It clocks in at 8:50. Recorded April 19, 1968. The group includes Woody Shaw, Frank Mitchell, Jimmy Ponder, Reginald Workman, and Idris Muhammad.

I have at least MIles, Ella & Louis, and Mundell Lowe's album on RCA Camden.

I like The Pink Floyd but do not like Pink Floyd.

I wonder how his students turned out.

Scott Walker wishes David Bowie a Happy Birthday!

There are really no equivalents of Scott Walker, at least in the English-speaking world. While he was never one to look back, I had always hoped that he would do a tour performing stuff from the first five or so solo albums with the original Wally Stott/Angela Morley arrangements. We can be content having those records. Scott 3 remains a favorite.

A genius. RIP.

These albums are fairly hard to find, in my experience. I have two of them - France and Spain - and neither has received many repeat spins. I think Hopkins was really collecting a paycheck on these. I few of his Capitol albums fall into a similar category.

Most of the instruments I hate are the high-pitched ones, so I'm not worried. I still find myself turning the treble down rather than going the other way.

Thank you both. Yes, side 1 clocks in at over 20 minutes, so assuming the album was available in stereo - my copy is mono - I can see why they wouldn't want it to run too long. Back to the topic of discographies: Is there a good online discography that anyone could recommend, with session info, etc.? Obviously, there are artist discographies, but I don't know how complete they are. I suspect that a lot of the music I like, which is at least on the cusp of jazz, isn't included in a lot of jazz discographies, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Thank you! I prefer conversations over printed discographies, but I do appreciate your suggestion. Maybe there was not enough room on the LP for the rest of that track. God knows where the CP master tapes ended up. Probably in a landfill in north Jersey.

Imagine your beloved TTK in the early 1990s, surrounded by 50-cent thrift store LP acquisitions, including jazz LPs, EZ LPs, exotica LPs, soundtracks, and anything that fell in the cracks between these genres. So here am I, listening to the latest haul, which includes an LP on Charlie Parker Records called East and West of Jazz. Side 1, the "east" side, is by Hakim; side 2, the "west" side, is by Duke Jordan. The last track on side 1, "Little Lou," clocks in at only 2:30, and abruptly fades in the middle of a guitar solo. What is the story? Did CP randomly assemble tracks by these two artists? Is there a longer version of "Little Lou" someplace?

Inviting strangers into your house once a week - and every day, when you're syndicated - creates just as much of a cultural impact.

Well, Shelly Manne played on a lot of TV themes, so many of those could have the equivalency of a number one record. How about the Jetsons theme?

I can't tell you how many LPs I own that have a blurb on the back cover reading "Shelly Manne appears through the courtesy of Contemporary Records."

Shecky Greene?

Beautiful. Did all of this happen in black and white? I have an older French friend who has lived in the US for many decades. He saw Ella Fitzgerald when she came to Paris in the 1950s. He said when he remembers his youth in Paris, he sees it in black and white! When I hear a walking bass, the first images that will pop into my mind are young, well-dressed, slightly disheveled Frenchmen, collars undone, smoking, listening to jazz in a cellar club. In black and white, of course. Growing up, one of the jazz albums that my Dad owned was the Double Six album on Capitol. This was the album that was released in Europe as Sing Quincy Jones or something similar. This album made a huge impression on me as a kid and no doubt helped me form in my mind a deep connection between Europe and jazz. The cover art for the Swingles with MJQ, the European version, visually encapsulates this connection. The US is getting to be an ugly place these days, and I know that Europe is confronting many of the same issues. But when the racism and xenophobia start to get me down, there is nothing I like to do more than to uncork a nice bottle of wine and spin something on the Philips label, either classical, jazz, or a combination of the two. The best revenge, as they say, is living well.

It's funny, but being from the US, I think of those albums - along with the Swingles - very differently. They exemplify an idealized, moderne Europe, the one that I would see on late-night movies as a kid, the suave and urbane Europe that is equally at home with Mini Coopers, urinating cherub fountains, mod fashions, and Roman ruins. I never would have gotten into jazz to begin with, had it not been for the fact that the French invented it.

She is also Bernard Herrmann's mother!