Teasing the Korean

I always play stereo Blue Note albums - regardless of which mastering - in mono. It typically brings the bass and piano further into focus, as they are mixed to the center of the image, and the center is always boosted slightly when you collapse stereo to mono. I think this is the way these recordings were intended to be heard.

I have most or all of his bossa records, including the ones on Riverside and Columbia, but not too much beyond that, maybe an early session or two leaning more toward the jazz side of the spectrum. I'm not sure I understand the "pop" reference in your initial post. Haven't many jazz musicians who lean toward the more melodic/song structure side of the spectrum included "pop" music of one form or other in their repertoires? Also - and I am just curious - is having a "blues quality" to one's playing an important criterion in assessing non-blues music? Again, I am just curious to learn what sorts of qualities draw certain listeners.

It's so true. At this time, buying jazz records and learning about jazz, some of the LPs just seemed like four of five guys playing tunes. But the Blue Note albums seemed to have an aesthetic, a philosophy, and a concept. I remember getting Empyrean Isles around the same time, reading the liner notes, and tripping out over the cover art.

When I was a high school student teaching myself about jazz, I used to listen to a local community radio station that played jazz in the evenings. There was one DJ who spun a lot of organ groove stuff, and this was the first time I had ever heard this music. This was ten years after this style had gone out of fashion, and ten years before it would become hip again. I would spend my free time combing the cutout bin at Peaches, and spending my lavish busboy's salary on cheap LPs. This was during a period when Blue Note and Impulse! titles routinely showed up for $1.99 a throw. If I knew nothing about the artist or the style of music, I knew enough to look for certain record labels. So when I came across this LP for $1.99, I knew nothing about it, except that it was on Blue Note, it contained a cover of Aretha Franklin's "Think," and that the dude on the cover looked like a real badass in his pin-striped Nehru jacket. It ended up being the first jazz organ LP I ever bought. Last night, I was mixing cocktails and spinning LPs, and played this album. The opening track is killer, and I remember how much I dug it the first time I played the LP. The drumming on this track is sensational. So, from the first jazz organ LP I ever bought, here is Lonnie Smith performing Hugh Masakela's "Son of Ice Bag:"

Oh, and the podcast wasn't on the link. That certainly didn't help.

I think the narrowed stereo on the CDs was an attempt to get the levels and balance closer to the mono versions. The sessions were apparently monitored in mono, the mono masters of the LPs were made from the stereo versions, and the stereo masters represented more of a byproduct of the mono masters rather than the final version.

History tends to favor the originators, doesn't it?

He is talking about the year they started, so students entering college in 1961 were the class of 1965, assuming everything went as planned.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/25/entertainment/cnnphotos-jim-marshall-jazz/index.html

Ha ha!

"Cool" doesn't pay the rent!

That's another way of saying "next to no one would."

Jackie and Roy's A Wilder Alias is a totally insane masterpiece, easily one of the 10 greatest CTI albums ever. It simply must be heard to be believed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/arts/music/whats-lost-when-pops-orchestras-tap-pop-culture.html?_r=1

Couldn't you say this about many/most/virtually all songs of the "Great American Songbook?"

But so are a lot of those other tunes. That in itself doesn't explain why it has attained that status. I have nothing against the song or changes per se, but for me the most dreaded aspect of the gig was when someone called "Rhythm Changes." It suggested either a lack of ideas, or a desperate attempt to ensure that the proceedings were indeed "jazz."

I have often wondered what it was about this tune that made it become such an uber-standard of the bebop era. I imagine an alternate universe in which a different tune by either the Gershwins, or Jerome Kern, or Rodgers and Hart was endlessly improvised over by Bird, Diz, Bud, etc. I imagine what cliched riffs may have emerged that are lost to time, and wonder if casting a different tune in that role could have somehow pushed jazz in a different direction.

That is great that you were able to see this amazing lineup! Well, this was my introduction to Toots, and I ain't complaining.

How might this album go over with someone who generally likes Bob Belden but absolutely abhors Sting and the Police?

Not sure where you draw the line at "recent," but I would suggest Bob Belden's "Black Dahlia."

Divine. Still kicking myself.

And then there is the pop-psych ditty "Donkey Rides, a Penny a Glass" by The Small Faces, although the donkey makes only a single appearance in the lyric, if memory serves.

If we can expand the criteria to encompass mules, there is Morricone's score for Two Mules for Sister Sara.

He did the arrangements on the George Shearing bossa album for Capitol, circa 1963. It's a very good record, scored with woodwinds and rhythm section. The vibes and guitar got the day off.