Teasing the Korean

This is true in one sense of the term, but it has a secondary use among musicians. "Standard" can also refer to the standard repertoire, i.e., the expected repertoire known among musicians. Wide audiences do not necessarily know "Nica's Dream"or "Minority," but a professional musician could call them at a gig with an expectation that the players would know them. I was using the term with its secondary meaning, and am very curious about the fact that so few tunes from, say, 1980 (if not before) have been canonized in this fashion. Not to get off tops, but to address your original point, I would argue that many of the traditional standards are no longer known by broad audiences. The people who know "All the Things You Are" and "Body and Soul" are dead or dying. The songs are still considered standards among jazz musicians.

Considering how many "live" albums from this period were studio forgeries, it is kind of surprising that they didn't just get this group in the studio and add canned crowd sounds.

Well, that is part of what I am getting at with my questions. Has jazz fragmented into too many sub-genres and sub-cultures to have a coherent center in the present? While it may have lost some tunes along the fringes, the historical core of jazz and pop standards seems to have remained more or less intact, but not many newer tunes have been added to it. This isn't to say the tunes aren't heard or known or appreciated, but it seems like jazz and pop tunes from newer eras are not categorically embraced by the players and deemed a part of the core repertoire. Does anyone make an album anymore that contains a song that nearly everyone decides they have to learn? Maybe they do and I just don't know about it? Among the professional and semi-professional players with whom I interact, there seems to be no consensus about which current jazz is worth exploring. Everyone is all over the map. Granted, this is anecdotal, but these experiences must be reflective of something.

Thanks, all, for the replies. This is pretty much as I'd imagined. Now, here is part two of my question: What, if any, jazz tunes - or, more precisely, tunes written by jazz artists - from more recent decades have achieved "jazz standard" status among professional jazz musicians? Again, I mean tunes that could easily be played on the spot by four of five professional jazz musicians who have never played together before. Could a professional musician call certain jazz tunes of a more recent vintage and assume everyone on the gig would know the tune?

I am wondering what, if any, tunes from more recent decades have achieved "standard" status among professional jazz musicians. When I say "standard," I mean tunes that could easily be played on the spot by four of five professional jazz musicians who have never played together before. The same way you could call "Laura" or "These Foolish Things," could a professional musician call anything of more recent vintage and assume everyone on the gig would know the tune? I am wondering if cultural fragmentation and niche genres/audiences have made the possibility of new standards more difficult, or if these factors have changed the criteria for considering a tune a standard.

Of all names to steal.

Just picked up this CD featuring both of Dolphy's albums with the Latin Jazz Quintet, plus a bonus track from a Max Roach session. The sound quality sounded good on first listen, like it was from a tape source as opposed to a vinyl rip. Anyone have this? What do you think of this particular reissue, or the music in general?

A lot of the sentiments expressed here are the very ones that keep me from buying Mosaic sets, although the packaging and visual aesthetics employed by Mosaic are not in the same league as the film score specialty labels. Back to "Mission: Impossible," Santa Claus is supposed to bring this to me if I am a good boy between now and December 25. I will get back to you then. In the meantime, from various things I've inferred or read outright, I think we will be seeing a lot of box sets in the coming years covering TV shows with amazing or at least worthwhile music. There was a 14-disc "Star Trek" set and a three-disc "Outer Limits" set a few years back, and there will be a 12-disc "Lost in Space" in October. Supposedly, one of the specialty labels is working out the rights issues for a complete "Twilight Zone" set. The audience for this music isn't getting any younger, so now is the time. I'm waiting for sets covering "Night Gallery," Dominic Frontiere's "The Invaders," and the 70s CBS output of Billy Goldenberg, a great composer underrepresented on LP and CD.

Thanks. I have zero experience with this label, so I had no idea what to expect.

I have no concrete or up-to-date info but it seems like the tapes must have gone somewhere after the demise of Tampa. A few Tampa LPs were reissued in the 70s/80s on a U.S. budget label (with pretty garish covers, BTW) called "AJ Records" (subtitle: Archives of Jazz) which still said "Supervised by Robert Scherman" on the record labels. So if ex-Tampa boss Robert Scherman had a hand in these later reissues he certainly did not work with needledrops. Thanks. You'd think some label might have hopped on these by now. But then again...

Just picked up this four-disc set for a ridiculously low price. Boy is it screechy, even by Stan Kenton standards. I had to goose the bass well beyond my typical settings, and had to roll off lots of high end. The versions on the low-number Capitol LPs sound much better. What do folks think of this set?

Do the master tapes for any Tampa Records sessions exist, to anyone's knowledge?

Well, I finally picked up that four-CD box. Agreed, sound is OK, some tracks sound better than others, they certainly sound better than the MGM LPs. It is interesting to see the chronology. In particular there is that one date with Cal Tjader and Armando Peraza that must have had a huge effect on Cal, considering his solo career. This material dates from 1949 to 1954. I wonder how many of these sessions were recorded on tape, as opposed to disc, and I wonder if the masters exist.

I am trying to search by topic, but the search produces content results, i.e., zillions of threads without the key word in the title.

Great film about a young piano player. Clark Terry shows up along the way. Cameo by Quincy Jones.

I don't doubt you, but that is very surprising. I have bought VG albums from DG that I thought were graded very conservatively. I have also sold lots of LPs to them over the years and likewise graded conservatively.

I did not mean to imply that the two were mutually exclusive. Bud Powell played very long lines that created lots of compelling rhythms through accents, harmonic emphases, and alternating between straight 8ths and swing 8ths. He also broke them up with shorter phrases between. The type that I'm discussing seem to be of a more recent-ish vintage, beginning maybe in the 1970s. if that decade can even remotely be characterized as "recent-ish." I sometimes hear it in Bill Evans' late-career playing. Naturally, pianists and guitarists seem to be more prone to this, as horn and reed players have to breathe.

Yes, I have no idea what they were thinking when they changed it.

I know a lot of jazz listeners tend to go for long lines, but for me one of the interesting aspects of melody is the beats on which phrases begin and end. While I can intrinsically appreciate an artist's ability to play an endless string of eighth notes over changing chords, such lines for me are not particularly compelling because they lack the rhythmic push and pull. I once heard a solo performance by a fairly highly regarded pianist and his solos were all endless strings of eighth notes. Everything started to sound identical by the third tune. What are your thought?

This album has eluded me for some reason but I recently found a cheap CD. A few initial thoughts: How refreshing to hear Bill Evans in a setting other than a trio. Obviously that was his preferred format, but those trio textures really start to sound the same over the course of 50 albums or whatever. I suppose this was conceived as a "serious" work, but it is interesting to see how it is influenced by then-contemporary aesthetics. Many passages feature that introspective minor-9th harmony that I associate with early 70s ennui. Parts of it could have been on a CTI album. If Ogerman had written something for Evans 15 years earlier and stemming from the same organizing principles, it would have sounded very different. The electric piano on track three (third part of the first movement) completely does not work for me. In addition to the instrument's limitations, it is not well recorded here, and Evans' endless lines of 8th notes almost sounded like they are pasted on. The final slow movement (tracks 4 and 5) were for me the most satisfying. Overall, I like parts of this more than others, but for me, it does not hold together as a satisfying single long work. Finally, my copy has a 1960s photo of Evans on the cover. It ever there was an Evans album that cried out for the beard and leisure suit, this is it.

Does Warner still have Elektra and Asylum?

I have lost track of all the corporate mergers. Are Universal and Sony/BMG the only ones left?

If you want the core albums, definitely get the expanded editions. They contain mono and stereo, and also contain most of the oddball tracks that found their way onto Kronikles and Great Lost Kinks Album. I would start with Village Green, Face to Face and Something Else, and then work backward and forwards as you see fit.

Thanks all for these replies! I am familiar with many of the composers that have been mentioned, and, of course, others are completely unknown to me. Lots to explore.

And by "modern," I do not mean "contemporary." I love the orchestral music of Debussy and Ravel. This music was my gateway into classical music as a teen, because the harmonies and chord voicings were similar to those used in a lot of the jazz I liked. I love modernist "primitive" works along the lines of Le Sacre, Night of the Mayas, Scythian, etc. And I know the major serial composers. I have lots of Bartok. Villa Lobos is hit or miss for me. And I am very into modernist film composers such as Alex North (who studied with Revueltas), Jerry Goldsmith, Leonard Rosenman, and Jerry Fielding. I am looking for music with lots of orchestral color, and bold or lush harmonies. Looking for 20th (and perhaps 21st) century stuff, Debussy/Ravel and later. I realize that this this a pretty broad category I'm describing. What are some gems, not the obvious ones , that I may have missed?