Teasing the Korean

I have 7 McCoy Tyner albums on Milestone, but I don't have Sahara. Is this considered to be the best of the bunch?

We are not in Tampa proper. Around here, we are usually the first to lose power, and the last to get it back.

We lucked out this time, but our luck was someone else's misfortune. We didn't even lose power, and we sometimes lose power in routine thunderstorms. Time to lug the patio furniture back outside. It looks like we still may be seeing action from outer bands, though.

Hurricanes mean rum cocktails - until the ice melts, at least - and exotica. I will post today's playlist as it occurs. But first, there's work to do!

I have read that a trend among more recent hurricanes has been to maintain intensity over land, so that may be a possibility.

Yeah, the path has shifted slightly west, but it is still too close for comfort. And considering all the hurricanes I've lived through that changed paths at the last minute, I don't take anything for granted.

Do you know if these were ever released on CD? Also, do you know if these were the same recordings that were later overdubbed with percussion by Frank Capp to cash in the percussion fad?

I hope you saw the warning about contaminated Citgo gas! https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/florida-gas-stations-supplied-by-citgos-tampa-terminal-may-have-contaminated-fuel/articleshow/103145102.cms?from=mdr#

Prepping for the storm. The worst is supposed to be Tuesday night into Wednesday. Positive vibes to @Stonewall15 and @Dan Gould and anyone else I may have missed.

So we listened to their second album, Make Someone Happy, yesterday. I can see why this group perhaps struggled to find an audience. Some of the tracks are indeed in a proto-jefferson Airplane folk/psych vibe, while other tracks seem to be in a Sandpipers/adult contemporary bag. The album works well enough on its own terms 56 years later, but it may have been hard to market at the time. This was the last album with the original female vocalist. She was replaced for the third and fourth albums (which I've never heard).

I should have thought to tape them and watch them later in the day. Slow learner!

This wasn't marketed to jazz fans per se. It was marketed to big band/swing fans who wanted to hear hi-fi versions of low-fi swing hits. There was clearly a market for this stuff, based on the numbers I've seen in thrift stores.

Did not know that!

It was all happening concurrently. Don Ellis was playing original compositions in 7/4, while Time/Life was selling The Swing Era, a box set of hi-fi recreations of swing-era material, transcribed and arranged by Billy May. This set must have been huge, based on the sheer numbers of copies that I have encountered in thrift stores over the decades. Both extremes fed into the hype while profiting from the hype, regardless of intention.

The Hellers - Singers...Talkers...Players...Swingers...& Doers (Command) A totally whacked album! He was an arranger. Not sure if we was directly connected with the show, or if the album was a promotional tie-in. I should revisit this album. The cover art and the Rhodes were both stumbling blocks for me. I do like electric pianos in other contexts, though.

I think the GAS resurgence spanned generations. On the one hand, GAS albums by artists like Nilsson, Willie Nelson, and Linda Ronstadt were probably geared toward a younger audience. On the other hand, the birth of the AM "Music of Your Life" format and records by Mel Torme and Rosemary Clooney to the Concord Label were probably geared toward an older audience. (I think the Concord label in general was designed to reach a certain audience of older adults who liked jazz and standards.) Then you had the Broadway revival of 42nd Street and musicals based on the songs of Fats (Ain't Misbehavin') and Duke (Sophisticated Ladies), which collectively must have reached older and younger audiences. Ditto for Woody Allen's soundtracks to Manhattan and Stardust Memories, the films of which must have also reached wide audiences. So I get the impression that the GAS resurgence was happening on a number of levels.

That's great, but too early to drink champagne! 😹

I agree with your vocals/instrumentals assessment, but there was some crossover, inasmuch as some big band instrumentals had lyrics written later (e.g., Ellington) and many (certainly not all) of the swing era tunes followed pop song AABA or ABAC formats, so I think the two reinforced each other in this regard. I do think there is a distinction that came later between the big band ensemble format and big band style, such as swing music. This must have been one of the reasons that many band leaders preferred the phrase "jazz orchestra," correct? A connotation developed between the descriptor "big bands" and swing era music.

Thank you! Looking forward to catching one that is not on while I'm either asleep or too groggy to turn on the TV!

Thanks. The Forumula 1 site indicated two races today, one for late morning. Are races scheduled and then cancelled for some reason?

Is there a link between the early/mid 1970s big-bands-are-coming-back hype and the resurgence in popularity of the Great American Songbook in the late-70s/early 80s? Could the latter be viewed in any way as a continuation or evolutionary offshoot of the former?

Is that the race that was on at 8am EST today? I thought there was another race following, but I couldn't find it on ESPN.

Right, but music downloads are different in that regard.

I guess those of us who came up in the LP era have been conditioned to experience music in 15-20-minute chunks. Sometimes, the first track on side 2 does not necessarily sound great directly after the last track on side 1. Early in the CD era, I would find myself drifting off at about the 75% mark, which would have once been the middle of side 2.

I like having a physical collection too. I like knowing that my LPs do not contain digital watermarks, and that a corporation cannot pull them from the shelves on a whim. Of course, the flip side is that we have hurricanes here.