gmonahan

I'll confess to a liking for his work with Mel Torme in the late 70s (I think--or was it the 80s?!), but he could come on pretty strong during that period. Early stuff is great, but the recent Songbook albums are pretty good too. Like others, I don't listen to the Mosaic that much. Maybe I should get it out and give it a spin. gregmo

I imagine things will calm down. Young Tunisians finally got a little tired of 50+% unemployment and a dictator for life. I don't much blame them. Still a lovely country, and I imagine the retirees are doing ok. gregmo

Thanks for posting this. I've been listening to Tatum for years (I *think* I have just about everything he ever recorded, anything that's been released anyway), and I've come to understand that songs for Tatum were just structures for his genius to deconstruct and reconstruct however he saw fit. He also deconstructed and reconstructed rhythms, as this piece makes clear, but he always had the rhythm he started with there in his mind while he was building others. Listen to any of his numerous versions of "Tiger Rag." You'll hear him recompose the piece several times in the space of a couple of minutes. Tatum was a true titan. I do agree with one liner-note writer I read once (I'm sorry to say I don't remember on which album I read it) who said that Tatum is best taken in relatively short doses where one can really concentrate one's attention to focused listening. Like a fine liqueur, he's a very, very rich drink. gregmo

This one definitely sounds like great fun. Good to see the great bassist still active and working! gregmo

Ditto for me, Ubu. Have to wait until I get back over to the other side of the pond! (I'm on yours, right now!) gregmo

I remember using keypunch machines, then sending the deck in to a massive IBM 360-60 (which had about as much computing power as my watch), then getting back a thin bit of "output" because, of course, I'd made one typo on one card. My first personal computer was a Commodore 64. It could hold 12 PAGES of text at ONE time. Thought I'd died and gone to computer heaven. gregmo

Wow--talk about truly unsung heroes. Bless Brian Rust. R.I.P. gregmo

I found them at the Jazz Corner in Paris a few years back and snapped them up. They are pretty rare. Columbia also put out the material on a series of 2-LP "World of Duke Ellington" sets a number of years ago, so they've been done a few times. I too would like to see the Okeh material from '25-31 done right, but with the 2-cd (incomplete) set still available, I don't imagine there's much chance of it. gregmo

A little over 4600 cds (of which around 4000 are jazz), 1300+ LPs, several hundred 78s, 100 or so cassettes. By some standards here, though, I'm just a piker. Does that mean I should get MORE?! gregmo

I am SO up for that Lunceford set. The LT too. As for the Rivers, I'm not quite as buzzed for that one as some of my avant-garde friends here on the Board! gregmo

Listening and watching this, I'm reminded again--as if I need reminding--of what an incredibly brilliant trombonist Carl Fontana was. I'm with MartyJazz on "SOB." I think it's one of Edwards's best films. RIP. gregmo

I'm late on this one, but hope it was a happy one, Jim!

I've put a few together over the years: Ellington, Basie, Gillespie, Herman, Kenton. I also have Freddie Green and Buddy DeFranco. Got 'em on programs, mostly, though Woody Herman signed a 78 of "Blue Flame." He got kind of a kick out of that. gregmo

I always listened to the Quartet for Desmond. Liked Chuck's story though! gregmo

Toy Story stuff--action figures and books. Playmobil sets--very fun, lots of bits to play with. The lower the tech considering the I-Pad, the better! gregmo

gregmo

Has anyone heard anything lately from Mosaic about this collection? gregmo

Nice video of the band (with Krupa apparently playing those same drums) embedded with the newspaper story. Thanks for posting that. Reminds me that a Mosaic set of Goodman's Big Band material for Victor would be nice to have. gregmo

Given the price of college textbooks, $10 large should pay for about...one! gregmo

Police Squad and its goofy movie follow-ups are comic masterpieces, thanks in large part to Nielsen's wonderful work. What a *great* second career! RIP. gregmo

Me too. I recently downloaded the album Sarah Vaughan made with Jimmy Rowles for Mainstream because there was no other way to get it, but I'm missing the "stuff" that comes with it--cover art, liner notes, etc. I can scrounge together something and sort of make my own cd, but it just ain't the same. I have to wonder, though, how long it will be before Mosaic starts a download service on its discs. gregmo

Well, Jim, first I really appreciate your posting these because they do offer two interestingly different takes on the same song. It's a pretty melodramatic song no matter who arranges it! But I have to say I really prefer the Columbia version (which I assume is a Stordahl arrangement--again, I'm not close to my collection to check). Despite the choral group at the beginning and end, which was more typical of the Columbias and with which I could do without, it's a more subtle arrangement, and Sinatra is, I think, in better voice for it. What Jenkins did with his acres of strings was to make Sinatra work harder (which may be why he very seldom sang these in concert), making him sing louder and therefore a bit more dramatically...or melodramatically, if one is being critical. There are times when that's kind of fun. "Where Are You" (the song, not the album) is a case where I think the melodrama kind of works, but even there, the strings are really intrusive. I think they completely overwhelm his version of "Laura" on that album. I think you're right that Riddle captured "melancholy" better than any other arranger, and maybe it's just that one person's "sentiment" is another person's "maudlin." I guess I've always thought of "September of My Years" as a made-to-order melancholy album, so that the strings in "It was a Very Good Year," just go *way* over the top for me! A bit more of Riddle's melancholy and less of Jenkins's sentiment would have been a good thing in that song! Of course, all of this has taken us a pretty fair distance from Friedwald's book, but I'm enjoying the conversation! gregmo

Each set of ears is different! The most startling contrast is between something like that track and Riddle's (for me) utterly brilliant arrangement of "One For My Baby" on the Only the Lonely album. The strings are so subtle on the latter you're barely even aware they're there, but they make for a gorgeous background. (I often wonder what "September of My Years" would have sounded like with Riddle at the helm.) gregmo

I'm not saying I dislike all the stuff Jenkins did with Sinatra, but it just seemed to me that too often, he overdid it with the strings. The most classic case for me comes from "September of My Years" on the hit song "It Was a Very Good Year" where the strings completely overwhelm everything, making one of Sinatra's best and most heartfelt vocals sound maudlin. Riddle, May, and even some of the lesser used arrangers like Mandel and Oliver, sound much better. They didn't overwhelm the singer--and Sinatra wasn't easy to overwhelm! gregmo