Shrdlu

This reminds me of my Dad in Egypt in W.W. II. They dealt with the scorpions by pouring a bit of gas and dropping a match. When I camped out in 29* Palms, CA, we looked inside our boots before pulling them on. ______________ * Now 24 Palms, because of State cutbacks.

A Ron Mcmaster CD will quickly drive them away.

Better to see "It Must Schwing", if you can. I have seen it. It's pretty good, but doesn't contain much that an experienced jazz lover would not already know. But it's well worth a watch. Wie ist dein Deutsch? The talking heads almost all speak in English, including Alfred and Dan Morgenstern, but they are almost entirely drowned out by overdubs in German. I can speak German, but it's hard to listen to both languages simultaneously. English subtitles would have been a great help, especially for American audiences. Here is a Blue Note bio that isn't lame, unlike the 90s one. Catch it if you can, but don't spend a lot on a ticket.

A Brubeck album that has been neglected is "Southern Scene", from 1959. Very few CD appearances - should I put an s on that. It is a delighful album, and was a follow-up to "Gone With The Wind" (and better, I think). It was one of my first two LPs, and my copy was mono, because we didn't have stereo equipment at that time. It got neglected because it was lost in all the fuss about "Time Out", with whose recording sessions it overlaped. Don't miss the outstanding version of "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen". The piano and saxophone solos are amongst the best by those guys.

Someone at Impulse threw out nearly all of the session reels in the 70s. Only the masters for the LPs were kept. A small amount of the tapes survived, e.g. the tapes of Trane's November 1961 Village Vaguard performances, which were issued in a 4 CD set. Some dribs and drabs came out on vinyl before that. All of the 90s Impulse CDs have nothing on them that had not been issued on vinyl. The tracks on the three "Definitive Jazz Scene" LPs provided a few tracks that were included on the CDs. No Impulse out-takes or unissued tracks were lost in that terrible fire. But it does seem that the main LP masters were lost.

Thanks for posting. A nice piece of history. The Detroit area has produced so many excellent jazz musicians. Kenny's first recording was "Tin Tin Deo", in 1951, with Diz. (That composition was not recorded by Diz's first big band, as you might have expected, unlike other Diz classics, such as "Ow" and "Oop Bop Sh'Bam". The 1951 recording was its first appearance on disk.)

What G.O.M. said. I have all of that here. It would take a while to assemble. The second Basie/Young set is chaotically arranged. This is not entirely Mosaic's fault. Sony and Universal refused to mix their material on CDs. The Sony-owned tracks are hived off onto a separate CD. But the alternate takes are shoved down to the ends of the disks. Michael Cuscuna does that in response to (fairly virulent) customer requests. For me, the arrangement of the tracks is a mess. I have never played the CDs as issued. It took me days to disentangle all the tracks into chronological order. The notes are in the same order, and now the set is easy to study. Superb music, of course. (I love Slam Stewart and didn't appreciate what the note writer said.)

That paper is one of those sulky sites that block you if you have an ad blocker. I just leave their page when they do that. Anyway, I know the full story about Wodehouse in WW II. He was a guy who was above the grubby world of politics. He made at least one non-political broadcast from Germany, and some stuffed shirts griped about it. At the war's conclusion, he was arrested by the Brits, but fortunately, he was interviewed by Malcolm Muggeridge, who was an officer at the time. Muggeridge had a brain and soon realized that Wodehouse had done nothing wrong. He was just unlucky to be in Europe at the time. The stupid Brits boycotted him for decades, and it was only just before he died that they finally honored him for the brilliant writer that he was. He was not a N.A.S.D.A.P. member or sympathiser. So, let us enjoy his superb books and forget about that sad business.

Hank is playing a King tenor in that last picture. You don't see them a lot (I've never seen one live). Usually, Hank is shown with a Super Action Selmer (the one before the Mark VI), the same model that Trane used until about 1964. Cannonball is always shown with a King, and Yusef Lateef had one when he was in Cannonball's sextet. Presumably good horns. I have always stuck to Selmer horns, which are the best for jazz from bop onward. All the others today are copies of it. I have blown Yamaha altos and tenors, and those are good, but you can't beat the real thing. During the swing era, the Conn tenor was the best bet. They had a big sound. My saxophone mentor said that the Conn was the tenor to get. Too bad that the keywork for the left little finger is so clumsy on saxophones before Selmer's "balanced action" design. I had a 20s Buescher on loan at one time. The owner's grandfather had played it in Jimmy Durante's band. It had a nice, big sound, and it was very solidly built, but the keywork was awful for a man accustomed to the balanced action layout.

The letter has a signature and the postcard has his name printed. I don't see any discrepancy. Re names and spellings, Jimmy Cobb wrote "Jimmie". At the 1955 Jazz Messengers, Kenny Dorham announces "Jeromes Kerns". Don't forget that, until Sammy Johnson's English Dictionary came out, in 1755, spelling was "make it up as you go along". We had Shakspere, Ann Bullen, and "servants" was "feruants", where the f is a curly s. The main thing that grabs me is that these letters were written just before Eric's tragic and totally unnecessary death in that German hospital. They should have been sued for criminal negligence.

How about Taco Bell?

If I may butt in here, disks 1 and 2 of the Buck Clayton set are the best ones, and well worth getting.

Sorry to hear about the problem, Bob. The above advice is good, but I have found that the Discogs people will help if there's a problem. I have purchased dozens of items from sellers on Discogs, and the people (especially the Japanese) have been great. I had one problem retailer, who got spiteful and gave me false, and unwarranted negative feedback. I complained to Discogs and they removed it (and, I hope, the retailer). I recommend against buying an LP described as VG+. They always say that, and you get Rice Krispie City.

Yes! Have a great time, Jim, and thanks for starting this bulletin board.

The Monk Riverside set is great, and I'm happy with the sound. For the "Monk's Music" and "Monk and Mulligan" sessions, they used several mono tracks where stereo versions exist, and there is at least one out-take that they omitted. Nothing serious here, but it was a bit careless.

There is still a substantial amount of unissued Trane on Impulse, including a session reel of the Hartman session. I read an article about 10 years ago about a radio broadcast of unissued material. How much longer are they going to make us wait to hear this?

Yes, that really IS an alto clarinet (the one a fifth below the regular clarinet) there. But the others listed by Blue Note as "alto clarinet" are contra alto clarinets. I prefer the name Eb contrabass clarinet, but the clumsy name prevails. For those who don't know, the contra alto clarinet is a fifth below the Bb "bass clarinet". They are very expensive, so they are rather rare. To add to the story, there is a Bb "contrabass clarinet", which is very practical, but usually only used in ensemble work. It is an octave below the Bb bass clarinet, and two octaves below the standard Bb clarinet. It sounds like a harsh grunt in the low register.

I'm not buying that story about Max attacking Ornette. Last night, we were listening again to Pharaoh's "Message From Home". At one point, he barked out a low C (concert Bb) very harshly. I said to my friend "Don't do that in Tommy Dorsey's band.".

Rooster, the low register of the clarinet (any size) is called the Chalumeau register (not that that weird name supplies any information). The key like an octave key is called the register key. The next register up is called the clarion register (written B through C), after which you have what is now called the altissimo register. The clarinet, having a cylindrical shape, rather than the saxophone's conical shape, only has odd harmonics, and the mouthpiece end acts as a "node" (no vibration). The register key makes the instrument go to the third harmonic, a twelfth higher than the Chalumeau range. The clarinet tube is half of a wavelength, which explains why the standard clarinet, only about 2' long, goes down to the concert D halfway down the bass clef, a low note for such a small instrument. I love having those low notes. There is a problem with the bass clarinet. It really needs two register keys (after all, all saxophones have two), but cheaper ones have only the one. This is to help with the clarion (middle) register. That register is weak, and if you try to push the notes, you get a squeak, which is actually a high harmonic. Unless you have a mike, the drummer will invariably drown you out. For studio work, like the Miles sessions, the engineer can boost the sound. There is some difference of opinion as to what the bottom note of a bass clarinet should be. The regular clarinet goes down to (written) E. All bass clarinets have a low Eb, in order to reach the low E of the virtually extinct bass clarinet in A. For many decades, some bass clarinets have gone down to C, but the additional keywork is a bit on the clumsy side, usually having two keys for the right thumb. I haven't checked to see how low Bennie's bass clarinet goes, but although Eric Dolphy didn't have a low C instrument, I did hear a low D on one recording. You can get that on a low Eb instrument if you insert a piece of cardboard tube into the bell, though you then lose the low Eb. While on the subject, Blue Note records invariably call the contra alto clarinet an alto clarinet, which it is not. Frank Foster used one (no doubt a rented horn) on a Duke Pearson session and also on an Elvin Jones session, where it was originally assumed to be a Bb bass clarinet. Hope that helps.

The story about the Miles Davis "Bags' Groove" session has circulated for years. It is well past the time to bury it. According to witnesses, no-one hit anyone. Don Byas once pulled a knife on Bird (but didn't cut him). Diz used to pull a knife, and he punched Slim Gaillard out at Billy Berg's in late 1945, after accusing him of Tomming.

Old Billy was, of course, a man. A few years ago, some people decided to estimate the I.Q.s of some famous historical figures, including Mr Shakspere. They couldn't ask him to do a test, with those "Which geometrical figure is the odd one out?" and "What is the next number in this sequence?" questions. He wasn't free that day, to take the test. They devised some criteria for estimation. Anyway, they scored the dude at 200 and I buy that. (I forget the estimates for Ike Newton and Al Einstein and others, but I think they were less than that for Billy.) The live I.Q. tests they use are not necessarily very accurate. In my own case, I used to be a Math professor, so I already know the answers to those questions such as "What comes after 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, ... ?", so I have an unfair advantage. Here is a question that was thrown by a grade school teacher at Karl Gauss (mathematical physicist). He was bored by the lesson (who wouldn't be, in a grade school?) and was looking out the window. The teacher told him to add up all the whole numbers (integers) from 1 to 100. Quick as a flash, he said 5050. That is real genius. I have had time to look into it, so I know how he did it, but he figured it out for the first time, on the spot.

The titles on the "Straight No Filter" 3-track session are definitely wrong. We will probably never know what is what. One incorrectly labeled track is obviously "Soft Impressions": the other two: who knows. I do not accept that the sound will be better in the new set. That is just advertising copy. Not that there is anything wrong with Malcolm Addey. It is not true that all the tapes are in pristine condition. There is an audible fault on one of the tracks on "Dippin' " on a later CD which is not present on the "Blue Note Works" version, which was taken from an LP master. The tape had aged in the interval between the two CDs.

Archie who?

People traveled to the U.K. and Europe before there ever was an E.U.. This kind of talk is just an irrelevant scare tactic. The U.K. voted to leave the E.U. for different reasons.

It is arguable that Mingus contributed to Eric Dolphy's death. He wore his musicians out on that 1964 tour of Europe. Johnny Coles was exhausted and unable to play, at one point.