Shrdlu

I like this, and all the early 60s BN sessions. You can't go wrong with Grant. My favorite track is "Hey There", not on the original LP, but included with the U.S. CD reissue. That's a very tasty track.

Very sad news. He was such a superb pianist, with a very recognizable touch. I can't count the number of times I've listened to him. He certainly always sounded great. The first album I heard him on was "Bags and Trane", an excellent session.

Very simple for me: I pretty much have everything I want now. That's been the case for several years.

I totally agree with you, Chris, and I don't think you are over reacting at all. That site is a pest. I went on it soon after it opened, but quickly got off (inasmuch as that is possible) when I saw how much time it was taking, and how nosey it all is. There are many other "social" sites, and the ones that I have been on are handy without being a pest. None of them has invaded my privacy. Facebook stands alone as a throughly annoying experience.

I think that video is from the session where Trane and Stan Getz play one piece together, with Oscar Peterson on piano instead of Wynton. You can find that on Dailymotion. Trane is really on fire on that!

Well, as I said, it sounded very trebly with the mike there. I think they put it there because it was easy to park it in that position. It wasn't a well considered thing.

When I first started playing, we often had a mike on the bass, and it wasn't always easy to do. The bass was a bass fiddle (we never had an electric bass back then), and he would park the mike next to the bridge. It often sounded rather trebly. The problem, of course, was that the drums usually drowned out the bass, not to mention other instruments, such as a clarinet.

Yeah, welcome, Alex! That's a very tasty performance. I'll never tire of that instrumentation and style.

Very similar to "Jay Walking" on the Tonite Show, lol. The best one of those had Jay asking a young girl what the Canadian equivalent of The President is. She said "Oh, I think they only have a Mayor". Never mind, Chris, you can always put on some Lady Ga Ga.

After all this, I'd say that the music is fantastic, and all the various LP and CD versions are more than listenable. Don't worry too much about which issue you have. You will still be able to enjoy it all. I have the box set, and that is the version I usually play. The sound limitations go back to the original sessions. Atlantic just didn't have the best combination of engineers, equipment and studio. Possibly they used a lot of baffles and screens to obtain sound separation, and these absorbed some top end. I hate those in a studio and I think Rudy was right to leave everyone open and together. I don't like recording in a box with headphones. This sound problem is odd, because the Erteguns and the engineers were all real nice guys who loved, and were loved by, the musicians.

I love all of this. Great album. I do prefer the quintet tracks though. What on earth is wrong with Blumenthal?? Trying to sound clever, or what? Philly Joe was one of the best drummers ever, and sounds great in a small group or a big band. I think they even comment in the original liner notes that they really liked Philly Joe's work with the large group. He was loud and fiery, and that's ideal for a big band. Who could forget his feature on Miles's "Porgy and Bess" album? Wonderfully crisp.

Hi, and welcome to the board, Jazz1972! I would recommend listening to a lot of recordings, going to live performances, hanging out with musicians, and sitting in with them where possible. Recordings are your best bet, because there isn't much live jazz anymore. You will pick it all up. Above all, you need a sound in your head. If you have that, you will play it. A jazz feel is something that comes from inside and from what you hear other guys play. You will learn various jazz licks that you can synthesise into your own style. You didn't say which instruments you play, but it sounds like you might be a pianist. As for scales, the vast majority of jazz is in the regular major and minor scales. Chord voicings on the piano can be learned by listening to such top guys as McCoy Tyner, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock and so on. I assume from what you have said that you know what chords are available: in C, you have C, C7, C9, C11, C13 and variations such as C7 - 5 etc. Then, the chords can be inverted, e.g. C7 can be played with G, Bb, C, E in that order, both for convenience of fingering, and to obtain a different sound. Hope that helps.

When I was a kid, Nescafé was pretty good. But today, and for many years, all the instant that I have come across is battery acid. When in England, if they say "We only have instant", go for the tea, lol. Seriously. (And, in America, avoid the tea, other than iced.) Even though you are traveling around, why not get some real coffee and one of those conical Melitta filter holders? Then you can make some great coffee for yourself in your motel room. I did that for years in Motel 6s etc. It is just as quick as instant too. A reasonably priced, but very nice coffee is Costco's "Kirkland Signature" Colombian, in a 3 1/2 lb tin. I use that every day, and I make it as I described - much quicker and you avoid having to clean all the bits of a coffee machine - and, the coffee doesn't stand on the hotplate, where a chemical reaction is taking place.

I liked the late 60s Prestige LP reissues. As was said above, they often reorganized the music in a nice, all-in-one-place, way, compared with the original issues. (For example, the "Bags' Groove" session by Miles, collected onto one LP.) It's a pity that the OJC CDs follow the first LPs. There was the occasional hazard of added fake stereo, though it was fairly mild, and nothing like the appalling echoey Columbia ones. I had a debate with Fantasy over that, as the OJC CD of Trane's album "Settin' The Pace" used the late 60s LP master with the fake stereo, instead of the original tapes. The Fantasy engineer denied it. The 16 CD Trane box set used the session reels.

Sad news indeed. I almost "met" him tangentially. I was living in Jo'burg, South Africa, in the early 70s, and Herb visited there in late 1974 or early 1975. I was on vacation in England at the time, and our drummer, Joe, ferried Herb around in my car for the duration of his visit. Herb insisted in playing at a concert in a black township near Pretoria, where things turned ugly, almost violent; he was glad to get out of there, and said "never again", lol.

It's wonderful that Mr Jones is still playing. How many hours of listening pleasure has he given us over the years? A list of guys with whom he has played would be very impressive.

You can adjust the pitch by running the music through Virtual DJ on the PC and recording it. Virtual DJ, and the club CD players such as the famous Pioneer CDJ 1000, also have the amazing ability to be able to alter the speed without changing the pitch. This makes them far superior to turntables and vinyl. You can alter both the pitch and the speed if desired.

Are these available on Rapishare? [Atheists' Day aside, it would be great to hear these. Kirk would have been up for it. After all, Gil Evans planned a recording with Hendrix, and Mr Sting actually DID record an album and video with Gil - and it's good, too.]

Good for you, Allen! I'd love to try one of those horns. I've done a lot of online reading about the C melodies over the last few years. Does it play in tune with a tenor mouthpiece? I've heard that alto and tenor mouthpieces can cause intonation problems. There is an outfit in New Zealand that now makes brand new ones, including, of course, the proper mouthpiece. The thing that makes me wary of getting a vintage horn is the keywork. I once had a 20s Beuscher alto on loan (originally played by the owner's grandfather in Jimmy Durante's band, lol). It had a nice sound, but the keywork was a bit awkward for faster work, and it felt very uncomfortable compared with the Selmer MK VI. Gerry Mulligan played a fairly old Conn baritone, and I've often wondered what the keywork feels like on those. I'm not keen on the Selmer baritone with the low A, which affects the low Bb. Certainly, Gerry had no trouble flying around on it. And Bird often played on some awful-looking altos. A sort of gay tenor?

What a contrast between the kids on that cover and today's clubbers, Jim! Of the two scenes, I much prefer today's. Clubbing and partying has never been better.

It is the same chord, Skeith: C, E, Gb, Bb, but the # is usually written as a +. Violinists, and some other players, maintain that "enharmonic" notes, in this case Gb/F#, are slightly different, which is technically true, but I have always ignored this, except perhaps subconciously. This is an issue with the harpsichord, which is tuned especially for each key that is about to be used. (On a TV show, the late Yehudi Menuhin demonstated this, by tuning it to C and then playing something in Ab. It sounded even worse than that instrument already does to my ears. "As sour as a lemon", in Yehudi's words.) The modern piano, the "Well Tempered Klavier", has its notes tuned to a compromise pitch, so that it can be played in all keys without the need for individual tuning. This would apply to just about all keyboards, of course. We do vary the pitch on a blues, on instruments such as woodwind, where, for example, the minor third (Eb if you are playing in C) is played up to a quarter tone sharp by lipping it. Yusef Lateef plays a spectacular example of this on oboe on the "Jazz Around The World" album (Impulse, sadly not reissued on a U.S. CD).

I have loved "Black Market" since it first came out. It's a real trancy cooker! (Some house and trance shows a Weather Report influence - unknown to most young listeners, of course.) "Black Market" was an excellent follow-up to "Tale Spinnin'", which is far and away my favorite Weather Report set, partly because Alphonso Johnson is such a funky bassist. It doesn't get better than these two albums. What superb muscians Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter are! For my money, their work is the best thing since the late 60s. The group lost my interest afer "Black Market". Although Jaco was a brilliant technician, his onstage antics were obnoxious at times.

I remember seeing one at the Victoria Falls on the Rhodesia side that said "Watch out for crocodiles". It gave us a rather uneasy feeling. (We didn't see any, by the way.) That was where a lady in a shop asked us if we had seen the waterfall.

They should really have used a pic of Trane playing tenor. The one they used shows him playing alto - from a 1958 Prestige session led by Gene Ammons. (Collectors of trivia can also see him playing alto on the video of Miles made in early 1959. He was playing in Gil Evans' orchestra in the absence of Cannonball, who was ill that day.)

Is that so? I haven't listened to this one in quite some time ... and if so, I wouldn't care - I'm turning into a mono fan for these old sessions. RVG stereo wasn't the best. Well Rudy's Hackensack monos are great. For a quintet, stereo doesn't add much anyway. The 1957 Prestige Trane sessions sound wonderful, and the CDs were not done by McMaster. Most people think that the guys at Fantasy did a great job with the humble 16 bit Prestige CDs. Prestige, unlike Blue Note, didn't normally get Rudy to record in stereo until well into 1958. Savoy apparently did go for stereo in 1958, but, judging by what's on the CD reissues, they seem to have lost the session reels, and LP masters seem to have been used.