Shrdlu

They used to sell an excellent one at the Mart of Wal. It was a learning remote, meaning that you could transfer commands from another remote to it, and it also had three separate "on-off" buttons, making that a one-touch command. It had one of those no-name names, which I now forget. So what did they do? They discontinued it! Grrrr .....

You're right MG What don't I agree with? I'm in, I'm in.

It was amazing, and courageous, of you, Chris, to put out that set of double albums. I always saddens me that America as a whole has so badly neglected the work of its original artists like Bessie and the jazz musicians. Your reissue, long before the days of Mosaic, is a tremendous achievement. I guess there were some at Columbia who did not really favor such a project. We have still to see a reissue of all the Columbia Basie, to match the Billie Holiday set.

That would be a lot of fun. It's always great to try new instruments. After I heard Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, back in the 60s, I wanted one so bad that I could taste it. A friend lent me his Selmer, which had the extension down to low C (concert Bb). But he also had an Eb clarinet, and got me to have a blow on that. It was fantastic to be able to try a relatively rare horn. I even got it up to its top C at the first attempt, which startled him a little, lol. You can hear this wonderful instrument in the score of the great movie "Young Sherlock Holmes" - Johnny Williams, I think.

That is an excellent post, Steve. It comes after I had just gone back to the Parker Savoy and Dial sessions again. I have known all this material since the 1960s. This time, I put a selection of favorite tracks onto one CD. No more grinding through 6 takes of "Perhaps" and so on. Let alone listening for 4 hours in a row.

As many have already said, this was an outstanding series. Fabulous music, a lot of it released for the first time then, and the pressings are very good too - no sonic problems at all. For some reason, they are mainly easy to find on eBay and gemm.com, and they are not expensive, unlike the 50s and 60s LPs, yet they sound just as good. (All that fuss about the earlier albums is just a lot of hype, rather like today's "safety" regulations. Back in the 60s, they were just LPs, and we enjoyed them but didn't go bananas like the eBay bidders.)

Who is like Bob James? Red Garland? Red is awesome. One guy put it well when he said that there are lots of fine albums out there, but he constantly found himself going back to Red. That's how I feel too. There is nothing at all unexpected on any of his albums. But it's all sooo enjoyable. I could play Red all the time. The Three Sounds are also in that category, for me. It's sad that the sheer number of tracks they cut for Blue Note, added to their not being all that well-known by the public today, stops a reissue of all their 1959-62 sessions. It's just as well that the TOCJs were issued.

From this article about the history of the saxophone: "1841 - Adolphe Sax first showed his creation (a C bass saxophone) to the composer Hector Berlioz. The great composer was impressed by the uniqueness and versatility of the instrument." Don't know if there were ever (m)any C basses commercially produced. The whole Key of C/Key of F family of saxes never really caught on (except for the C melody, of course) but there are some collectors who have F altos and F baritones. I had heard about Adolphe making a C bass but I meant that, today, the C bass probably only exists in theory. I used to have a book by a guy called Anthony Baines about woodwind instruments, and he said that some opera houses actually had an A bass clarinet. Now that's an oddity! Getting back to the C and F saxes, Baines had a picture of an F alto, which he referred to as a mezzo-soprano.

There are a few mid 70s albums by Chick Corea and Stan Clarke with one absolutely amazing track and everything else crap. Such tracks as "Ode To John", and "No Mystery" are just fabulous. What a waste of their enormous talent on the boring tracks. (Plus the sad fact that they were both hoodwinked by that used car salesman Ron Hubbard. Ought to have more sense.) I have several albums where there is mainly one track that I really like, for various reasons. I had not thought of "Blue Train" in this context, but, to be totally honest, I only normally think of the title track - when I do think of the album. (For me, I don't buy all the remarks about it being his best album of the period. It is excellent, but I just pigeonhole it with the best of the Prestige albums. One thing that IS special is the presence of Philly Joe, whom Bob Weinstock didn't like. Philly Joe is superior to Art Taylor, great though Art was, and it would have been nice to have him alongside Red Garland and Paul Chambers.)

There are tons of scammers in Nigeria and also Ghana. The funniest one I got was a 29 yr old gorgeous-looking girl in Chicago who approached me on a chat/profile website. (Facebook is terrible for that, but it wasn't Facebook.) "She" was really a man in Nigeria. There was one, and only one, display picture showing on msn. I played along with him for awhile, to see what he would say. "She" said she loved me and wanted to come see me. Eventually it got to "please send the airfare to this bank account number". So I (having lots of real pics AND a cam) said, "do you have any more pics?" Then the msn window was as silent as a turkey farm on Thanksgiving afternoon, lol. A real giveaway happened when I asked how much the airfare was. The guy called it "Chicago O'Hare", instead of just saying Chicago Airport like a true local would do. I have also chatted with "Sean Brosnan" and "Mihael Rothschild III". "Sean" wanted to use my Paypal account cos he said his Dad was restricting his money. One guy wanted me to help him ship ivory from Nigeria to some U.S. museums. He wanted money up front from me to pay for - get this - export duties.

I totally agree with you, Lon, about "I Talk With The Spirits'. Very tasty Horace Parlan on that too. Yusef is awesome on flute - as well as all the other instruments - in spite of all the islam garbage. "A Flat, G Flat and C" has some fantastic Japanese bamboo flute. What an outstanding player, and for so many years. Jazz flute has never been rare since the 50s. One of Hank Mancini's trademark sounds was with one or more flutes. The "Peter Gunn" albums have a good helping.

This is an absolute classic, hee hee. Time for another trip to Vancouver.

I'd love to get the unissued tracks of the Duke Pearson session with Airto Moreira, but Michael Cuscuna refuses to issue them. Maybe a future reissue producer will put them out before the tapes crumble away to dust. As far as reissues of the regular BN catalog go, you can easily scan the lists of the 1500 and 4000 series. There are only a finite number of albums. Pretty much all of it has been reissued. Time to move on from BN, really. The subject is rather tired now. As far as Mosaics of Blue Notes go, they can be useful, because some of the material is not readily available anywhere else. I much prefer reissues of the original albums, with the color artwork and liner notes. A lot of the flavor of the BN album experience is lost in the Mosaic versions. And some, but fortunately not all, of the Mosaics suffer from McMastering, so the sound is not good. They should use that guy who did the Mulligan set - he's great.

About half of Dave Brubeck's "Newport 1958" is actually "NYC studio 1958". Part of "Jazz Impressions of Eurasia" was also done at the same studio session. Actually, who cares really? I wonder why they even bothered to lie about all these "live" albums. The word is stupid anyway, cos you never get dead musicians recording.

D'oh! That's Ahmad's main album, from a musical and historical point of view. (It having influenced Miles and Gil so heavily.) Typical of the rather academic type of reasoning that so often puts a fly in the ointment of these sets. I always shudder when I see "We decided to ........"

Coastal Oregon, and Washington, are relatively mild. There can be a serious hassle at times with ice. There are a lot of steep hills and it can get like a skating rink. Personally, I've had enough of both States for a lifetime, lol.

Well it's been a long time since I bought a CD, and I have not bought many for a few years now.

Sad to see these going OOP. I guess it's part of the move from physical CDs to mp3 files on the pc. But I like to have the artwork and liner notes and I will never buy just a file. I have everything I want from their hit list. There's a lot of fantastic stuff there, e.g. those McLeans. I got "Domination", by Cannonball, when the LP came out. I love that session. There's some great blowing, and Oliver's arrangements are gorgeous, especially the clarinet choir on the slow number. The sound on the vinyl is stunning stereo. I have not heard the CD, so I don't know how well it emerged from the McMaster wringer. After all these years of BN CD reissues, I find it hard to work up a lot of interest in it really. It's so mid 90s.

Slim and Slam both rule! I love both of them. The reviewer needs a kick up the reety vooty. No Charlie Parker fan will ever forget "Slim's Jam" and the Red Norvo session with Slam on bass. Funnily enough, I saw Slam on a Youtube a few weeks ago and he was playing in a very modern style. I had always thought of him as a (top quality) swing bassist, but he was much more versatile than that. Top drawer bassist. Hey, his arco style was a big influence on Paul Chambers.

He's hot on Elvin's "Dear John C" album (not out on CD though). And also on "The Return of El Chico".

As one of millions of Bb tenor players (not to mention the soprano and the regular clarinet) I can't understand why it disorients you. It is not easy to find C tenors these days - I've certainly never seen one live. To me, the tenor is a piece of metal that I blow into and it makes a sound. I used to play alto and that's in a really weird key, namely Eb of course, so to play a concert A, say, you have to play an F#. The C soprano that I saw in the clip I mentioned sounded great, but not really any different from the Bb. The Bb bass sax goes only a fourth lower than the baritone, less if the baritone has a low A. So a C bass sax has little to offer, being a mere minor third lower than the baritone, and only a tone lower than the low A baritone.

Well said, Chris, lol. The Miles Davis Columbia box set booklets are often terrible to read. Some pages have weird background colors under the text. And the things snap shut so easily. In every case, I took the CDs out of the sleeves and rehoused them in jewel cases. Otherwise, the dog would have some of them by now.

We can thank the world of house music for this, cos lots of house (family) DJs spin vinyl, and quite a few hate CDs. (Not me though - vinyl is a pain in the ass when you are beat-matching, compared with CDs on a Pioneer CDJ 1000.) Much though I love LPs for jazz, I wonder about the sound though. A new LP will have been processed digitally at some stage(s) and so we are not going back to the pre-CD era soundwise. Plus, as one who grew up with analog records, I really enjoy nearly all of the CDs that I have (heresy, I know, lol) and, dare I say it, I'm even happy with mp3 and ogg and the other suffixes.

I take it that you are not including electro house, Jim, lol. I've been having a ball with that during the last 18 months or so. If anyone wants a copy of my new mix, message me and I can send it over msn.

I have had this set for ages and I just love it. Just a groove! Horace is a very interesting player and really draws me in when I'm listening to him. I rearranged the set in chronological order, having never heard any of the original albums - there was too much else to try to get back in those golden days of jazz. The collection starts with just the trio, which is very absorbing on its own, and then leads up to the priceless sessions with the Turrentine brothers. Welcome on my hifi set at any time. Horace, George Tucker and Al Harewood made a terrific section. As Stanley Turrentine once said, "Al is tasty". George reminds me of Mingus a bit, with his aggressive plucking; you can always tell when it's him. The same can be said of Horace! Hans mentioned the TOCJs. (Alas, long gone; the definitive Blue Note reissues.) There are not a lot of alternates in the Mosaic set, so you are pretty well set up with those. For those who enjoy these sessions (and what's not to like?), check out Horace's work on Roland Kirk's "I Talk With The Spirits" album. His playing is in the same vein there and it makes a good complement to the Blue Notes.