Shrdlu

Give the guy a break already. I'm so tired of all the pomposity and bickering on this board. Everything inspected and dissected to the n'th degree. It's only a bulletin board.

Ah, the spelling reassures my faith in our wonderful education system, lol. I remember grading university math papers and seeing the number 2 written as to.

Meanwhile, Red was a fantastic bass player. I first heard him with Bird on a couple of Dial sessions.

The Desmond set is not all that exciting and can safely be missed, I think. (Speaking as one who likes a lot of S & G.) I've always liked the Burrell set. Get that if you're a fan. (And what's not to like about Kenny?)

I imagine the C bass sax only exists in theory, lol. The Bb one is so similar that surely it would do. I saw a video of a guy playing a C soprano, but, again, the Bb does the job.

The thing is, that whereas you hear about this massive thing, you can actually listen to it on that clip, and see the guy playing it. Prior to that, all I had ever heard was a five-second clip of a grunt or two on one. There is another article (that Google brings up) about a guy who ordered a new one. He tells how he go on when it arrived. Downsizing a little, I'd love to have a bass sax. It has a nice, rich sound all of its own. And, at the other end, I'd love a Selmer sopranino too. I love low flutes, and there are some great examples of the bass, such as Joe Farrell playing one on the "Tide" album by Jobim. I wonder how much volume you can get out of a contrabass or sub contrabass flute though. The sub contrabass, despite its name, would only go down to C two octaves below middle C, which is not ultra low. In the clarinet family, the Eb contrabass is a fine horn. You can hear that on "Canto de Ossanha", by Duke Pearson, where Frank Foster plays it. Michael Cuscuna erroneously listed it as a an alto clarinet, but it's an octave below that one, and also has a low C extension (sounding concert Eb). If a guy is going to go to bass clarinet, he might as well use the Eb contrabass.

When I was an eager kid wanting to get a sax, a mentor friend wrote out a list of the various sizes, and he included the contrabass, with a note saying "workshop curiosity". He was pretty much right at the time, but a few manufacturers have worked on the design in recent years and made it a viable proposition - if you are pretty rich. In case you don't know (and how many on earth do?), this is in Eb, an octave below the baritone, and twice as long. Yes, I have never seen a live specimen! The expansion of sites like Youtube in the last year or two has been amazing. (Suddenly, tons of video clips of the top jazz musicians have been uploaded. You would do well to Google your favorites.) I was amazed to find this performance a few days ago: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4748127359655445832 It's a guy playing a blues on a contrabass. I had expected this enormous horn to sound like a weird physics experiment, but, much to my surprise, it is very musical. Hope you enjoy it too.

Well said, Lon. Aric, why restrict yourself to Hank Jones? I love Hank but there are tons of other excellent trio recordings. Getting back to Denny, try to find a copy of his 1973 LP, "Expansion". It's very interesting! Not just a standard swinging trio album at all.

Nice pics! Thx for posting those. Trane's 1951 tenor is not the balanced action Selmer that he played from the mid 50s until it (presumably) broke and was replaced by a Selmer MK VI in about 1965. What a pairing, Trane and Diz!

I still think the Mosaic sets of BN recordings should have included (color) copies of the original album art and facsimilies of the original liner notes. I sometimes stick the album art inside the front cover of the booklet.

So it's something neither of us can hear anymore... "All the highest notes, neither sharp nor flat / The ear can't hear as high as that / Still, I thought I'd please any passing bat / With my High Fidelitee ..." (Flanders and Swann, "A Song of Reproduction", from "At The Drop of a Hat", ca. 1959)

I don't remember where I saw the interview, but in it, Norman Granz said that he coined that expression as a put-on, and that he (Granz) was the fan of Münster cheese. All very much a part of that 50s era. I'm sure it would have been taken seriously by some - it was all so exciting and new back then. I also remember the use of "hifi" for mono, vs "stereo", and, as a very young kid, saying to the neighbor that surely stereo was hifi too. One of the greatest advantages of that era over the last 20 years was that we just accepted the LPs that came out as definitive issues, without all the worries and arguments about which remastering was the best.

I love this album. Chuck sounds great, Frank cooks, and you have to hear Keith Jarrett's solo on "My Secret Love" to believe it. The tempo on that one is unbelievably fast.

I'm not voting, cos it's a flügelhorn - and I'm busy mixing an electro house set.

How disgusting to hear that this great musician was beaten by the police. Add him to the list with Miles, Pres and who knows who else. I never knew that Bud played at the 1965 Parker Memoorial Concert. It's sad that he wasn't in form, when you consider who else was there - Diz, JJ and so on. Anyway, this is an excuse to recommend the released recordings from that concert. Some great stuff, especially Diz soaring into the high register. I got the original LP (on Limelight, with a stunning gatefold cover) when it first came out, and recently got the Japanese mini-LP CD reissue, which has about three extra tracks, including some more Diz.

By "title track", I mean "Tones For Joan's Bones". I say this because the 1988 U.S. CD mis-issue () is titled "Inner Space". (It has an excuse printed on the papers twice. I hate it when they do something wrong like that and make it clear that they know it's wrong by adding an excuse.) It was nice to hear that track again. It's a trio cut, very much in the Bill Evans tradition.

That's right really. The piano was invented, and tuned, in order to cope with any key and still sound in tune. This involves a small compromise in the pitch of each note. As you know, the harpsicord has to be retuned for each key - otherwise it sounds even worse, if that were possible, .

This is a terrific commentary on the ridiculousness of worshipping these stupid statues. There is a scripture that goes something like this: "Eyes they have, but cannot see. Ears they have but cannot hear. Mouths they have but cannot speak." Yet millions bow before things like this and the pink elephant in India.

That's a classic sequence of church signs! I guess it was a slow news week there.

I like a little celeste by Fats Waller (no-one's mentioned him yet) and Gene Harris on that first Three Sounds album. Some people get the celeste and harpsicord mixed up - they sound and look way different from each other. The U.S. reissue of Freddie Hubbard's "Blue Spirits" has a bonus track on which the harpsicord is listed as a celeste. For me, the harpsicord sucks and I think they should all have been burned with the old streetcars.

I first heard this in the U.S. CD version, with the two tracks missing. The sound was so bad that I could not really enjoy the music. Then, I got a copy of the Japanese CD version, which is the same as the original double LP. It sounds great and the music really came alive when I heard that. But Atlantic's engineering is not very good, and it's sad that Rudy or Columbia didn't do the album. The title track is a classic composition, and you will also enjoy the version that Blue Mitchell recorded. Chick was present on that too.

Extra virgin, very pregnant, über gay, ...... I don't like extra virgin olive oil. The flavor is too strong and it interferes with the taste of whatever you are adding it to. And the green color is a turnoff too. Give me the non virgin (experienced?) yellow oil every time.

The bassoon is one of the many so-called "woodwind" instruments. These include the flute, clarinet, and oboe, as well as the bassoon. They are not always actually made of wood. Most orchestral flutes are metal, and the saxophone (rarely seen in a symphony orchestra) is also classified as woodwind. One reason for the name is that the basic fingerings for the six fingers other than the thumbs and the little fingers are pretty much the same on all of them. It makes sense to group the woodwind players together, as the score harmonizes them. So that is probably what you saw. The standard symphony woodwind section has two each of the flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon. Most woodwind players double on other woodwind instruments, including the piccolo (octave higher than the flute), cor anglais (a larger instrument in the oboe family), bass clarinet and contrabassoon. It would be hard to find a woodwind player who does not double.

It's the regular Nero used for burning CDrs. I used that "pan in" option for the Bill Evans with Gary McFarland session in the Evans box set. The stereo separation was way too wide (not a problem I often have) and the music sounded a lot better after I panned it in.

I love that 1961 Verve album he did with Sonny Stitt. That album alone was enough to make me a big fan of both. He had a wonderful, rich, heavy sound. Check out his appearance on that live big-band album that Mingus did in 1971 - Mingus With Friends or some name like that.