Shrdlu

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.

A big favorite of mine!! Very tasty album. It never gets stale. Check this one out.

Funnily enough, Ravi added me as a friend on Myspace. Shall I nag him about this? lol.

Maybe Miles didn't notice. It was not obvious unless you tried to play along with it. I for one didn't know about the tape recorder fault until a recent CD came out. I just thought maybe I was out of tune. I think I read somewhere that Miles said that he could not stand listening to his own albums. so it's even possible that he never listened to it. This clumsy error was typical of Columbia. Others included the failure to issue "Miles Ahead", "Milestones" and the "Green Dolphin Street" session in stereo (I'm talking LPs here), and the later issue of these with horrible fake stereo - all they did was add a reverb to the mono. This also happened to Louis Armstrong's W.C. Handy LP, at which point they even lost the original mono master tapes!

I'm certainly not laughing. Mancini's "Peter Gunn" album is a masterpiece. I've had it since the early 60s, and it has stood up to dozens of playings without ever sounding stale. It wasn't until recently that I finally got the entire "More Music From Peter Gunn" album, and that has some excellent tracks too - "Goofin' At The Coffee House" being my favorite. The LP mixes are better than the CDs, by the way.

Al, if you run your Monk album (a gem, by the way!) through Nero, there is a pan-in option, which, at its extreme, would collapse it down to mono. It might not be the same as the separately recorded mono mix, which Riverside, Blue Note and others had at that time, but it might be worth a try. I don't have any problem with most stereo jazz albums, which are usually very good, I think. The stereo sound stage gives a clear sound with more detail than mono. From about 1964 or so, all mono jazz albums were just collapsed down stereo. I once saw the date on which Rudy Van Gelder abandoned the separate mono recordings. Funnily enough, most electro/house is almost mono. This is handy, because the right channel of my car stereo recently died, and house still sounds good, whereas stereo jazz CDs sound terrible.

Olympics total bore for me. You will have realized the parallel between the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and the latest show. Well it gets worse. The 1936 structure was designed by Albert Speer, and his son, Albert Speer Jr., was the architect for the setup in China. Kind of a two fingers to the world on China's part, right?

Another big favorite by this "not a jazz musican" ( ) is "Back at the Chicken Shack". Glad it was mentioned above. That was my intro to Jimmy Smith, and one of the first albums by Stanley that I ever heard. Stan is heavily featured, and he goes very well with Smith and Kenny Burrell, making it by far my favorite Smith album. I like it way more than "The Sermon". Here's another indication of the stature and power of Stan. On September 4, 1964, he recorded with McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, then of course in their forceful prime as Trane's rhythm section. (Session later released as "Mr Natural", BN LT 1075). The liner note writer pointed out how Stan made them sound different and conform to what he was doing. Yes, this attests to the professionalism and versatility of Tyner and Jones, but nevertheless the writer had a point. Would YOU like to have stepped in front of them at that time and made them sound very different? Elvin, especially, changes.

Blakey's "Mosaic" and "Free For All" - and toss in "Indestructible" too.

I don't agree about the original, out-of-tune LP (though it DID sound great if you were not aware of the sharp pitch). Try playing along with it, as I did, as a fledgling alto player. It was very hard to tune to it, and back then I didn't know about the fault with the Columbia tape recorder.

This is shattering! Thanks so much for posting all that detail. The box set was so disappointing, listing so many unincluded items - with the comments "untitled original" and "no tapes exist". I wonder how many CDs it would take to reissue all of this, and what the price would be. Maybe MP3 would be the way to go. I doubt that there would be a huge number of people who would pay a high price for these items. But it seems that this stuff will come out one CD at a time, spread over a long period.

There are lots of small speakers today that put out a great sound. But, do you have room for a stereo boom box? The kind that goes in the trunk of a car. For good bass, you need the large dimensions. You wire it in parallel with the main speakers. My living room speakers are smallish Jamos, and they are very good, but what a difference the boom box makes. You ought to hear the likes of Ron Carter or Richard Davis on them, plus Jimmy Smith's bass pedals! Not to mention electro/house - that was enough to make the neighbor come around, lol.

It was only recently that I got to hear ALL of the Robert Herridge TV performance, thanks to Youtube and Dailymotion. That material is outstanding and should have been put onto a CD long ago. Trane's solo on the TV "So What" is a spine-tingler, and totally different from the LP solo. You can see some of the musicians in the wings (Frank Rehak and others) really digging it. Interesting to see Trane drafted into Gil's band on alto. (Cannonball would probably have done it, but was not well that day.)

Some very tasty, kick-ass funky stuff http://www.myspace.com/aleksei Free downloads - the steps involved are pretty easy. Enjoy!

Would this be 'Countdown - The Savoy Sessions', from the mid-70s? That was an excellent sounding reissue on Arista/Savoy, with great liner notes. No, I got them in the late 60s. I think they were American LPs. French Musidisc put out several Savoys, but I don't think my Harden LPs were French. I did get the Musidisc versions of those fabulous Milt Jackson sessions with Lucky Thompson.

They still doing new RVGs?? Surely the whole catalog has been done by now, lol. How many years has it been? Moving on, "Leapin' and Lopin'" is an outstanding album, Sonny's best for my money. It has a great groove. Sad to think that this terrific pianist had not long to go. If only we had more like this record. I have tons of excellent albums, but I have returned to this one very often, so that says something about it.

This is a hard one, as Stanley was consistently good. I've never heard him on a bad session. I have all his Blue Note sessions, I think - you need a couple of those later "LT" LPs to get the lot. My first taste was the abovementioned Duke Jordan album (a mono BN LP, yum yum) and that was more than enough to make me a fan. The sessions with his bro Tommy and Horace Parlan are very tasty. But it's all good. Sorry if that's frustrating. At least you are safe buying any of his records.