Guy Berger

I love everything I’ve heard from this group - the Mosaic, Flight for Four, Self Determination Music, and the album on Dark Tree.

So reading this, it seems mostly a nuisance and I don’t get why people are getting really mad about it (rather than just mildly annoyed) Lets say something comes on that pretends to be Nat Adderley but is obviously not him… you can just skip the track! Fwiw, I strongly agree Spotify should stop this kind of thing

Agreed! Capricorn Rising (Rivers with Pullen) teases out how that might have worked

This one is very good

I’ve been listening to A Glancing Blow (the Clean Feed live recording) and there’s a segment on there when Parker just starts quoting a Monk tune… not where I’d expect to encounter it!

The other Organissimo Guy. I missed this thread in real time but have to say - he was one of the best posters on here. I miss his contributions.

I was on the BNBB near the end of its life, and then migrated over here. I've been here since June 2003. That's an incredibly long time.

Great characterization

YUM!!!

This is very exciting though I’ll wait until there is a bigger release

I liked the show a lot, can understand why someone else wouldn’t. BUT she was incredible in it… indisputable. How did she even come up with that accent.

Definitely not Lonnie Smith, but I always assumed it was guitarist Lonnie Johnson. Coltrane would have surely been familiar with him…

I should have mentioned in my list: Jon Jang, Two Flowers on a Stem Andrew Cyrille w/James Newton, X-Man and Good to Go: A Tribute to Bu (I like the duets w/Jimmy Lyons and the quarters with David S Ware too, but return to these 2 the most)

There are a lot of great recordings on these labels - I was lucky to pick up a lot of the CamJazz reissue boxes back in the day. If I had to pick favorites of what I’ve heard: Muhal Richard Abrams, Blu Blu Blu & Blues Forever David Murray, Home & The Hill New Air, Live at Montreal Jazz Festival Mal Waldron, The Seagulls of Kristiansund & Crowd Scene Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy, Sempre Amore Steve Lacy, Only Monk & More Monk Paul Motian, Misterioso Geri Allen, Etudes I am sure there are others

RIP. A major voice

The 50s Blue Note albums are all really enjoyable. Arguably the pinnacle for this style of “functional” hard hop - great players at the top of their game but no dominant voice, on compositions that take a back seat to the playing (unlike Silver or Blakey) but don’t sound generic

I like the sound of JT’s first album

The intro to “Teeter Totter” is some of my favorite Andrew Hill record. Setting aside Point of Departure, this is IMHO the best Joe/Kenny album

Power to the People and In Japan are obviously exceptionally good, but I’ve been listening to some of the other later Milestones and they’re also quite enjoyable. Joe had a combo of great sound and great ideas and was willing to make the most out of any setting into which he was placed. And the settings on those albums are generally quite good if not always great.

Have been listening to What Is To Be Done with Larry Ochs, Gerald Cleaver, and Mr Wilco this week. Clean Feed, 2019. Really good, ferocious without being offputting. I recommend!

I think Chambers has some pluses and considerable minuses. The pluses - it’s comprehensive as far ans official recordings go and he mines a lot of secondary sources. However, he has serious blind spots / cluelessness on Miles’s music starting in the mid 1960s that get worse and worse the later you go. His coverage of the electric era is mostly a waste (except to get a flavor of how that music went over many jazz listeners’ heads). There are also some discography errors that suggest he wasn’t a close listener. I also think it’s unfortunate that he didn’t do any primary research when nearly all the musicians who played with Miles were still alive. None of the other, better biographers had that luxury. I think Carr’s bio is better, as is Tingen’s. I haven’t read Szwed’s yet!

I am not a big fan. Like a lot of Davis’s biographers, Carr lets his opinions as a fan get the better of him.

I love this version. I think of it as more “freebop” than “fusion” - sort of a successor to the Miles Davis version, taken even further. And yes, McLaughlin is absolutely smoking on this. (Also: Joe Henderson!) I need to revisit the Don Ellis version (in 7/4 right?) and check out the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble.

I have been listening to the original version of Eddie Harris’s “Freedom Jazz Dance” (from The In Sound) and am struck by how much its popularity in more avant-garde circles was already baked in to the original. Yes the beat is very “soul jazz”, but the melody is pretty angular and syncopated, not your stereotypical populist pitch. I think of the Davis version and its offspring as just taking what’s implied in the original and taking it to its obvious conclusion. Did anybody ever record a version that combines an avant-garde vibe with the soul jazz (or even funk/rock) rhythmic approach?

I saw him twice - once with Gateway, one w/the Jarrett standards trio.