Guy Berger

Was K.B. Blues recorded in 1957 or 1956?

I didn't mean to suggest that I disliked ALL OUR REASONS; I liked it a lot, that's why I was so excited about OItO. But I think the new album is somewhat better. This group has a different vibe live, as many American groups recorded on ECM do.

Just got this new release... I think I like it better than ALL OUR REASONS, despite the fact that it doesn't have anything as WOW as "Song for Balkis". Like the prior release, it's probably more straight-ahead post-bop than your typical ECM album but more ECMy than your typical straight-ahead post-bop album.

Justin, thanks for mentioning the 50 year anniversary. Still one of my all-time favorites. It kind of "ruined" Dolphy's earlier recordings for me.

At least in some cases, they are bred to do so. I have run into plenty of really sweet pit bulls, but also some meanies. One of our former neighbors (a dog owner) got two of her fingers bitten off by one. They're particularly scary because they're so strong. Worth noting that the statements "most pit bulls are sweet dogs" and "pit bulls are more likely to aggressively hurt humans or other dogs than most other breeds" are not mutually exclusive. (But I'd actually guess that the share of meanies is higher for wienerdogs or chihuahuas than for pit bulls.)

What about Gettin' Around? Embarrassing to admit, when I first read this post I mixed up GA (which I think is DG's weakest BN) and Our Man in Paris mixed up, and I was surprised you were so favorable on the album!

Surprised that I didn't post in this thread - maybe I commented in the other one that erwbol posted. 1) Nice that everyone stayed courteous in this thread given the potentially contentious topic. 2) Some of the albums cited in this thread didn't really belong here, I don't think. I mean, Am I Blue is not a very good album [sorry Chewy!] but how many people rate it that highly? And I feel like A Caddy of Daddy might actually be a tad underrated. 3) Overrated, in my opinion [and some of these musicians I love in other contexts] - these are all good albums, just not deserving of the "amazing classic" label that I hear them tagged with sometimes: Maiden Voyage Speak No Evil (Wayne's my favorite saxophonist!) Song for My Father The Sidewinder (my opinion on this one has improved over time, for what it's worth) Midnight Special (great album, but not the equal of Back at the Chicken Shack in my opinion) The Sermon (love the soloists, some very good music, but not quite a classic) Evolution Mode for Joe (maybe doesn't belong here... I know opinion on this is more mixed. Definitely a disappointment relative to Inner Urge) Search for the New Land (love the title track, which probably earned the album its reputation; but the rest of the tunes aren't on the same level) Destination Out! (disappointing compared to Let Freedom Ring and One Step Beyond) Moanin' (quite a few better Blakey sessions out there) Grant Green + Sonny Clark sessions (though the praise for "It Ain't Necessarily So" is 100% deserved) From the Soul I walk back my anti-Lee and anti-Hank comments, I feel like now that the reissue program is dead I'm exposed to less excessive hype and can enjoy their great music for what it was.

My biggest regret about this period of Miles's career (really, 1961-70) is that we don't have more recorded gigs, particularly from clubs (rather than concert halls). I feel like a lot of our "received wisdom" about this music is not entirely accurate.

Side Two, yes, much mojo indeed. Have you given The Sixth Sense time to work its magic? I started exploring a bunch of those mid/late 60s albums over the past few years. I probably haven't given them all the attention they deserve, but they generally range from "good" to "excellent". If somebody is worried (like I was) that it's just "generic BN hard bop", those concerns should be (mostly) set aside.

Miles in Europe is great... though the box version is superior because it has "Bye Bye Blackbird". I think of this recording (as well Cote Blues and the other live recordings from the summer of 1963) as bridging the 1961 band with Hank/Wynton/Paul/Jimmy with the more progressive sounds of the 1960s.

Scott, not sure we're really disagreeing that much. The only thing I am getting at is that these guys played a lot of live gigs and, based on the recorded evidence from 1963 through 1967, did so at an extremely high level pretty much all the time. Within that context, what made the 2/12/64 concert special was not that these guys played a lot better than they usually did on this specific night, but that it was the only opportunity for many listeners to hear them in action. Maybe if Columbia had recorded & released the May 1966 Portland concert or the November 1967 Paris concert to a broad audience, those would be the concerts we'd all be swooning over.

If someone said this, they are incorrect. For what it's worth, while this is an excellent concert, I do wonder whether its reputation is at least in part exaggerated due to the fact that it had almost no competition for listeners' ears from other live recordings with this rhythm section for a decade. Maybe if the Plugged Nickel or later recordings had been released in real time... I don't know, but I personally doubt it. The tension and aggression they played with due to the money situation is quite noticeable. And it is still fascinating to hear how cohesively two rather disparate sources, meaning Coleman vs. Ron/Herbie/Tony played together. Kinda reminds me a lot of the Coltrane Quartet in '65. You just felt as though both bands had reached their apotheosis at those points, and could simply go no further. I have listened to every (or nearly every) live recording with this rhythm section. I don't dispute that they felt what they felt on this evening, but their playing here doesn't strike me as unusual in terms of aggression/tension. Can you give specific examples of compositions played at this concert and on other live recordings from 1964-1967 that are played with more aggression/tension here?

I actually think the 1959 San Francisco recording is somewhat overrated, as is the "Know What I Mean" album with Bill Evans. My faves with Cannonball (besides Somethin' Else) are Cannonball in Europe, Fiddler on the Roof, and Money in the Pocket. My opinion is Cannonball's bands got better once Yusef Lateef joined - there was some grit added to all that sweetness.

If someone said this, they are incorrect. For what it's worth, while this is an excellent concert, I do wonder whether its reputation is at least in part exaggerated due to the fact that it had almost no competition for listeners' ears from other live recordings with this rhythm section for a decade. Maybe if the Plugged Nickel or later recordings had been released in real time...

Agreed - the early Verve stuff is essential.

Loving this right now (or rather, disc 1; haven't listened to disc 2). Listening to the solo album on Tzadik and Pi trilogy is a 2014 resolution.

Putin's Russia gives me the creeps.

Well of course, but you could also flip that statement and say that you can never read an article about Miles without it mentioning all of major, major artists that got their starts in his combos over the years. That is certainly an essential aspect of Miles' oeuvre that has propelled him to such legendary stature. For what it's worth, I have never thought of Herbie or any of those guys simply as Miles' sidemen, and I really haven't at all gotten that impression over the years. I realize that your experience may be different. I am guessing that a fairly large percentage of the universe that's familiar with Herbie Hancock does not know that he played with Miles Davis.

My experience with them has always been positive, and I tend to favor them when I order on Amazon Marketplace. But I'll add that I've never ordered anything complicated.

There's a pretty good chance that this is not the most sexist/chauvinist post on this board... But it's still sexist/chauvinist. Seems like something the Simpsons comic book guy would say.

It's funny - I didn't become "aware" of him until fairly late in his career - and then retrospectively realized he was in a ton of movies I'd seen ("The Big Lebowski"! "Scent of a Woman"!). Great actor, never mailed it in.

Steve Grossman is among my least favorite 1970-75 Miles saxophonists, but I second this - he sounded a lot better on the April and June stuff that was not officially released. Haven't listed to this stuff for a while.. but my memory of it is that I was disappointed by Grossman....so I am wondering if I should get this box when I have much of this material live with a better version of the band. Do I have it wrong? Well, I've already offered my lukewarm semi-defense of Grossman on these recordings. But besides that, Miles and the rhythm section are red hot. Let me also add that - assuming "better version of the band" refers to the March 1970 gigs with Wayne - the group's sound did change pretty quickly during this period, becoming less free-jazzy and more groove-oriented. Less than six months separate the March Fillmore gigs and the Isle of Wight gig, and the gap between March and the first Cellar Door band recordings is less than right months. This stuff isn't redundant from a stylistic standpoint.

Actually...not...there's the band returned to the US with Sam Morrison replacing Sonny Fortune. That is starting to evolve into another direction yet, although since it ended the way it did, it could easily be heard as the sound of a band running out of breath. But either way, that stuff shows that when people talked about The Man With The Horn showing Miles picking up where he had left off, that might be truer than many of them realized at the time. Great point. I think for multiple reasons - the lack of widely available recordings when this music first re-entered the jazz consciousness, the agenda of the people who pushed the re-evaluation of this music (when was Greg Tate's article published?) - the "conventional wisdom" was/is that the 1975 and post-1980 music have no continuity between them.

I hope so. That Japan tour yielded some amazing concerts. I suspect they will do the 1971 European tour with Jarrett and Bartz next. October 1970 @ Fillmore West would be my preference. DeJohnette was still on board, and the music was incendiary. Ndudu Leon Chancelor made that 71 Euro tour, and while playing fine, was also by his own admission not quite yet ready to bring it all the way. The Japan tour, yeah, the band was tight as hell by then, some amazing shows indeed. The best recorded that I've heard came out on a boot as Black Satin, from Tokyo 6/19/73 (and w/Liebman still on the band, so it's pre-Fortune), but jeez, that's the best recorded example I've ever heard (including Columbia/Sony albums) of how that band was constantly bouncing off the time back and forth, like an Acid Technicolor Muhammad Ali/James Brown/Miles Davis band. I've really never heard another Miles performance quite like that one in terms of recorded balance between all elements. There were actually two Japan tours, 1973 (which is what Jim is talking about) and 1975 (B Clugston and Kyo are referring to that one). Both have some amazing gigs, some of which I think are better than A+P. They do have different feels as the band's sound evolved over those 18 months.

I like most of the early Beatles stuff A LOT. Please Please Me is a bit hit and miss, but the next four are great, and the non-album tracks from this period are generally fantastic. And I say this as some who thinks Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road are the pinnacle of their output. However, the fascination with the inferior American LPs is weird to me. I guess nostalgia has a powerful pull.