medjuck

The whole movie is a mind boggling "representation of the time". Amos and Andy (and King Fish? --I forget if he's in it) are played by white actors in black face. Their scenes are often introduced with documentary footageof real Black people in Harlem. So the 2 stars in blackface drive the Ellington band to a high society gig for the filmming of which Juan Tizol and Barney Bigard also had to wear blackface so the band wouldn't look integrated !! After the band plays a terrific version of Old Man Blues three band members step forward and sing "3 Little Words" but the voices we hear are those of 3 White guys: The Rhythm Boys (one of whom is Bing Crosby). The movie flopped partly because Black audiences were dismayed that the actors who played Amos and Andy on the radio were White. This is a movie you don't want to see on acid. Strangest thing I'd ever seen until I saw Starship Troopers.

More than 40 years ago. Either '64 or '65.

Last weekend the wife and kids were away so I went out to hear live music 2 nights in a row. Friday was the Wayne Shorter Quartet (w. Dailo Perez, John Patitucci & Brian Blades) at a 600 seat theater. I'm not that familiar with Shorter's work. Last time I saw him live he was with Miles and the only record of his I have is the fairly recent Alegria which I would guess is not typical of his work. (I have nothing against Weather Report but I don't own any of their records.) The quartet played about a 90 minutes straight including an encore and they knocked me out. The first piece was nearly 30 minutes long and Shorter took his time joining in! Eventually he played a lot of tenor, a bit of soprano, whistled into the mike and blew through his tenor without vibrating his reed. It soon became clear that this quartet was not 3 sidemen accompaying a leader but four equally strong individuals playing together. I have no idea what any of the pieces were or if they were medleys or individual numbers. But I loved it. Anyone else seen this group? The Shorter concert inspired me to hear more live music so the next night I went out to UCSB to an 800 seat hall and heard the SF Jazz Collective. I'd heard them last year when they paid homage to Ornette. This year it was Coltrane. Their tradition (of 2 years) is to play new orchestrations of songs by one composer and give equal time to pieces composed by collective members. It's a great group but for me the whole was less than the sum of the parts. I liked all the soloists but the orchestrations (which I think were by Gil Goldstein-- for whom I have an affection because of his association with Gil Evans) left me cold. I liked the ensemble work best on the pieces where Bobby Hutcherson had a strong voice in the mix. The use of vibes struck me as the most original thing about the group--- though I guess you can find precedent for this in larger Teddy Charles or Don Elliot combos. Still the collective is worth seeing and hearing. But for me last weekend The Wayne Shorter Quartet may have just set the bar to high for them.

There was a British sax player named something like Lon Coxhill who used to busk on the streets of London. I know he made some records but he might have gone inside to record them.

Anyone here besides me ever trying playing Keaton's Go West along with Bill Frissell's cd of music for the film?

I got this when I was looking for the studio "Sweet Rain". It's good. Whatever one thinks of Getz he had good taste in sidemen. Tony Williams here, and in the last year of his life Scott Lafaro seems to have performed more with Getz than with Bill Evans.

Thanks to L p for posting the following on the thread about the newly found coltrane/monk tapes: there is 15min of an mp3 of unissued monk/coltrane on the official monk site. http://www.monkzone.com/monkzone.htm webcasts Anyone else listen to these? They're all pretty interesting but I'm struck by how noisy the audience is on the 5 Spot recordings. This may have to do with mic placement-- you can hear Nica having a conversation after she introduces the band- but the audiences seem much morerespectiful on the European cuts. I guess individual nights at the 5 Spot didn't seem legendary or even special when the group was playing there every night.

I've never seen these but I was at one of the tapings: The Mose Allison one.

I only have one of them-- I think Vol2,-- but I've alwasy loved it. I guess I better complete the set.

Where to stay depends a lot on what you can afford to pay. I've been there with no money, with some money and with a large corporation paying for an expensive hotel. Had the most fun when I had no money, but I was a lot younger then. PM if you want advice on the Left Bank which I know more about than anywhere else (and which I do recommend). But it looks like you're getting lots of good advice from people who have probably been to Paris more recently then me. Wish I was going with you.

I am a fan. A friend just sent me a cdr of "Elliot Lawrence plays Gerry Mulligan Arrangements". It really surprised me. I have a couple of other Mulligan arranged cuts on another cd but I always presumed they were aberrations. All of this cd is good. Reminds me of the Concert Jazz Band.

Donald Westlake. Any of the Dortmuller books or Dancing Aztecs. Also the first couple of Fletch books by Gregory MacDonald. (Fletch One and Fletch Too are not the first ones. Chgeck out the order of publication.)

I heard an interview with Bobby Short on Fresh Air recently (right after his death) and apparently he starated out as a child prodigy in vaudeville shows. He obviously had mroe talent than Sugar Chile.

I'm listening to the Monk/Coltrane from the Monk Zone right now. Wow! Thanks for pointing it out. The whole page is full of interesting stuff. The only thing I know of that compares to this is the performances page on bobdylan.com.

Lankin reports: "disc two features Newport '55 performance of "Round Midnight" plus previously unreleased 1956 concert presented by producer Gene Norman at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Feb. 1956 with the lineup of Miles Davis, Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers, Red Garland and John Coltrane" so I presumed that it has just the one number from'55. If not this, cd is really worth getting. On the other hand I'll probably get it anyway for the Pasadena concert. I admit that by the time I was able to hear the '55 Newport concert I really expected something amazing given what I'd read about it. I remember waiting with anticipation for the cd's arrival in the mail which seemed to take weeks. So I was a little disappointed. Listening to it now, however, I can see why it made such an impression. However, I also agree with Miles that he'd been playing that good for a year or so. Think of "Musings of Miles" or the December'54 date with Monk. But I'm not sure those were even released by the time of Newport. Anyone know? BTW Guy: As well as Hackensack and Round midnight the group also performed Now's the Time-- so it wasn't an all Monk program.

88. But I probably got points for already being 62. Not impossible given that I've been trying to phone my 97 year old mother all day but she's out!

Those items are not soundies but part of a (I think) Universal short film which featured the octet plus Billie plus some stuff with a child prodigy piano player whose name I now forget. The numbers with Lady Day are available on a Lazer disc which looks pretty good. The whole thing is on a new DVD of pretty well every known piece Billie Holiday on film though the stuff with the kid is in pretty bad shape. I've got the DVD at home and will add the information when I get there.

I think that's another recording with the first quintet. The 1955 Newport comeback was with a pick-up group that included Gerry Mulligan and Monk. The entire concert was available on a European cd but Round Midnight only was on a recently released Columbia Box entitled Happy Birthday Newport (or something like that). Since they have released the one song they should be able to obtain the rights to the rest of the set if they don't already have them. (Then again Mulligan is not on Round Midnight so maybe they need to get rights from his estate for the numbers he play on. )

Because of this thread I decided that it was time to buy a cd of the Diaabelli Variations. I could only find one version at my local Borders and that was by somone I'd never heard of named Uri Caine. I probably should have noticed that he was accompanied by the Concerto Koln but I'd forgotten that the variations are a solo piano piece. (If I'd ever known it to begin with.) I finally realised that this was not your standard version when he broke into some barrelhouse piano on variation 16 but I should have noticed as early as variation 2 which sounds awfully modern for Beethoven. So who is Uri Caine? I looked him up on-line and see that he's done several recordings. Any fans out there? I do like his variations on the variations but did get Rudolph Serkin's version too. (It came with the 11 bagatelles and the Fantasy in G Minor all on one cd.)

I've been listening to a lot of Bird in Boston from the early 50's recently and think that the one session he did with Red Garland is hard to beat.

I can supply a cdr of the Defintive version if one want to do an a/b with your version Allen. (I don't feel guilty about copying what's basically a bootleg.)

Are you sure? The Criterion people told me that they obtained the rights from Stanley Donen.

I've read that you can redo your student loan to the newer, lower, interest rates. Sorry to be so vague but I'm pretty sure I read about this recently in the LA Times Sunday business section in an advice column called "Your Money" or something like that.

Same here. I've never been all that taken w/Audrey Hepburn, but she pushes all the right buttons in this one. My wife and I have had a cheapie DVD edition of this for about a year and finally got around to watching it the other night... Wow!! Great cast, great chemistry between Hepburn and Grant, lots of sharp, witty dialogue... much fun. Why was Hepburn nearly always paired with much older men? Bogart in SABRINA, Astaire in FUNNY FACE, Grant in CHARADE... even Gregory Peck in ROMAN HOLIDAY seems at least 10 years older than her. The only movie I can think of where her romantic partner is approximately the same age is BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (George Peppard, and in that one the chemistry definitely ain't there IMO). There was a not cheap Criterion edition that had a fascinating commmentary track by Peter Stone the writer and Stanley Donen the director. I think the same commentary is available on a new edition from another company. On that commentary one of them says that Grant insisted that he not pursue her becaseu that would be unseemly given the differences in their ages.

In my case I'm sure it's "Kind of Blue"--as unimaginative as that may be. (I think this is a more interesting question than what is the "best" recording of all time.)