medjuck

I resisted it for a few weeks because I thought I already had too many of the cuts on it. Then I read about the booklet and decided I had to have it. The booklet is great and it turns out I didn't have as much of the music as I thought and some of the best is by people I'd never even heard of before.

I think I read that the master tapes are in terrible shape. Too bad. These are two of my favorite records.

My cable system (Cox) offered a DVR cable box for $9 more a month. If you go HD the DVR is included. I expec that this is the wave of the future and will allow yo to avoid one set top box.

I interviewed Zappa re: 10,000 Motels once for a film magazine. He was backstage at a rock club in Toronto with his whole band and Blood, Sweat & Tears. They had all just heard of CTA (Later called Chicago) and were joking that if they could all play together they'd have a bigger band than Stan Kenton. Zappa was nice enough but I was shocked by how misoginistic he was. Kept talking about "strapping on"women. Good thing my feminist girl friend wasn't with me. I once interviewd Robert Mitchum who made a pass at her and she almost took his head off. Ironically by the end of his life his wife seemed to be entirely in control. Zappa also talked about getting letters from kids saying they were the only freaks in their town and his music kept them alive.

Which Manny Albam Sessions? West Side Story by any chance?

So they easily could have included the Dial sides. (Instead of the duplicates from the Bird set-- they do include the sides with Bird don't they?)

The RCA and the Savoy CDs togther are missing a few sessions by Diz under his name from the 1940s: The session where he recorded the first version of "Salt Peanuts", plus "Good Bait", "I Can't Get Started", and "Bebop"; the session with the first version of "Groovin' High" (the same session where he recorded "Blues 'n' Boogie"--but Keepnews kept "Groovin' High" off the Savoy disc because it was "sonically inferior"; a sesson from LA where he and Bags et al did "Dynamo", "Diggin' for Diz", "Round Midnight", "When I Get to Old to Dream", and "Confirmation" (a great session, but Bags sounds like he's playing milk bottles); and a four tune session with strings. This is from memory, so I am sure I screwed something up somewhere. Now, wasn't that easy? The first 4 sides you mention were cut for Manor before the Guild sides, and along with the first version of Groovin High are available on a great Naxos cd called Dizzy Gillespie: Classic Recordings 1942-1949. But I got that when I was in Canada and it may not be available in the States. The Diz with Bags sides were made for Dial so you'd think Savoy could have gotten hold of them like they did with the Bird Dials. BTW Who owns the rights to the Dial material nowadays?

Leonard and his ersatz blues lyrics--very annoying. But not as annoying as his piano playing--how many sessions Leonard organized did he ruin with his clunky, inert approach to the keyboard? I dunno: I've always liked the 2 Ellington versions of Mighty Like the Blues. (Did Feather produce either of those sessions?)

In the US weren't the early Beatles records in stereo with the instruments on one track and the vocals on the other? I think that's how they were in Canada. Iim not sure becasue I was listening to Miles at the time and thought I was too cool for the Beatles. But I used to hear them at parties. I think the first Beatles record I bought was Rubber Soul. And I think they released completely different Lps in Canada: ie neither the British or the US.

I didn't know about the Avid release. Maybe that's what Definitive ripped-off. Anybody compare the 2 of them?

Yes. Except for some audience and set-up noises-- to which I think Schaap assigned tracks (I'm not sure because I'm not at home where the cds are).

I saw Pullen a couple of times with Mingus and was very impressed. I was also present for his solo recording on Sackville. Though you can't tell, John Norris and Bil Smith often had a paid audience when they did the recordings to help defray the costs. But what I really like is Ode To Life: his tribute to George Adams on Blue Note. It's one of his "African _Brazilian Connection" cds which may not be to everone's taste. Sadly, as I remember it he died not too long after Adams.

I'm just looking at my cd collection and it's amazing how few of them were recorded in the 70's-- and of those that were, few are acoustic and most are on Sackville.

I have both and I much prefer the Definitive. However that may be a matter of taste and my hearings shot from old age and too many rock and roll concerts.

I didn't know there were sextet sides from Pacific Jazz. Could someone post a discography of them too. It would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to see a box of all the Mercury stuff-- not just the Sextet. There's a lot of it on one of those Jazz 'Round Midnight complilations that I really like. At least I think most of it was originally on Mercury: It's copyright Polygram nowadays. Actually it would probably be copyright Universal Music nowadays but the compilations are from the early 90's.

What records have Pops & Pee Wee on them? (I'm presuming there are some.) I just got the new Mosaic catalogue and it was the montion of the Ruby Braff with Pee Wee sides that made me decide to get the Columbia Small Group Swing Sessions.

But that one's hard to beat.

I find the same with films: The Golden Age is whenever you were 17.

Have you heard the Definitive release? This is *said* to be the best version of the Carnegie Hall concert. Less noisier than the Schaap (extreme in this regard, even my 80 year old neighbour complained about the scratching sounds ) and much clearer than the noisereduced earlier CBS CD reissue. I agree about the Definitive disc. There's some controversy as to whether they had a different source or just doctored the Schaap cd. Whatever: the result is great. All you miss is some between numbers audience shuffling. (The same is true of their Charlie Christian live box.) I know they're dastardly pirates, but they seem to have good engineers. BTW Since I brought it up: if you want a cd version of the correct take of Up & Down on which Clark Terry does his "Oh what fools these mortals be", it's on a cd devoted to Ralph Ellison. (I forget the title right now.)

If you mean at the end of the disc (ie after the anouncements) it's actually track 21: something Phil Schaap called a pause track. It should be listed on your cd and in the notes. Schaap had this idea that we would want a pause track for programming our cds. He also seemed to think that we all knew how to use indexes on our players. He was so worried about stuff like that that he left out the actual take of Up and Down from Such Sweet Thunder that everyone talks about in the notes.

I've got a Ray Russell cd where Gil Evans plays on a couple of cuts, the RMS with Gil at Montreux cd and a DVD of the latter which includes a lot of RMS without Gil. I didn't find the non-Gil cuts very interesting. But then I'm not really into fusion.

I think that one of the few exceptions to this was the issue of Esquire in which the "Great Day in Harlem" photo first appeared. Much of that issue was devoted to articles about Jazz under the gnereal descriptioin "The Golden Age of Jazz". Rarely do people realise when they're in a Golden Age. (Tv people always point out that when they were working in the '50s in what is now known as the "Golden Age of tv" everyone told them that what they were doing was crap). But take a look at that famous photo and you see it was a brief period when many of the early greats were still alive and a whole new crop of modernists were making the presence felt. A Golden Age indeed and someone at Esquire knew it. Of course, very few of even the modernists are still alive now.

I recomend Krin Gabbard's Jammin' at the Margins as a scholarly book about jazz in films but it certainly doesn't attempt to be encyclopedic. Meeker's book is out of print but he told me that he plans to give his archives to the Library of Congress (or maybe he said the Smithsonian) so taht they could be made available on line. (He's not very happy with his long time employers the British Film institute which is why he's not giving it to them. ) Meanwhile the Yannow book is pretty good in letting you know what's available even if you don't agree with his evaluations. Very good intgerviews with film collectors at the end of the book.

My only problem with it is that it doesn't include the studio chatter from the original releases. Not only is it interesting but it's become part of the songs for me.

Well since I started this thread let me jump in: I certainly don't think of my self as an anti-intellectual. I was an academic with a Phd for many years. I guess I still have the PhD though nobody but my mother ever calls me Doctor. I think my biggest influences were Marshall Mcluhan and Robertson Davies (who were my teachers) along with Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag. I'm certainly not against analysis, but I do think a lot of Jazz criticism is just one-upmanship. And what's that famous quote: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture".