Dan Gould

Check out this article from the NYT about the different drafts of the letter she sent to the Judge. Such remorse! And a completely false description of the acts of her buddy Waksal. She's lucky she didn't send the first letter to the judge-maybe then she'd gotten the upper range of the sentence guidelines. Stewart's Letter to the Judge Shows Up Online, in Two Versions By CONSTANCE L. HAYS Published: July 19, 2004 Online, the public can see a presentencing letter that Martha Stewart sent to the judge who oversaw her trial - and, for a while, they could see one she did not send. The unsent letter, posted on the Web shortly after Ms. Stewart was sentenced on Friday to five months in prison and five months of house arrest, was a draft version of the letter she did send. The draft included a long apologia for the behavior of Ms. Stewart's friend Samuel D. Waksal, the founder and former chief executive of ImClone Systems. He is serving a seven-year prison term for arranging stock trades before a critical announcement from ImClone in 2001. But the letter that the judge received made no mention of Dr. Waksal or ImClone. "I am sure and have heard from others that his attempted stock sales were only attempts to stem serious margin calls," Ms. Stewart wrote in the first version. "So far as I know Sam never sold or tried to sell his stock because of fear of non-success - rather he sold for just the opposite reason - because he believed so much in the future of his company that he leveraged his own stock way beyond what any sensible person would do, and a temporary delay, a temporary setback, could and actually did, wipe him out." In the first version, Ms. Stewart also offered an explanation of her own ImClone trade, the one that led to her conviction: it was "not because I was secretly tipped, but because I set a price, made a profit, and knew I could always reinvest if I wanted to. To believe that I sold because Sam was trying to sell is so very, very wrong." The letters appeared on www.marthatalks.com, a Web site that Ms. Stewart set up shortly after she was indicted. The posting of both letters can be traced to public relations people who were trying to stay on top of things, and to the industriousness of Ms. Stewart, who wrote a heart-to-heart to Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum that she delivered the day before the sentencing. "In an attempt to put information out quickly, a preliminary version not sent to Judge Cedarbaum was accidentally posted on the Web site for a brief period of time," a spokesman for Ms. Stewart, George Sard, said. Ms. Stewart wrote both letters herself and included all sorts of detail, including the fact that her perfectionism was inspired by the handbook of the American Poultry Association, and that as a child she read the novels of Willa Cather, Upton Sinclair, Dostoyevsky and Gogol. Originally, Ms. Stewart made reference to one juror in her trial, whom her lawyers accused of having lied on a screening questionnaire. She ended her letter by telling the judge: "My hopes that my life will not be completely destroyed lie unfortunately entirely in your hands." In the final version, the word "unfortunately" had been excised, and there was no mention of the jury. Maybe someone told her that first sentence is not a good way to win friends and influence people ...

Don't know if this eases the pain, but the fact that no sale is being run might be taken to indicate: A. They are managing inventory better (when it comes to the True Blue catalog-I think that lagging sales there is what forced the $5 off sale) B. Mosaic is doing well with the Selects and therefore we may see even more; or that the company as a whole is doing well enough that no sales are necessary; as disappointing as that may be, it does indicate continued success and longevity.

Berigan is right-if bundling were done away with, would there be enough people choosing, say, Trio, one of the pseudo-cultural channels, to keep it viable? Of course, strangely enough, this puts me and Berigan arguing against letting the market decide, but there you go!

I have received the disc but bad timing as far as listening time goes. Hopefully soon-or at least before Marcus' CD arrives! In the meantime, thanks to Emergency Command Post Leader Big Al (and Nate)!

I don't think that would constitute a double life under the rules established by the esteemed Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

I have a very bad copy of the record with lots of pops. I don't even have the album cover. I found it at http://www.djangomusic.com If its important to you, PM me, and I can xerox the front and back for you.

Available in what sense? Burns for trade? Are you only looking for vinyl? A lot of the later BNs you list show up on ebay regularly. Do you actually own Ronnie Foster's Live at Montreux? That is an lp that eluded our own BN fanatic, Bill Fenohr, until I found it on Ebay's German site.

Marcus, Are you hoping people may buy these for you here for repayment? Or are you hoping to trade with someone who already has these? Its possible I could land a couple of these ....

You misunderstand-Danbury is not a country club, but its close to NYC and Westport, and it happens to be where Helmsley served her time, so I put two and two together and flippantly added the "Lovely Helmsley Suite".

I am sure she will spend her five months in the lovely Leona Helmsley Suite of the Danbury Federal Correctional Facility.

"Never mind!"

Sonny Clark: Trio (Time) Trio (BN) Sonny's Crib My Perception Leapin and Lopin' Dial 'S' for Sonny Standards Cool Struttin' Kenny Clarke: Bohemia After Dark Seleno Clarke: Live at Smoke (pretty nice CDR available from Cadence, got some good young guys like Eric Alexander and Jim Rotondi) James Clay and Marchel Ivery: Texas Tenors (rare 80s recording, found this on ebay. Of course, since no one knows what it is, I had no competition for it More James Clay to look forward to on Monday, then a bunch of Buck Clayton. Other than it being Monday, the 19th looks pretty good

If it was auspicious to you, that's good enough for me (or at least good enough for this thread)!

I was just listening to Kenny Clarke's Bohemia After Dark and since this is Cannonball's knockout recording debut, what are some other knock-out first performances? To keep it narrow, lets make it recording debut as opposed to leader debut.

I'm sure someone with a BN discography will be along shortly to help.

I think we need more info in order to have any idea. What was the original label, date, etc.?

Or certainly a Moody Select!

BETTY Carter with the Messengers? And on what do you base your ironclad assertion? Is there a handbill in the Fitzgerald archives?

the best way would be to let us all listen to what the announcer has to say. And while you're at it, you might as well throw the entire show out way I'm sorry, what did you say? I can't hear you over this primo private recording of the Monk Quartet. Did you know that Coltrane joined them at Birdland on February 22nd, 1963?

Looking at it again, I guess the Porter book is saying that the Coltrane Quartet was in Birdland, February 23rd for a radio broadcast, which makes sense since the announcer says Monk will be there for another week, meaning he would have cleared out by then, and the 23rd makes sense because it was a Friday and that's when they broadcast from Birdland. I don't think the February 19th date is correct though, because I'd think that if the Coltrane Quartet was starting an engagement then, the announcer would have made note of it, instead of saying that Monk will be there for another week, with Coltrane joining him the next Thursday. Porter doesn't really clear it up ...

Porter's book, p369: Well there's the answer, except that, if a Thursday as the DJ said, it would have been the 22nd of February. Then again, the radio broadcasts were Friday night, so if a radio broadcast exists, maybe it was Friday. Too bad there's no indication of whether Benny Carter actually joined the band, too. Thanks, RC.

might actually be we will feature John Coltrane and the quartet , and that they're referring to a multi-artist lineup - Monk's band, Tran'es band, and some kind of Benny Carter group all appearing over the course of a night. Birfland often had multiple bands booked like that. I've seen photos of the signs out front, and the lineups amount to what today would pass for a jazz festival! Well, the explanation may be plausible, but I listened to the announcement over and over again, and he clearly says, "in the Quartet" and note also I know they were running double features here-the second show on this night in particular was the Cannonball Sextet. So, to me this says that the second show is the Messengers, and "Again with Benny Carter" says that Benny Carter is also sitting in with the Messengers. The best way to put this to rest would be to document where Trane was in the third week of February, 1963.

OK, I guess Coltrane did gig with Monk after he'd become a successful leader. I always thought that he just had the gig at the Five Spot and that was it (or mostly it), certainly not that he was gigging with him five years later. But I'd kill to have heard Monk with Coltrane and Benny Carter! Or Benny with the Messengers!

OK, so I'm listening to a reel to reel tape of the Monk Quartet at Birdland, February 16 1963 (don't ask, I'm not at liberty to discuss), its a radio broadcast and the DJ starts talking about the upcoming shows. And this is what he says (I transcribed it so I'd be sure): Now, my understanding was that Coltrane only gigged with Monk in, what, '58, right? Is it common knowledge that Coltrane got back with Monk, on at least one occassion? And how about that front line? Coltrane and Benny Carter with the Monk Quartet?! Granted, its not real clear, exactly what he means, but I think the Messengers are actually the second act of the evening (and Carter is sitting in with them, too???!!!) To put an exact date on this, the radio broadcast was a Friday night, so the following Thursday was February 22nd, 1963. Maybe Mike Fitzgerald can shed light on this.

Ray Charles: Ain't That Fine (Drive Archive, its his very first recording session) Teddy Charles: Three for Duke (Jubilee) Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham and the Baby Blues Band Blues and the Boogie Masters Basket Full of Blues Luv in the Afternoon Homeward Bound Midnight Mama Gud Nuz Bluz (Got most of these at that Barnes and Noble Concord Jazz sale. Fun music, but geez, 6 in a row of this band was much harder sledding than the days and days of Blakey!) Don Cherry: Art Deco Cyrus Chestnut: Soul Food Nut Earth Stories Revelation Looks like a Sonny Clark Friday. I can think of worse things ... like actually working while I listen