Stompin at the Savoy

Good program!

That's your assessment and that is fine by me. Nevertheless I find Rhapsody memorable and there are a few passages from it that I occasionally recall.

Hmnnn. Well I don't agree with you. And I reject the tune, which you seem to be moving towards, that Gershwin is somehow bad or undeserving (sung over rhythm changes).

Come on Jim, now you are not doing your homework or something. The piece was discussed to death at the time. Gershwin was the toast of Europe. At the time most black music was considered beneath consideration. A serious composer took black music seriously in a European musical context.

I sympathize with you insofar as I have heard Rhapsody several times and have no need to hear it again. And from a contemporary musical perspective maybe it isn't that interesting. In its time the piece was rather startling, even revolutionary, and had reverberations.

The article sets up a straw man argument that Gershwin is more highly regarded than Ellington. Apples and oranges! Rhapsody in Blue is a symphonic piece with elements and motifs from black music. It's not jazz. There is no conflict here. You can like Rhapsody in Blue and like jazz too. Just subscribe to the NYT already! It's worth it and important to support journalism.

http://ellingtonlive.blogspot.com/2024/01/discography-ellington-in-order-volume-7.html

Welcome back, Larry!

I was able to very significantly improve my hearing a few years back by removing a lot of wax that had accumulated in the forty odd years since I had them cleaned in college. But at 70, following the usual pattern, my mid and high frequency sensitivity is waning. I've been compensating by boosting mids and highs with equalizers when listening to music for the past few years. It's probably time to go get a hearing test and see if hearing aid might help.

The website says: https://www.mosaicrecords.com/product/classic-don-byas-sessions/ So keep an eye on the website and order when the next batch becomes available. Maybe create an id on the mosaic shop and sign up for email notifications...

An Australian airliner had landed and was proceeding towards the gate as the pilot concluded some announcements to the passengers. He forgot to turn off the microphone and caused some passengers to chuckle when he remarked to his co-pilot: "All I need now is an ice cold beer and a red hot Sheila!" One of the stewardesses ran toward the cockpit to inform the captain of his error and a passenger called out: "Don't forget his ice cold beer!"

Yeah I bought the MJQ set - disks only - on ebay a while back and have been looking for a book too. By coincidence I have been getting into listening to this set the last few days and split it up into playlists of the original albums yesterday.

I really like this record and just bought a used copy. I've been getting into Moody a bit lately and noticed this item towards the end of his discography. Hey I'm a big Hank fan I thought and his late period stuff is almost always revealing. Very impressed with the sound of all the instruments but especially of the piano in this! Great tone.

Wasn't there a famous cartoon of a man running for dear life entitled "Harry Houdini escaping from Texas"?

I'm a little surprised you - something of a gear-head - wouldn't even check out the whole concept of a smart phone. My kid got an ipod touch back when they first came out. I come from a pretty traditional IT background so there was some point where I had to do something with it and I asked my son if there was a manual for it. He gave me a sort of wondering look and said you just dink around with it and it's self-explanatory. This is apple's basic posture and concept - ya don't need a manual just dink around and it will become clear. That has become somewhat less true as the iphone gained all sorts of functionality and the list of 'settings' has grown exponentially. Still and all, it's a fabulous tool, like a swiss army knife for the computer age. I almost never have phone conversations but I use my phone a lot. I use the timer/alarm app every day. The 'personal hot spot' on the phone serves as a backup when my ISP goes down. When I go out I often use the music app with some blue-tooth headphones when I have to wait, such as dental office. Or sometimes I read a book instead with the Kindle app. There is a built-in compass app in case you get lost. You can write and save memos. Access the internet. Text your friends! Take pictures and send them to your friends. It's pretty great. I've told all this to several friends in their seventies like me and they look at me as though I am proposing to take them for a trip on the Space Shuttle. Everybody has their own level of tolerance and interest in technology, I guess.

Um, so get an Android phone?

To get back to the original topic, I would recommend against a portable cd player for the car. It's going to bounce around and the controls will only really be safely accessible when the car is stopped. In addition, the capabilities of a cd player are so meager compared to a phone. For example you plug your phone in and call out "Hey Siri give me directions to 1750 Vine Street Los Angeles, California" and a map comes up on your dashboard showing where your car is, and spoken directions follow. You can bring hundreds of albums with you in the car instead of a few cds which you probably cannot control with voice commands- "Hey Siri, play Classic Don Byas Sessions". How about "Hey Siri where's the next rest stop?" Your cd player can't answer that. The smart phone clearly is the mainline designated replacement for a car stereo. You'll miss out if you don't get with the program.

One pgm you can use to move music files to an iphone is Music Monkey. I didn't think it could do it but I upgraded to the current free version just now and was able to do it. I wonder if you can really operate an iphone effectively without itunes? How do you backup the phone to your pc? I doubt that anything but itunes is going to do that reliably... If you don't have a backup you may have trouble down the line.