GA Russell

Walmart has a flyer in this morning's paper that advertises the iPod Shuffle for $48 with a free $15 iTunes card. So that brings the net price down to $33. At that price point, it competes with the SanDisk item (which I believe also has an FM radio). At this point, I still don't have use for an iPod, but with a price like that maybe one day I will.

My favorite song of his from the Blue Note years is "I'm not downhearted, but I'm getting there."

Because they're not at church like they ought to be. That's why all the Sunday morning talk shows in the US are liberal. The liberals are home watching television, while the conservatives are at church.

Have a good time BM!

I want to give you a heads up that the AotW for the first two weeks of April will be Hank Mobley's Soul Station. Of course, this is an album that has been mentioned many times here, but I was a little surprised to see that it has been the subject of only one thread that I found, a thread from a year ago. That thread contained a number of comments along the lines of which song was the poster's favorite, but there wasn't much on why someone who hadn't heard it should go out and buy it, other than the enthusiasm of the posters. So I thought the album might be a good candidate for AotW. http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...l+Station\ If you haven't already bought it, it is available from BMG/Your Music, and from J&R for $6.99. http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=3916495

Happy Birthday Conrad! That was no tornado. That was just you blowing out the many candles on your cake!

Does anyone have an opinion of his Mosaic box? BMG/Your Music carries six releases of his, including his A&M Walking in Space, which as I recall sold a goodly amount (not that that proves anything). I've been thinking of ordering one of them. Does anyone have an opinion of Walking in Space?

Didn't XM and Sirius agree to never merge when they received permission to use satellites originally? I don't know, did they agree never to merge? Why would anyone really give a fuck if they did? What would you be worried about? catesta, as a customer of Sirius, what I would be worried about (since you asked) is that the price would go up and the quality of the service would go down. Here is an example of the price going up without competition: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/12/lack-of...-prices-upward/ Lack of competition sends Blu-ray player prices upward Posted Mar 12th 2008 9:43PM Late last month, we actually posed the question of buying a Blu-ray player now (being that the format war is over and all), or waiting things out until prices sink and Profile 2.0 players flood the market. Aside from the PlayStation 3 -- which is actually priced fairly reasonably if you were in the hunt for a new console anyway -- it seems as though HD DVD's exit has actually caused Blu-ray player prices to creep back upwards. Granted, this is about as far from surprising as it gets -- after all, it's nothing short of supply and demand working its magic. Still, it wasn't too long ago that we saw Toshiba actively putting pressure on the Blu camp to reduce prices in order to stay competitive, and now that said pressure has vanished, stickers on the whole have headed north. Ah well, it's not like the consumer didn't ask for this, um, right?

My pick for this month is Hot Club of Detroit. A couple of years ago I got a Mack Avenue Christmas sampler called Jazz Yule Love II which included two songs by the band. They are young guys who are picking up on the style of Django Reinhardt and his friends. The two tracks I have are interesting and different, so I thought I would take a flyer on the album.

$29 million for nothing! http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home All American Football League scraps inaugural season Associated Press March 13, 2008 at 2:13 PM EDT ATLANTA — The new All American Football League has scrapped plans for its 2008 inaugural season and will continue to search for financial backing for 2009. Kennan Davis, the AAFL's vice president of league operations, said sponsors have commitments to remain with the league in 2009. The league's decision to postpone its 2008 season was first reported by KRIV-TV in Dallas. The league's chief executive officer, Marcus Katz, said economic conditions forced the decision to scrap plans for this year. "I invested $29 million in cash to roll out the operations of the league," Katz told the station, adding he was owed "a lot more money" by a student loan company. "When I told the board I would subsidize the league, that was before the bond market collapsed," Katz said. The league announced last week it was exploring "multiple financing options," including a TV deal, to address its funding crisis. The league announced Thursday refunds will be given for tickets purchased for 2008 games. The league planned to open training camps for its six teams this week. Games were scheduled to begin April 12. The league held its inaugural draft in January for six teams: Detroit; Little Rock, Ark; Gainesville, Fla.; Birmingham, Ala.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Houston. The AAFL was formed to fill the void created when the NFL shut down NFL Europe earlier this year after 16 seasons. That league was losing a reported $30 million a season. Among the first players drafted Jan. 26 were quarterbacks Bryan Randall, by Tennessee, and Eric Crouch, by Texas. Former Troy offensive lineman Zarah Yisrael was drafted No. 1 overall by Arkansas.

Omarr Morgan has landed back with the Riders. http://riderville.com/modules.php?name=New...1&sid1=8676

I never heard of Gloria Shayne (Baker) before, but I see that she was the composer of a number of hits. Here is her New York Times obit: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/arts/11b...nyt&emc=rss Gloria Shayne Baker, Composer and Lyricist, Dies at 84 Published: March 11, 2008 Gloria Shayne Baker, who composed the hit Christmas song "Do You Hear What I Hear?," died on Thursday at her home in Stamford, Conn. She was 84. The cause was cancer, her daughter, Gabrielle Regney, said. Written in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was intended to be a plea for peace. The song had music by Ms. Baker and lyrics by Noel Regney, to whom she was then married. (This division of labor was a switch for them: in most of their other collaborations, including "Rain, Rain, Go Away," he wrote the music and she the lyrics.) "Do You Hear What I Hear?," which tells the story of the Nativity, has sold tens of millions of records. It has been recorded most famously by Bing Crosby. Gloria Adele Shain was born in Brookline, Mass., on Sept. 4, 1923; she changed the spelling of her last name early in her career. She earned a bachelor's degree from the School of Music and afterward worked as a pianist, arranger and background vocalist for composers like Irving Berlin and Stephen Sondheim. In later years, she accompanied the tenor Jan Peerce. In 1951, she married Mr. Regney (pronounced ray-NYAY); they divorced in 1973. Her second husband, William Baker, died in 2001. In addition to her daughter, Gabrielle, Ms. Baker is survived by another child from her first marriage, Paul Regney; a brother, Myron Shain; a sister, Thelma Wisefield; a half-sister, Etta Sandler; four stepchildren, Carolyn Ohlson, William Baker Jr., Alan Baker and Steven Baker; one grandchild; and 10 step-grandchildren. Mr. Regney died in 2002. Ms. Baker's other credits include the music and lyrics for "Goodbye, Cruel World," which was recorded by James Darren. With Jerry Keller, she wrote "Almost There," recorded by Andy Williams; and with Mary Candy and Eddie Deane, she wrote "The Men in My Little Girl's Life," recorded by Mike Douglas.

I received three of these promptly, but the Cafe Jazz is listed as temporarily out of stock. Since the Savoy/Dial Parker box is no longer carried, I am wondering if BMG is no longer carrying anything of that label.

medjuck, I'm glad you said that! (I guess there's nothing wrong with us starting the discussion a couple of days early!) I was wondering if this was the first Miles album that featured songs without hummable melodies. The entire album was recorded in one overnight session December 4-5, 1957. Can anyone think of another jazz album whose music was as "impressionistic" as this which was issued before then? Miles was given composer credits for all the songs, even though one of them is only a bass solo. I use the word "impressionistic" because they recorded each song after viewing a scene of the movie, and then coming up with some music for that scene. Since they did it all in one night, I doubt that they spent much time planning the songs before they recorded them. I notice that Miles did not create motifs repeated throughout the movie like most movie soundtracks have. Each song is different. I would be interested to hear from those of you who have the release with the alternate takes. Are they very similar to the master takes?

JI Albrecht has died. I haven't found an obituary that speaks of all his controversial moves and how many fans hated him. Here's the best one I found, from the CP: http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/New...4983771-cp.html

It was in the past year or so that I read for the first time that Hurricane Smith worked on the Beatles' records. Here's his obituary from the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...1,2701047.story March 11, 2008 <h2 style="">Norman Smith</h2>Sound engineer for the Beatles Norman Smith, a leading record producer who was the original sound engineer for the Beatles through 1965 and later signed the band Pink Floyd to a recording contract, died March 4 of cancer in East Sussex, England, British newspapers reported. He was 85. Smith, who later had a No. 1 hit in the U.S. singing under the name Hurricane Smith, was selected by Beatles producer George Martin to handle the controls when the group cut its first session June 6, 1962, which included the early hit "Love Me Do." He would handle the engineering for every Beatles recording through the "Rubber Soul" sessions in December 1965. The hit songs he engineered included "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "A Hard Day's Night," "Help!," "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out." When Martin left EMI Records in 1966, Smith took over as senior producer. In that role, he signed the psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd and produced their albums "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and "A Saucerful of Secrets." He was 50 when his singing career started, and his song "Oh Babe, What Would You Say" was a hit on the U.S. charts. Smith was born in North London in 1923 and trained as a glider pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II but never saw combat. After the war, he formed a band called the Bobby Arnold Quintet, in which he played mostly drums and vibes. In need of a job, he saw an EMI advertisement in the Times of London in 1959. The recording company was looking for apprentice engineers, and Smith, then 35, said he was 28 to qualify for the job.

Happy Birthday FFA! Type here!

Many years ago I saw Harry Blackstone, Jr., on Larry King. He said that as a professional magician he could appreciate what another magician does, but he does not have the thrill of wonder that the general public has when it sees a good magic trick. (For that reason, I have always avoided reading how to do a magic trick.) I have long suspected that Blackstone's feeling is often true for many professional jazz musicians, although maybe not so thoroughly. Like Noj, I am attracted to melody and harmony. I still enjoy bossa nova very much after more than forty years. I suspect that many jazz musicians don't play simple but excellent music because they don't appreciate it and find it boring to play. They apparently find difficult music more interesting, and I'm guessing it is because they understand it much more than the general public jazz fan.

Malvin Wald was the co-screenwriter of the movie The Naked City. I did not realize until I heard on the radio news yesterday that The Naked City was the first police procedural drama of any sort. (Interesting that the first was a movie and not a book.) I thought that the Dragnet radio show had been the first. Here's his LA Times obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...1,1492526.story Malvin Wald, 90; prolific screenwriter got Oscar nod for 'The Naked City' template_bastemplate_bas By Claire Noland, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer March 8, 2008 Malvin Wald, a prolific writer for film and television best known for co-writing the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the 1948 film "The Naked City," died Thursday of age-related causes at Sherman Oaks Hospital, said his son, Alan. He was 90. Wald wrote the story for the archetypal police drama, which ended with the now-famous line, "There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them." He and writer Albert Maltz, one of the blacklisted Hollywood 10 who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, were credited with the screenplay, which was also nominated for a Writers Guild Award. The gritty black-and-white film noir, produced and narrated by Mark Hellinger and directed by Jules Dassin, follows a police investigation of a model's murder. Filmed on location on the streets of New York City, it spawned a television series by the same name and, ultimately, a genre of film and TV dramas that includes "Dragnet," "Hill Street Blues" and the "CSI" series. "What we see all over our TV screens today originated in large part in that movie," film historian Leonard Maltin told The Times on Friday. "It was a novelty then, deglamorizing Hollywood's depiction of crime-solving, taking it out of the hands of glamorous or exotic private investigators and following the day-to-day, mundane activities of the police." Wald, a Brooklyn native who had worked in a New York post office after college, wanted to capture the feel of his hometown streets. "No one had done a film where the real hero was a hardworking police detective, like the ones I knew in Brooklyn," Wald told the Hollywood Reporter last year, not long after a restored version of the film was released. "We knew we were making a new genre that became the police procedural." He did research by shadowing NYPD homicide detectives, who were initially skeptical. "When I met Inspector [Joseph] Donovan, he said to me, 'Oh, you picture guys always make cops look so stupid, like we couldn't find a sail in the Navy yard,' " Wald told the Hollywood Reporter. The movie became a critical and popular success. It won Oscars for cinematography and film editing. Born Malvin Daniel Wald in 1917, he got his start in Hollywood by following in the footsteps of his older brother Jerry, who began writing screenplays in the 1930s and became a noted producer. After graduating from Brooklyn College in 1936, Malvin moved west and began writing. When World War II began, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces and was assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit at the old Hal Roach Studio in Culver City. He worked as a writer on more than 30 military training and recruitment films, sometimes getting screen time as an extra. After the war ended and he was discharged, Wald continued writing for film and, later, for television, including many of the anthology programs of the 1950s and multiple episodes of "Daktari" and "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams." He taught screenwriting at USC for many years and wrote essays and articles about film history. In addition to his son, Wald is survived by a daughter, Jenifer Wald Morgan. His wife, Sylvia, died in 1999. His brother died in 1962. No services are planned.

Funny you should post this today, Bev. I'm just back from a week in Seattle (Pacific time). I got up each day at 5:30 am, which was like sleeping in till 8:30 am Eastern time!

I took Chuck's posting of Jimmy Piersall's card to mean, "You're nuts!"

Last night I tried to get my flight changed to go through Atlanta, but it would have cost me $300 (!), so I decided to try my luck this morning. When I got to the airport (Seattle) I was told that there was no problem in Cincinnati. But for the time being, the Atlanta airport was closed! We lost a little time in Cincy getting the plane de-iced, but it was all good.

Happy Birthday! I remember when you started the board, but I preferred to lurk for a few months before making the move. It sure doesn't seem like five years!

I'm scheduled to change planes in Cincinnati tomorrow. Should I be concerned?

Well, that was quick. The league has run out of money before training camps have opened. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/New...4933076-ap.html All American Football League on verge of scrapping inaugural season By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ATLANTA - The new All American Football League will postpone its 2008 season unless it finds additional financial backing. The announcement Thursday came less than a week before camps were to open for the six-team league. The league, which held its inaugural draft in January, has rosters and staffs in place for six teams: Detroit; Little Rock, Ark; Gainesville, Fla.; Birmingham, Ala.; Knoxville, Tenn., and Houston. Training camps were scheduled to open Wednesday, followed by the first games in April. The league will push its plans back to 2009 unless it secures a TV deal or other funding. The league announced Thursday it was exploring "multiple financing options" to address its funding crisis. League chief executive officer Marcus Katz said Thursday night that discussions continue with several prospective investors. A statement released by the league and attributed to Katz said the start of pre-season training camps will be "delayed briefly" with plans for games to begin on April 12. The AAFL was formed to fill the void created when the NFL shut down NFL Europe earlier this year after 16 seasons. That league was losing a reported US$30 million a season, and now the AAFL, lacking a TV deal, also faces a financial crisis before it can stage its first game. Among the first players drafted on Jan. 26 were quarterbacks Bryan Randall, by Tennessee, and Eric Crouch, by Texas. Former Troy offensive lineman Zarah Yisrael was drafted No. 1 overall by Arkansas. According to a statement released by the league, the AAFL's financial problems are tied to the national subprime mortgage crisis. Katz co-founded a company that provides student loans. The statement said camps would open Wednesday "if liquidity can be immediately restored." If not, plans for an inaugural season will be pushed back to 2009.