GA Russell

Alexander, the LP you mention was a British album, not available in the US. Capitol in the US was not allowed to release such an album.

Guys, I am not referring to the classic spacy ECM sound. What I have in mind is the dryness of the compositions, and maybe his touch on the keyboard. Maybe you can think of another label you think Iyer would be more at home at.

The pre-season has begun. The Argos beat the Als 27-13, with Michael Bishop looking good. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home

I opened it up tonight. It was a Your Music queue selection from some time ago. I like it, but I'm going to need a little time for it to grow on me. I'll agree with the AMG statement quoted above that Iyer is unique. I can't think of anyone he reminds me of, although generally this is something I might expect to find on the ECM label. I like the sax player Rudresh Mahanthappa. I wish he had a larger role.

Thanks Unk! http://www.downbeat.com/ I'll give it some thought before I cast my vote. I think this year has been better than last year.

You may be interested to learn that for decades the Beatles refused to allow Capitol in the US to release compilations. You mean, apart from (at least): The Beatles 1962-66 (released 1973) The Beatles 1967-70 (released 1973) Rock n Roll music (released 1976) Love songs (released 1977) Rarities (released 1980) Reel music (released 1982) 20 greatest hits (released 1982) Past masters vols 1 & 2 (released 1988) Anthology 1, 2 & 3 (released 1995 & 96) ? MG Well you've proven me wrong, MG. I didn't realize that the compilations started as early as 1973. I do remember reading plenty of times in the 60s that Capitol in the US wanted to release a Greatest Hits record and the group wouldn't allow it. edit for typo

Happy Birthday Bertrand!

You may be interested to learn that for decades the Beatles refused to allow Capitol in the US to release compilations.

Sidewinder, I consider that one to be a classic! I got it in college, and it has a lot of sentimental value for me. I played it a few months ago for the first time in years, and I still enjoy it. Hope you dig it.

NS, that's my favorite Red Garland album (not that I've heard a whole lot of them). Hope you enjoy it.

My pick from last month, Gerry Mulligan's Jeru, is my best queue selection ever. Highly recommended. My pick this month is Mark Murphy - Once to Every Heart. I have more Mark Murphy albums than anyone except Miles and Monk. With so many, I figured that I would never get another of his, but I have read a couple of times on the internet that this is his best album in decades. I had this set in the queue for October, but I decided to bump it up to this month because Your Music has had it for quite a while, and I'm thinking that they might not have it much longer.

Happy Birthday RDK!

Happy Birthday Kalo!

Here's his AP obit, from the LA Times website: Clete Boyer, 70; third baseman for 1960s champion Yankees From the Associated Press June 5, 2007 Clete Boyer, the third baseman for the champion New York Yankees teams of the 1960s who made an art form of diving stops and throws from his knees, died Monday in an Atlanta hospital from complications of a brain hemorrhage, son-in-law Todd Gladden said. He was 70. Boyer played from 1955 to 1971 with the Yankees, Kansas City Athletics and Atlanta Braves. He helped the Yankees reach the World Series in five straight years from 1960 to 1964, when they won two titles, and later returned to the team as a coach. "He was a great Yankee and a tough guy. He never talked too much, but he was extremely hardworking," Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said through a spokesman. Boyer was a career .242 hitter with 162 home runs and 654 RBIs, but it was fielding that became his signature. Boyer added an air of flamboyance to a Yankees team that otherwise played with conservative precision. His only Gold Glove came in 1969 in Atlanta; he might've earned more had it not been for the peerless Brooks Robinson in Baltimore. "In all my years of playing with him, he only made one bad throw to me," former Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson said Monday. "When I made the double play, I could just about close my eyes, put my glove up and the ball would be there. I would consider him one of the best players defensively. And when we got in the World Series and the lights came up, he made those great, great plays." In 1964, Boyer and his brother, Ken, became the first brothers to homer in the same World Series game. They did it in Game 7, when the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Yankees. Ken, also a third baseman, was the NL MVP that season. Ken Boyer died of cancer in 1982 at age 51. The Boyer family of 14 children included another brother who played in the majors, Cloyd, who pitched from 1949 to 1955. Boyer's best World Series performance came in 1962, when he hit .318 with a home run and four RBIs in the Yankees' seven-game victory over San Francisco. Born Cletis Leroy Boyer on Feb. 9, 1937, in Cassville, Mo., he made his major league debut at age 18 with Kansas City. The A's traded him to the Yankees during the 1957 season. After finishing with the Braves, Boyer played in Japan. He later coached with Oakland and the Yankees and owned and ran Clete Boyer's Hall of Fame Hamburgers near Cooperstown, N.Y. "He was a hard liver, I don't think that's any secret," Richardson said. "He lived life to the fullest."

Being a Mike Nock fan, I enjoy that one too. But I like Penumbra from last year better.

For the other side of the coin, here's an article that blasts the critics, and blasts Yoshi's for taking the CD off the market. http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/06/jaz..._to_racism.html June 02, 2007 Jazz Succumbs to Racism By Thomas Lifson Jazz is the great cultural achievement of America where blacks took a leading role as creators and practitioners, and where blacks and whites and eventually Asians, Latinos, and well, everyone, performed and listened in harmony (literally and figuratively). That era ended yesterday, thanks to the forward-thinking "progressives" of the San Francisco Bay Area. Race is now more important than music, according to authoritative local commentators and practitioners. Jazz has now fallen to the level apparently requiring affirmative action. The word "tragedy" leaps to mind. We are moving in the opposite direction from a society where everyone is presumed equal and race is an irrelevant criterion. So much for Dr. King's "content of our character" hopes. Yoshi's jazz club, a very prominent jazz venue in Oakland's Jack London Square entertainment district has, in the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, been "shamed" by its failure to judge the worth of jazz musicians on the color of their skin, instead of the content of their artistry. The managers of Yoshi's jazz club said Friday that issuing a 10th anniversary CD with no African American musicians was "a huge mistake" and "a major oversight." In the wake of complaints by some African American musicians and community leaders, the club issued an apology and withdrew the disc. Here is where Yoshi's now says it went wrong: Kajimura [the club's owner] and Yoshi's artistic director Peter Williams attributed the botched CD to haste and expediency. "This was done on the spur of the moment, and we didn't have a lot of time and research to put into it," said Kajimura. Yoshi's began working on the project in late March to mark the club's 10 years in Oakland in May. Eight of the 10 tracks, from four different musicians, came from Concord records, one of the world's largest recording labels. The other two came from San Francisco radio station KFOG's archives. "That was the easiest, quickest thing to do," said Williams. "We assumed Concord would have the most music recorded live at Yoshi's." The crime, then, is in failing to regard skin color as a major criterion. Williams said race and ethnicity are "things that I just never think about when I'm booking the club. It always comes out that we have a great mix. I'm very comfortable with what we've done." Apparently in this day and age, especially in the "progressive" Bay Area, one must always devote time and effort to racial bean-counting and careful allocation of everything on the basis of race. It doesn't matter if your business is a small one (Yoshi's is not exactly a multinational conglomerate, despite its international prominence and importance in the world of jazz), race must always be considered an important standard for judging every decision. Colorblindness is a crime. Yoshi's was following the old way of thinking in jazz, and now that old way is judged bad by the leading lights of the Bay Area. As Matthew May reminded us yesterday, in the old days (you know, the era of Jim Crow), black and white jazz musicians were indifferent to race. The only criterion was, "Can he play?" Today, the "enlightened" minds demand a racial consciousness that puts the old apartheid regime of South Africa to shame. In the realm of jazz, the monumental contribution of African-Americans to world culture, blacks are now relegated by "progressives" to the status of fragile, weak outsiders, so uncertain of their own merit, so lacking in standing that they require special consideration and support lest they fall between the cracks. A protected species, in other words. I had always thought blacks were not just in the front of the bus, they were in the driver's seat when it came to jazz. Now, blacks have been moved to the back of the jazz bus. Ironies abound in the decision of Yoshi's to withdraw its original 10th anniversary compilation CD. When the new CD is made, [Williams] added, it will include African American musicians recorded live at Yoshi's on such labels as Verve, MaxJazz and Blue Note. That will involve more elaborate negotiations for rights and licensing fees. Translation: the new CD is going to cost more. So much for making high quality jazz available to the widest possible audience. Can jazz really afford to lose any more listeners? Yoshi's had sold about 500 of the 1,000 CDs it began offering on its Web site last month. The disc, the first made by Yoshi's, was not distributed to stores. Translation: about 500 lucky jazz fans now have an instant collector's item, all but certain to skyrocket in value. Question: what becomes of the unsold CDs? Are they now so offensive that they must be shipped to the nearest landfill to become solid waste? If so, the clever garbage truck crew has a nice little gold mine on their hands if they spot the valuable trash. So: Are we going to hear cries that the CDs must be destroyed? After all, if they are so somehow harmful that they must be withdrawn, then isn't it an act of "racism" to recycle them through unofficial channels? Should they be treated the way Hitler treated books by Jews, and burned in a public bonfire? If so, someone please call Al Gore and tell him about the pollution that will result. Or maybe Yoshi's must go to the expense of hiring a shredding machine, to protect the world's from the sounds of melanin-deficient jazz musicians. Running a jazz club is never a route to fortune. I don't know the state of finances at Yoshi's, but I suspect that the financial blow of junking 500 CDs, along with the extra royalty costs and other expenses associated with a new affirmative action version of the 10th anniversary disc, are material, as they say in the world of financial reporting. If Yoshi's were to quietly sell the 500 politically incorrect discs on ebay (at the moment of writing this piece 68 jazz CDs recorded live at Yoshi's are on sale at ebay), the "shame" could actually become a minor financial bonanza. I would certainly a pay handsome sum for one of the forbidden discs, as they mark a historic turning point - the moment when blacks became a protected species in the world of jazz. But if Yoshi's were to salvage its investment in this way (and thereby be able to host more jazz musicians - "more than half of the musicians who play Yoshi's are African American"), what are the odds that it would be denounced as a racist act? With people like Glen Pearson, an African American musician and College of Alameda instructor, waiting to pounce, I'd say almost a certainty. Here's what Pearson had to say to the Chron: "If Yoshi's is calling this an oversight, then maybe there needs to be a larger discussion about the dynamic of what jazz is all about." Silly me, silly Yoshi's. We thought jazz was about music. It turns out that it is about racial grievances. This sad tale hits me in the gut because of a bit of personal history. Growing up in Minneapolis, which was in the 1950s a metropolis with very few black residents, the first black person I ever really met and sat down and talked to as a child of about 11, was a jazz musician, the great Eugene Wright, best known as the bassist in the Dave Brubeck Quartet in its "classic" phase. His kindness and consideration toward me, a youthful jazz fan and son of a former jazz vocalist, made a huge impression on me, both for his musical artistry and for his wonderful friendly and engaging personality. Race simply wasn't an issue, and in the 1960s that was a pretty rare experience. Gene, along with the upbringing my parents provided, set my racial template to "everyone is the same." Evidently, even in jazz, that way of thinking is obsolete. And I cannot describe how sad I feel about it.

Clete Boyer died today of a massive stroke. He was 70. He was in town here just two or three weeks ago for an autograph session. When I was a boy I watched Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese every week, and almost every week they showed the Yankees game. Boyer was the third baseman. On a team of sluggers, he was the slick fielding singles hitter. It's funny. I hated the Yankees and always rooted against them until World Series time when I would root for them because I was an American League fan. But I don't have anything but positive memories of the Yankee players themselves. They all seemed to be class guys (at least until I read Joe Pepitone's autobiography). I'll post an obit when I see one tomorrow.

Thanks kh. I've put the Tolliver in my queue for next month.

Luis Parga was the pianist in that group, though Sergio led a similar trio during that time. Thanks TTK. I don't know Parga. I gather you like him?

I never thought I would be posting to the Anthony Braxton thread! Our local paper the Raleigh News & Observer each day lists celebrities' birthdays. I know I'm getting old as more and more of these celebrities are people younger than me whom I have never heard of. Most of the celebrities are Hollywood or young rock types, but today they listed Anthony Braxton, age 62! I thought he was older than that.

Walter Egan - The Last Stroll (Columbia DJ copy) 1980 Walt was a friend of mine in college. He had a hit you may remember called You are a Magnet, and I am Steel. The Very Best of The Classics IV (United Artists) 1975 compilation

I recognize Sebastiao Neto in the lower left. Is that Sergio Mendes in the lower right?

Today I opened up Cal Tjader Plugs In from my recent dccblowout.com Skye order. Steve Hoffman's name is nowhere to be found. I thought he remastered all of the Skye recordings for DCC, but I guess not.

Thanks for that informative post, Rooster. I suppose that the EWI (electonic wind instrument) that Michael Brecker used should be considered something like "the Varitone that caught on". I've never seen a picture of it. Now that Brecker has passed away, perhaps the EWI will fade away as well.

The Free Spirits (Cdn. Sparton/ABC mono) 1966? Kevin Ayers - Whatevershebringswesing (Br. Harvest) 1974? Gringo (Decca) 1971