GA Russell

Richard "Groove" Holmes - Misty (Prestige) 1966? Danny Toan - First Serve (Embryo) 1977 John Mayall - Primal Solos (London) 1966, 1968 Mose Allison Sings (Prestige mono) Alexis Korner's All Stars - Blues Incorporated (Just Sunshine) 1964 (liner notes by Michael Cuscuna!) The Hi-Lo's, discs 1&2 (MCA) 1955?

Wynton Marsalis - Black Codes (From the Underground)

Doug Ramsey on his Rifftides blog today has a quote from Concord Records in response to a reader's question about the possible deletion of the OJC catalogue. Here's what Ramsey says: I passed along Mr. Quick's question to Nick Phillips of Concord Records, since Concord's purchase of Fantasy Inc. the owner of the OJC (Original Jazz Classics) archive. I asked him about the closing of the company's Berkeley, California, warehouse where much of the OJC stock was stored. Here is his reply: While it is true that the Berkley warehouse is closed, that doesn't mean we're embarking on any kind of wholesale deletion campaign. That warehouse facility is closed because we've consolidated our warehousing operations to one facility, in Cleveland (where our Telarc operations are based). We are not planning to "delete the OJC catalog." That said, as the consumer trends in acquiring music continues to shift toward downloads (much in the same way that there was a shift from LP to CD) there may be, however, instances of titles that simply are not selling any more on CD that we will not reprint in that format; but they will continue to be available via digital download (via i-tunes, emusic.com, etc.). Finally, there are also many examples of titles where we've taken the OJC CD version of a classic album off of the market, when we reissue a new version of the same title (such as our RVG Remasters series, and our new Keepnews Collection series).

I'm looking forward to this. Glad to see Concord do something positive.

Chet Baker Studio PJ, disc 1

Tom. I've got Nothing Serious in my queue. What do you think of it?

My favorite is the second album with John Mealing of If on organ. If you can find it, get it! I've never seen it on CD.

John Surman - Morning Glory (Br. Island) 1973 Steve Marcus - Sometime Other Than Now (Flying Dutchman) 1976 The Byrds - The Notorious Byrd Brothers (Columbia) 1968

My pick this month is Kenny Dorham - Trompeta Toccata. It has received high praise in the Kenny Dorham thread, so I thought I would give it a go.

Happy Birthday Bright!

Here's a Billboard report out today I found on Yahoo News: Music business suffers a long, cold winter By Ed Christman Mon Apr 9, 1:16 AM ET NEW YORK (Billboard) - While it is no shock that CD sales plummeted in the first quarter, what may be more surprising is who and what are leading that decline. ADVERTISEMENT First things first: Overall album sales for the January 1-April 2 period are down 16.6% to 117.1 million units, led -- or perhaps misled -- by a 20.5% decline in CD album sales. Industry executives attribute the decline to a weak release schedule, the consumer's loss of confidence in the CD and a reduction in store space for the format. Certainly, the last point is documentable. Between first-quarter 2006 and now, several key retailers have disappeared. FYE shuttered 131 stores in January, and Tower Records liquidated 89 superstores in December. Musicland also closed 500 stores beginning in January 2006, so many of those outlets -- and their going-out-of-business sales -- contributed to first-quarter 2006. "We are seeing a customer dislocation," says Mike Dreese, CEO of Newbury Comics, a 27-store chain based in New England. "A lot of people are confused about where they shop, and it's changing their habits ... it takes a while for people to find new stores." Digital track sales, although they are still growing, could not pick up the slack. More than 280 million digital tracks were sold, outpacing album sales by more than 100 million units, according to Nielsen SoundScan. When those digital tracks are converted to track equivalences (10 tracks counting as one album sale), unit album sales were still down 10.3%. Digital sales growth is slowing from last year, when tracks were up 87% and digital albums up 144% at the end of 2006's first quarter. At the end of first-quarter 2007, digital track sales were up 51.9%; digital album sales, which total 11.5 million units, were up 56%. But as a percentage of album sales, digital albums are nearly 10% now, versus the 5.2% they were at the end of first-quarter 2006. Meanwhile, two tracks topped the million-unit milestone: Fall Out Boy's "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race" and Gwen Stefani's "The Sweet Escape." The top-selling digital download at the end of first-quarter 2006 was James Blunt's "You're Beautiful," which stood at 714,000 scans. IT'S ROUGH TO BE A WAL-MART IN NASHVILLE For the first time since the early days of the industry, such mass merchants as Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart have surpassed chains, which include such retailers as Trans World, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Newbury Comics and Gallery of Sound. The discount department stores scanned 44.8 million album copies versus the 44.5 million units that chains sold. But in a subtle change, for the first time in recent years, mass merchants, with a 17.8% decline, didn't turn in a better performance than the overall U.S. market's 16.6% decline. Meanwhile, the independent store-sector seems to have stabilized, after shrinking faster than the overall marketplace for the last five years. In the first quarter, indie stores declined 14.5% to 8 million units. In contrast, at the end of first-quarter 2006 when total U.S. album sales declined 5%, indie stores were down 18.5%. Nontraditional sales -- which include digital album downloads, CD sales through online stores, retailers like Starbucks, TV 800-phone sales and concert hall sales -- continue to be the star performer, with sales up 29.2% to 19.8 million units. Despite worries about the reduction in store space devoted to CDs, catalog sales, down 14.6% to 47.5 million units, continue to show more strength than current album sales, which are down 18.9% to 69.6 million. The top-selling album so far this year is Norah Jones' "Not Too Late," with nearly 1.2 million scans, the only album to top the million-unit mark. Last year at the end of the first quarter three albums had hit 1 million units -- Mary J. Blige's "The Breakthrough," the "High School Musical" soundtrack and Blunt's "Back to Bedlam." Within genres sales, rock, which includes alternative and hard rock and is responsible for nearly 30% of all U.S. album sales, showed resilience to the sales downturn, with the genre and both subgenres down in the 10%-12% range. The country and rap genres appeared to be the big losers. Rap, which SoundScan also counts within R&B, had the largest genre decline. Sales fell 33.6% to 10.9 million scans from the 16.5 million units the genre tallied in first-quarter 2006 sales. R&B, the second-largest genre with scans of 24.7 million units, was down only 17.6% for the year. If rap's decline is removed from the equation, then R&B albums actually showed a 1.9% increase in sales for the year, making that category the only genre to grow. Country sales were the second-biggest loser of the large genres, with a 30.7% decline to 12.1 million units. "Country hasn't had sizzle in the new-release category so far this year," says Ben Kline, executive VP of sales, marketing and new media at Universal Music Group (UMG) Nashville, who also notes that carryover sales of 2006 releases are not as strong either. Indeed, last year, Carrie Underwood's 2005 release "Some Hearts" sold more than 900,000 units in the first quarter; there were two Johnny Cash-related albums that between them sold 1 million units; and Rascal Flatts, Trace Adkins and Keith Urban each had albums that, combined, generated another 1.25 million in sales. In contrast, this year the three best-selling country albums were Rascal Flatts' 2006 release "Me and My Gang," the Dixie Chicks' "Taking the Long Way" and Tim McGraw's "Let It Go," which just sneaked in with 325,000 units sold in the quarter's final week. Combined, the three have eked out 1 million units. Fortunately, Kline says the country release schedule for the rest of the year "looks pretty stout." In the market-share race, UMG held steady in the top spot, racking up a 30.6% slice of the pie in total album market share and 33.6% in current market share. But because of the overall sales decline, UMG's album scans were down 1 million units to 36 million. Sony BMG Music Entertainment had a 7.5 million-unit drop in sales. The industry remains generally stymied by the freefall. "I don't know what's going on," the head of sales at a major record label says. "Except it's scary out there and changing every week." Reuters/Billboard

kh, I've always enjoyed that one. Not the greatest, but very solid. PS - As I recall, it was issued after Groove left Prestige to rejoin PJ, and it kind of slipped under the radar.

Hope everyone has a great day! I did a great deal of relevant reading this Lent, and I have a greater appreciation of it all.

Mark Murphy - Beauty and the Beast (Muse) 1985 and 1986 Mark Murphy - This Could Be the Start of Something (Pausa) 1960? Lani Hall - Sun Down Lady (A&M) 1972? Various - A Random Sampler (Random Radar) 1977 Random Radar was a short-lived Washington, DC, label specializing in prog rock and electronica. The album includes tracks by Fred Frith, Lol Coxhill, Steve Feigenbaum (of Cuneiform Records fame) and The Muffins.

I'm with you on that, JL. I never watch TV. I have a few DVDs of mysteries like Peter Gunn, Mr. & Mrs. North and Dragnet. I spent an evening watching them not long ago. One day when the credit cards are paid off I'll get the Danger Mans. I'm jealous!

I went to see Dick Dale in Atlanta about 1987. After the show he mingled with the crowd a little bit. So I shook his hand, and he autographed the t-shirt I was wearing! My friends and neighbors at the time were too young to appreciate him. They thought I was a crazy old dude.

Any recommendations Jim?

Mark Murphy Sings Dorothy Fields and Cy Coleman (Audiophile) 1977 Mark Murphy - Living Room (Muse) 1984

The Lions released Bobby Singh yesterday. It appears to be a salary cap move, but he was injured and missed six games last year. The Bombers have indicated interest in signing him. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/BC/...3926142-cp.html ***** Ricky Williams' agent announced today that he has filed for reinstatement with the NFL. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home

Of the various fast food restaurants, I like the relatively new McDonald's coffee the best. But that is only before noon. I find that everybody lets the coffee go stale after noon except Burger King. BK has a machine that always makes a fresh cup, so I like it best after noon. The worst IMO is Hardee's, which is too weak.

Well, I love The Four Freshmen, so you know I'm going to give thumbs up to the Beach Boys! I've slowly obtained all of the twofer CDs up to Surf's Up. Other than Pet Sounds, Today may be my favorite album. Having grown up with their music and listened to it a great deal between 1985 and 1995, I've grown a little tired of just about all of it. But that doesn't mean that it isn't great. Guy, if I were to recommend only one CD it would be the compilation Endless Summer. But at Your Music prices, you might as well load up! By the way, I bought their Brother Greatest Hits LP twenty years ago and enjoyed it. I think it's better than their post-Friends Capitol albums, but I can't comment on any particular Brother LP.

I'm old enough to remember when baseball was king, and the World Series was the biggest deal in sports. In the mid-60s Tom Moore was the President of ABC, which was the third of the three television networks. He was quoted saying that Baseball should shorten its season and only play on weekends. This was often reported in the press, with the accompanying jibe by the Baseball execs that his opinion was worth nothing because he was "third in a three team league". I've often thought of that, because I believe that if Baseball had taken his advice their television ratings would be much higher and their franchises would have grown in value the way the NFL teams have. Here's his obit from today's LA Times: Tom Moore, 88; former ABC president By Meg James, Times Staff Writer April 5, 2007 Tom Moore, who helped define the business of TV and give prominence to professional sports broadcasts, has died. He was 88. Moore died Saturday of congestive heart failure in Palm Springs, his daughter Jean Edwards said. His career in television spanned four decades, from 1952 to 1983. He won at least six Emmy Awards for shows produced by his company, Tomorrow Entertainment, including "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," "The Body Human" and "Lifeline," which profiled the work of surgeons. Perhaps Moore's most lasting contributions to the industry came while he was president of ABC Television from 1963 to 1968. When he took the helm, ABC lagged far behind titans NBC and CBS in the Nielsen ratings. CBS had such popular shows as "Gunsmoke" and "Father Knows Best," and NBC aired "Wagon Train" and "Bonanza." Moore and other top ABC executives determined that although the shows on rival networks pulled in enormous audiences, the viewers tended to be older. In the mid-1960s, ABC lobbied Nielsen to provide more information, including ages, for viewers in its sample audience. The network then pressed advertisers to pay more money for commercials in programs that appealed to younger viewers. At that time, baby boomers were on the cusp of adulthood — and ABC and Moore saw those younger consumers as their ticket to the top. "Probably his greatest legacy is that he changed the whole basis on which television time is sold, and thus, how television is programmed," said TV historian Tim Brooks. "ABC basically introduced us to the concept of demographics. And ever since, we in the TV industry have been appealing to 18- to 49-year-old viewers." To capture those young adults, ABC came up with edgier shows such as "77 Sunset Strip," "The Untouchables," "Peyton Place" and later, "The Mod Squad." While Moore was in charge of ABC programming, the network aired other fan favorites such as "McHale's Navy," "My Three Sons" and "The Flintstones." Moore also played a pivotal role in developing ABC Sports into a network jewel. Moore hired sports producer Roone Arledge, who would become a legend, and helped create "ABC's Wide World of Sports" and "Monday Night Football." "That was all done under his tutelage," his daughter said, adding that before her father, ABC's sports programming consisted largely of bowling telecasts. "He brought mainstream sports to network television." He was born Sept. 17, 1918, in Meridian, Miss., the son of a cotton buyer and a schoolteacher. After attending the University of Missouri, he served six years as a Navy pilot during World War II. Moore started his TV career in 1952 at CBS, where he rose to general sales manager. In 1957, he joined ABC in sales and, the following year, became vice president of programming. In April 1963, he was named president of the ABC television network, a job he held for five years. After helping ABC become a viable network, he left and in the 1970s, he ran Tomorrow Entertainment. After retiring, Moore and his wife, Claire Stirrat Moore, split their time between Palm Springs and the Napa Valley town of St. Helena, where they owned a 100-acre vineyard. He helped found the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla., and the Palm Springs Air Museum.

That's great! Congrats Mark!

Hi Danielle! Do you have any plans for Easter? I got my ham yesterday. Saturday I'll buy two dozen eggs and boil them, and then color them. Nothing fancy. Glad to see that you've started the clarinet. Phil Woods said that the clarinet was invented by three guys who didn't know each other! I got a clarinet record this week by a New Orleanian named Alvin Batiste. I'll post about it early next week when I have some time. I think you would like its New Orleans beat!

I went to the NO Jazzfest in '90 and '91. They may have changed their modus operendi since then, but I doubt it. They had a jazz tent where nothing but modern jazz was played, continously for all four days. If they have many other tents featuring non-jazz ('91 had the Indigo Girls!), so what?