Lazaro Vega

The Arno Marsh Quartet in our backyard. Good times, good times. A 25th Anniversary party.

http://www.bluelake.org/radio

Chauncy's out on the road with Elmer Calloway and can't reply: reed trouble.

And it isn't just five hours of Johnny Hartman. He's the featured artist for about 20 minutes of each hour. If you can't have a happy holiday weekend listening to jazz then don't -- you won't be alone. As for me -- bring it on, all night long. Expecting a spike in the birth rate 9 months from now.

Tonight's broadcast of "Jazz From Blue Lake" focuses on vocalist Johnny Hartman. 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. est July 4th at 10 p.m. "Live From Blue Lake" with the Blue Lake Faculty Jazz Sixtet followed by a two hour special on the 2007 Detroit Jazz Festival. Jazz programming continues until 11 a.m. Saturday morning ("Jazz a la Carte" celebrates the 4th from 7 to 10 a.m. and at 10 "Piano Jazz" with guest Bill Evans. Please join us via 90.3 FM, in Grand Rapids on 88.9 FM, or over the net from http://www.bluelake.org/radio. Have a great holiday weekend. Lazaro

Recently received and have been playing "Coltrane In Spring" from J.T. Nice quartet date with Danish musicians. Also, bassist Adam Lane's record with Paul Smoker, J. T., and Barry Altchul. There's a Boxholder trio record with Garrison Fewell, guitar; Charlie Kholhase and J.T. that's lyrical and beautiful. Not the NYC5 but worthwhile none the less.

Press release -- thought the NYers might be interested: "Projectile" with MARK HELIAS - bass, compositions Ray Anderson - trombone Ellery Eskelin - saxophone Tyshawn Sorey - drums Friday June 27th at the Cornelia Street Cafe 29 Cornelia Street, NYC 10014 * 212-989-9319 http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/ Sets at 9pm and 10:30pm Mark Helias http://www.markhelias.com/ Ray Anderson http://www.rayanderson.org/ Ellery Eskelin http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/ Tyshawn Sorey http://www.myspace.com/tyshawnsorey http://www.markhelias.com for more info

We will be re-broadcasting Phil Ogilvie's Rhythm Kings this Saturday morning at 8:45 a.m. Hope you can join us. And if you happened to have caught any of the live broadcasts in this year's series, we could use your comments for the grant follow-up. radio@bluelake.org . Thanks folks.

Yeah, like what Lester Bowie had to say about using the "star" system to mess everything up.

And the Decca's from 1934 sound pretty good. My comments came after hearing the re-performance. Seems like a lot of money to spend on a virtual performance. Blue Lake is playing classic pianists all week, btw. Tatum tonight and tomorrow an oft over looked influence on him, Earl Hines. This issue of fidelity, though: have heard it for years from the early jazz crowd. "Oh, you have to come and hear our bands play this music live because it sounds so much better." To me that entirely misses the point of Johnny Dodds. Now, the Tatum thing isn't exactly the same, though, again, it doesn't sound like Tatum. There are nuances you can hear on the original recordings which identify Tatum right off the bat, and it has to do with the sound he coaxes from the piano, and you get a sense of his thinking his way through this stuff, which the re-performance does not capture. The notes are spectacular but there was more to Tatum's music, and to most of jazz, than "just the notes."

Yeah, but Allen's not a sockpuppet, he's a saxophonist. I mean, he's real and writes under his own name, not a nom de sock.

Sockpups are anthithetical to the spirit of collectivism engendered by the AACM. The sockpuppet is a stand alone soloist and as such has been outdone by others, such as Mark Twain or Thomas Pinchon, so is now outmoded. Let the ladies read whatever they want -- freedom for the sistas!

A Primer by Bob Hicok I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go to be in Michigan. The right hand of America waving from maps or the left pressing into clay a mold to take home from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan forty-three years. The state bird is a chained factory gate. The state flower is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical though it is merely cold and deep as truth. A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,” can sincerely use the word “sincere.” In truth the Midwest is not mid or west. When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio. There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam, which we’re not getting along with on account of the Towers as I pass. Then Ohio goes corn corn corn billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan. It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing. The Upper Peninsula is a spare state in case Michigan goes flat. I live now in Virginia, which has no backup plan but is named the same as my mother, I live in my mother again, which is creepy but so is what the skin under my chin is doing, suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials are needed. The state joy is spring. “Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball” is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April, when February hasn’t ended. February is thirteen months long in Michigan. We are a people who by February want to kill the sky for being so gray and angry at us. “What did we do?” is the state motto. There’s a day in May when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics is everywhere, and daffodils are asked by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes with a daffodil, you know where he’s from. In this way I have given you a primer. Let us all be from somewhere. Let us tell each other everything we can.

What Art Tatum website? Link?

His work with Woody Shaw, too, though the McCoy influence is pretty heavy throughout the entire band.

Carlin on Jazz: "Jazz musician is the only profession where you work for four hours and get payed and then you go to something called a jam session and work for another four hours for free."

Yep. "Ida Lupino"

Largest Internet audience we've ever had for night time jazz programming during Dapogny's hour. What a band. The harmonized transcription of Armstrong's solo on "Beau Koo Jack" killed me. That and King Oliver's famous break on "Snag It." Great version of "Pass Out Lightly."

http://www.pkorecords.com/members/jdapogny.htm

The finale of this season’s “Live From Blue Lake” radio concert series is June 19th at 10 p.m. with Phil Ogilvie’s Rhythm Kings playing the arrangements and transcriptions by pianist James DaPogny of music from the 1930’s when jazz pioneers Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver as well as a young Duke Ellington began to explore sections of instruments, enlarging the instrumentation of the classic jazz ensemble. At 10 pieces Phil Ogilvie’s Rhythm Kings is the largest jazz ensemble “Live From Blue Lake,” now wrapping up its second season, ever presented. The grant Blue Lake Public Radio receives from the Holland Area Arts Council and the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs to produce this series stipulates an emphasis in booking bands from Michigan. Last year Blue Lake focused on west Michigan musicians including The Western Jazz Quartet from Kalamazoo, bassist Paul Keller who grew up in East Grand Rapids, Dr. John Hair’s Quintet and Sweet Willie Singleton’s Quintet featuring the late saxophonist Mel Dalton (both bands from Grand Rapids). Additionally, saxophonist Wess “Warmdaddy” Anderson, Wynton Marsalis’s alto saxophonist for decades, led a trio live on the air celebrating his new position at Michigan State University. This year we’ve continued to bring you live jazz from area musicians with Michael Doyle and Evidence featuring West Michigan Jazz Society “Jazz Musician of the Year” Steve Talaga, yet Blue Lake also invited musicians from the University of Michigan faculty to the airwaves: pianist Geri Allen, bassist Robert Hurst and, finally, pianist/arranger/scholar and historian James Dapogny. This May “Live From Blue Lake” brought you an international ensemble co-led by New York trombonist Steve Swell and Berlin-based woodwind virtuoso Gebhard Ullmann with Little Jimmy Scott’s music director, bassist Hilliard Green, and the legendary jazz drummer Barry Altschul. None of this programming would be possible without the corporate support of Mack Avenue Records, a Detroit based jazz record label featuring music by George Shearing, Terry Gibbs and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra as well as local favorites and up and coming Michigan musicians. “The Road to Great Music, www.mackavenue.com”. Also see www.dirtydogjazz.com for Mack Avenue owner Gretchen Valade’s new Gross Point Farms jazz/diner club. (313) 882-5299. Please join us via FM or the Internet Thursday, June 19th at 10 p.m. for the conclusion of this year’s “Live From Blue Lake” with Phil Olgilvie’s Rhythm Kings (www.porkjazz.com ).

He does a good job on the discussion of Sun Ra and the AACM.

Listened to a few samples, and based on my memories of many other Tatum recordings, especially the well-recorded late solo Granz albums and the fantastic stuff recorded at a party at Ray Heindorf's house, the note-to-note relationships sound "off" in terms of time and attack -- too raw, abrupt, and clattery, lacking in shading/nuance. That's true. First reaction -- it doesn't sound like Tatum but some Conlin Nancarrow doppleganger of him. Wonder what Nancarrow would do with this technology?

Came in two days ago. Always wondered about these "covers." Heard Vandermark play "New York Is Full of Lonely People" at the concert/service for Lester Bowie. Good to have that now on CD.

Like Muhal. When talking about 50's Chicago and the ideas of Black Experimentalism in the bebop era of Chicago two things: Johnny Griffin's "Woody N You" from his sextet album on Prestige which unfolds like a mini-suite, instrumental recombinations occuring as regularly as a Jelly Roll Morton chart; and Ira Sullivan talking about playing on the South Side and saying the musicians there weren't as predisposed to say "This is the right way" but if there were just a drummer and a tenor, they'd hit it.