ghost of miles

MLB.com’s power rankings for Opening Day. The Dodgers unsurprisingly clock in at #1, while four of the other top ten teams are from the AL East.

Here's a Night Lights show I did a few years back: Late Art: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the 1980s

Spoiler: Sure seems that way (and not the first time I've read about AI slop proliferating on the platform) I finally opened a Spotify account last year, but most musicians I've talked to about streaming favor Apple, saying that the audio quality and musician compensation is better. (Apple's basic monthly streaming service cost is also two dollars cheaper than Spotify's.) I have no illusions about Apple being any kind of paragon of corporate virtue ("corporate" and "virtue" are pretty much antithetical anyway. Corporations are out to make money, period, and making even more money will always trump--er, win out over any kind of greater good), but do other posters have an opinion about the pros and cons of each service? Or others that are available?

Me too! And also digging into Ian Carr's Miles Davis biography.

I'm thinking Organissimo may also be the *only* jazz discussion forum active in 2003 that's still around today. And twenty-three years feels like a century in digital-technology time. When this board launched there was no social media, no streaming, no YouTube, etc, and smartphones had yet to be introduced. (Remember when Blackberry was all the rage?)

Sorry to hear this as well. His Miles Davis bio was the first one I ever read, and I was especially grateful for his book on Dick Twardzik. Appreciation also to Mark Miller, who has done stellar jazz history work himself, for posting the news.

Happy Big Bang for the Big O Day! Twenty-three years and counting.

Blood on the Tracks for Gen X. Got to see him on the accompanying tour, in which Flaming Lips opened and them returned as his backing band. Speaking of Dylan allusions, currently delving into this puppy:

Seconded!

Beat me to it! Braxton was the first person I thought of when I saw the subject heading. Iirc he talks about meeting Desmond in Forces in Motion.

I think such a revival has already been bubbling for the past few years--Concord now markets some of its new jazz releases as smooth jazz. You could even go all the way back to the 2012 release of Robert Glasper's Black Radio album as a starting point.

I bit on both the 6-CD Cutting Edge (great book and photos, just skimming through them so far) and the Live 1966 boxes, both found online at very good prices, and have started to dig into them. I'm still only three CDs into Through the Open Window, so I think I'm set for Dylan listening material for awhile!

Mark’s on the show again this afternoon to talk about “Best of the Best: Jazz From Detroit,” the documentary film adaptation of his book about Detroit jazz that’s showing Saturday at the IU Cinema in Bloomington. We’ll be playing lots of Detroit jazz as well by Kenny Burrell, Barry Harris, Ron Carter, Geri Allen, Bob Hurst and more. On WFIU from 3-5 p.m. EST, 103.7 FM in Bloomington, online at wfiu.org

I voted for him in that year's primary as well!

Hi Steve, yes, pretty sure it's the same recording that's on the Hep CD March of the Boyds 1945-48 that I have at home. I'll check when I'm back from work this evening.

The 2-CD highlights version of Through the Open Window and a review by a critic friend persuaded me to opt for the full-blown deluxe set: Just as Mark Lewisohn’s Beatles bio Tune In lit a deeper interest in their formative years for me, last year’s A Complete Unknown film stoked my interest in Dylan’s earliest years, so I’m really going to enjoy the deep dive that this set offers. I thought the 2-CD version would suffice, but it only whetted my appetite to hear and read even more. This is only the third deluxe bootleg box I’ve purchased, preceded by The Complete Basement Tapes and the Rolling Thunder Revue set. I’ll probably eventually pick up the expanded Cutting Edge collection as well. On the fence about the full-blown 1966 Live leviathan.

Knockout version of “Begin the Beguine” by Boyd Raeburn’s band near the end of disc 3 (arrangement by Johnny Richards). Also recently encountered big-band singer Dorothy Claire on a new CD of Glenn Miller’s Chesterfield broadcasts and was pleasantly surprised to hear her again on the V-disc set with Raeburn’s orchestra. She did a stint with Bob Crosby in 1939 but doesn’t appear on the Crosby Mosaic, which omits most of that band’s vocal sides (but does include a couple of vocals from Teddy Grace, another lesser-known fave of mine among swing-era singers).

I was going to mention Off The Record, but then realized that it is (or was) an imprint of Archeophone. Apologies if the initial post was a bit vague. Certainly labels such as Mosaic, Nessa, and Hep fit the definition, in terms of being small operations devoted to specialized jazz reissues and releases--it's just that their longevity and extensive catalogues almost make them "too big to be boutique" at this point. This is my anecdotal sense as well. There will be exceptions, of course (a few years ago it seemed a # of musicians in the improvisatory/avant-garde community were exploring a renewed interest in hot jazz of the 1920s), and young dancers often seek out music from the swing era. But once the living generations of artists and their fanbases are gone, the interest in the music seems to decline even more.

Discussion of an upcoming Julius Hemphill reissue put me in mind of International Phonograph Inc, which then put me in mind of Mighty Quinn, both of which put out some beautifully-done, labor-of-love releases. What are some of your favorite boutique labels and reissues?

I just realized that the International Phonograph reissue of this came out *15* years ago. Damn, time doesn't fly, it's more like now you see it, now you don't.

Hear, hear! Five days till pitchers and catchers report.

My guess is that they've distilled Tiberi's original 86-CD-R transfer stash to something in the neighborhood of 4-8 CDs for general release? And I'd also imagine that modern audio clean-up technology has made whatever they're going to put out more listenable, as opposed to what was available in 2000 when the transfers were originally made. This is a really big deal--the Tiberi tapes have been akin to Dean Benedetti's Charlie Parker recordings for Coltrane fans.

Scene from "The Pine Barrens," now with laugh track: