ghost of miles

Wonder what the unreleased Parker is--live performances, perhaps? Verve Records Celebrates 60 Years Label will celebrate landmark anniversary with releases throughout the year LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24, 2016 -- One of the most prestigious labels in the history of jazz, Verve Records will celebrate its 60th anniversary throughout 2016 with a trove of historic reissues and stunning new collections from its legendary archives. The release schedule constitutes a who's-who of jazz legends, including such pioneers as Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Smith, Stan Getz, and the label's heart and soul, Ella Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald will be honored with the release of Jazz at the Philharmonic: The Ella Fitzgerald Set, a new compilation bringing together all of her Jazz at the Philharmonic performances previously issued by Verve on various albums, on a single collection for the first time ever. The collection -- which includes concerts from 1949, 1953 and 1954 and features appearances by Parker, Lester Young, and Hank Jones among others -- will feature newly re-mastered music and an essay by author Will Friedwald. The first set of releases, due out in March 2016, is also highlighted by the new digital collection Verve 60, featuring 60 stellar tracks by 60 different artists from throughout the label's history, spanning from Ella and Oscar through Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock to Diana Krall and Christian McBride. In addition, five favorites from the Verve catalogue will be reissued on vinyl, including Ella and Louis, the first pairing for the label of Fitzgerald and Armstrong; Billie Holiday's Lady Sings the Blues; Charlie "Bird" Parker's innovative Charlie Parker with Strings; Oscar Peterson's Night Train; and Count Basie's April in Paris. Several classics will also make their debuts in HD digital audio and iTunes, including titles by Fitzgerald, Evans, Parker, Wynton Kelly, and Stan Getz. Organ master Jimmy Smith's classic singles for the label will be compiled into a digital box set. The release schedule continues in May and June with more vinyl and digital reissues, including Getz/Gilberto and albums by Wes Montgomery, Blossom Dearie, Coleman Hawkins, and Anita O'Day. A new CD collection will compile unreleased music by Charlie Parker, while Louis Armstrong's complete studio recordings for the label will be collected onto one multi-disc set. Verve was founded in 1956 by Norman Granz, the forward-thinking impresario responsible for the hugely popular Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts, which brought the music to new audiences and garnered jazz an unprecedented level of respect in the popular culture. Granz also managed Ella Fitzgerald and launched the label in large part to create new opportunities worthy of the singer's immense talent, including her landmark series of Songbook recordings. Under the visionary leadership of Granz and later Creed Taylor (after MGM purchased the imprint in 1961), Verve continued to set new trends. The label sparked the Bossa Nova craze with the 1964 release of the Grammy Award-winning Getz/Gilberto and brought a lush, elegant new sound to jazz with the arrangements of Claus Ogerman and Oliver Nelson. Its focus also encompassed groundbreaking comedy, and later widened to embrace folk and rock recordings, including now-iconic releases by The Velvet Underground, Richie Havens, Frank Zappa The Mothers of Invention and Janis Ian. It was its jazz legacy that cemented Verve's place in the popular imagination however, and after a fallow period in the '70s and '80s Verve was revived in the mid-1990s, again signing many of the biggest names in the music: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, John Scofield, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, Jeff Lorber, Chris Botti and Incognito all recorded for Verve during this period. Its diverse and distinguished lineage continues today through the work of artists like Diana Krall, Sarah McLachlan and Third Story. Over the course of its six-decade history, Verve has become synonymous with the very best in jazz, venerating the music while charting its course and helping to break down racial and stylistic barriers. There's no better way to celebrate that legacy than with the music itself, and 2016 will allow listeners to revisit the breathtaking sounds of Verve in new and exhilarating ways. Source: Verve Recordshttp://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/verve-records-celebrates-60-years-300225287.html

Last week's Night Lights show, devoted to the late 1950s/early 1960s recordings of pianist Freddie Redd, with a heavy emphasis on Blue Note material, is up for online listening: Ready For Freddie Redd Didn't have time to include "San Francisco Suite," but that will be included in another program later this year.

Picked this up used a couple of years ago, just getting around to listening to it tonight, and right on, Jim! Liking this much more than I'd expected to. Need to check out Tutu, which I haven't heard yet... if anybody else is interested in late-late Miles, also check out Live Around The World.

Same here. It also drives me crazy when updated/"upgraded" systems dispense, for whatever reason, with functions that used to work quite well.

Beck's Morning Phase.

Eugene Blacknell, "We Know We Got To Live Together": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkBNv63d6rU

Count Basie and Paul Robeson team up to salute Joe Louis, Gil Scott-Heron pays tribute to Billie Holiday and John Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard delivers a jazz skyhook for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Duke Ellington paints a musical picture of Mahalia Jackson, and more on this recent edition of Night Lights: Portraits In Black: Jazz Tributes To African-American Heroes Coming up this week: "Ready For Freddie Redd."

When Dylan met Cash: One Too Many Mornings

Love Johnny Cash! Just picked up the Bear Family box Come Along And Ride This Train not too long ago. The other night I was listening to his cover of Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" quite a few times... one of my favorite Cash performances (though I love Kristofferson's recording of it as well).

Well, the Yankees' "what to do with Greg Bird in 2016" problem has been solved--he's sidelined for the entire season.

Thanks, Bill--I had to leave a lot of material on the cutting-room floor, as it were, including leader dates by Eddie Higgins and Louis Hayes (though they appear elsewhere in the program as sidemen). I may try to do a sequel at some point.

Exploring the jazz side of black-owned, Chicago-based Vee-Jay Records on this edition of Night Lights, with music from Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Paul Chambers, Wynton Kelly, Bill Henderson, Eddie Harris, Frank Strozier, and the MJT + III: The Vee-Jay Jazz Story

PM sent on the Charlie Haden.

Up for Groundhog Day! Do It Again: Jazz Remakes

Serge Chaloff.

On this recent edition of Night Lights, veteran pianist Hod O'Brien talks coming of jazz age in the 1950s, playing with Ornette Coleman and Chet Baker, and much more. We also check out recordings he made as a leader and with Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, and Idrees Suliemann, JR Monterose, Roswell Rudd, and others: A Portrait Of Hod O'Brien

I can't really render any final comparison to TWAW after having watched only five episodes of Cold War, but I have found myself wishing that the episodes could have emulated World At War's 52-minute length. Cold War episodes are 46 minutes--a shorter length, I'm sure, to accommodate CNN's 1998 allowances for commercial breaks. Two fewer episodes overall than World At War as well.

Thought of this ancient thread tonight while watching the fifth episode of Sir Jeremy Isaacs' Cold War. If you enjoyed his early 1970s World At War series about WWII, then definitely check out Cold War, done in a very similar style for CNN in the late 1990s: Cold War

Bobby Hutcherson turns 75 today, and we're re-airing this show this week in honor of him. You can listen on any of the stations that carry Night Lights, or here: Later: Bobby Hutcherson in the Mid-1970s

Upping this in honor of Benny Golson's 87th birthday today, and the re-airing of the show this past week on Night Lights: The Benny Golson Songbook

Found this excellent 2-CD anthology for $3 in a used bookstore last year... if you see it cheap somewhere, highly recommended as a good overview of Ogerman: A Man And His Music