ghost of miles

Yes, definitely Mary Osborne--this dates from around the time she was working with Tyree Glenn, and the show is indeed Art Ford's Jazz Party. Recent Night Lights program: Mary Osborne: Queen of the Jazz Guitar

Saw him here in Bloomington several years ago, and it was an amazing concert. Very sorry to hear this news.

Yankees are hitting a lot of HRs and not much else--a .236 team BA to date. Boston not far behind at .231 (going into tonight's game). I don't think Teixeira has gotten a single hit since taking that ball off his knee. I didn't see the game itself, but one of the regular bloggers at PA said he looked terrible in every AB that game after getting hit. Not sure if there's any correlation, but he went from torrid at the plate to stone-cold dead.

'...Horizon' is Benson "put in the right environment". It's his masterpiece, and quite atypical for CTI (no sweetener), and my favorite jazz guitar album. The title track from the Hubbard is gorgeous in a prototypical CTI manner. Also, 'White Rabbit' is one of the best "typical" CTI's (sweetener galore, but it all works). Agree w/Felser--BEYOND is a really solid Benson outing, Matthew. I have the Mosaic Contemporary edition (whatever happened to that series, eh?) and probably won't be too inclined to go for the new one, but you ought to snag it if you're into GB at all.

Go, Rangers! (For tonight and tomorrow, anyway... )

I have one of those Blue Note watches in my desk-drawer... mine's non-working as well. It's a cool little item.

We're re-airing The King At Midpoint: Benny Carter this week and it remains archived for online listening.

The new Smithsonian jazz anthology.

A friend and fellow O poster tipped me off to the post about the Cole set here... many thanks to all!

As somebody over at PA just posted:

Going into today's game, the Yankees were third to last in the American League in team ERA at 5.00. Boston was last, at 6.95. Right now it's NY 8, Boston 4 in the bottom of the 6th. Conversely, Baltimore sits atop the team ERA standings at 2.33, and Texas is third at 2.83.

Yes, Tex took a ball off the knee several days ago and seemed to lose his newfound April mojo almost immediately. Lots of concern over at PA right now about Hughes' utter lack of location as well as velocity. (Where have you gone, Andy Pettitte? Yankee fans turn their lonely eyes to you...whoo, whoo, whoo.) Too early for me to say much else about the team so far, but the two awful starts in a row from Hughes certainly constitute a red flag, simply because there's no stuff to his stuff.

J.A.W. is right re: Prestige Carnegie. That's one to seek out on LP rather than CD if possible.

Very interested in this topic myself, TTK--was just talking to a friend about it last week (PM forthcoming). Definitely check out the first three volumes of Circle's DKE World transcriptions (though V. 3 straddles a 1943 and a 1945 session). You're already hip to the 1943 Carnegie Hall concerts (January on Prestige, December on Storyville), I'm sure, but look for the Storyville CD of Duke's 1943 Hurricane broadcasts. (And there's a lot more material from that stand that circulates... I wish a reputable label could gather it all together and issue it as a nice set.) Several of the Treasury 2-CD sets (which cover 1945-46) also include a few broadcasts from 1943. EDIT: there are seven 1943 DKE recordings featuring Betty Roche on this Night Lights show: When Betty Met The Duke. Roche is definitely (IMHO) a generally underrepresented-on-record DKE orchestra member worth seeking out.

After today's "start," Hughes' ERA rests at a stratospheric 16.50, making Lackey's current 15+ look rather ace-like by comparison.

I still think that Boston's just getting the suckitude out of their system early... plus tomorrow afternoon they'll be facing Phil "Dude-where's-my-velocity" Hughes (or is that "Dude-I-wish-two-strikes-made-an-out?" ) at Fenway. As always, I'd be happy simply to see NY take two of three from the Bosox on the road.

Here's the Conover Night Lights show: Conover's Coming Over: Willis Conover and Jazz at the Voice of America

Riverwalk Jazz has a nice take on Hughes' poetry and jazz up this week, featuring readings of Hughes' poems by singer and actor William Warfield: Jazz and the Poetry of Langston Hughes

Much as it cheers me to see the mighty 2011 Bosox off to such a bad start, I figure they'll snap out of it just in time for the Yanks' visit to Fenway this weekend. Seems to me they're just getting their five-game losing streak out of their system early on. Dave James, yeah, hated to see that one slip away against the Twins the other night... this year's bullpen should just about never blow a 4-0 lead going into the 8th inning. Not sure what was up with Soriano and the walks... last year he walked only 14 for the season and never more than two hitters in a single inning. Hopefully just an aberration. In better news, Mark Teixeira's hitting .333 with 4 HRs and seems to have put the kibosh on his April woes for this year; in not-better news, Derek Jeter's already dropped his re-tooled swing, and he and Brett Gardner are a combined 5-34 so far.

A friend tipped me off to this DEMS report that Volume 15 is in the works.

I'm hoping that one of our fave AL teams around this joint--Boston, Texas, New York, what have you--gets to the World Series and makes mince-meat outta that character Cliff Lee.

I'm inclined to agree w/Chuck as well, and I can't really hear their influence in the late 1970s/1980s jazz that I know (but there's a lot that I don't know). As an aside/one-off, there was this Woody Herman album, which I have yet to hear (but would like to):

I didn't take away a great feeling about A.J.'s performance yesterday either, but it's very, very early (some folks at PA expressing concern about Phil Hughes' velocity, though). The offense sure is looking great! Tex appears to have finally overcome his April doldrums. But yeah, that starting rotation...oy vey. We'll see how things shake out.