ghost of miles

Glad you enjoyed the show, AL... McCoy Tyner also recorded that Massey tune ("I Thought I'd Let You Know"). The program will air again tonight on Blue Lake, but it will be a poor second to Mr. Vega's interview with Ornette Coleman, which airs before it, from 7-10 p.m. EST. (Lobbying folks to tune in for that; I know I am.) Chewy, I'd imagine that Cal Massey Candid is hard to find on vinyl; it didn't even come out until (I think) the 1980s--might be a few copies floating around in the ether. On CD, not hard at all, as it was recently reissued; certainly available on Amazon.

Yes, but no sectarian he... have you ever heard his recording of "On the Sunni Side of the Street"?

This week on Night Lights it’s “Soulful Days: the Cal Massey Songbook.” Trumpeter Cal Massey was an African-American jazz composer, little-known now and in his lifetime, but whose work was recorded by musicians such as John Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, Charlie Parker, Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, McCoy Tyner, and Archie Shepp. In the 1960s Massey made his Brooklyn home into a kind of community center for jazz artists and produced many concerts, including benefits for the Black Panthers. A longtime friend of Coltrane, he read the tenor saxophonist’s poem “A Love Supreme” at Coltrane’s 1967 funeral. Massey died of a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 44, leaving a wife and three children; his son, Zane Massey, is a well-respected saxophonist on the modern jazz scene. (As a child Zane was also the inspiration for Massey’s composition “Father and Son,” tapping out a figure on drums that would become his father’s basis for the melody.) We’ll hear recordings of Massey’s music from many of the above-named artists; you can view an online discography of his compositions here. “Soulful Days: the Cal Massey Songbook” airs at 11:05 p.m. EST Saturday, February 10 on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. It airs at 10 p.m. EST Sunday evening on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. Also, be sure to tune into Blue Lake Public Radio at 7 p.m. EST Sunday for a three-hour program featuring Lazaro Vega's interview with jazz giant Ornette Coleman. You can read a transcript of the interview here. The Night Lights "Cal Massey Songbook" show will follow the conclusion of Lazaro's Ornette program at 10 p.m. Next week: "Come On Down to Central Avenue" with L.A. jazz historian Steve Isoardi.

Wanted to give this an up for board members Michael Weiss and Stevebop.

My first thought was that it was some sort of mashing project.

Thanks for the update, Bol--I think I remember you mentioning this campaign to me last month when we met for coffee. Great news indeed! I have a buddy who's an Al Cohn fanatic & on the trail of the RCA material; he'll be jubilant when he hears this news.

Thanks, I will!

This program is now archived.

If you think jazz writers are livin' large, well, I have two words for you--jazz radio. I'd post more, but Lazaro says we're about to run out of "supplies" for the mid-day party down here in Bermuda, so I need to rustle up one of the staff for some errand-running. Dilemma: do I buy that third yacht or not?

"The Big Broadcast" archives

Something I haven't seen much about (might've missed it... but so much of today's coverage is "Manning overcomes, etc.") is the Colts' running game... didn't they pile up about 200 yards on the ground? Not sure that that was a key factor in the game, but it seemed significant enough to keep the Bears from focusing solely on Manning.

Glad you liked the show, Sidewinder. There was some discussion of Williams recently in the Artists forum (you might have caught it already) and I posted some comments about TW from Wallace Roney halfway down this page. I can't remember where I came across this--I think it might be alluded to in the Mosaic booklet, but I found the name somewhere else--Terence Blanchard was the trumpeter originally scheduled to make the FOREIGN INTRIGUE date, and Roney was a last-minute substitution.

It's a topic that's long fascinated me, and I'm hoping to do a show about it eventually. The references to jazz in crime novels are almost too numerous to mention... I once started a list, but I think it's on the computer at my office. And there's quite a lot of crime fiction that I haven't read, so I'm sure that I've missed plenty of allusions. In terms of relatively recent crime novels, some here are probably already familiar with Bill Moody's novels, in which a jazz pianist solves mysteries that are related to jazz and jazz narratives (the death of Wardell Gray, a Clifford Brown bootleg, etc.). I found them passably enjoyable, if a bit too thick with a kind of derivative jazz "attitude" that ended up being rather offputting.

Lots of divided loyalties down in Bloomington today. Rex Grossman grew up here and played for Bloomington North High School; lots of students from Da Region, too. There was a story in the paper the other day about how some of the frats are going to have separate TV-viewing rooms for Colts & Bears fans. I had breakfast at the vegetarian restaurant on the downtown square today, and even the counterculture-inclined staff there (some of them, anyway) were talking about where they were going to be watching the game tonight.

I'd like to sink my teeth into those myself... Right now, Tom Perchard's Lee Morgan bio.

doing a seg? damn shame. Yes, he was on the original list of 100+ program ideas when I first proposed the show--but somebody's working on a bio & so I've been holding off till it comes out. (Or at least until I can perhaps read an advance copy--would like to get some more background on LW before preparing a program.) That was quite a score, Mike--I've had half an eye out for that Newport LP for a long time. I need to check out that McDuff side, too.

This week on Night Lights it’s “We Shall Overcome: Civil-Rights Jazz.” There was a strong relationship between jazz and civil rights in 20th-century America; musicians and many critics as well were advocates for equal rights for African-Americans, and jazz provided a cultural bridge between blacks and whites that helped to work as a force for integration. In the post-World War II era black musicians began to speak up, directly and indirectly, against racial injustice, and they also began to record works with titles or lyrics that referred explicitly to the struggle for equality. This program includes music from Nina Simone (her take on the legendary anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit”), Sonny Rollins (his instrumental version of “The House I Live In,” first sung by Frank Sinatra in 1945, and co-written by Abel Meeropol, who also wrote “Strange Fruit”), John Coltrane (a live and complete performance of “Alabama” taken from Ralph Gleason’s Jazz Casual TV show), and Max Roach’s powerful “Prayer/Protest/Peace” from the 1960 album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. We Shall Overcome: Civil-Rights Jazz airs at 11:05 p.m. EST Saturday, February 3 on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. It also airs Sunday evening at 10 EST on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. The program will be posted Monday afternoon in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Soulful Days: the Cal Massey Songbook."

He was just here at the station! Signed my copies of LOVE BUG and BLUE MODE... all three of them were really cool and fun to talk to. Showed Mr. Wilson a picture from this thread & told him there was much positive discussion going on here... he was very pleased. (And he now knows who Organissimo is, too!)

This program is at long last archived.

Not sure about its status. Maybe it irks me so much because I think jazz programmers (present company included) should do all they can to support their local scenes. (I'm lucky; Bloomington has a very good one, thanks to the IU School of Music and the jazz studies department. It's a genuine pleasure to put the folks around here on the air.) In any event, I think it's a lousy business concept, in addition to being a reprehensible one; screw 'em and put up MP3s on your own site.

Saw this in a jazz-radio thread over at AAJ: Pay for play Somebody (new member with this as the sole post to his/her credit) was trying to get a Virginia-area jazz musician to use this service. Am I alone in finding this reprehensible in all kinds of ways? I guess it's somewhat akin to vanity publishing... but for some reason, it strikes me as even worse.

Dick Haymes smokes Camels (w/thanks to the Songbirds list)

Well, sure--Blue Note for one, to make a case quite close to home. Where did most of the posters on this board come from? Of course you buy for the music, but I don't think you can deny that a # of the people who post here certainly "trust" the Blue Note label of yore. And Mosaic, IMO, has very much built upon that sort of identity/brand/label loyalty. I agree w/most of what you're saying and don't think that ultimately this is a big deal, but I would certainly define Mosaic as a "label"--even if they do only reissues. A label in the sense of a record/business company purveying a certain brand of music. And yeah, Blue Note recorded a diversity of artists, but there are a lot of folks on this board unhappy with the current incarnation of the label for the direction they're taking and the artists they're signing. Like I said, no big deal to me, as long as they keep putting out the classic stuff... and yeah, the timeframe inevitably stretches and has to... I mean, hell, the Tony Williams set covers recordings made after Mosaic was launched. But that doesn't have much to do with what gets defined as worthy jazz... we have yet to see a "sweet-music" band set from Mosaic, even though they do lots of early jazz. There's a lot of stuff from the 1980s and 1990s that I'd like to see Mosaic get around to putting out, but none of it emanating from the "contemporary" purview.

This is pretty much my thinking, too. If Mosaic needs to expand its horizons in order to keep releasing the good stuff, it's OK with me. I'm not sure I understand what people are concerned about "tarnishing the brand" unless it somehow impacts their ability to continue the boxes. To the extent that brand identity reflects reality, my notion of Mosaic is a quality product, involving only recordings of clear artistic merit. I might not like some of them, but I respect all of them as being chosen for their merit as music. I have thought of Mosaic as the George Washington of jazz labels. If Mosaic is going to become a hit and miss label, with Chu Berry coming out one week and the collected late 1970s works of Bob James the next, it will change the way I think of it. Instead of automatically considering all of their releases for potential purchase or gift lists, I will pause and wonder if a new release is trash or treasure, and will wonder if I have the time, patience and energy to analyze which it is, and why. I may come to think of Mosaic as the Lyndon B. Johnson of jazz labels. Fascinating analogies but unless you've had a standing order for every single Mosaic, don't you already analyze the inherent value of each new Mosaic offering? True enough, but I think he means that the "trust" which tips some decisions might be lost... i.e., the "Mosaic put this out so it must be music of merit, music that I might really appreciate at some point even if I'm on the fence about it now" factor that might help sway some folks. Ultimately, I guess it doesn't really matter if one chooses simply to ignore the new label all together. I'll be curious to see what they do down the line, and will probably order the Hubbard. I'm sure MC & others involved gave a lot of thought to this latest project.. they surely were aware it would strike some as an unfortunate step. I don't know the current economic state of their operation, or if that even played a role in taking this direction. I just hope that they eventually get around to the Braxton Arista Quartets...