ghost of miles

All five of the 2005 WFIU Big Bands Duke Ellington Treasury programs are now posted.

Thought they were drawn from acetates or transcriptions that Jerry Valburn had gathered... was Mel collecting them at some point? Supposedly it took Valburn quite a long time to piece the broadcasts back together into anything resembling complete form. The July 1945 program is now posted; the last one (Aug. '45) will go up tomorrow morning.

A good chance that we will have two channels as of late next spring... one primarily music, one primarily talk. Hoping that means we'll be able to up the jazz content somewhat.

Irony, man

It's not the tunes, SJ--they are indeed good. Somehow the album just doesn't spark for me. I've thought about trading in my old Conn for the RVG, to see if the remastering brightened things up... fine lineup, obviously, and one I'll pull out again at some point down the road for another listen.

I went back to this one and listened to it several times while working on the Night Lights "Jackie and Lee" show, and I couldn't justify inclusion of any of the tracks. Length was a problem (hard shoehorning material into a fixed 59-minute program with required breaks, newsholes, etc.), but nothing jumped out at me as a "must-include" side...not a bad date, but I much prefer the later collaborations. I think U. Cypher has a somewhat more positive opinion of it, though.

Just (finally, after meaning to buy it for a long time) picked up the CD reissue of Rain Parade's EMERGENCY THIRD RAIL POWER TRIP, which includes the EXPLOSIONS IN THE GLASS PALACE ep. While the influences are as overt as ever ("What She's Done to Your Mind" is straight out of the Byrds' 1965-66 catalogue), the songs hold up pretty well... glad I've got this one around the house again.

"Duke Ellington: the Treasury Shows, June 1945" is now archived.

A couple of years ago I did five big-band programs based on Duke Ellington's 1945 Treasury shows. These were weekly broadcasts that Ellington did for the U.S. government to help sell war bonds; they were called "Your Saturday Date With the Duke," and they were often done while Duke was on the road somewhere. The music is a mix of contemporary pop hits, staples from the Ellington songbook, and Ellington/Strayhorn compositions that sometimes were never (or rarely) performed or recorded again. (Previous Organissimo discussion of the Treasury shows here. Generally the band did two, three, or four numbers, and then the MC and/or Duke made a pitch to buy war bonds. The programs I did were distillations from 4 CDs' worth of broadcasts, presented with some background about the times and the music, each one representing a month's worth of shows (these were done as 60th-anniversary commemorations for the end of World War II). Yesterday I posted April 1945 and today I posted Duke Ellington Treasury Shows May 1945. Over the next three days I'll post June, July, and August 1945. Still hoping that Storyville will resume/finish the D.E.T.S. series (they're halfway through but have slowed significantly--owing, I'd imagine, to Karl Emil Knudsen's passing away).

Here's to another trip around the sun... with many more for all of us, I hope.

"Trane '57" is now archived.

Chamberlain picked up his first save today--struck out three of the final four batters he faced. Shades of 1996, when Mariano was the setup man for John Wetteland...and also the obvious coming closer.

New York Calling bash this Wednesday 9/26 in NYC... I'd swing by, but the WFIU corporate jet is in the shop for repairs. Sounds like a good time.

I guess I'll post this in the "live" forum... color me highly dubious of this project. Shouldn't they at least have dug up a pristine state-of-the-art 1955 piano?

Agree on both counts. Even if Burns' series turns out to be better than the review suggests, I think the earlier series will remain more "definitive," as these things go... simply for its international perspective. And I actually prefer the older, drier 1970s documentary style... I've gotten heartily sick of mood music and soundtrack manipulation, historical recreations, famous actors reading letters, and what-not.

The review seems a bit unfocused to me at times, but... In the Trenches

It's an Internet meter for how many people have linked to your site or blog. A certain Organissimo poster's very interesting blog has already piled up a "14" authority rating (though I suspect he'd be somewhat scornful of the value of such things). Guess it's a "size matter"--just like "Surrey" is a "car song."

Man, you're gonna be piling up Technorati "authority" too fast to shake a chimp-chewin' stick at! You and Larry should run a tag-team blog...

Many thanks, Jim--I'm hoping that it will serve as a sort of online introduction to the subject. Hoping to post Part II sometime this weekend or on Monday... meantime, I've linked to YOU in this post. :rsly:

Several board members have referred glowingly to Max Harrison over the years, and I've really liked the one or two articles by him that I've come across in anthologies. Just found a used paperback 1991 UK reprint of A JAZZ RETROSPECT for $5 in the local book emporium... looks like a great read for the weekend.

In the liner notes to his 1964 masterpiece A Love Supreme, John Coltrane wrote, “During the year of 1957 I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life.” 1957 has become Year Zero in the Coltrane legend, a key turning point for the tenor saxophonist, then 30 and still in the throes of a debilitating drug addiction that had led Miles Davis to twice boot Coltrane out of his group. Throughout the course of this year Coltrane would kick his drug and alcohol habits, make his first recordings as a leader, and work extensively with jazz master Thelonious Monk. His playing brimmed with a new vitality as he began a rapid evolutionary development that would lead to his so-called “sheets of sound” technique and the compositional breakthroughs of Giant Steps in the next two years. Trane ‘57 features music from John Coltrane’s Prestige leader debut Coltrane as well as his acclaimed Blue Train, his appearance on hardbop pianist Sonny Clark’s Sonny’s Crib, and studio and live dates with Thelonious Monk. In addition, we’ll hear Coltrane himself, speaking to fan August Blume in 1958 about his musical relationship with Monk and the changes he’d made the previous year in his personal life. The program airs this evening at 11:05 p.m. EST 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. It will be posted for online listening Monday morning in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Ahmed Abdul-Malik."

For our NYC-area posters:

Dan, much as I'd like to see it happen, I just don't think the inevitable laws of momentum can sustain the Yanks overtaking the Bosox. NY's won, what, 12 of their last 14 now? It is pretty breathtaking that they're 1.5 games off the lead at this point---I sure would not have predicted that a few weeks ago--but they're bound to cool off (hopefully not just in time for the playoffs). Boston would really have to keep dying to blow it now. A-Rod is in a 3-for-29 slump... saving it up for the postseason, I hope.