ghost of miles

Have you heard Soul on Top? JB definitely had a lot of love for jazz & jazz singers. Discussion here.

Just finished Steven Isoardi's THE DARK TREE (which I had set aside back in October) and H. Rider Haggard's SHE. Getting ready to start Alec Wilder's book on American popular song.

Got CDs of: Joe Albany, TWO'S COMPANY Warne Marsh, LIVE AT DANA POINT June Christy/Stan Kenton, DUET Got DVDs of: GOOD NIGHT & GOOD LUCK HILL STREET BLUES (Season 2) SHANE CHINATOWN THE TWO JAKES ...and a couple of books on American popular song.

Just got a mint used copy of this from a fellow board member, and it's very good indeed--in fact, was getting ready to spin it again when I saw this thread, as I'm still working on a Monterose show.

TVLand is evidently running all of the sitcom holiday episodes this evening. My wife & I have been watching a "Jeffersons" one... a fun concept on TVLand's part.

Last night's Night Lights Christmas show is already archived; it includes some hidden cinematic moments from holiday movies and ends with Louis Armstrong reading "The Night Before Christmas." Friday night's Afterglow "Songs of the Season: Christmas" is also now archived, as is the 12/15 program of combined winter & holiday songs ("Look Out the Window"). And there are previous Night Lights Christmas shows online in the archives as well, under the dates of 12/24/2005 and 12/18/2004. Many, many thanks to our webmaster Michael Toler for being willing to post these on Sunday Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

I wouldn't count on it. I think the future will be split between U.S. boutique labels (Mosaic, Water, Mighty Quinn, etc.) and Andorra. Zappa's dead & I'll bet he smells funny.

Obit for Mike Evans: I always really liked the Lionel character--didn't realize Evans was connected with "Good Times." Strangely enough, after I read this obituary the other night, I again picked up Steve Isoardi's THE DARK TREE, his recent book about Horace Tapscott, the Arkestra, and jazz & arts in Los Angeles circa 1960-2000. Around 1974 Marla Gibbs met Tapscott and joined the UGMAA (Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension)... not long after that she landed the role of "Flo", the Jeffersons' maid, and retained that role throughout the run of the show. That gig enabled her to put some $$ into the whole Tapscott/UGMAA/Arkestra scene. BTW, a fair amount of talk in that book as well about the Elaine Brown SEIZE THE TIME album, which Jim has started a thread about elsewhere. I'll have to post some of the book's info there later on.

MG, the feeling's mutual... all the way around. The community spirit that exists here year-round is something to treasure & celebrate. Happy holidays, with hopes that all of us find some great jazz under the tree tomorrow.

Another thought, apropos of nothing immediately at hand, I suppose, but haven't we had genre-busters in jazz before? Nina Simone... Nat King Cole... Sister Rosetta Tharpe... without having invested nearly as much listening time in Monday Michiru as you have, Jim, I hear her being somewhat in that tradition... granted, without the popularity (yet, anyway) that any of those performers managed to achieve.

Weirdly enough, immediately after reading the exchanges between Larry & Jim, I went over to the Yahoo Songbirds list and came upon this posted review: Now Dianne Reeves is somebody who's grown on me greatly as a singer in the past several years. Her Blue Note Christmas CD is the best new jazz holiday album I've heard in a long time. And yet I think she's somebody--in spite of her Grammys, or because of them--who gets knocked by both those who argue for a narrow interpretation of jazz, as well as more outside-minded folk who see her as dully picking at bones in the graveyard. I do think that a too-ideological embrace of inclusivity can lead to a none-too-open rejection of things with musical merit... in other words, that a rejection of prejudice can become a kind of prejudice in and of itself. Not that that's what you're really saying, Jim, but some of the rhetoric does seem to potentially wink in that direction. I don't want rigid boundaries, but nor do I want a "Waterloo-Records-of-the-mind" either, I guess. I've thought for a long time, and continue to think, that the configuration of jazz groups will change & evolve, even though certain formats--the piano trio, etc.--will endure just as string quartets endure in classical music. I think a lot of what Jim's saying is very accurate. But I don't think that a continuing appreciation for jazz presented in its more historical forms of delivery is necessarily a sign of impending death. And anyway, jazz has been a "sect" music for a long time now. I want to see it grow aesthetically, I want to see it reach more & younger listeners, and I think--or like to think--that I'm fairly open-minded about how it does that. And yeah, Ellington has the famous quote about there being only two kinds of music... but I also have no problem comprehending what he did as "jazz" and appreciating it as "jazz." Whatever his feelings about that word and its implications, he, to me, is a great example of an artist continuing to grow, staying true to himself, not (for the most part, anyway) bowing awkwardly or desperately to modern trends as he got older, but still managing to infuse his projects with a fresh vitality. Somehow keeping his guard up and his guard down at the same time.

Oh my God, a student reporter for our college newspaper actually wrote that as a mistake several years ago, in an article on a vocal group called Straight No Chaser... she quoted one of the members as saying that the band's name was inspired by a "Felonious Monk song." Sounds like a rapper, eh?

Yet another SNL digital short from A. Samberg & his Lonely Island partners: Natalie Portman's gangsta rap

Another Andy Samberg SNL short, this one from last December: Lazy Sunday

This week it's "The Night Lights Before Christmas," our annual holiday program, with seasonal jazz from Mal Waldron, Elvin Jones, Bill Evans and Jim Hall, Booker Ervin, Coleman Hawkins, and a special Christmas reading from Louis Armstrong. "The Night Lights Before Christmas" airs Saturday, December 23 at 11:05 p.m.. EST on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. Hoping to have the program posted by late tomorrow morning in the Night Lights archives. Happy holidays to all... next week we'll be re-airing the Jackie McLean tribute from last April.

Hey, that's the day I was born! Thanks for posting that column, Brownie. Very interesting. I'd been thinking about picking up the new version, but I'll definitely hold onto the old one if I do.

Hilarious! Anybody else see the NY Times writeup on this the other day? And yeah, after I watched it the other night the damn tune was in my head all the next day. Speaking of Diner (great movie, need to watch it again), I think the Daniel Stern character is a warning to us all.

Yeah, I liked the Shank & played it on the radio. Are these all-new recordings?

I have a New Yorker cartoon pinned up on the bulletin board next to my desk, with two bedraggled, chained-up prisoners sitting forlorn on a jail-cell floor, one of them saying to the other: "It wouldn't be so bad, if they'd just pipe in some jazz." Lately I've really been enjoying the back-page cartoon-caption contest.

Buy only one book or CD per week and concentrate more on reading/listening to what I already have. Exceptions allowed for programming needs, of course.

Miles: Why did you play so long, man? Trane: It took that long to get it all in.

"A Jazzy Quartet" is now archived.

Thanks for the notice--I'll be putting in an order for both sometime after Jan. 1.

Feeling extraordinarily mortal. Some time off, though, so that's nice... enjoying the new Ellington Mosaic, a new batch of Heps, and about to crack the Tony Williams Select. Tonight my wife & I are going to watch a holiday-ish movie we've never seen before, It Happened on 5th Avenue. We have our first Christmas tree in the new house--"the big boy," the employees at the lot called it ( ) and it's striking a very Victorian pose in our library/living room. I'm grateful for all I have in my life and becoming more acutely aware that I haven't given back nearly enough to the world, esp. in light of much more fortunate I am than many others. Along with listening to the new Duke Mosaic, I've been rereading REMINISCING IN TEMPO, the oral history--and in a weird way it's a rather appropriate book for this time of year, in that so much of the humanity of Ellington and his band members comes through, as well as that of the people they encounter (Barney Bigard's story on pg. 220-21 of the hardback edition is a humorous and oddly poignant account of how the band got served in a restaurant outside St. Louis circa 1940; that's one example).

You?! What about me??