ghost of miles

To me late-period Coltrane is like a series of waves, so drawing lines in the sand becomes difficult. I think of certain albums as "quieter" consolidations of force that are still vibrantly powerful--FIRST MEDITATIONS and INTERSTELLAR SPACE, for instance. I think Coltrane was still looking back even as he was surging forward. Well, now you made me go and put it on (INTERSTELLAR SPACE).

For me, the best way to listen to late-period Trane is to lie down on the couch & close my eyes. Not to go to sleep... but to go somewhere else. Probably sounds as if late Trane is akin to a transcendental drug, but that's the kind of effect it has on me. It does require a way of listening that's different, I think, then the way we're conditioned to listen to music.

Best b-day wishes to you, Chris...let's all of us keep alive period!

I'm looking for a Holy Grail... Allen, you got a Holy Grail?

That version of "Fables" is chock full of fun quotes & yeah, "A Train" is a burner!

I'd also nominate Lazaro or Stevebop, but I think they like being where they are. Sounds like a good gig, though I'd wager the politics of the NY jazz scene would enter into it.

You're askin' too many questions, son... stay right where you are. We got a plane comin' to take you on an all-expenses-paid vacation to a little place we call Gitmo. Get ready for our version of the endless summer! Tranemonk, the Jamal sessions came out on an individual CD a year or two back. I voted "Good not great"... depends, as Lon said, how into "jazz piano" you are. I know I didn't have any post-purchase regrets about getting it, though.

I usually do it around 7 in the evening, while it's still light out but cooler than in late morning/early afternoon. If I do cut it in the morning, I wait till 10 or so--partly out of consideration for neighbors, and partly to avoid the damp-grass syndrome mentioned above.

Up for broadcast tonight at 11:05 on WFIU and at 9 p.m Central Time on WNIN; also tomorrow night at 10 p.m. on Blue Lake Public Radio. Already available for online listening.

I watched CHINATOWN for the first time several years ago...loved it & really liked the score, but didn't think much about it again until recently, when we got trumpeter Till Bronner's OCEANA in at the station. He does the "Chinatown" theme (I'm surprised more people haven't--Terence Blanchard recorded it a few years ago for his JAZZ ON FILM cd), a nice version--it sent me back to the movie, which I've since watched two more times, and my God, Rasey's trumpet solos all but make the atmosphere of that film. Jerry Goldsmith evidently wrote the score in 10 days after another composer's music was rejected. Would like to learn more about Uan Rasey. Stuart Varden, btw, who did the interveiw w/Rasey, is a great guy. He drove over here from Ohio one day last year & we hung out for an afternoon... I love his Fats site, well worth checking out. AMG entry on Rasey: EDIT: found an online interview with Rasey & Pete Candoli: Full interview here.

If anybody has the out-of-print 1995 Varese Seraband CD reissue of Jerry Goldsmith's score for CHINATOWN, could they contact me off-board?

LCM, last week I taped a Night Lights show for Aug. 4 called "Satchmo, Take Two: Louis Armstrong at the Movies." We'll also post a short sort of "Night Lights supplemental" program on the website that will include "Skeletons" and "A Song Was Born." I'll second Lon's rec for NOW YOU HAS JAZZ (a collection of Armstrong's MGM movie recordings) and also recommend that Pops fans seek out the new reissue of the soundtrack for A MAN CALLED ADAM--we used Armstrong's "Back o' Town Blues" and "Someday Sweetheart" from that CD for the show. Benny Carter did the score.

I've some of this on three excellent RCA LPs from France. I'll certainly go for the Mosaic for the whole package. It's not just the music you get from them. Sounds like the LP set we have here at the station--RCA France PM 42417, three records covering 1939-1941.

The dead live!

Bollani has a recent release out on ECM. I'd like to get that HUM 3-CD set mentioned earlier... been listening to a lot of Solal lately. (1950s Vogue, the Hat record w/Konitz, the trio date with Peacock & Motian, and the 2003 Blue Note VANGUARD.)

David, I said this a few posts back, but I think you are mis-characterizing the bulk of the contributions to this thread. Guy Guy, apologies if I've done so, though I really didn't see ANY response to Cali's post--outside of an indirect reference in something Allen said. I'm not somebody who enjoys disagreeing/arguing with people I genuinely like, & I've had some good exchanges offboard with a poster in this thread who feels quite differently than me about the topic at hand (which strikes me now as being about much more than a particular Johnny Mercer recording). So I'll take that away as a positive, plus the usual high Organissimo ratio of thought-provocation to post. Very cool people here, no matter how strong our likes/dislikes, personal reactions, etc., and I have a lot of faith in the intellectual good will and integrity that inhabit these online environs. Irony of ironies, I'm a Johnny Mercer fan, as stated before.. and still need to listen to disc 3 of the Select. I hope that Cali comes back more often & that tranemonk sticks around. I, too, think too much has been made of this--in a different sense. Anycase, I'll do my part at this point and move on.

Yeah, I liked it a bit better than the Gene Lees one... and your background quote is what I was getting at in my first post in this thread. Re: Judy Garland, I read somewhere that Mercer's widow wouldn't let "I Remember You" be included in a posthumous anthology of his work (supposedly because it's about JG).

Excellent post, ghost. FWIW, this type of of chatisement of people of color who dare to present their feelings about insensitivity is the main reason I rarely post on this board these days. I find it arrogant in the extreme to tell someone who has suffered racism how they should respond to it. Interesting that there's been no response/allusion to this post from Cali, who by the standards of this thread is evidently yet another "oversensitive" African-American.

A scroll of the posts in this thread leaves me with the impression that there's been more "offense" from those who claim tranemonk had no rational reason to be upset about the lyrics & lack of context/frame in the first place. He said it bothered him, I & a couple of other folks agreed that the song was problematic & suggested that Mosaic probably should've said something about it in the liners, as they have with past such songs. Not exactly a lynching party for the First Amendment, eh? AGAIN... this particular forum is not for the greater ills of society, etc. That's for the politics forum--whether or not we agree w/said division of the board, that's how it's run. If I want to knock the Roberts Court or Bush's abandonment of New Orleans or school kids getting killed in Chicago, that's where I go. No time for Baraka & his Jew-baiting schtick either--I'll take Etheridge Knight over L/A any day. Glad he started the Jihad label so that we could have SUNNY'S TIME NOW, sorry that he had to appear on it himself. I've got L/A's reader & appreciate some of his earlier work (still rec BLUES PEOPLE as well as the essay collection BLACK MUSIC to others), but he's spotty at best after DUTCHMAN & well on his way to becoming the African-American Ezra Pound... though I'm not sure he's ever gotten to the level of the Cantos. Maybe history will judge him more kindly, but the anti-Semitic crap is what it is.

"Paris Noir" is now archived on the new site. We should have the "shows" page (i.e., new archives) working in the next week or so.

Mr. Lowe's wit may also be the healing force of the universe.

DAY BY DAY & FILM BY FILM (which has an extensive section on REVEILLE WITH BEVERLY) says the recording was made on the morning of Oct. 8, 1942, with filming to playback taking place that afternoon. Evidently the trio backing was a reprise of something they'd done with Ivie Anderson in the 1937 movie HIT PARADE, even employing two of the same band members (Stewart and Carney), with Ray Nance replacing Hayes Alvis in the later film. Stratemann implies that this is indeed the first vocal treatment of "A Train," and that Nance took over subsequent vocal versions after Roche left the band in 1944. It seems to have been played most often as an instrumental during this period, however, since Duke was already using it as his theme.

Had heard this one was in the pipeline a few months back--glad it's official now. I think all I have of this material is one 2-CD RCA Tribune set.

Yes, & finally seeing this clip surprised me--when I was researching the show last autumn, this version of "A Train" was described as being much more straightahead than the 1952 Roche/Duke recording... but the boppish approach is already there, you're right. Is this the first vocal version of "A Train"? I'll have to take a look at ELLINGTON DAY BY DAY FILM BY FILM when I get home, but I think it might be.

I think there's more room for agreement here than some of us might think. BigBeat Steve, re: your "blacklisted" comment, again I'd say that in the case of this Mercer recording, I think Mosaic should've provided some sort of critical justification within the body of the liner notes for its inclusion--as they have done with other tracks such as Woody Herman's "Uncle Remus Said." I'm guessing that the compacted size of the Select booklet may have been a factor (don't remember off the top of my head who wrote the notes, but many of the individual tracks do not receive commentary... as opposed to a regular Mosaic booklet, where every single one usually does). I want discussion, context, and history--not a "whitewash." What troubles me is the notion of throwing out historical artistic content that contains racism, underlying or overt, without any sort of framing or aesthetic rationale. Allen Lowe is spot-on in what he says above... and points like that, or Jim Sangrey's remark about Johnny Mercer's forays into faux-negritude, all give listeners some sort of sense of where Mercer was coming from in that performance. (Not to mention Harold Z.'s info re: what George Brunis did with the tune?) As the Mosaic booklet stands now, though, there's nothing at all there that I can see which alludes to any of this background. (I went through the booklet twice... possible I missed a reference to it, & if I did please let me know.) Myself, if I'd been the set producer, I would've been tempted to leave it out, since the set wasn't a "complete" one anyway, and since the track doesn't strike me as particularly compelling. But I'm not, I'm just a slightly surprised buyer who's sympathetic to tranemonk's reaction; I'll still be placing the Mosaic order I was planning to place next week, and I'm still going to feature the Mercer set on an upcoming program. Re: the Chan films, I would still say I think Fox was right to accede to the wishes of Asian-American viewers... but I do not know all of the particulars (were they planning to broadcast the films with any sort of before-and-after discussion about why they had offended Asian-Americans so much, or about the general portrayal of Asians in 1920s/30s/40s cinema, and how difficult it was for Asian-Americans to find film work?). Seems like putting the films out on DVD was a very good solution--there's a similar sort of issue with the MR. MOTO films, which I've picked up on DVD in the past year. (And a similar discussion of how the central character in some ways functions as a positive image in the context of the film's era.) This essay makes a decent case for the Chan series: Original link from the California Literary Review here.