ghost of miles

Yes! I love Dmitry's stories about the effect of various records/artists upon his patients (particularly the Ella story).

Do you have the 1953(?) Birdland broadcast w/Bird, Dizzy, Bud, Forgetwhoonbass, & "Sgt. Roy Haynes"? That's another one... Don't have it--I've got a ton of live Bird, but not that date. What's it on? (I've got a bit of Bird w/Bud at Birdland on one of the ESP 1953 discs, but that's w/Art Taylor on drums, along w/Candido--just two cuts.) Did that second Ember live-Bird set ever come out? Probably would've covered the date you're talking about...

The last thing I'd want to do would be to make light of it--the issue hits far too close to home anyway. I'm re-recording the program because the original one doesn't fit standard format for NPR stations, and because it's a show I wanted to do over anyway. It will still focus primarily on the Pass and Hope LPs (of which there was much discussion here at some point), but I wanted to round it out with a couple of tunes from other sources ("Camarillo" ended the original show, which can still be heard online at the link above).

Thanks for the suggestions from other posters. I'll try to run down that Moody tune--not on the records I have. Original show info here. Text below: "Resolution: Jazz From Rehab" focuses on two unique early-1960s albums made by guitarist Joe Pass and pianist Elmo Hope. Pass' 1961 Pacific Jazz LP SOUNDS OF SYNANON was his debut as a leader; although he'd begun to play professionally as a teenager in the late 1940s, stays in prison and rehabilitation centers for drug addiction had hampered his career throughout the 1950s. All the personnel on the album were residents at Synanon, a Santa Monica, California recovery center that had been featured earlier in the year in Downbeat. Other jazz musicians that would pass through its program in the next few years would include Charlie Haden and Art Pepper, who wrote at length about Synanon in his autobiography STRAIGHT LIFE. Despite the program's success in treating addicts, from the late 1970s on it began to succumb to ever-increasing managerial authoritarianism, criminal charges, and loss of its tax-emption status. More information on the history of the Synanon program can be found here. SOUNDS FROM RIKER'S ISLAND was a 1963 album project conceived by vibraphonist Walt Dickerson and a producer named Sid Frey. The ensemble, led by pianist Elmo Hope, consisted primarily of musicians who had struggled in one way or another with addiction; it included drummer Philly Jo Jones and tenor saxophonist John Gilmore (making one of his rare appearances away from Sun Ra's Arkestra). Nat Hentoff's liner notes argued for a more humane treatment of musician-addicts; the title was an allusion to the place where such artists usually found themselves if arrested for narcotics violations in New York City. Both albums now stand as early social documents of recovery culture in the United States, at a time when addicted jazz musicians were routinely stigmatized and condemned by the media and society.

WTF is your problem? This show has been in the archives for the past year & a half--sorry you never noticed it. GO and fucking listen to it BEFORE YOU KNOCK WHAT I'M DOING. Jesus Christ!

First Parker I got was the old Stash LEGENDARY DIAL MASTERS V. 1. I went for at least a month without listening to much of anything else--save for the several Parker Savoy/Verve sides that I picked up as a result of the Dial. A friend of mine said, "You are in a Charlie Parker haze." I don't have much of a musician's appreciation for what Bird accomplished (a rudimentary understanding, and certainly an abstract sense of it), but I surely have the human (as Jim said) appreciation of it. It's all there, all right... and the all that's there is an awful lot.

That Birdland 1950 airshot w/Navarro, Powell & Blakey is my favorite live bebop-era date. Love the 1945 Town Hall date on Uptown, but man, that 1950 show smokes up the stereo every time. I was a bit bummed when Savoy yanked all of the chatter, commercials, and other extraneous stuff from the last reissue of the live Royal Roost material. The late-1980s set (I have only one volume) really gives you a sense of hearing Bird in an NYC club setting. Speaking of live Bird--the other Uptown release, BOSTON 1952, definitely worth checking out. Hell, the chance just to hear Bird w/Mingus, Roy Haynes, Joe Gordon, and Dick Twardzik is worth the price of admission alone!

Big Al, I'd definitely go for those Verve and Dial/Savoy Master sets through BMG (maybe tonight, while the 60% off and free shipping offer's still good). Especially that Dial/Savoy set. And hey, you'll love it all the more for not having heard it before--I remember back in 1998 when the Miles 1965-68 set came out, and I told a trumpeter friend that I was picking it up. I commented that I hadn't really heard much from that period of Miles yet (I'd been holding off on buying ESP & other titles from that era because I knew the box was going to come out); he looked at me with an envious smile and said, "Man, I wish I was hearing all of that music for the first time."

Maybe Tom/umum cypher has a U.S. publication date? It's on my birthday & Christmas list as well.

Hey all, I'm getting ready to re-record an older Night Lights program, "Resolution: Jazz From Rehab," in order to make it fit the NPR clock (we're getting ready to put the show up on an FTP server, where it will be widely/easily available to any other station that wants to take it). In the original show I used music from Joe Pass' SOUNDS OF SYNANON and Elmo Hope's SOUNDS FROM RIKER'S ISLAND, as well as Bird's "Relaxin' at Camarillo." Anybody know of other tunes with titles that invoke clinics, rehab facilities, etc.? ("Jonesin' at Lexington"? OK, I made that one up.) I looked through most of my Art Pepper CDs, thinking surely he would've invoked Synanon in one of his 1970s tunes, but no dice (and "Straight Life" is a relatively early composition, first recorded when--1957? I always took it as more of a reference to a square lifestyle, rather than Art's vow to go clean... but could be wrong.) Incidentally, Pepper supposedly recorded at Synanon with a band that included Frank Rehak, but Synanon's founder (who really went off the rails in the 1970s) destroyed them after deciding that jazz was "evil music," or some such.

This week on Night Lights it's "The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook." The jazz pioneers of the 1960s--artists such as Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and others--all came up in the entertainment world of the 1940s and 50s, when what we know now as the Great American Songbook was taking hold in the musical canon. Although we think of these musicians today as groundbreaking innovators who abandoned traditional song form, they all knew it, respected it, and in many cases genuinely liked it. In this program we'll hear Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Arthur Schwartz as interpreted by the above players and Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, and Sonny Rollins. "The Avant-Garde Plays the Great American Songbook" airs Saturday, Nov. 18 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU, at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville, and at 10 p.m. EST Sunday evening on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. The program will be posted Monday afternoon in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Mary Lou Williams' Zodiac Suite."

Came across a used paperback set (in good condition) of Shelby Foote's Civil War history. How does it hold up, 45-plus years later? I was a big Civil War geek as a kid (then got into baseball, now into jazz... good Lord, am I distantly related to Mr. Burns? )

A lot of discussion about her going on right now on the jazz programmers' list... I'm going to check out her albums, especially the first one. What do folks here think of her work (apart from the influence she had on Miles, etc.)? Supposedly she's still around, but living quietly in Pennsylvania.

Way too obvious for a dumb smart-guy like me! That's actually perfect for the needs of this listener, a casual fan who's interested in checking out some GW sounds. I recommended the recent ARTIST SELECTS comp as a good starting point. Have sent the AMG link to her now as well. Many thanks for helping me locate the forest in the trees (or something like that).

I don't think that any of NPR's funding actually comes from the NEA--doesn't all of the government funding come through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Part of the fault does lie with Congress (although this will change with the new one--Democrats are unanimous in their support of public broadcasting, and about a third of the Republicans are... so we're hoping we won't be under the budget axe for the next two years). But NPR was headed in this direction anyway. I see nothing wrong with the "professionalization" of public radio--we should have always aspired to that--but I do think the cultural mission, as outlined in the original CPB manifesto that Lyndon Johnson signed into law, has been betrayed to some extent. (How on earth is wall-to-wall, non-stop news & talk "preserving the cultural heritage of America"?) And yes, there is some politicking going on in the current efforts by some to steer NPR back towards cultural programming--but it's really beside the point. I'm just grateful that my station, like Lazaro's, is in the classical/jazz/news format. Sure, some folks want more of each and less of the others, but generally there's something for everyone. The "digital" angle--well, are we going to pony up for podcasting fees? Strictly observe RIAA rules? Do that and you're severely limiting the kinds of programming you're going to be able to offer. Internet listening will continue to grow (perhaps especially among frustrated jazz fans who can no longer tune in for local shows), but Lazaro's right, and it's going to be a loooooong time before it approaches anything like the terrestrial audiences.

A listener recently inquired about a Gerald Wilson discography. I don't see one on Mike Fitzgerald's page, and an initial Google search turned up only relatively recent items. Any suggestions or recommendations for a decent discography?

Where is the sly dog? Sleeping it off, no doubt!

Lots of Chris Connor, Mabel Mercer, and a singer I'd never heard before--Mae Barnes. I've only checked out disc 1 so far, but great stuff, if you're a fan of that sort of singing.

Just means you have to party for three days straight, that's all!

Read the essay in Larry Kart's book last weekend on THE ERTEGUNS' NEW YORK: NEW YORK CABARET MUSIC, a 4-CD Atlantic set that came out in the late 1980s, and found a copy online for $9.99. Arrived yesterday--complete as described, with booklet and CDs in excellent conditiion. Wow!!

To a soon-to-be veteran on Veterans' Day! Really hoping we can meet in person when you're back stateside and rap about all things literary, West Coast jazz, and what-not... and that you can truly say, (Wow, that was the original cover?)

... and many happy returns!

The Thad Jones Mosaic. I pulled this one out about a month ago and damn, I'd forgotten how sweet it is.

Interesting--I've been following the attempts to restore the Los Angeles River (ever see the 1954 sci-fi horror movie THEM, about the giant ants? That dry, cement-banked riverbed where some of the ending was filmed was/is the L.A. River): The Lost Streams of Los Angeles

It's now online.