ghost of miles

I want to see it and will post my impressions if I do. But just watching the trailer is a pretty gut-wrenching experience.

There was an absolutely beautiful memorial service for him Wednesday evening at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington. Just incredible--the IU School of Music really put heart & soul into it. Songs, poetry reflect on life of music student He was 24, and he'd already written an opera (a very good one, from what I hear--the School of Music may end up staging it). His talent was extraordinary, but I just took it for granted, as did many who had any kind of daily contact with him--partly because he was so unassuming in his brilliance. Really going to miss having him around.

Anybody's hair loss been reversed?

There's gotta be a Steven Wright joke in here somewhere.

I lost about 1500 posts, but regained the signature that I was using about a year ago... a Wes Clark Memorial Day quote about veterans. What the hell, it's about that time of year again... guess I'll keep it!

I'm looking for a copy of the 1958 film ST. LOUIS BLUES, which starred Nat King Cole. I don't think it's ever been released on either VHS or DVD... if anybody has a copy taped off TV, could they contact me via PM? Thanks much, David

Man, M.L. Kaufman's review on that thread got me even more eager (if such a thing is possible) to hear this set. Talked to my record-store owner buddy this a.m. (Landlocked Records--south/central Org. posters, check 'im out esp. if you like jazz vinyl) and put in my order. Might've posted this earlier, but a friend tells me BF is definitely doing a followup box that will cover the early 1960s.

Upwithcavemen

The big bands are never coming back. Know what I mean? The best jazz today, as Joe M points out, is on the margins, and that's not an entirely bad thing. We should buy it, go see it, and do word-of-mouth via the Internet (Jsngry way ahead of us as usual). I think even people who are mostly into historical jazz may eventually veer into the modern, sheerly from having mined most of the past, if nothing else. Or maybe not. But jazz won't stay alive by emulating the past that we're so in love with (me included) and may sound very different from what we now think of as "jazz." I think there's a place, sure, for repertory--just that it shouldn't be the only place at the table (in which case you'll get slim pickings indeed).

A fellow WFIU announcer, friend, and rising star in the world of classical vocal music was killed this past Thursday night in a plane crash that took the lives of four other IU School of Music grad students. Robert was a bass baritone who also pursued choral conducting, composition (he'd already written an opera), and teaching. He had started a great Tuesday-evening vocal program, Cantabile, this past January, and was going to spend the summer at Wolf Trap. He was genuinely brilliant, endlessly enthusiastic, liked and/or loved by nearly all who came into contact with him, and--despite his many gifts--not at all arrogant or infatuated with himself. A rare, rare human being; he was on his way to big things, which he deserved in every sense of the word. Robert Samels in memoriam It's incredible to me--and an inspiration--how much Robert managed to accomplish in his 24 years. His colleagues on the plane were amazingly talented as well (IU has a very good school of music, and these five students were considered the best of the best) and also in their mid-twenties. Yet one more reminder that even the sad, bad, depressed days are gifts too, and that there could be thousands more of them, or only one.

This program is now archived. A102, I have very little of ON's Flying Dutchman material, but I really like what I've heard. Calling Mosaic?

Thanks--I was fairly happy with how that one turned out and would like to do more along those lines. Chris Albertson and some other jazz folk on the Internet were a tremendous help with that particular program. Thanks for the Ornette suggestions as well.

Didn't he do the famous 52nd St. photograph?

Belated b-day greetings from a fellow Hoosier. Keep up the great jazz photography, and here's hoping we can meet for lunch again soon.

This week on Night Lights it's "Full Nelson," a program devoted to the 1960s studio big-band recordings of saxophonist, arranger, and composer Oliver Nelson. Nelson is best-known in the jazz world for his small-group Impulse LP Blues and the Abstract Truth; outside of that world he's been heard by many more people who don't even know of him, through the scoring he did for 1960s and 1970s television shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man. Nelson died young, at the age of 43 in 1975, and many of his 1960s big-band records, which demonstrate the wide scope of his writing abilities, have been out of print. This program will draw on a recent Mosaic Records collection of those albums, including tracks from Full Nelson, Jazzhattan Suite, and Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz All Stars, as well as Nelson's collaborations with artists such as Pee Wee Russell, Jimmy Smith, and Ray Brown and Milt Jackson. "Full Nelson" airs Saturday, April 22 at 11:05 p.m. on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. It will be posted to the Night Lights archives Monday afternoon. Note: Nelson's 1961 Prestige LP Afro-American Sketches will be included in a forthcoming program. For more of Nelson's big-band work with Jimmy Smith and guitarist Wes Montgomery, you can listen to the June 17, 2005 "Jimmy and Wes" program in WFIU's Big Bands archives. The January 14, 2006 Night Lights program, "Dear Martin," includes several selections from Nelson's Martin Luther King tribute album Black, Brown, and Beautiful; it can be heard in the Night Lights archives.

DJ friend of mine writes: Hey Jim, I hear ya--I'll have to check out the later records. I remember a biographer once quoting an exchange between a journalist and a scholar--referring to a certain poet, the journalist asked, "But isn't he sentimental?" and the scholar said, "Well, yes, but that's his inspiration. If he weren't sentimental, he wouldn't be a poet." Or something like that.

Have three wise guys shown up yet?

Mike Mainieri? (Vibraphonist on some of the Buddy Rich Mosaic set... love his playing, although I understand he later traveled a rather commercial path.)

Happy b-day, AM!

I think it's Deveaux who quotes Mary Lou Williams quoting Monk as saying in 1941, "We're going to create something that they can't steal." But when did MLW say this? Every generation wants to forge its own style. I have little doubt, though, that certain issues of race and alienation also played at least a subconscious role in the rise of bebop. And I doubt that many black musicians would have been willing to go on record in the mainstream jazz media of the time with any such quotes. Cultural & career considerations aside, such overt declarations in a public setting seem somewhat at odds with the coded language of bop. (What Monk might have said to Mary Lou in private is another matter.)

Yeah, but how many people in the US watch "free" TV now? Aren't we all paying for cable or satellite these days? I was wondering the same thing. Is there some sort of secret free TV that we don't know about? :bwallace2:

One more reason for me not to watch the damn tube! So it would basically be similar to what you encounter now at the beginning of most DVDs, when you're not allowed to skip to the menu.

Just got it through BMG... they have it for $1.99 in the clearance section. Even with shipping, it comes to less than five bucks.

Turn it up, man! TV Party ...and scroll down to August 25.

Putting together a Night Lights program and came across this site... Jazzbo What a character! I've heard of him, caught his voice on some records, but hadn't ever bothered to read up on the whole "Purple Grotto" trip (or the later "Collins on a Cloud" scenario he used out in San Fran...)