ghost of miles

Forgot to mention that both of the Joe Mooney Heps are also well worth picking up. Some prior discussion here.

The Mary McCall and that most recent Artie are wonderful, Larry. You might like the two most recent Thornhill entries as well, particularly 1949-1953, as much of that material has rarely, if ever, surfaced before in the post-LP era (I particularly like the 1953 sessions that Thornhill did for Albert Marx's Trend label--they include four Mulligan arrangements that CT had been sitting on for several years). I'm sure you already have the Raeburns and the Shaw 1944-45 set; some of my other favorites from the series include these: Georgie Auld--JUMP, GEORGIE, JUMP Johnny Bothwell--STREET OF DREAMS Benny Carter/Jimmy Mundy/Gerald Wilson--THEY ALL HAD RHYTHM and GROOVIN' HIGH Sam Donahue--all of them Benny Goodman--PLAYS EDDIE SAUTER and PLAYS MEL POWELL Jack Jenny--STARDUST Teddy Powell--RIDIN' THE SUBWAYS Teddy Wilson--JUMPIN' FOR JOY (collects all of TW's 1939-40 big band) Much discussion of Hep & its various titles here. The DeFranco is tremendous--I did a Big Bands show last month devoted to it & the new Hep Don Redman, if anyone wants to sample a few sides: Two Heps I'd waited a long time to hear the legendary "A Bird in Igor's Yard" (do you suppose this was a part of the aborted Mosaic Capitol Big Bands box?); interestingly enough, none of the sides from that session were released at the time, according to the liner notes, which also quote De Franco telling Downbeat in 1951 that "that was one attempt at pioneering I never should have made."

Now that is great holiday news. Thanks much, Dan!

This week on Night Lights it's "The Night Before Christmas," with Christmas-Eve jazz from Fats Navarro, Dexter Gordon, Louis Armstrong, Duke Pearson, Frank Sinatra, Donald Byrd, and more, including our home team favorites... Organissimo doing "A Child Is Born." The program is alreadyarchived; you can listen now. Merry Christmas! Next week: "The New Year's Eve Jam." Recordings from Slim Gaillard, Harry the Hipster Gibson, Ken Nordine, Lenny Bruce, Big John Patton, Illinois Jacquet, and others as we ring in 2006 with a radio nightclub party.

Last night's Big Bands Christmas program has already been archived. Music from the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, the Glenn Miller AAF Band, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby with Johnny Mercer and Rosemary Clooney, Sammy Kaye, and more...some of the recordings are vintage radio broadcasts. Playlist here (the link on the BB page is not yet active). Merry Christmas! David

Where was he playing?

His son apparently committed suicide. I don't really follow the Colts, but already there's a lot of bafflement to go along with the pain... sounds like he was a loved & loving kid. Really, really sad.

This is the man to whom Waldron and Dolphy's Five Spot performance refers, correct?

All right, Allen, enough holding back already--isn't it about time that you issued those acetates you've been sitting on (literally, I imagine) so that some poor, famished European bootleg operation could rip 'em off for a cheapo edition?

Sad news re: Wheeler from the Indy Star: I played several of the RCA sides on the Oct. 7 edition of The Big Bands, if anybody wants to hear what that 1940s band sounded like. Thanks again to Chuck Nessa for helping me to find them on LP. Wheeler will be much missed.

Jim, glad you enjoyed it! "Not Afraid to Live: Frank Hewitt" is now archived.

Good luck! I've been reading Doug Ramsey's Desmond bio and am about to pull out my RCA box for another listen... wonderful stuff. I need to seek out the Warner Bros. album that Desmond did as well. (Which I think was a part of the Mosaic box.) I don't have the Brown box simply because I have all of the mini-LPs that came out a few years ago and have that material pretty much covered.

It's a haunting, devastating book--read it pretty much in one sitting (it's only 167 pages, but man...). Makes me very grateful for the life I've had. As messed up as Joe Albany's personal life was, he definitely passed on something akin to love to his daughter; at tiimes, you get the feeling that the vision she garnered from that was all that kept her going.

Mine came this afternoon--hoping to read it while I'm on vacation.

Oh, Jim's probably not putting one up this year because he's been sucked into the "war on Christmas." Sarcasm aside (not directed at you, Catesta), it'd be nice to see the logo again.

The "war" is not on Christmas, Oh-Willing-Tool-of-Right-Wing-Christian-Fundamentalism; the "war" is on those who for reasons of faith don't buy into the Christian fairytale. Yeah, no kidding. And I'm a so-called "person of faith." (Man, I hate that phrase... makes believers sound as if we are the "special" and priviliged group of citizens). That doesn't mean that I should go around trying to shove my religion's holiday down everybody else's throat. Know why most stores say "Happy Holidays," outside of not wanting to exclude their Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, and Kwanzaa-celebrating customers? BECAUSE THERE ARE TWO FREAKIN' HOLIDAYS!!!!! Christmas and New Year's. Hence the saying "Happy holidays." The fact that it doesn't exclude those who aren't Christian is just a nice little afterthought. These jivesters have managed to turn a happy day of spiritual unity into a divisive political matter. Like everything else they touch, they turn it to hate. In my more Christian moments, I say, "God bless 'em anyway..." in my more secular moments, I say, "Fuck 'em." O'Reilly and his ilk--I'll say it again--are truly the Grinches of the season. What would Jesus say? "Stop turning my birthday into a wingnut fest!!"

Love the original, looking forward to the re-make. But the notion of a sexual attraction between Kong and the Anne character is ludicrous to start with; understandable, perhaps, in the 1933 picture as a symbolic portrait of interracial love (even Kehr points out this element--seeming simultaneously to criticize Hollywood for it and then lament its absence from the current version), where Kong represents the Super Black Male, in an age when film could never depict a romantic relationship between an African-American man and a white woman. Not to say that remnants of the taboo don't still exist today (they clearly do, as witness the controversial "Desperate Housewives"/NFL moment last year), but for Jackson to retain that aspect of the original in 2005 would seem a bit bizarre and goofy. The notion of an animal and a human finding a certain kinship, less so.

Can we mount a campaign and ask Dusty Groove NOT to carry this title?

There'll also be a couple of unreleased tracks... Luke sent me some very good stuff that he's hoping to eventually put out on Smalls. In fact, I'm thinking about doing a Hewitt sequel, as I had to leave a lot of great numbers on the table.

I wasn't aware that he had a stutter, and I did notice it--but really, he sounded fine, I thought. A lot of folks stutter a bit on the radio anyways (even after being in the biz for several years, I still catch myself doing the "Uh" thing at times). He & Marian seemed to genuinely enjoy talking to each other.

I suppose I'm being a Grinch, but this reminds me too much of the bogus "war on Christmas" crap that Bill O'Reilly and other wingnuts have been perpetuating. The irony is that it's jerks like O'Reilly who have now politicized the holiday. Beam me up to the political forum, Scottie!!

Try to catch this if you can when it's broadcast in your area... right now he & Marian are doing a very nice duet version of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square." As much as I love Andrew's compositions, it makes me want to hear an album of standards by him... I think he could suffuse a few of the chestnuts with some fresh feeling.

I think "Couleur Cafe" was the one that I saw. I'll keep an eye out for it and the other one that you mention, couw. Many thanks!

Brownie, I nearly picked up a used CD of Gainsbourg's early jazz recordings not too long ago... may head back to the shop and see if it's still there. Any recommendations in that area?

Have a swingin' one!!