ghost of miles

There's a rumor about that Jim will soon be announcing his candidacy for "President of Jazz".... I put it down to these mad pundits always searching for talk-show fodder.

Deus, I vote for the double Deccas--managed to land the 4-CD box through BMG for a song (so to speak) a couple of years ago. I have the Hep Webb CD STRICTLY JIVE, but Ella's on only a few cuts; I got it partly to pick up some of the non-Ella instrumental material (such a great band that sometimes gets lost, IMO, in the shadow of Ella's vocals). I think the Decca EARLY YEARS box sounds just a tad better than the Ella sides on the Hep. One of my favorite non-SONGBOOK Ellas is the duets album with Ellis Larkin, though I'm not sure if it's been re-issued outside of the other Decca Ella box (the big gold one). I also recently got a copy of ELLA AT JUAN-LES-PINS and have been enjoying that a great deal. (She's backed by Flanagan and Roy Eldridge there.) There's also MACK THE KNIFE/ELLA IN BERLIN.

'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

Did you see Sonny Rollins at the first Indy Jazz Festival? I am still kicking myself for not going to see him that time.... Yeah, David Young has great! I wish he would come out and play more often. Yeah, at the Madame Walker Theater... amazing show! First time I ever saw one of the giants/legends. I've seen David Young twice: once at the Hampton Sisters show at the IHS (Nov. 2003, I think) and down here in Bloomington several months later, when he played with David Baker and several musicians/teachers from the IU School of Music. He played a killer version of "In a Sentimental Mood."

This week on Night Lights it's "Meet the Jazztet," a program of recordings taken from the recent Mosaic collection of Benny Golson and Art Farmer's work for the Argo and Mercury labels between 1960 and 1962. Some of the players who passed through the Jazztet included McCoy Tyner, Harold Mabern, Curtis Fuller, and Grachan Moncur III; it remains one of jazz's alltime great hardbop groups. (Golson, Fuller, and Farmer reunited in 1984 for further performances and recordings.) We'll also hear from some of the solo records which Golson and Farmer recorded during that period. The program airs at 11:05 p.m. Saturday night (8:05 California time, 10:05 Chicago time); you can listen to it live, or wait until Monday afternoon, when it will be posted in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Word From Mingus," a program of Charles Mingus' spoken-word collaborations with Langston Hughes, Jean Shepherd, and Melvin Stewart.

Jim, did you get that direct from Ayler Records, or is there a stateside distributor? (Cadence, I'm guessing.) What do all here think of Murray's octet recordings? I like what I've heard...

They have been a bit wacky of late with me. My most recent experience was ordering the Ellington Treasury Dpt. Shows V. 5 and V. 6. The next day I got an e-mail saying both items were out of stock and asking whether or not I wanted to leave the order open. I was still pondering whether or not to do so when I got an e-mail that afternoon saying, "Your order has shipped!" for V. 5. OK, great, and it did show up... two days later I cancelled the order for V. 6 and got a confirmation saying that they'd done so. I nearly ordered the CD from another site, but fortunately held off--because two days later, another e-mail came from Caiman saying, "Your order has shipped!" for V. 6, which will presumably show up early next week. So I'll get both items that I'd ordered, but what if I'd bought V. 6 from another site in the meantime? It does seem as if they have a few kinks to work out in their inventory/sale system... right hand not always aware of what the left hand's doing, etc.

Well... different thread, I suppose. Most of the bands I loved in the 80s were the aftermath of that beautiful explosion, and wouldn't have come about without it. However, I don't believe Organissimo is in any need of a punk "corrective." Not until we all grow big beards, get fat, snort lots of coke, and start putting out triple-LP concept records with underlying Tolkien motifs... or have I spoken too soon?

Hmmm.. this topic seems a bit too close to the male characters in DINER (Daniel Stern's record collector, Steve Guttenberg's football marriage test). I developed my passion for jazz around the same time that I started dating the woman that I ended up marrying, but I never tried to push it on her--in part because a previous boyfriend had once insisted on playing KIND OF BLUE for her 13 times in a row. Guys can be cultural fascists, you know? He totally ruined the album for her; I never play it when she's in the house. However, she's come to like jazz quite a lot since moving in with me, and she's enjoyed a lot of the jazz concerts we've gone to together. (We usually trade off on paying for dates, but I always pay for any jazz concert that we go to together.) She still raves about seeing Sonny Rollins in Indianapolis in 1999, and she's become quite a fan of Indpls. saxophonist David Young, whom we've seen twice now. On the other side of things she's gotten me interested in early music, which is something I would have paid little attention to otherwise. We have a pretty nice mix of both intersecting and different interests, which I think is the best kind of situation for a relationship, and so I'm genuinely grateful (in all kinds of ways) to be with her.

Because phony Beatlemania was dead? B-)

Now if that ain't one post which should be made sticky, I don't know which one is. Good points! Cheers! Beautiful, Jim! That's why I consider Jim the unofficial "mayor" of Organissimo. Or Organissimoville, as it were...

I think there were complaints about this release elsewhere, but they had to do with the sound quality of the CD.

Rostasi, have you looked at Shoutcast?

I'm planning on a random round-the-clock broadcast of all 16 Selects after the Hill arrives. At least a two day affair. Info will follow if anybody cares. Rod --- Now playing: Curtis Amy - In Your Own Sweet Way That's cool--I'll probably be devoting a Night Lights program to the new Hill set in May. Between our broadcasts and the Mosaic samples, people should be able to get a pretty good idea of what the material sounds like!

For budgetary reasons, I'm holding off on ordering this and the new Pepper till early March... so I'll be interested (and envious!) to read the reactions to the set here. The Hill is definitely a "wish come true" collection for me; I've been intrigued by these sessions ever since reading MC's passing reference to them in '95 when the Hill Mosaic came out.

No kidding! It's now being prominently featured on "classic rock" radio, ESPECIALLY Def Leppard (who I've hated with a vengeance since day one). Who made this decision? the right? More like "the wrong." According to the law of popular culture, anything that was once commercially successful for more than an Andy Warhole minute will come round once more, generally in 15-20 years' time.

Forgot to mention Lazaro Vega's Blue Lake Public Radio program, which will start streaming very soon: Blue Lake Lazaro's evening program, which I've caught a couple of times while on vacation in Michigan, is very good. And hell, next month he's going to have Henry Grimes on as a guest! Can't beat that....

Be warned: this stuff (hair band music) has been coming back with a vengeance.

Thanks for the plug, AB! I've been remiss in getting the "Strictly Romantic" show up on the web, but it and this week's broadcast (on the Mosaic Jazztet box) will both be up by Monday afternoon. Some other suggestions for stations that play jazz: WKCR, one of the more highly-touted jazz stations that's also on the Internet, out of Columbia in New York. WBGO out of Newark, which broadcasts jazz 24 hours a day. WGBH out of Boston also offers some good jazz programming. One of their DJs, Steve Schwartz, posts here under the name of Stevebop. If you desire a mix of free/out and modern, check out this thread.

Well, he weren't no bastard... unless you mean a Dusty Groove-type bastard!

Hell, I'D love to take credit for that quote! You are a gracious man, Senor Sangrey.

Can we trade l p to Jazz Corner for a poster-to-be-named-later? I don't understand the bitterness and the attacks that you seem compelled to add to your posts. I mean, why throw in that gratuitous remark about Jsngry? (And I'm sure that I'm not the only one around here who finds Jim's posts consistently illuminating... if you're looking for a discography, get one on CD-Rom!) Why dog Chris A. like you do? Even if you posit controversial viewpoints, posters around here will generally respond with tact... why supplement them with these nasty asides?

Religious. Seriously--a few years ago I went to see Sonny Rollins at the Madame Walker Theater in Indianapolis, the only building still standing from the glorious age of Indiana Avenue jazz. The theater was built in the 1920s and has a real Harlem Renaissance feel to it; when I walked in, with the lights dimmed and the stage cast in an amber hue, with KIND OF BLUE playing on the overhead, I felt as if I were walking into church. And I mean that in the best kind of way--a church of humanity and a church of God at the same time. Maybe it was the church I'd been waiting to walk into, because I felt what you're supposed to feel when you walk into church (but it's a feeling I've experienced only when I've walked into a deserted church at mid-day to pray; never on a Sunday morning when the congregation's all there). I'm not proposing that jazz be elevated over religion--simply that for me, it has become a significant part of how I feel connected with those who came before me and those who are here today. I guess it makes me feel what it's like to be a human being.

I've read Kofsky and have time for some of his points... As someone who was born right around the time he interviewed Coltrane, I can offer only a perspective based in historical reading, whereas Chris, Larry, Allen, and others here who lived through the era can speak to it much better than I can. His writing tended to overheat and get in the way of the very causes he was trying to promote, but it was a time of excesses--some of them, perhaps, necessary as historical correctives. Nobody's going to dispute that white businessmen exploited black musicians, or that white critics had too much power and influence--but when you boil this down to horrendously reductive statements like, "There are no good or great Jewish jazz musicians," and then follow it up with "They were better at handling the business end," which plays into a terrible stereotype of Jews (remember Spike Lee's MO' BETTER BLUES and the two club-owners?), then I think you've bought into a very simplistic, and, yes, racist, representation of jazz history.

Yes, those Jewish people sure are great with money, aren't they? Pardon my rolling eyes, but that's one of the most offensive comments I've ever seen posted here--whether you're Jewish or not. If you don't think there are any worthwhile Jewish musicians, fine, that's your opinion, etc. But to then go and promulgate one of the worst stereotypes that have been visited upon Jews...