ghost of miles

This week on Night Lights I kick off Black History Month with "But I Was Cool," featuring the early-1960s music of singer-songwriter and activist Oscar Brown Jr. Brown, the son of a well-to-do South Side Chicago businessman, participated in the labor movement and progressive politics in the 1950s before trying his hand at composing and performing. He wrote a musical, Kicks and Co., and co-wrote WE INSIST! THE FREEDOM NOW SUITE with Max Roach (you can hear Abbey Lincoln performing "Freedom Day" on the previous Night Lights program "Let Freedom Ring" and "Driva Man" on "The Hawk Heads Home"). Brown was a master of hip comedic narrative as well as social protest, often mingling the two together; we'll hear examples of his work from SIN AND SOUL, IN A NEW MOOD, TELLS IT LIKE IT IS, and MR. OSCAR BROWN JR. GOES TO WASHINGTON. The program airs this Saturday evening at 11:05 (8:05 California time, 10:05 Chicago time) on WFIU; you can listen to it live or from next Monday on in the Night Lights archives. Oscar Brown Jr.'s homepage is located here. There's also an interview with him here. Next week: "Strictly Romantic," a program of jazz ballads from Don Byas, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Helen Carr, Fred Astaire, and others.

Cheese?! Tuna, I say. Or turkey. If it's a hep cat, play it some jazz.

You beat me to the punch. River's Edge was good. I always wondered what made Thek weed so special... Beat me to the punch as well... the one film in which I've liked him. And Crispin Glover... Mr. Slayer!!

SGUD MISSILE is far too modest. He's confessed elsewhere to having once sat in with the Thornhill band... details, details!

Up for any (relative) newcomers who might have stories, anecdotes, etc., about seeing and hearing big bands in performance.

I'm getting it via the 128... my RealPlayer wouldn't support the 160. Hey, hey, Booker Little!

I hear ya on the George Duke. Just yesterday I was taping a Coltrane big-band program, in which I used Gerald Wilson's 1969 version of "Equinox"... Looked at the notes to see who was playing the piano solo, which I was enjoying, and issued a "Whoa!" at the name of George Duke. In the immortal words of A MIGHTY WIND--"wha'happen?"

Not to mention Elisha Cook Jr.'s turn as a sweaty drummer in PHANTOM LADY!

In THE ROAD TO PERDITION, Fletcher Henderson/Hawk's "Queer Notions" is playing in the diner when Tom Hanks has his creepy confrontation with Jude Law.

Laton, I hadn't checked out this thread yet b/c I figured it was a recommendation... so I did want to check it out, but just wasn't in a goldurned hurry. Congratulations! I'm going to order it ASAP. Are you familiar with the work of Dean Young? He lived here in Bloomington for a long time and now teaches at Iowa... I knew him through his wife, the novelist Cornelia Nixon. There's another Young here now, Kevin Young, who did some reading for my Ellington special... very cool guy and a great lover of jazz. Komunyakaa taught here for awhile but got a better gig after he won the Pulitzer. He used to come in and buy jazz at the CD store where I worked, and I was always a little bit in awe of him. Again, congrats! Keep us posted on new publications, etc.

What I heard of it sounded great. Should be archived on the Fresh Air website soon or Soon.

If I were rich, like you I would have a huge honkin' collection of classic films on DVD. I do have quite the collection(Taped off TV) of 30's, and 40's films deteriorating quite nicely on beta and VHS . Rich?? I'm just a hardworkin' double-jobbin' slob like yerself! If my wife & I ever decide to have children, my freespending habits will spiral downward even faster... I'd love to see an old 1939 movie called FIVE CAME BACK show up on DVD. It was written by Dalton Trumbo and Nathanael West, among others, about a plane going down in a jungle... kind of a class-conflict/survival tale, with Lucille Ball as one of the passengers. Truly an obscurity, although my dad claims to have it on VHS in his own huge honkin' basement collection of flicks taped off the tube.

A bit of earlier discussion on Berkman here.

Great news, Johnny!! Milo Forman? Was that the inspiration?

Welcome to the club! Have you ever been to this site? dogeared Yeah, I just discovered and "bookmarked" (heh, heh) that site about a month ago. I keep thinking I should pony up the $15 or whatever so that I can get the full use of it... I'm that much of a nut. Probably have about 200 or so w/the jackets by now.

Oh, and DVDs. Never collected movies on VHS in particular, but DVD has become a form of cinematic crack for me...

Like Lon, books... books on jazz, of course, old pulp paperbacks, and a long-running fetish for old Modern Libraries with the dustjackets still on them: Also the Library of America series: In both cases I buy only books that I'm really interested in reading... although I've gotten more promiscuous with the Modern Libraries and have snagged a few as curios.

Jazzshrink, Full disclosure--I'm the host/producer of Night Lights, just so you know where to aim the barbed remarks, should the program displease you. I think more & more stations are archiving programs--WGBH out of Boston is archiving some of their regular programs such as "Jazz From Studio 4" and "Jazz With Eric in the Evening" here. WBGO has archived interviews online, but I couldn't find any programs archived there. Other posters can probably hip you to other sources; much discussion about Jazz on 3 in this very forum, though I think their broadcasts are kept online for only a week. I'm taking over WFIU's weekly big-band program starting this week, and that will be archived online at our site as well.

"Boppin' in Beantown" is now archived.

*Paperboy *KFC "cook" *Door-to-door surveyor for Polk *Coffeehouse busser/waiter *Line cook *Police dpt. transcriber *"Sailor" (Alaskan salmon processor) *Data entry for Columbia House *Record store clerk *Borders music manager *Library supervisor *Jazz DJ

Wow! Any Tina solos, by any chance?

I want Harpo's version!

From Filmscoremonthly: In James Ellroy's memoir MY DARK PLACES, he writes that LAURA is the favorite movie of many real-life homicide detectives.

This summary of a Terry Teachout piece seems to indicate that Herman's was indeed the first jazz recording of "Laura." I could've sworn that somebody else waxed it before him... not that that's worth much! What does Schoenberg say in the Mosaic booklet? LAURA is coming out on DVD in March, btw (looks as if it will include commentary from Raksin). It was supposed to come out a year or two ago; rumor has it the hold-up had to do with the rights to the music.

Was that really their slogan?