ghost of miles

Right! Organissimo members/posters don't take no shit from anybody! Shouldn't that be, "...don't take no shit from nobody?" B-) BTW, can we hereby dub ourselves "O.G.s?"

I agree--Lil Green wrote the tune, and she's an interesting/overlooked figure in 40s blues/jazz.

Recently got the INVISIBLE MAN Legacy set and plan on watching the original tonight or tomorrow, plus at least one of the sequels. Universal's done a nice job with these horror-movie packages; wish they had done the same for their recent Marx Brothers set, which doesn't even quite reach the level of "bare bones."

Bev, I think Jim meant it more as advice, not as a set of rules or dress code.

Yes!

OK, as long as they promise not to release any more post-Mick Clash records.

I'm interested as well... I, too, have been deluged with offers, and I really want to consolidate my flexible-interest rate (which is very low) with my wife's higher, locked-in rate--overall, we'll save money.

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...

Just got a promo of this in the mail and hope to give it a spin tomorrow. Hersch was here in Bloomington last year and performed an early version of LEAVES with some IU School of Music students; I caught the first half of it and thought it worked, for the most part. I have mixed feelings about Kurt Elling, but I'm still eager to hear how this project came off in the studio (and to hear all of it; I had to leave and go back to work during the intermission of the Bloomington performance). More info on LEAVES here.

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...

Tell me about it. This is one I've long liked, but suddenly everybody seems to be doing it, and I'm on the verge of burnout...

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?

The only version that (I think) I have of this is Chet Baker's from the soundtrack to Let's Get Lost, and I like it a lot. What other versions do you recommend Brownie? A standard I never tire of is "The Song is You" — one to add to Connie's "you" medley! I've long loved Billie's version of that song, and recently heard another great one recorded around the same time, by big-band singer Mary Ann McCall. It's on this fine new Hep compilation: Hey, is that McKusick Decca still in print?

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.