ghost of miles

this is something I seriously need to do too. Congratulations!! Well, it's a little strange, I have to admit. I feel pretty disconnected now from TV culture and hear about it word-of-mouth (such as Desperate Housewives... what's all the hoopla about that, anyhoo?). But I don't really miss it. I get more of a kick out of buying DVD boxes of old shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, The World at War, and Peter Gunn (thanks to relyles), and watching a few episodes of those at my leisure... and I have high hopes that a DVD release of Hill Street Blues is imminent. But yeah, I'll trade cable for $500 worth of jazz CDs any time! It's weird... whenever I go to my father's house and watch TV for an extended time, say, on a holiday, I end up feeling something that I can describe only as a spiritual hangover.

this is something I seriously need to do too. Congratulations!! Aw, he's all talk! Just wait 'til he & Mrs. Ghost have a few kids and they start getting sitters to swing in so that they can have a night out to check the new Fahrenheit 911, Part 12. I'm sure she'll be happy to sit there all night flipping through National Geographic and a few old Mosaic catalogues. More like old New York Review of Books and Mosaic catalogues. Hey, it's no problem finding literate, liberal babysitters in Bloomington... yes indeedy, what we got here is a re-gu-lar oasis of enlightenment. Course'n you gotta keep the kiddies away from the medicine cabinet... they're a little too curious when it comes to mood-altering substances!

I've got all of them throurh Vol 10 and was very happy with them until Vol 10. The sound on it is horribly compressed. Also the notes identify the last song on cd one as A Train when in fact it's Things Ain't What they Used to Be. Maybe the death of the founder has led to shoddy work on the part of Storyville. I have volumes 1, 2, and 10, and 3 & 4 are on their way... you're right about V. 10's sound. Hopefully V. 11--if it ever comes out--will not suffer from the same problems. Aren't there 24 double-CDs planned in all? I'm thinking about featuring some once a month on The Big Bands this year--doing a show of April 1945 broadcasts in April, a show of May 1945 broadcasts in May, etc.--right up through the 60th anniversary of V-J Day. (After which the name of "War Bonds" was changed to "Victory Bonds.")

Liked DEATH OF A TENOR MAN quite a lot, SOUND OF THE TRUMPET not quite as much, and stopped reading BIRD LIVES after the first couple of chapters. Something about the protagonist's attitude started to wear on me... interesting concept, though. I'm also intrigued by Moody's non-fiction book on jazz exiles in Europe, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

This week on Night Lights it's jazz from late-1940s/early-1950s Boston, featuring alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano, pianist and arranger Nat Pierce, and baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff. The Boston scene was a thriving one, enhanced in part by the presence of the Boston Conservatory of Music, which stood out for its acceptance of black musicians (Sam Rivers and Gigi Gryce were among the artists who studied there--I highly recommend checking out Mike Fitzgerald's Gryce bio RAT RACE BLUES for its portrayal of the Boston music scene during this era). We'll hear selections from CHARLIE MARIANO AND THE BOSTON ALL-STARS, Nat Pierce's BOSTON BUSTOUT, and Serge Chaloff's BOSTON 1950, in addition to some sides from Chaloff's collected works on the Mosaic label (a future show will focus on Chaloff exclusively). The program airs at 11:05 Saturday night (8:05 California time, 10:05 Chicago time) on WFIU; you can listen live here or (by Monday afternoon) in the Night Lights archives. (Note: this show is in place of the previously-announced program about Dick Twardzik, a pianist from Boston. Jack Chambers' forthcoming biography of Twardzik has been delayed until late-spring or early-summer; the Twardzik program will air sometime in late summer.) Next week: "But I Was Cool: the Early-1960s Recordings of Oscar Brown Jr."

The Pullen-Adams is now archived.

Found this on a cool big-band site that I just discovered: Petrillo ban There's a joke in Evan Hunter's QUARTET IN H that references Petrillo and the recording ban... can't remember it at the moment, but I'll try to post it tomorrow.

My interest in the big bands has been accelerating in the past several years and even more so now that I'm taking over a weekly big-band program and preparing to teach an adult-education class on the subject. Thought some posters might be interested in this site that I found while trolling the web. If you know of others (in addition to the Big Bands Database Plus), please feel free to post them--I'm putting together some links for the new web-page that we're making for the WFIU show.

My wife and I "de-cableized" several years ago. Hey, it's $500 more a year to spend on jazz CDs, and the ol' brain rot decelerates. There are at least several African-Americans that I'm aware of who post here. I once chided a poster for saying of James Carter, "The boy can play," only to find out from another poster that said poster was African-American... which certainly did make a difference.

No way, man--I will resist the tired old cheap shot! Besides, I'm having breakfast with a "spook" on Sunday. Library supervisor/jazz DJ. Hoping that the jazz DJ gig will soon turn into a fulltime one.

Several other posters thought this release deserved its own thread, and I agree with them: BEFORE MOTOWN is a great book, btw, a fascinating regional history that will appeal to anybody who's interested in some or all of the great jazz artists who have come out of Detroit. There's also now a website here.

ABOUT THE BLUES.

Evans wrote "NYC's No Lark" as a eulogy for Clark (the title is an anagram of his name). I think they were also nicknamed the Gold Dust Twins for their addictive inclinations.

Yes. Thanks for posting the original piece, Lazaro. I've been curious to hear what others--on the board or off--have to say about the LCJO recording. Hope Byron puts the concert stuff out in some form.

"Randy's Record Shop?" Out of Tennessee?

It's part of what constitutes THE JACK JOHNSON SESSIONS... some of the material I use, such as "Duran," wasn't released for years. For syndication purposes, I also have to open the program with a track that's less than 5 minutes long. It has to do with NPR "clocks"... basically, some stations may play only your 1-minute opening tease or "billboard" and then cut away for 5 minutes of NPR news. The trick is to do a backlist and land back at 6:01, talking as if the past 5 minutes didn't occur. I'm still trying to master it and the later breaks... we're hoping to offer up the program later this year to other stations. I also picked "Nem Um Talvez" because it was one of the quieter tracks on the box-set... wanted to ease some listeners into the material.

Pretty sure BMG still has it--that's where I picked up my copy.

No way. Kung Fu Master, maybe. Sincerely yours, "Toxic Granny" KEEEEEYYYIIIEEE!!!! Does this mean you're going to start going around saying things like, "That is because you are stupid, grasshopper?"

A smidgen of earlier discussion here... still haven't gotten around to picking this one up yet. I think it may have also come up in the Funny Rat thread, but I'll be damned if I know where--enter the labyrinth at your own risk!

Is the live version of Bette Midler singing "One for My Baby" to Carson on the last show posted anywhere online?

My parents watched him almost religiously when I was growing up... strong memories of staying up late particularly on summer nights and hearing/watching Carson with the windows and front screen-door open. I've never seen a better master at handling a dud joke... he almost always managed to turn it into a laugh anyway. There was a kind of adroit jazziness in his delivery and style. And it's hard to imagine my favorite sitcom of the 90s--The Larry Sanders Show--ever having come into existence without The Tonight Show as precedent.

This program is now archived.

I always thought "Positively 4th Street" was a pretty scathing put-down of said crowd.