ghost of miles

Yeah, I've wanted to check that one out. It just got a front-page review on the NY Times Book Review from Woody Allen. Now reading Graham Greene's ORIENT EXPRESS, also known as STAMBOUL TRAIN.

Vy-a-duck, vy-a-no chicken? To get to the other side? There is no dark side of the chicken. It's all dark.

Vy-a-duck, vy-a-no chicken?

Two of our cats like jazz, while the third holds out for classical/opera. I listened to disc 2 of the Ayler box late last night, which led me to listen to disc 1 of the Atlantic New Orleans Mosaic box this morning. (Liked both very much.) Ironically enough, cat #3, who almost never likes jazz, came in and sat down beside me for the entire Mosaic disc 1! Evidently he was just waiting for some New Orleans sounds to come around. BTW that version of "Children" on disc 2 is indeed great... that whole session with Cherry is one that I'm going to revisit frequently.

Happy birthday to a wonderful member of the online jazz community! Hope you get a chance to enjoy more of the Ayler box or whatever else you're spinning these days, to read some of your favorite writers, and to do whatever else fulfills you, whether it be work or play. I hope this and every day is a blessed one for you.

Brown didn't impress me much when he pitched against the Yanks in the '98 WS... seemed to have a bit of an attitude problem, so I wasn't so keen when NY signed him during the off-season last year. I still argue that what made the 1996-2001 Yankees so great--a real class team full of gutty and dignified players, who had an amazing chemistry and nearly always found a way to pull the big win out--was Steinbrenner's absence from the scene during the early-mid 1990s. Now there's nothing left in the minor-league pipeline, because NY has gone back to the Steinbrenner ways of old, trading away promising players & prospects and spending millions on aging, past-their-prime stars. With the wild-card, I doubt NY will go through a stretch like it did in 1982-1993 (I don't count 1994 because of the stoppage--NY had the best record in baseball at that point), but I think another period of decline is definitely in effect now and has been since game 7 of the 2001 Series. Congratulations again to the Red Sox--this will be a hell of a WS, with a past/rivalry to boot--two of the last 4 WS the Sox lost were to the Cards (1946 and 1967). And a tip of the hat to my fellow Yankees fans here on the board--you've shown nothing but class and dignity throughout all of this, whether up 3-0 or losing the ALCS. I'm gonna catch as much of the WS as I can and then fire up the ol' hot stove...

Thanks for the information, John. Sheesh. There is only one cure... and that is to listen to more jazz.

What to say? Is there any better proof that baseball, for those of us who love mythology and narrative, is the best game around? How fitting that it would take the greatest series comeback in history to "reverse the Curse." Congratulations to the Red Sox & their fans, and I'll be cheering for them in the World Series.

I think it's the Internet & website; fans find out much more quickly these days, and places like this only fan the flames. For which I'm grateful!

Were these previously issued as part of the Mystic Sound series? I ask only because "previously unissued" doesn't always mean what it says... OTOH I thought all of that material was now coming out through Fantasy. Good news, if they truly are new sides.

But you have posted at least....where is Ghost, and Dan, and bluesForBartok??? Are they all passed out from shock??? Just heard that Shilling had his ankle sutured before the start!!!! I've been on vacation and haven't been on the Internet much... oh, agony! A conservative poster on Atrios recently wrote, "I wouldn't mind Kerry winning so much... what I don't think I could take would be Atrios crowing about it for the next 4 years." Well, Dan, you may be crowing away come this evening. I also wouldn't mind the Yanks getting beat by the Bosox... but I would mind like hell their being the first team ever to blow a 3-0 lead. Lord, can you imagine what Steinbrenner will do if that comes to pass? Speaking of Atrios, he started a thread when St. Louis was up 2-0 and NY was up 3-0 saying, "Please spare us a Boston-Houston series," for the sole reason that it would spawn tons of baseball metaphors in articles about the presidential race (Bush=Houston, Kerry=Boston). At the time he said, "Not that there's too much chance of that happening." It's another reason why I love baseball so much. What a crazy series! And I thought last year's was over the top...

Oh, man, this is all too reminiscent of Game 7 in the 2001 WS... Boston will be really pumped if they pull this one out.

Not quite--Rivera just let them off the hook.

I understand the Red Sox fans at Fenway last night were chanting, "Let's go, Patriots" by the 6th inning.

Forget it, man. You're a goner. I got bit about 12 years ago. I'm now in my late 30s and the fever shows no signs of abating, for some of the same reasons that you state in your very thoughtful post. I still have a great appreciation for pop/rock, classical, r & b, etc., and there are times when I have to listen to music other than jazz. But jazz has become spiritual food/drink/breath for me; if I go longer than a day or two without it, I truly get to feeling deprived. I used to spend a great deal of time scrutinizing this phenomenon, trying to elaborate/articulate it, ponder it at length... now I just accept it as a part of my daily being. There's so much more I have to learn, and you're right, the music seems infinite... and immediate at the same time. I love living in it. Right now I'm listening to a live Ellington band broadcast of "Harlem Air Shaft" circa 1945 and thinking, does life get any aesthetically sweeter than this? Not often, anyway...

Nothing especially spectacular here, just good, warm, engaging playing from the principals, including Nelson on alto & tenor, Lem Winchester on vibes, George Tucker on bass, Roy Haynes on drums, and Johnny Hammond Smith on organ. One of those jazz CDs that made my wife go, "What's this?" when I was playing it the other day (in a good way!).

DrJ, another "giant" aspect of MLW is simply the astonishing length & duration of her career. How many other jazz artists span late-1920's Kansas City to performing a duet concert with Cecil Taylor in the late 1970s? And throughout that long, long career, she never sounds less than modern. The only person I can think of who equals or surpasses her in this regard is Duke.

Both Bethlehem titles came to mind when I saw this thread's subject heading--MODERN and also EAST COASTING. I picked up MODERN around '95, when Bethlehem themselves re-issued many of their titles on CD, and instantly got hooked by the aforementioned "Scenes." (Planning to use it in a late-February program that will also feature some of Langston Hughes' work w/Mingus.) EAST COASTING also came out on Bethlehem; the band includes Jimmy Knepper, Shafi Hadi, Clarence Shaw, Dannie Richmond, and Bill Evans on piano. Fortunately Rhino re-re-issued much of the Bethlehem catalogue again under the "Avenue Jazz" moniker in the late 1990s, but that series unfortunately came to an end several years ago. Jsngry and Joe Milazzo have both spoken highly of LET MY CHILDREN HEAR MUSIC, which means it's high time I sought it out.

Up for broadcast in about 30 minutes.

The musical MY PEOPLE is another example of Ellington making a pretty strong statement about civil rights.

Ellington's involvement with politics is a nuanced history. You might want to check out Michael Denning's THE CULTURAL FRONT, an excellent book about politics and the arts in the 1930s and 40s; there are several mentions of Ellington there. He played a few Communist Party benefits in the 1930s and signed petitions for a number of social justice causes. He himself wasn't a Communist, but this sort of support and peripheral involvement wasn't uncommon at all in the 1930s jazz world (and it's one of the reasons why there's still a tradition, alive today, of jazz's being intertwined with liberal and leftwing politics). In the late 1940s he issued a statement distancing himself from some of the things he'd signed (given the times and the political climate, it's understandable, if regrettable--a number of other artists were backpedaling fast, including alleged tough-guy Humphrey Bogart, from leftist causes that they'd previously backed). He also had some sort of run-in with the NAACP in the early 1950s, but my details on this are pretty fuzzy--had to do with a concert performance. Denning's book also contains a long section on JUMP FOR JOY, Ellington's 1941 civil-rights musical, and one of the most overt statements he ever made about racial politics in the United States. (When a protestor challenged Ellington in the early 1960s with the question, "What have you done for the movement?" Ellington replied, "I did my civil-rights piece 20 years ago with JUMP FOR JOY.") Pardon the self-promotion here, but I did an hour-long documentary on this musical precisely because of the fascinating intersection it forged with politics, Hollywood glamour, racial justice, and the 1941 Blanton-Webster band. It's archived here.

A long (10 minutes) feature on Elliott last night on NPR's "All Things Considered." Scroll about halfway down this page. Even the strongly protective posters over at Sweet Addy loved this piece. The new album sounds so good--better and better with each listen.

What are the comments about Rivers' playing? Do they also offer any explanation as to why they left off the other two concerts with Rivers in Japan that were recorded by Columbia?

This week on Night Lights I'll be playing music from the 1956 RCA Victor Jazz Workshop albums of George Russell and Hal McKusick. (A Part 2 will air in late November, featuring music from Johnny Carisi's abandoned session and Charles Mingus' Savoy Jazz Workshop album.) The program airs at 11:10 tonight (9:10 on the West Coast, 12:10 on the East Coast); you can listen live on WFIU, or you can listen next week when it's posted in the archives.