ghost of miles

Recently ordered the Chronological Classics HARLAN LEONARD 1940 CD, as I'm putting together a special on J.J. Johnson, who was influenced by Leonard's trombonist Fred Beckett. The CD came in the mail today, and damn! What a band! Evidently this CD contains all of the sides that these guys made (for Bluebird in 1940), but there's some great, swinging music here... and some early Tadd Dameron arrangements as well. To my ears, a very modern-sounding Kansas City band for 1940... highly recommended:

Thanks, Dan--I didn't realize that the movie was based on a non-fiction book. BTW that movie was filmed in Indianapolis while I was living there. I never ran into him, but supposedly Christopher Lloyd all but lived at the Chatterbox, the coolest jazz bar in downtown Indy. (Erm, actually the only one at that time, but still extremely cool nonetheless! I actually ended up sitting next to Mick Jagger & Ron Wood there one night... a long, strange story!)

Are there any good books out there that deal with the Black Sox scandal? All of the Pete Rose talk has given me thought of re-visiting that era...

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Will do. It'll probably be in late August--the book is due out in July. I'm just excited to have a great reason to delve once again into the works of Fletcher Henderson.

New article from L.A. Weekly. It's basically an account of what Jennifer Chiba (Elliott's girlfriend) told the police:

Angell's post-playoff retrospective articles for the New Yorker are always a bittersweet pleasure for me--savoring the season past, sorry that it's over... This thread is giving me my first spring-training shivers! Oh, and Bernard Malamud's THE NATURAL. Devastating.

I'll second the Voice reviewer's remarks about FURNITURE MUSIC. I just picked it up a month or two ago and it's quite a trip, one of the best non-V5 Vandermark releases I've heard. The Jaap Blonk piece in particular jumped out at me--I played it on the radio & thought it sounded like an EAS signal running amok (and I mean that in a good way! ).

Mixed feelings about this... I love the original w/Mostel and Gene Wilder, but I'll be interested to see these guys too:

This is good news. Oxford has done such a wonderful job of keeping the jazz flame burning. I've traded phone messages with Professor Magee, and we're going to do a program together on the book & Henderson when it comes out. Probably about 75 minutes... I'll post a link later this year if anybody's interested.

One book I've had for several years and haven't read yet is Arnold Rampersad's biography of Jackie Robinson. Fully intending to read it this spring. "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?" Yeah, Jackie! (And Basie and Buddy!)

I love Halberstam's SUMMER OF '49--might have to re-read that one come spring. And, of course, THE BOYS OF SUMMER. Has anybody else here ever read Ted Williams' MY TURN AT BAT? I think it's one of the better "as told to" memoirs.

Dibs for me on THE SWINGIN' NUTCRACKER.

That's great news, Johnny. I've played the Non Grata CD a couple of times on my show & like it much... best to you in your ongoing improv endeavours!

Ken Vandermark, FURNITURE MUSIC J.J. Johnson, MEMORIAL ALBUM (Prestige) Bill Henderson, WITH THE OSCAR PETERSON TRIO Tom Harrell, WISE CHILDREN Jimmy Cleveland, INTRODUCING JIMMY CLEVELAND AND HIS ALL-STARS

The day of infamy, by the way, was 03/03/03. Good things come in threes... not!

I saw the Flaming Lips open for Beck in Oct. 2002 and then return as his backup band. I'm still recovering...

One of my many resolutions: to stop posting in the "Politics" forum... after the November election.

I don't know, it seems to me as if it's re-animated people's pain in some ways... I think people are relieved that he was "clean," and yes, in some way the idea that it was possibly murder rather than suicide makes people feel less--angry? At him? The Sweet Addy board does tend to get a bit vitriolic at times, like most Internet forums--still, I think it's a nicer place than most, just ripped up because the artist around which it's centered has died. And Elliott Smith may be treated like a "god" there, to some extent, but I wonder how we would've treated Charlie Parker, had we been alive in 1948 with an Internet board. Clearly many people accorded Parker that reception, as they later did Coltrane... I would not say that jazz fandom has been immune from this particular kind of response by any means--and that Smith, for the so-called "emo" movement in music, was a kind of Parker figure as well.

I have to go back to SUMMER SUN. It didn't grab me the way the past several records have... but I still love 'em. I saw them open for My Bloody Valentine at the Vick in Chicago in '92... they were doing mostly quiet acoustic stuff and some drunken jocko beside me kept yelling for them to "play some rock 'n roll!" Finally Ira looked up irritably and said, "Shut the fuck up!" They're also a band that seems to be aging gracefully in terms of the music that they make.

PERFECT PRESCRIPTION, baby! And you beat me to it with one of your following posts... I was going to make the same comment about the TAKING DRUGS album title.

Ringing in the new year with: Gil Evans, THE INDIVIDUALISM OF GIL EVANS Teddy Edwards, SMOOTH SAILING Charlie Mariano, DEEP IN A DREAM Benny Goodman, PLAYS FLETCHER HENDERSON V. 2 Chico Hamilton, MAN FROM TWO WORLDS Grant Green, ALIVE

Jeffery Magee, a musicologist here at Indiana University, has written a biography of Fletcher Henderson--it will be published by Oxford University Press in July. Can't wait! Henderson is such an important figure in 20's and 30's jazz. I'm already getting the itch to pull out A STUDY IN FRUSTRATION again...

You can only imagine the uproar this is causing on the main Smith discussion board (Sweet Adeline). Some people have been positing murder all along, but very few, if any, knew that he'd received two stab wounds... which does make suicide seem less likely. No easy answers now, if indeed there ever were.

Anybody ever order the ones that Cadence sells?