ghost of miles

Truly music to my ears! (And I'd definitely go for the Pullen set as well.)

Ah, well, time for me to get my lumps for the names I omitted, inadvertently for the most part. I guess I associate Tyner so strongly with Coltrane's 1960's sound--which, on the surface anyway, does not seem to resemble the "Blue Note sound" very much--that I neglected to put him in there. Ammons and Lewis, whom Jim Sangrey mentioned, did cross my mind, but they--along with Johnson and Hodes--represent the dawning years of the label, and while they helped set the template in some ways, they don't represent what I think of as the Blue Note sound. (Ouch, I feel the flames already!) In retrospect I probably should have included Tyner and one of the Ammons/Lewis/Johnson/Hodes coterie, and dropped one or two of the iconoclasts. I voted for Hancock, by the way, after the initial Silver/Clark twinge. I think Herbie's range touched nearly every aspect of the BN aesthetic.

Thanks for the review, Mike. I e-mailed it to several friends of mine who are Grimes followers as well. An imminent CALL reunion, who woulda thunk it? Amazing!

Nice post, Mnytime. It's the old saw of "America gave you all these rights--how dare you use them!" And actually, it seems like the political forum's been fairly quiet lately.

A big thumbs-up from me for this one. I bought it last week because, well, it's Cannonball, and because I've developed quite an interest in 50's/60's musical concept albums. (Interesting that, according to the liner notes, this LP was Cannonball's idea.) The CD was even better than I'd hoped it would be--the first two tracks, in particular, should be a delight to anybody who loves the classic modal hard-bop sound of early-60's Adderley. Planning to listen to it again this weekend. The re-issue is fleshed out with four short (but different) tracks that were recorded for 45's around the same time.

I think Alan Lankin got a copy of this as well--I noticed several days ago that he had posted it in the "May listening" thread. Didn't the 60's quintet and Bitches Brew boxes come out just a few months apart?

Up for broadcast--just started.

Cool that the Times gave him this coverage. If anybody on the board catches his gig tonight, I'd love to hear your impressions! It is an amazing story, isn't it? Somebody should write a book...

Not the "best," but the pianist that for you captures the Blue Note "house sound." (Yes, I know, a vague, categorical concept...)

Looking forward to hearing this. I still want to pick up his 1968 duets with Lee Konitz, which came out on CD as EUROPEAN EPISODE and IMPRESSIVE ROME.

That's the route I'll probably take. I'm on the hunt for the Sinatra Columbia box, too. (Forgive me, Lon!)

I really enjoyed JSP's CAB CALLOWAY: THE EARLY YEARS set, and now the followup is on the way, streeting June 10: Cab I don't have any of this material and am quite excited, as Chu Berry, Dizzy Gillespie, and Ben Webster, among others, show up on this set.

Thanks, man--I don't think I can ever have enough Duke! I'd been contemplating the 2-CD set, but I think I'll skip it and wait for the box. Verve put out so many great boxes in the mid-to-late 90's--the Bud Powell, the JATP, the Lester Young, this one... I realize it's a financially precarious practice (didn't they supposedly take a bath on the Young?), so I hope they continue to occasionally farm sets out to Mosaic (the Hodges, Roach, now the Mulligan and Eldridge).

Anybody around these parts own this box? (Surely somebody does!) Coted'Azur I'm thinking about putting it on my "to-get" list, if I can find a used copy at a reasonable price some day, or even a marked-down new one...

Well, better an imitation than the real thing. I managed to cultivate an offboard amiability with Greg, but I think that mostly dissolved in one of our last disputes... in any case, I haven't heard from him since the BNBB blew up. You're right about AAJ, I think, Lon. I still go there too, but the discussions just don't engage me. I'm not sure why. The visual appearance of the board doesn't draw me in either; Organissimo's colors and layout are just so damned comfy on the old .

I used to work as a musicseller, and then as a music manager, at Borders. We had a monthly newsletter, and I usually wrote the "music notes" column, often from the point-of-view of some fictional character, working some of our highlighted new releases into some (hopefully) humorous narrative. One month the long-awaited (by me, anyway) Miles Davis 60's quintet box was coming out, and so I wrote the column from the pov of "Ghost of Miles," basically imitating the tone of his autobiography, inserting plenty of asterisks and other marks to symbolize the curses. It went over really well and became a bit of a running joke--hence the handle. I also happen to love his music, and I'm a white guy who can't play a lick of trumpet. Ghost also alludes to "Ghost of a Chance," one of my favorite 40's jazz standards, and to the ethereal nature of maintaining an internet presence. OK, guess I'm done being an ex-English major now. When the old BNBB sank I registered elsewhere with different "Ghost" handles, but something about this site influenced me to resurrect my former one. I'm glad I did, because this really has replaced the BNBB in my heart-of-internet-hearts.

Hey, at least they never did a Beatles duet!

Oops--good point, Mike. I forgot about those, so maybe the Roost sessions will be re-mastered by Rudy (or somebody else). They came out years ago on a single CD, but the sound was pretty bad.

Yep, I think that's all that's been confirmed. I've heard rumors of a Gerry Mulligan Songbook Select (not to be confused with the supposedly imminent Concert Jazz Band set, which should be a fullblown Mosaic box), in addition to the news about a possible Crusaders release.

Birthday greetings to Mr. B-3'er, er, Jim. Thanks, too, to you & the rest of the band for providing the exiled Blue Note community with such a great new home. May your CD royalties one day surpass those of Jimmy Smith's!

Actually, I think Late did. (And thanks, Late, for the link to Rosolino--I didn't know that his wife and mother of his two boys had just committed suicide, shortly before his own suicide and shooting of his sons.)

Hey all, I'm doing a radio program tomorrow afternoon from 3:30-5 p.m. EST that draws on a box-set called THE VICTORY COLLECTION: THE SMITHSONIAN REMEMBERS WHEN AMERICA WENT TO WAR. The show will feature topical music from WWII (Wingy Manone's "Stop the War, Cats Are Killin' Themselves," Fats Waller's "That's What the Well-Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear," Carson Robison's "Grab a Gun, We're Fixin' to Kill a Skunk" and "Mussolini's Letter to Hitler," as well as some non-box selections like Martha Tilton's "I'll Walk Alone") and American propaganda radio ads, in addition to some bites from interviews with people who lived through the era. Here's the link: WFIU1

I wish Mosaic would do a set of Holmes on Pacific Jazz--e-mailed them about it last year, but they said too much of it had been readily available in the past few years.

Hey all, I'm looking for an OOP 1994 Moon Records CD release of Louis Armstrong entitled RADIO DAYS. It consists of a 1943 and a 1945 broadcast that Armstrong did; I'm particularly interested in getting a copy of the track "Blue Skies," which is a duet between Armstrong and Frank Sinatra (hoping to use it for a July 4 radio program). PM me if you have this and are interested in some kind of trade, CD-R or otherwise...

The RVGs are indeed a big improvement in sound (at least on THE AMAZING BUD POWELL V. 1 and V. 2--the only ones I have so far). However, the Roost sessions, particularly the '47 that leads off the box-set, and the '53 that ends Disc 2 as well, are superlative, and they haven't been RVG'd (and won't be, I'm assuming, as I'm pretty sure Rudy didn't engineer these sessions). The booklet's most interesting segment is an excerpt of an interview that Alfred Lion did with Michael Cuscuna. If you can pick up the box for $30 or so, I think it's worth it, even if you get the RVGs later on.