ghost of miles

I had a couple of those 3-D cards! Again, acquired from kids who'd inherited them from older siblings. I'd forgotten all about those.

My brothers and I also had quite a few of the Hostess Twinkie cards that came out in the mid/late 1970s:

Sad news, had not seen that. As a kid I think I eventually had the 1975-1980 seasons complete (from 1978-80 I was buying the newest sets wholesale through mail-order). Lost interest as a teenager and sold them all off in 1985... would cost me a pretty penny and then some to reacquire them today. Also had a lot of early-1970s cards that I’d picked up in trades with other neighborhood kids (passed on to them by older siblings) as well as some 1950s cards that my dad had given to me. (He even had some Bowmans from the year when they were designed to look like TV sets). On a lighter, or should I say lightning note: The incredible story of Ray Caldwell, the pitcher who was struck by lightning and still completed the game ... hipped to this story by Paul O’Neill’s reference to it during the Yankees game the other night. “... after they revived him, he said ‘I’ve still got one more out to get!’” And he got it. 😄

We re-aired Making A New Kind Of Scene: New York City’s Five Spot this past week, and it remains archived for online listening.

Much love! Will be featuring some live recordings of his compositions with Blakey, Miles, Weather Report, and his own quartet on my afternoon show today.

My delivery time today is 2:45-5:45 p.m., most likelee. Thanks, I’ll show myself out... no need to shove! But... but... won’t the beacon have gone dark by then?!

My best friend's gotten me hooked on this Joe Walsh album:

We re-aired Lennie Tristano: The Jazz Guru this past week, and it remains archived for online listening.

I came across mention of this performance near the end of Curt Bianchi’s new Weather Report biography Elegant People—August 2, 2007, in Hungary, with Wayne joining Joe onstage at what would prove to be Zawinul’s next-to-last concert. Six weeks later he was dead. They do a duet of “In A Silent Way”:

A favorite! Most of the recordings made in the backroom of a record store, iirc? Right now: Paul Bley’s Reality Check.

From pg 134-35, discussing the recording of Sweetnighter: According to Joe, (drummer Herschel) Dwellingham didn’t initially feel the rhythm, either. So Joe sang it to him until he had it. If only things were that simple. As Muruga tells the story, “We did this one tune (‘125th Street Congress’) and Joe said, ‘Give me a rhythm for this.’ So Herschel had this really cool, funky rhythm. And being from Detroit, I associated, and so we laid that down. And Joe said, ‘No, do something else.’ And he took us on a half-hour to an hour tangent looking for another rhythm. And you know, after about forty minutes of grueling rhythms, Herschel came up and whispered in my ear, ‘Hey bro, you remember that beat that we did in the beginning, the first one that he didn’t like? Let’s lay that motherfucker on him again. We’re going to lay that same beat on him.’ So we gave him the first rhythm again and Joe said, ‘That’s it! That’s the rhythm I want, man! That’s perfect!’ And Herschel just stood up and yelled, ‘You motherfucker!’ And he started running and rushed him right through the center of all of the instruments, right through the whole studio and up against the wall. And he said, ‘Look motherfucker! You ain’t telling me what to play anymore! We gave you that an hour ago and you made us go through all that shit and waste our time. You could’ve had that track done!’ And I was just cracking up because Herschel is twice as big as Joe and I saw that Joe is a domineering person. Joe said, ‘Okay, man, we’re cool! I know! You’re right, man! Everything’s cool!’ Joe listened to Herschel a little bit better after that. (laughs)”

On the hunt for the first 1971-75 set, if any board member is interested in selling.

Some of my favorite OP comes from that particular run of MPS albums.

Weird trivia note from last night’s Royals-Yankees game: >>It was the first game in Major League history in which both teams scored in the seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th and 11th innings, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Kansas City became the first team in the Modern Era (since 1900) to erase a deficit in innings seven, eight, nine and 10.<< ... and in a much older story, evidently the so-called “Manfred rule” of starting all extra innings with a runner on second, instituted last year in an effort to speed up the conclusion of such games, will be retired at the end of this season: Manfred says added runner, 7-inning doubleheader games likely on the way out I think he may well have become a Hall of Famer if it hadn’t been for the stroke. I started to follow baseball as a kid around 1974, and in my memory he was one of the most dominant pitchers in MLB from 1975-1980.

The pandemic is not done with wreaking havoc on the world of live music: New Orleans Jazz Festival canceled

Larry, I am so sorry to hear this. My cat Amelie died quite suddenly this spring at the age of 14 and I was emotionally crushed for weeks afterward... I still think about her and miss her every day. Thank you for sharing the photo of Scout--what a beautiful dog.

👍 Great set, and one of the first Ellington collections I ever picked up, believe it or not.

The latest episode of WBGO’s The Checkout is a 20th-anniversary celebration of the Pi label: Staunchly Original: 20 Years Of Making Pi Recordings

Looking forward to hearing that Mose set myself. Right now, revisiting discs 9-10 of the Herbie Hancock Columbia box, which cover the 1976 Newport Jazz Festival appearance that featured VSOP (first incarnation of this group, I believe?), the Mwandishi Sextet, and the Headhunters... quite the Herbie fest!

Another insightful piece from Bloomington's/Detroit's/Organissimo's/the world's own Mark Stryker (did I cover enough bases there?), published yesterday on the JazzTimes website: Chronology: Quincy Jones In The 1950s ... as far as Quincy's 1950s arranging work goes, I'd also cast a vote for Billy Taylor's My Fair Lady Loves Jazz album.