ghost of miles

A sequel to the previous Night Lights program of MLK jazz tributes Dear Martin is now available for online listening. It includes music from Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Wadada Leo Smith: Dear Martin, P.S.: More Jazz Tributes To Martin Luther King Jr.

Disc 1, which includes the soundtracks to The Pawnbroker and The Slender Thread:

Dammit. One of the last of that 1950s/60s generation--of the pianists, at least.

On disc 1 as I begin to revisit this one:

Dan Bilawksy of JazzTimes just tweeted that Sammy Nestico has passed away. I'll post further confirmation if it becomes available.

Revisiting the 1948 Carnegie Hall concert and yes, “Fantazm” jumped out at me as well. Sounds like a missing chapter from the Tizol-Duke songbook. Can’t find the Carnegie performance on YouTube, but here it is from Cornell a month later:

Solo album by Stone Roses guitarist John Squire:

Great period for Joe, obviously. I imagine many board members already have just about everything from this period, much like the recent Mobley (or the similar Lee Morgan Blue Note set that has been bandied about in the past as a possible Mosaic). I’ll still buy it... I’m sure the sound and the booklet will be excellent. Too bad, though, that we’re not getting a previously-unreleased stash of trio material from his 1980s/90s Verve era. I remember reading an interview in the mid-1990s where he lamented Verve’s lack of interest in putting out anything along those lines.

Please keep us posted and hope you rapidly get to feeling better. Grateful for your presence here.

Just read this quote in the liner notes to Film Score Monthly's CD of music from The Split (where the Parker character--renamed McClain, iirc--is played by Jim Brown). Right now, inspired by my re-reading last year of Dog Soldiers: I had assumed the title was an ode to high-grade weed, but apparently Stone's referring to "green light that washes over the rainforest at dawn." Still, I'm sure he wouldn't have minded it working the other way as well.

I'd be interested in that as well.

Nice historical overview via a Bandcamp article: The Real Swinging London: The Legacy Of Brit Jazz

This is an ongoing conundrum when it comes to the parameters of year-end polls (whether we're talking historical or modern recordings). Iirc Francis Davis advises those who vote in the NPR poll to use Thanksgiving or thereabouts as a cutoff date. The Hayes box came out quite late in 2019, and I don't think I got my copy (I bought it through Amazon UK) until right around Christmas. Same thing happened with Mosaic's Mobley and Herman sets. Releases that come that late in the year often don't get attention in the form of media/online response until the next year's already started--not to mention that listening all the way through something as large as the Hayes box, while an absolute pleasure, takes a fair amount of time. Anyway, the Hayes box didn't get nixed when I submitted my NPR ballot, so they're evidently cool with counting it as a 2020 release.

The NPR jazz poll requires that entries be ranked--so for the three historical-related titles that I was allowed to choose, I put the Hayes box first. It made such a huge swath of previously-hard-to-find music available in one fell swoop and did a great service in elevating the profile of a musician not well-known at all (or so it seemed to me) outside UK jazz circles. Not to mention the extensive booklet that Simon Spillett wrote for it.

I just mentioned in a response to Ken Dryden in my "best historical releases" Night Lights thread that I avoid ranking of any kind in that list that I do each year--and I don't cap it at 5, 10, or what have you. Some artistic endeavors clearly succeed--however that's defined--more than others. But attempting to apply some sort of sports-stats or election-count methodology to jazz recordings, or any other works of art for that matter, may be a fun game... but not really an accurate way IMO to reflect the worthiness of such works. Your point about the value of such lists in introducing records and artists to those, both broader-audience and more deep-dive listeners like us here on this board, is one I definitely agree with, though.

Agreed about servicing. And I may not be quite as vigilant about keeping up with all manner of historical releases and reissues as I have been in the past--this board and other forms of social media are helpful in that regard. I'm also fortunate that my local record store does a great job of displaying such titles of interest--that's how I found out that the Pullen/Graves Yale concert had finally been reissued on CD. It's also hard at times to keep up with the flood of new material by modern-day artists. Re Monk Palo Alto, I've always stayed away, in my own year-end lists, from any kind of ranking. I'll add these to the listener-and-reader-suggestions list. Hadn't heard of them, so thanks for the heads-up... I am a Rivers fan.

Great article--thanks so much for posting. (Full disclosure that I've been asked to vote in this poll for the past several years.)

That one somehow slipped by me... I'm sure I missed discussion of it here on the board. Btw I've added posters' suggestions and favorites here to the bottom of the post (as I did for last year's program). Also tacked on the Blakey, which was one that made it into the show, but which I inadvertently left off the overall list. Best Historical Releases 2020