ghost of miles

In 1963 the sixth annual Monterey Jazz Festival included a blues duet between Gerry Mulligan and Peewee Russell, the festival debuts of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, a moving performance from Jack Teagarden just four months before his death at the age of 58, and a dedication from the Modern Jazz Quartet to Martin Luther King Jr., weeks after his “I have a dream” speech and days after the deaths of four African-American girls in a Birmingham, Alabama church bombing. Oh, and Dizzy Gillespie launched his “Dizzy For President” campaign as well. Last week’s Night Lights show up for online listening: Jazz From Monterey, 1963: Dizzy For President!

Some Jug before midnight:

Damn, does that sound like 1983. And I mean that as a compliment... really captures the vibe of the times somehow.

Am I completely misremembering, or did Stanley Crouch show up here once for a brief flurry of jousting posts in a single thread (of which he was the topic, iirc) before departing? Or did that happen at AAJ or JazzCorner instead? EDIT: He showed up in a thread about him at JazzCorner, as I rediscovered perusing this Organissimo Crouch thread. There's reference there to him making a couple of posts in the JC discussion.

Also, here's a pretty ancient (at this point) Night Lights program about the Columbia comeback period: Star On Miles: The Return Of Miles Davis

Forgot all about this--I remember seeing it, maybe in a Mosaic brochure? Man, I sure miss getting those in the mail... I loved paging through them and setting my sights on certain sets that I didn't have yet.

I feel as if this has been discussed before, but the most specific thread I can locate quickly is this one: Miles Davis' Aura: Where Do You Rate It? ... which includes some mention of other Columbia-era comeback material as well.

I may do a “Rollins ‘56” prequel at some point.

... and one more time for Boppin’ On Bee Hive after its re-airing this past week.

I would love a full-blast Mosaic set of these years, pulling together the Savoys, Riversides, the Verve, and the Impulses. That's a lot of music (and probably unlikely licensing, especially in the case of the Riversides), but a fella can dream, cain't he? Oh, and the booklet/notes written by Mark Stryker.

The 2-CD companion to Rob Young’s excellent book:

Circa 1964-65, not sure of exact dates.

This collection mentions several. I just checked John Szwed's Sun Ra bio, and page 204-205 contains this passage about Gilmore and Blakey: As some of the musicians began to get a taste of the opportunities New York offered they began to feel restless and ignored. Rehearsals were not enough. John Gilmore spent hours every day practicing, then going out at night to hear lesser saxophonists making money: "I'd been walking around New York and I wasn't working anywhere, and half the cats were out there playing my ideas," he told DownBeat. "I said, 'What is this? Here I am not working, and they're working, and they're stealing my ideas." When Lee Morgan recommended him to Art Blakey as the Jazz Messengers were leaving for a tour of Japan and Europe, he accepted the offer and left the Arkestra. But his bitterness even carried over into the Blakey band, and annoyed Blakey to the point where he let him go: I criticized him because he'd be talking the way he was thinking. The way he thought about life and what he believed in and why he would put down other people. I didn't think it was right. He was young and running off the top of his head, don't tell me that Lester Young steals from him, or Coltrane steals from him--that's not true. He's off... I wasn't concerned about his playing, he'd be telling me about his fans on Mars or Jupiter, but I said it's the fans on this planet we're concerned with, not back there. The Blakey quote is from a July 1981 Cadence interview. Szwed doesn't specify when the DownBeat article with the Gilmore quote appeared.

Here’s an early Night Lights show that I did: Away From The Spaceways: John Gilmore It focuses on his few Ra-less dates, many of which have been mentioned above.

Thanks, shared this news with some of the classical folk at WFIU.

I saw Ethan Iverson’s retweet of this earlier today. This is an excellent list, Mark—thanks so much for putting it together.

Excited to be reading the final volume in Rick Perlstein’s rise-of-modern-conservatism saga:

Birthday salutations to Mr. Rollins today on the occasion of his 90th. We re-aired Rollins ‘57: Sonny Rollins Takes The Lead this past week in honor of his impending milestone, and it remains archived for online listening.

I think so, yes. There’s some overlap with the 1969 live albums released in the early 1970s as well. I highly recommend the Complete Matrix Tapes set to anybody who’s a Velvets fan. They’re locked in and there’s a lot of creative interpretation and variance in their approach to the songs. A great live rock ‘n roll band.

Blistering extended live versions of “I Can’t Stand It” and “White Light/White Heat” on disc 2 are highlights for me. Great workouts on “I’m Waiting For The Man”’ as well. Going to listen to discs 3 and 4 tonight.

That website is an ongoing hoax in and of itself. I really wish it could be blitzed off the Internet.