ghost of miles

A musician whose records I became acquainted with and enjoyed thanks to members of this board. R.I.P. and condolences to those such as Chuck who knew him personally.

Same here—I have absolutely no confidence in any vaccine that might be introduced by the current U.S. administration this year. If it’s a vaccine that’s been vetted by Canada or the EU, I’ll be good to go.

😄 I’ve told my girlfriend that I want to be entombed pyramid-style in my small house, with five different CDs inserted into the player every day, and a fresh pot of coffee brewed each morning in case I “wake up.” More likely, however, that the bulk of it will be digitally donated to the radio station where I work. Even though CDs themselves are a dying format, I might advise the physical retention of those with valuable liner notes or essays... and certainly that will be the case for many of the box sets. Not sure what, if anything, will be of much fiscal value if I live a relatively normal lifespan.

If any board member has a copy of the 1997 two-CD Don Grolnick Complete Blue Note Recordings that he or she would be interested in selling.. send me a PM!

Truth is marching in:

Smoke rises over Citi Field as new Mets owner is officially selected Joking aside, a good friend who’s a Mets fan is elated that the reign of the Wilpons is finally coming to an end.

That was the second Hemingway book I ever read, after The Sun Also Rises. An excellent collection that I still have, and iirc some of the previously-unpublished material seemed definitely worthy of the Hemingway oeuvre. Speaking of Hemingway, the new New York Review of Books takes a look at a new volume of Martha Gellhorn’s correspondence that sounds intriguing. A Moral Witness

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.