HWright

I buy a small number of new releases, but mainly a lot of reissues, like many people on this board. My favorite historical period is 1945-1970, I would say, with a secondary interest in pre-1945 and 1970's jazz and in more recent years I have started to investigate the 1980's and beyond.

I listened to the Priester album "Love, Love" on the darkfunk site and liked it a lot. I keep a wish list of either rare (only available as import or not available at all) jazz albums and both of Priester's ECM dates have been on it for some time. Having now heard one of them, they are sure to stay on the list. Perhaps there are technical issues preventing a perfect CD release, but I say bring the stuff out anyway, it's just too good to be left in the vaults! When one considers the questionable fidelity of some of the key items in Sun Ra (Priester's old one time boss)'s often lo-fi discography, for example, what is there for ECM to be afraid of? Couldn't they just make a transfer from someone's LP if the masters are in such terrible shape? I understand this is done all the time with old time blues, country and gospel '78's being transferred to CD...

I'd like to put in a plug for the Water reissue of Byard Lancaster's "It's Not Up to Us." It has some great sax/flute playing by Byard and it also has Sonny Sharrock on guitar, although it's often a somewhat muted presence, it seems to me.

For those of you in the Washington, DC area, take note that according to Ticketmaster, the Dave Holland Quintet will be playing a free concert at the Library of Congress on Friday, May 14. Seats are free but must be reserved through Ticketmaster. I saw Holland's group at the Kennedy Center a few years ago and it is very worth catching live, as many of you already know since you've enjoyed the recent live album. Alas, however, I will not be there myself, as I have tickets to the theater that night...a Tennessee Williams play at the Kennedy Center. Library of Congress link: http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/concert/0304-jazz.html Quote: All concerts are free, but require tickets. Tickets are distributed only via Ticketmaster, and available approximately six weeks before each concert. There is a small service charge associated with each ticket order (see below). There is a limit of 2 tickets per person. Please visit the "Full Season at a Glance" page for the ticket availability dates for all concerts. Patrons who are unable to obtain tickets are encouraged to try for stand-by tickets at the door on the day of the concert starting at 6:30pm (for 8:00pm) and 12:30pm (for 2:00pm). Ticketmaster contact information: By phone -- (703) 573-7328, (202) 432-7328, (800) 551-7328 Baltimore number - (410) 481-7328 On the Web -- www.ticketmaster.com Outlets -- for a list of outlets, please call TicketMaster at (202) 432-SEAT or visit TicketMaster's Washington D.C. page Service charges: $2.75 per ticket (via the Web, Outlet, or Telephone) $2.00 handling fee (Telephone and Web only) Per Order $3.50 charge to print Web tickets at home (no charge for Will Call or Mail delivery) "Distributing tickets through Ticketmaster has allowed us to eliminate many of the inconveniences experienced by our concertgoers in the past--including long, pre-concert lines and the uncertainty of getting into popular events," said Jon Newsom, chief of the Library's Music Division. "This system also allows the Library of Congress to comply with current security regulations for all Federal buildings. Since many events sell out quickly, we definitely encourage patrons to try for no-show tickets at the door; there are often empty seats at curtain time." The Ticketmaster ticketing system is designed to sell tickets on the "best available seat" basis. Therefore, the sooner patrons order tickets, the better the seat and the wider the selection. In past seasons, many patrons waiting in line for tickets were turned away for popular concerts. Under the new system, when a concert becomes "Sold Out," that information will be immediately available when patrons call Ticketmaster. Patrons will also be able to choose specific seat locations for events in the Coolidge Auditorium. Request ASL and ADL accommodations five days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

I've been enjoying this reissue too. The sound is just fantastic! Listening to this album more intently now than I have in some time (I first got the McMaster edition about ten years ago), I am struck by how in the past I didn't like the sextet side (with J.J. Johnson) very much and now I like it quite a lot, although I would still say that I prefer the quintet side...there's just something about the front line of Joe and Woody. Just like on Larry Young's "Unity." I would certainly hope they do an RVG of "The Jody Grind" too, although perhaps it won't happen any time soon...

Dr. Rat: Thanks for that link. I was not aware of the cartoon capybara on "The Tick." http://www.cs.rose-hulman.edu/~stinerkt/tickdocs/shspea.html That's great! You made my day!

An update: I got my copy of the Grachan Moncur CD in the mail. Having listened to it a few times, I can say that I like it. Moncur does some great soloing on the "New Africa" suite and the rhythm section of Burrell/Silva/Cyrille is dynamite. Rosco Mitchell on reeds sounds a little less "out" than on his own albums of the period. The second date is a little less interesting, but Moncur gets in some good playing there too. For those who can't get hold of this fairly rare disc, Archie Shepp's "The Way Ahead" CD ** is worth checking out. Moncur plays on the whole album and Shepp uses two of Moncur's compositions, "Frankenstein" (the Moncur tune done by Jackie McLean on "One Step Beyond") and "New Africa," which is presumably a version of the first movement of the suite heard on Moncur's own album. **= the "Way Ahead" CD contains bonus tracks from Archie Shepp's "Kwanza" album which has not otherwise been re-released, as far as I know. "Kwanza," based on what the AMG says, came out in 1974 and may be an out-take album. Not having heard its entire contents, I'm not sure what to make of their comment: "Important document musically and for people who need information about the traditional African Holy Week." Anyone know where the other tracks came from?

"World's Largest Rodent"!?!

Do books like this ever come out in paperback or is that terminology meaningless in this case?

Recently in Tower Records in Washington, DC, I found a reference in a jazz magazine to a new book about Jimi Hendrix by a British author ("Jimi Hendrix: Musician" by Keith Shadwick). I looked into the matter on the web and while I found a lot of good feedback about the book, it also seems that the book is a coffee table book. I'm not sure if it's a big or small coffee table book, but the text sounds interesting, especially since the author seems to know a bit about jazz. Has anyone read it? Thoughts? ==================================================== Here is sample text by Shadwick (this may be an excerpt from his book, but it's not clear). =================================================== Jimi Hendrix - Running the Voodoo Child Down ESSAY keith shadwick Jimi Hendrix would have been 60 this year had he lived. Since his death the influence of his music and general fascination with his celebrity has grown year on year. While rock fans claim Hendrix as one of their own it’s becoming increasingly accepted that Hendrix was also a major influence on jazz musicians and on subsequent jazz/rock hybrids. But how did Hendrix influence jazz? Did he influence musicians by his spirit as much as his technique and was he really a jazz improviser? In a special 8 page feature Jazzwise surveys Hendrix’s impact, reveals little known facts about jazz musicians he played with and talks to two iconic guitarists influenced by Hendrix, John McLaughlin and Vernon Reid. In December 1970 Jimi Hendrix won Down Beat magazine’s Readers’ Hall of Fame vote. He was not the first to win it posthumously on a wave of sympathy in the year of his death – Eric Dolphy had in 1964, to the unfeigned distaste of the traditionalists, and Wes Montgomery again in 1968 – but he was the first non-jazz musician to do so. Two questions emerge from this rather odd juxtaposition: what was he doing being voted for in a poll where he’d not previously troubled the compilers, and why was there such a concerted outcry afterwards in the letters pages of the magazine as well as from sundry jazz critics? This goes to the heart of Hendrix’s position in popular music. It is only in hindsight that we can look at such a result and say that it is entirely appropriate, given the enormous influence Hendrix and his musical ideas had on the subsequent development of not just jazz-rock and fusion, but all of jazz. For, like other musical titans, he brought to the music a helping of ideas that could be used by everybody. Thinking of Hendrix at the position he was in at his death, and of the musical scene he was central to, there is little overt connection with contemporaneous jazz, apart from the embryonic jazz-rock scenes in NYC and London. After all, Hendrix had built his entire musical vocabulary squarely on the solid foundations of the blues, not on blues and the standard song, which is where post-war jazz usually makes its entrance in a musician’s consciousness. The closest jazz approached Hendrix’s entry point was with the ubiquitous early-60s organ-guitar-drums trios on the Chitlin circuit. Where Hendrix had mapped out his territory was as the baddest guitarist in rock: countless other rock guitarists of the time have testified to his shattering impact, firstly in the London of late 1966 and later in America via Monterey in summer 1967. In all the fuss generated by his songs, his lyrics, his stage act and his general anti-establishment stance, there was little time for the majority of onlookers to wonder about jazz tie-ins. But they were there from the first album Hendrix released under his own name, Are You Experienced? Recorded between December 1966 and March 1967, the (14) tracks that made up the initial British release covered a lot of stylistic territory, from the Wilson Pickett/Otis Redding strut of ‘Remember’ to the open-form experimentation of ‘Third Stone From The Sun’ that had no previous parallel in all rock music and had its roots in an improvisatory dialogue between Hendrix and Mitch Mitchell that owed most of its conception to the convergence of Mitch’s studies of Elvin Jones and Hendrix’s obsession with sound for its own sake. This obsession was long-standing but had most likely been encouraged to take its particular form on this track by Jimi’s combination of fantasy films and novels with the sorts of extended improvisations that were common on the New York jazz scene he was living amongst prior to his relocation to London. Being Hendrix, of course he developed it in his own unique way (the instrumental theme sounds like nothing so much as a supercharged Ventures surf melody), instructing bassist Noel Redding to stick to a very basic three-note riff throughout the long improvisatory section – a device that beds the whole performance, unites it and keeps it within what was then defined as a rock ambit, rather than taking the approach Cream were starting to develop where Jack Bruce often took more adventurous bass lines in collective passages with Clapton and Baker than Clapton – always and forever primarily a blues player – was willing to go for. The majority of Hendrix’s improvisations on this track use the guitar not so much as a solo instrument in the jazz tradition of single-note lines or even chorded passages, but as a source of sound. Using and moulding an array of feedback techniques, Hendrix constructs a wild soundscape that bounces off and comes up in between all the other elements on the track, including his distorted spoken word passages. That this is a good trip rather than a nightmare is made clear in the humour the words contain – especially the allusion to surf music. The track concludes in a conflagration of sound that has no precedent in rock but whose violence and shrieks can be heard as a translation of the wild sounds prevalent in New York City avant-garde jazz circles from 1964 to the end of the decade. The leader of that particular young coterie, saxophonist Albert Ayler, was often quoted as saying that ‘it’s no longer about notes – it’s about sound.’ As with Hendrix’s most extreme electric explorations, their music was often performed over simple drones or with the absence of any precise tonality, and the colour and vibrancy of the sounds being created in, say, Albert Ayler’s famous 1965 live recording, Bells, is directly comparable to the conflagration with which Hendrix concludes ‘Third Stone From The Sun’. There is a similar melée at the end of I ‘Don’t Live Today ‘where once again Hendrix abandons traditional guitar picking and fretting for manipulation of electric amplified distortion and feedback while the bass continues the song’s main riff pattern and the drums cut loose from keeping any specific metre in spectacular fashion. On the original 1967 LP release the savagery of this passage’s attack was mitigated by Hendrix’s fading up and down of the music track so as to deliver the occasional laconic spoken line. In the past decade earlier mixes of this track have come to light on the collectors’ circuit where this free-for-all is presented in full and with no vocal overdubs. Its exuberant intensity is overwhelming, its musical invention remains as fresh as the day it was played. The Experience was outstripping everybody else out there in doing what was done on these tracks. What was unique about Hendrix’s achievement was that he managed to do this within a popular music format that stood very much at the heart of the rock, blues and R&B tradition of the day. This unique juggling act, as well as the adventurousness of the audiences of the day, allowed Hendrix to quickly build a phenomenal popular support and public profile that was sustained for the rest of his short career. This was a fantastic position to be in, and one that even the most popular jazz musicians of the day – Miles Davis or John Coltrane – could only dream of. As for the likes of Albert Ayler and those who populated the avant-garde in his wake, their musical stature seemed to be reflected only in inverse proportion by popular acceptance or approval. What is interesting about all this interlinking of music and day-to-day careers is that, while Hendrix quite likely felt the green light for his own casting off of the musical chains through his checking out of the wilder shores of jazz at this time, no-one in the jazz scene quite knew how to deal with what Hendrix was laying down. It would be years before his message was digested and re-interpreted in a coherent way by the jazz firmament. It’s also worth pointing out that the earliest attempts to do so came not from American musicians, but from European ones, who had a much longer history of fusing different forms and genres together. John McLaughlin, for example, was extending the sonic boom long before he left England for New York, Miles Davis and Tony Williams. And after all, Hendrix himself had to leave the US to get a deal that would for the first time allow him to front a band and express himself to appreciative audiences. Source: http://www.pacosvillage.com/articles/archi...003/hendrix.htm

"You're lucky to be here, Spalding, you're lucky to be alive!"

Thanks very much. Based on the positive recommendations for "New Africa," I've decided to check this out. I was able to find a used copy on amazon.

One old album that I've always been curious about is Grachan Moncur's "New Africa" (1969). I see that it can be special-ordered as an import (French?). I wonder if anyone who has the album (either as LP or CD) would care to comment on the session. How does it compare to Moncur's other work? To Moncur's work with Archie Shepp? Also, I understand that there is a second Moncur session the most recent CD reissue and any comments on it would be welcome also ( "Aco dei de Madrugada"). Is this material of Moncur's work worth going out of one's way to pick up? Is it really pick-up-able on CD anyway? Or only as an LP? Thanks.

I grew up listening primarily to classical and folk music, which is what my parents have always preferred. Later I got into pop and rock from listening to the radio and buying 45s. I got into jazz slowly at first, mostly by listening to jazz shows on public and college radio, but took the big plunge in my last year of college when I decided to really learn about jazz. I borrowed as many jazz tapes and CDs as I could from people in my dorm and other people I knew on campus and then started doing my own research at the college music library. The first jazz players I checked out were Miles, Trane, Monk, Bird, Mingus, Chet and Getz, I think.

That Guardian piece is very funny! Thanks for sharing it.

A comment about Chris Welch's book on Yes, which Bev mentioned: I read the book and recommend it as well. Unfortunately, his section on Yes in the studio during 1972-1974 seems to me problematic. He quotes the negative views of several band members regarding "Close to the Edge" and "Tales," without providing any alternate points of view (positive views) from other band members who are being implicitly (or perhaps explicitly, I don't have the book to hand) criticized. It seems to me that a split developed in the group during that period. Certainly the fact that both Bufford and Wakeman ended up quiting shows that there were significant internal strains. Now perhaps there is some truth to the allegations that the albums in question were primarily made up of fragments and left-overs from inconclusive sessions, but it seems to me an exageration to suggest that engineer Eddie Oford (spelling?) created them in the editing room. Still, I'm not saying one should necessarily accept the version of events presented in Jon Anderson's liner notes for "Tales," for instance, which suggests that he and Steve Howe knew what they were doing the whole time and that it came out exactly the way they planned from the beginning. Perhaps there is a bit of truth in both accounts... In any case it seems to me that what really matters is the final product, the albums. A lot of Yes fans enjoy them, even if there is some disagreement about their relative merits. However, by reporting negative views of the production of the albums outside of a broader context, it seems to me that Welch does the albums and the group a disservice. After all, if you are a fan of Yes and you read Welch's book, are you going to want to check out albums that some members of the band trashed in the pages of an otherwise rather adulatory biography?

You're welcome, Jazzbo. While on the topic of Yes and Progressive Rock, I wonder if anyone read Bill Martin's book on Yes (1) and if they did, did they also read his more general work about progressive rock and what did they think of it? I read the Martin book on Yes and while I did not like everything about it, it is the only book about Yes that I have read that takes "Tales" seriously and it helped me to learn to appreciate that album. (1) Music of Yes: Structure and Vision in Progressive Rock (Feedback - The Series in Contemporary Music) by Bill Martin (2) Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock, 1968-1978 (Feedback (Chicago, Ill.), V. 2.) by Bill Martin

I bought the Rhino Remaster of "Tales from Topographic Oceans" and must say I was impressed. It is quite an improvement over previous Western remasters (I can't speak for anything available in Japan), as are all the other reissues from the excellent Rhino Yes series. "Tales" especially benefits because it sounded a bit muddy on CD in the past. I know it's a rather controversial album and many people hate it, but I was never in that camp personally. It's not my favorite Yes album by any means (I like "Fragile" and "Close to the Edge" best), but I've always been willing to give it a fair shake and certainly now that I have the Rhino version I like it better. Even more interesting are the early rehearsal/out-takes that are included as a bonus on the second disc. The singing is a little off-mike and under-rehearsed but the band are on fire, often provided more inspiring instrumental performances than on the official takes. By the way, this is also true for "Relayer," the follow-up to "Tales," as it has also been improved by remastering and also has some good out-takes with a lot of energy.

After having ignored them for years, I checked out XTC's post-"Skylarking" material a few years ago (around 2001, although I can't really recall..)...My favorite is probably "Oranges and Lemons," although I'm quite fond of the rather underrated follow-up "Nonsuch" too. Based on my experience at the time, I think it can be rather hard to find on CD these days. As for the most recent pair of "Apple Venus" and "Wasp Star": I like a lot of the songs but don't find that the albums flow the way the earlier ones did. Perhaps with the group narrowed down to a duo it's just not the same. In any case, I often find myself pulling the two new albums out to play individual tracks rather than playing the albums all the way through. Over all, I like most of "Apple Venus" and my two favorite songs on "Wasp Star" are "You and the Clouds will still be Beautiful" and "Church of Women."

Did anyone else catch the Curtis Fuller 70th Birthday Band at Blues Alley in Washington, DC? They were in town Friday and Saturday nights and I caught the 8:00 show on Friday. I don't know if this is part of a tour or not, but the group included Curtis on trombone, Wallace Rooney on trumpet, Javon Jackson on tenor, John Hicks on piano, a young bassist named Michael Bowie and Carl Allen on drums. They played "The Clan" (tune by Curtis from "Soul Trombone," on Impulse), "Good Bait," "Caravan," "Arabia" (from "Mosaic" on BN) and Hicks played a piano solo which I think was "Passion Flower," but I'm not positive. This was the first time I'd heard any of these musicians except Hicks, who often plays the same club with his own groups (the time I saw him he was with Bobby Watson). I enjoyed the choice of tunes, many of them associated in one way or another with Curtis' days with the Jazz Messengers... In fact, I believe that everyone in the band except the bassist and drummer played with Art Blakey at one time or another. I suppose one could say that Curtis didn't play a lot and that it was really just a pick-up band, but I thought it was great hearing such old style hard bop live, something I'd never really had a chance to do before. Anyone else check this group out?

Since it was mentioned, I'd just like to add that I haven't seen the new book itself in any book store. That was why I started the thread. I did manage to find the table of contents on line, but it only mentioned the big names (the ones I already mentioned), so I really don't know if it covers other lesser well known players. If I find the book and am able to browse it I will certainly report back. I would certainly hope the books does talk about more than the big names and it would certainly make the book more interesting to me. Regarding Leitweiler, I have his book too and enjoy it, although there are places where I have no idea what he thinks about specific albums and musicians that he mentions. Just as an example, to this day I don't know if his comments about Wayne Shorter and Wayne's work with Miles are meant to be taken as positive or negative. Some of them seem to be negative, but it's hard to tell. What I do like about the book though is it has broad coverage of the music and more importantly it was written during the LP era and so he often discusses material which has not come out on CD.

Lately I've been seeing ads for a new book about jazz called "Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties" by Scott Saul. Based on the table of contents, it seems to cover Mingus, Max Roach, Coltrane and some others (Albert Ayler? Cecil Taylor? Ornette?). Has anyone checked this book out and if so what do they think of it? While the book seems to be mostly about the New Thing, I believe there is a chapter at the end about Hard Bop.

I know this may sound strange, but Archie Shepp is one of those artists who I don't like for themselves but for the company they keep. I have most of his 1960's Impulse dates and a few others not on Impulse because his sidemen include Grachan Moncur, Roswell Rudd, Marion Brown, Beaver Harris,Don Cherry, John Tchaicai (spelling?) and other infrequently recorded players from that era. But as for Shepp's soloing itself, it's never done anything for me, although I will grant that some of the tunes he wrote are interesting and the arranging he did on his albums often contains some very nice ensemble work. That said, I would say the two albums I enjoy the most are "4 for Trane," and "The Way Ahead."

The second and third clips sound a lot like a track on Herbie's "Sextant " album, "Hornets," I think. Is it possible that he reused that theme for the soundtrack album? That remark aside, I would say that anyone who enjoyed these samples and does not already have "Sextant" would be advised to check it out.

Just to clarify what I said about Porter's chapter on 1965-67, I agree that the music itself is hard to analyze or talk about either through musicology or poetics, and Porter is a brave and adventerous researcher for having approached that period at all, but as a person who also enjoys a historical/discographical approach (best example of it is Jack Chambers' "Milestones" in my opinion, even if the book as a whole is not perfect in other respects), I like to hear the basic facts, at least as they are known. While it is true, as I said, that all the facts are not necessarily currently known about Trane's work in the studio during 1966-67 (how many times?, what compositions were recorded?, how many are lost?, how many are with the Coltrane family?, etc), it seems to me that Porter could have at least summarized what is known about Trane's recording activities during 1965-67 based on the discography he helped put out and the tracks that have been released in one form or another. It makes for an interesting story, when you think about it...Trane was recording seemingly non-stop in 1965 and then in 1966 he slowed down...Was he sick most of the time? Was he consolidating what he had learned in the previous year? Was he not happy with the results? On a related note, I found it odd that in his essay in the booklet of the double-disc version of "A Love Supreme," John's son Ravi lists the composition "After the Crescent" as coming from its original Lp release "To the Beat of a Different Drummer" without naming that Lp's current CD incarnation "Dear Old Stockholm." That one had me stratching my head for a while until I did some cross referencing of 1965 sessions on David Wild's site.