Brownian Motion

I'd like for them to reissue the Commodore catalogue again, this time on CD. Whoever currently has rights to Commodore isn't doing squat with it.

Yes, I know about those. Thank you. One of the recordings that got me interested in jazz was Django's recording of Avalon, with Briggs on trumpet. My father had the 78. Briggs hot lyrical trumpet solo sounded so much like Bill Coleman that I thought it was Coleman for five years, until Prestige reissued it in the late 1960s and I learned the truth. I'm interested in Briggs because he was a talented swing trumpet player, as his recordings attest, whose career has been all but hidden from American jazz fans. I think I own most of his pre-WWII Paris recordings. I have no idea how well his spirited style survived his internment, but I would be interested to know.

Most of us probably have favorite recordings that are off the radar screen to the preponderance of jazz listeners. A case in point: The Modern Jazz Society Presents a Concert of Contemporary Music, "supervised" by John Lewis and featuring Lucky Thompson, Stan Getz, J.J. Johnson, Tony Scott, and Aaron Sachs. This 1955 recording has been a favorite of mine since I bought it in reissue in the 1960s. It is the first recording in a wonderful series of recordings of what later became known as "Third Stream", an attempt to fuse elements of formal European music with jazz. It features inspired compositions from John Lewis and J.J. Johnson and outstanding solo work from the jazzmen involved. This was reissued by Verve four years ago with a pair of rehearsal takes and a partial rehearsal take added on, but it went quickly out of print. But it is great music that should be heard by all.

Does anyone have any information about the pianist Ray Stokes, who appeared on a few jazz records in Europe in the 1930s?

Thanks Brownie. I had a feeling you'd have the answer!

Does anyone have information on whether trumpeter Arthur Briggs ever recorded again after WWII?

Andy Fitzgerald played on a Coleman Hawkins Signature date in 1943 and held his own in some very fast company.

Do you have a favorite alternate take? A take that either contrasts sharply with the more familiar first issued take, or even surpasses it? For example: I Surrender Dear by the Chocolate Dandies, recorded for Commodore in 1940. Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, and Benny Carter in the front line. An alternate take was issued in the 1970s on Atlantic Records that is to my ears, by virtue of its extraordinary Roy Eldridge solo, superior to the originally issued take. Still a third take of the same tune from the same session is also floating around, but, because Hawk gets lost in the middle of his solo, it is distinctly inferior to the other two takes.

This paragraph really jumped out at me: The vaults of modern jazz labels of the '50s and '60s, originally aimed at a more sophisticated LP listeners, have been luckier. The famous modern jazz vaults of Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Pacific Jazz and others are mostly intact, a condition largely due to the beliefs of the original owner of the importance of the music, and the respect accorded the material by the companies which later bought the catalogue.

Here they are, David. Timeless CBC1051

I really appreciate the BMG heads-up. Went to the website, noticed I had 4 free CDs, so I picked up Horace, a Wes Montgomery with Milt Jackson, Sketches of Spain, and Kiss and Tell by Martin Taylor. Postage is ridiculous, but "free" is a decent price.

I don't relish being the contrarian, but I disagree about this set. The Buck-Sweets sides are boring, and including alternate takes merely prolongs the boredom. The Red Allen sides demonstrate that Norman Granz did not understand how to effectively and imaginatively utilize this great swing trumpeter, saddling him with mostly dismal dixie warhorses like Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey and Bourbon Street Parade. Only on James P. Johnsons lovely Snowy Morning Blues does Red meet a tune worthy of his talents. It should also be mentioned that the other front-line musicians here, Herb Flemming and Buster Bailey, contribute little to the session. The Eldridge sides are the best things here, but be forewarned: they have been dubbed off a record, not off the master tapes.

Guy has balls.

I'll bet.

I can't claim to know Peanuts' work in any kind of detail, but the sides that spring to my mind are the French sides that he, Mel Powell, Bernie Privin, Carmen Mastern, and Ray McKinley (all members of the Glenn Miller Orchestra at the time) made in Paris beginning in January of 1945, shortly after liberation. Peanuts plays well on these sides on both clarinet and tenor sax; it's always a pleasure to hear Mel Powell; and Django drops by to add his special luster to four titles. Because these sides have historical significance I've always valued them highly, perhaps more highly than they deserve judged strictly as jazz.

Wow! Go, Martina! I'll second that!

Ignore this post.

Howard Solomon, 75, Owner of Famed Village Nightclub, Dies By JESSE McKINLEY Published: June 16, 2004 [H] oward Solomon, the mild-mannered owner of the Cafe au Go Go nightclub in Greenwich Village who became an unlikely First Amendment crusader when he was arrested with the comedian Lenny Bruce on obscenity charges in 1964, died on June 3 at his home in Crestline, Calif. He was 75. The cause was a heart attack, said his son Jason Solomon. At the height of the 1960's music scene, Mr. Solomon's basement club on Bleecker Street played host to dozens of influential music stars, including John Lee Hooker, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, B. B. King, the Blues Project, Stan Getz and Joni Mitchell. Renowned for its fine brick-wall acoustics and groovy coffee concoctions (no alcohol was served), the club was the site for numerous recordings, both official and bootlegged, particularly of the blues performers who favored the club. But perhaps no performance was better remembered than Mr. Bruce's appearance on April 3, 1964, just two months after the club's opening. Mr. Bruce, who had already been charged with obscenity and narcotics charges in California and obscenity charges in Chicago, was arrested before he even hit the stage for his 10 p.m. slot. Mr. Solomon and Elly Solomon, then his wife, joined Mr. Bruce in handcuffs. They soon learned that vice officers had attended and recorded two of Mr. Bruce's shows at the cafe earlier in the week to make their case. Mr. Bruce, then 38, pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on $1,000 bail. Mr. Solomon, then 35, was charged with allowing an obscene act to be performed in his club; he also pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance. The next day, Mr. Bruce returned to the cafe and played to a partisan crowd, who watched him gently thumb his nose at authority by spelling out the dirty words in his act rather than pronouncing them. Still, three days later, Mr. Bruce was again arrested on obscenity charges. The case went to trial that summer before a three-judge panel in Criminal Court. The defense for Mr. Bruce, who was ill with pleurisy, called more than a dozen artists and critics to the stand to defend his act and Mr. Solomon's right to present it, but to no avail. On Nov. 4, 1964, the panel reached a guilty verdict, voting 2 to 1 against both Mr. Bruce and Mr. Solomon; Ms. Solomon was acquitted. Mr. Bruce was later sentenced to four months in jail, while Mr. Solomon faced a $1,000 fine or 60 days in jail. Both men continued to fight the convictions in court, though Mr. Bruce's fight ended in August 1966, when he was found dead in Hollywood Hills, Calif., of a morphine overdose. He was 40. Mr. Solomon won an appeal in 1965, and in February 1968 his conviction was overturned by a state appellate court. That decision was later upheld by the New York State's highest court. Mr. Bruce's conviction of criminal obscenity remained officially on the books until last December, when he was granted a pardon by Gov. George E. Pataki. Mr. Solomon sold the Cafe au Go Go in 1969 and moved to Florida, where he worked quietly as a real estate developer in the Coconut Grove section of Miami before retiring to California in the early 1990's. In addition to his son Jason, of West Hollywood, Calif., and his former wife, of Crestline, Calif., Mr. Solomon is survived by another son, Sheppard Solomon, of London; a daughter, Candace Solomon, of New York City; a sister, Iris Poland, of West Palm Beach, Fla.; and a grandson. One of Mr. Solomon's contemporaries, Manny Roth, the onetime owner of the Cafe Wha?, said Mr. Solomon's stand had been an inspiration. "We had crusaders down there, but he wasn't one of them," Mr. Roth said. "But Howard went to bat for Lenny."

The created-late-in-life masterwork of a musician not yet born.

When I first began listening to jazz, around 1960, I could count on my fingers and toes the number of reissues of 1920s, 1930s and 1940s jazz then available on lp. Such peerless and important performers as Hawk, Fletcher Henderson, Bill Coleman, Benny Carter, Earl Hines, Red Allen, Luis Russell, James P. Johnson, and many more were neglected entirely. Today by contrast the riches embarress. Virtually every jazz recording made before 1950 is now on CD, and the career of every important jazz muscian of the early years can be traced in as much detail as his or her recorded legacy permits. So I find it hard to work up much indignation over centennials ingnored. After all, it's really about the music and not the packaging, and happily we've got the music.

I seldom miss a chance to blow Bill Coleman's horn. Bill Coleman, August 22, 2002 Reviewer: moldyfig (see more about me) from State College, PA United States Trumpeter Coleman, strongly influenced by Louis Armstrong, belongs to that generation of jazz musicians (He was born in 1904) who set the standard for instrumental performance in the 1930s. But for the fact that he spent 80% of his career in Europe he would today be one of the icons of early jazz, comparable in stature to Coleman Hawkins, Red Allen, or Benny Carter. Unlike so many of his contemporaries Coleman was a true long distance runner: this date, recorded in England in 1967, finds him in great form, not at all enfeebled by advancing age. Listen to him on the old warhorse "Indiana", a song he must have played a thousand times before this: he effortlessly spins off four hot choruses, sings a couple more (the second scatted and very boppish), and then, after a piano interlude, takes it out with a pair of choruses that are like an instruction manual on swing and swinging. A welcome release.

I loved his recording of Naima, which I enjoyed several times before my cat jumped on the the record while it was playing; that would have been around the mid-1960s. I haven't heard much of him since then.

I like the General's take on this. http://tinyurl.com/33mdu We're not misogynists after all Dear President Hoffman, It's hard being a manly Christian man these days. You have to watch every word you say or you'll be hauled before the PC police. You can't even say something like, "Hey 'cunt,' get me a beer," without people screaming "misogynist." It's funny that it took a Republican woman like yourself to change all that. That's what you did the other day when you said that "cunt" was a term of endearment. I salute you for doing it. Sure, there will be those who will say that you were just cynically covering your butt because your athletic program allowed male football players to use that word to sexually harass a female football player, but anyone who would say that is just a "cunt" anyway. Certainly, no real men, no rugged, manly, Christian individualists are making that argument. That's a debate for women and sissies. It's an argument for "cunts." In any event, it was a brave act on your part--one that is unlikely to win you friends in the academic world. To hell with those who can't grasp what you've accomplished. You've advanced traditional patriarchal values farther than any man could, now it's time to get back into the kitchen. Heterosexually yours, General JC Christian, patriot posted by Gen. JC Christian, Patriot | 12:14 AM

Francoise Gilot. Oceanic Woman. 1986