clifford_thornton

I got it at another shop so I'm sure it's still there! Now, Orkest De Volharding -- s/t -- (De Volharding, NL) excellent album; previously only had the 7", and this is much more full-on.

Don't have much to add -- posted some reminiscences over on the old Zuckerbook -- but I am glad to have been here while he was alive and making music.

Spoke to him once at length about Eric Dolphy -- he seemed like a really swell guy, not to mention a wonderful player. RIP.

Maarten Van Norden/Boy Raaymakers Quintet -- Chicken Song -- (BVHaast, NL) picked this up along with a number of other nice Dutch records on vacation to Amsterdam this last week.

it is fantastic. Makes me think of a solo Lacy record, but transliterated to fingerstyle guitar. Now: Freakwater -- Feels Like the Third Time -- (Thrill Jockey, US)

Duck Baker -- Duck Baker Plays Monk -- (Triple Point, US)

Theo Loevendie Consort -- Chess! -- (BIM/BASF, NL orig)

^ oh yes. Now: Pharoah Sanders -- Tauhid -- (Impulse, red/black labels)

haha, so it's only a grand?

great one

looks like it pops up on eBay and Discogs from time to time, not expensive at all.

you made the right decision.

I interviewed him in 2002 and he was a very kind and yes, self-effacing gentleman. My interactions since then have been similar. He's a good person in addition to being a fantastic musician and artist.

It's probably in the autobiography and my copy is in storage. Was he teaching then, perhaps?

pedal steel guitar with some additional effects.

haha, yes, me too!

Ballads and Virtuosi. They were part of a proposed double LP for ESP.

Yeah, got that too as well as a couple later samplers that were included with The Levitts and a Billie Holiday record.

Mercury (owners of Limelight), Philips/Fontana, and International Polydor were all under one odd roof in the 1960s and early '70s, so technically he did six albums under that umbrella in short succession (although Touching was originally on Danish Debut, so the Fontana is a reissue). That said, the only one that received US distribution was Mr. Joy, though Arista/Freedom did reissue two of the Philips/Fontana/Polydor sessions. Ramblin' was originally done for GTA, an arm of RCA Italy, and that label folded so BYG put it out instead (and Red Record somehow reissued it later in the 70s). Bley did quite a few records for ECM, starting with two albums of archival recordings, and also a number for Soul Note and his own IAI imprint, which he co-ran with his wife, video artist Carol Goss. One of the ECMs and one of the IAIs were supposed to be on ESP, so that would have made four on ESP. So I'm not really of the mind that his releases were that far flung in terms of where they landed, and he did have the creative freedom to do pretty much whatever he wanted in most instances (something that might not have happened on Columbia or Prestige).

Was: Initially, we thought about doing a magazine with a CD inside. I liked the idea of an exclusive anthology album. When I was first learning about jazz in the mid-’60s, there was an album that Impulse! put out called The New Wave in Jazz that had Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, and all these guys, and that’s how I found out about them. I knew Coltrane, but that was my first exposure to Shepp and Ayler. There’s also a label out in New York called ESP that does some pretty radical s**t. They put out an ESP-sampler vinyl that you could buy for a $1.99. It didn’t have whole songs, but it had bits of everything from Sun Ra to William Burroughs to Pharoah Sanders. It was all very extreme music, and that’s how I learned about it.

that looks great. Now: Craig Kupka -- Crystals -- (Folkways, US)

Was it with Heather Leigh?

True, Canadian and Jewish.

Even this?

Yeah, Blue Note did record two Cecil Taylor LPs and they did pretty well (despite being oddly recorded). Cecil is a VERY different artist from Bley and I don't think they were after the same things, not even remotely. Cecil built a much more consistent arc -- I don't think that Bley's recordings, if you go from, say, the Mercury record to the Savoy to Barrage to Blood to Revenge -- these are really quite a zigzag. Bley did work with some amazing reed players, sure: Ornette, Gilmore, Pharoah, Ayler, Giuffre, Marshall Allen -- but trying to put him in an Andrew Hill-like situation just doesn't make sense. Also, Blue Note purposely didn't record white players that often, so... it's kind of a moot point. Not sure why Lion and Wolff are necessary to validate one's career.