sidewinder

Pretty comprehensive and covering all the main bases, plus quite a few obscure sessions. Harry recorded with pretty well everyone over the years. I could have done with a bit more coverage of his life and career - much of it reads like lots of gig and LP reviews taken from old publications but having said that, there is a lot of detail in there, especially about the main LP releases and the BBC sessions. A labour of love for sure and Harry comes across as a lovely guy. I think the book is now sold out - at least on the Jazz in Britain website. They can’t have printed that many copies ! By the way - ‘Joy Unlimited’ has just been reissued by Cadillac on CD. The story was that the master tapes are lost so must be an LP lift. Great that it is back out there after all these years, one of Harry’s best sessions.

I picked up a copy of that DVD at the NYC Downtown Music Gallery years ago. It has been gathering dust - must rewatch. Quite interesting, as I recall.

Both of the Julian Priesters, Kenny Wheeler’s ‘Music For Large and Small Ensembles’, ‘Deer Wan’, Widow in the Window’, the Azimuths, Jarrett’s ‘At the Deer Head Inn’ and Dave Holland’s ‘Extensions’.

I hear they are already on the case..

I’m only sad that they won’t be touring this stuff as planned, this Summer.

They absolutely nail ‘Emperor March’ on this one. A classic.

Fopp Covent Garden is probably their main Central London outlet these days - and that place is a shadow of what it was in the 2000s. Romford in Nth London. Yeah...right.. Over the years I’ve found the Bath store to be a useful outlet. They have a half decent rack of CD jazz and their vinyl selection isn’t too bad either.

Fictional CD

You are probably right - these might have been ‘pending’ in the back room for a while awaiting putting out on Fri 31st. The same thing would have been done with the Charles Tolliver, which I was also surprised to see on display. Having said that, HMV always seem to have good stock of the major Gearbox release. Too bad that big HMV Oxford St. closed up shop. I thought another branch had opened up nearer to Bond St?

Gearbox CD

What is equally odd is that that one HMV store had a couple of copies, yet the CD is not listed on HMV’s site. I wonder if anyone has had any success at other UK HMV stores?

No problem !

Just giving it a spin - musically it is prime Monk Quartet live and the sound is more than passable considering it was recorded on cassette by the school janitor ! They have done some good sound restoration work on this, with the atmosphere captured nicely. A nice informative booklet and replica school concert poster completes the package. The essay mentions some confusion/disagreement between Danny Sher and Jules Colomby over manager fees after the concert so maybe that is impacting the US release? Or maybe not - as most reports state that Columbia/Sony threw the spanner in the works.

I’m expecting mine to spontaneously combust any minute..

‘Connect’ is definitely a winner. Tolliver plays with conviction and style and his compositions are soulful and first rate, Williams is his usual rock solid groove on bass, Lenny White full of fire and pianist Keith Brown, for me probably the unexpected standout. Jesse Davis excellent too. A real ace card by adding ‘local’ Binker Golding on two tracks - fits in brilliantly and plays with passion, really digging in. A winner all round. (Sorry if all that sounds a bit ‘Dusty Groove’ but it is good !)

Managed to pick up the CD of ‘Palo Alto’ at HMV this morning. They had a spare Gearbox CD of the Charles Tolliver too so I am a happy bunny.

Even better - I’ll see if I can grab the new Tolliver too. Cheers ! I was in Bath last Saturday too. Very odd to be there when the place isn’t over-run on a Saturday. Unprecedented.

Thanks for that - I’ll do a recce in that very store tomorrow.

Apple, stereo

There are some occasional goodies on the ‘6 Music Live Hour’. Ken Hyder’s Talisker in concert was on that one a couple of weeks ago. The ‘Freak Zone’ used to do obscure British Jazz but they don’t seem to be into that these days. Gideon Coe played a Charles Tolliver track last night I think ! Cerys Matthews also regularly throws in some hard bop or soul jazz.

I saw her at what was the Montreal Bistro/Cafe des Copains in Toronto about 30 years ago. A superb performance.

Blast from the past - the SX-650 was the first receiver that I ever owned, bought in 1979. Still in use with another family member - I used it with a Dual turntable and Mission speakers.

Yes, I saw that band too but slightly later. They played some of the material from ‘Horizon’.

Looks like a CD ! The 2LP version from this ‘40th Anniversary’ set. It definitely benefitted from a VPI clean. Sonics would pass muster against an original issue (it is from the same analogue master as the original, apparently).