sidewinder

Tony Kinsey - 94 Phil Nimmons - 98

And not forgetting Benny Golson - 92 and Dame Cleo Laine - 94

Followed by - on vinyl

LP set Also on LP -

Regarding Tracey’s influences - I hear more of Duke than Monk in Tracey’s playing and the Tracey bio backs that up.

‘Night of the Cookers’ ?

It’s a half-hour suite. Not typical of much of the rest of the set, which concentrates on Nucleus, but an unexpected bonus. Too many versions of ‘Snakehip’s Dream’ for my liking though. One or two would be enough !

A number of books have quoted Tracey’s story on this - and I think I recall him mentioning it on TV. What he basically said was that in general the visitors to Scott’s when he was leading the house trio were a delight to play with but with these two musicians (plus Getz I think) the on-stage vibe and attitude was extremely unpleasant - deliberately so. Great professional that he was, Stan put up with it and put two fingers up in return in his interplay. Getz of course, true to form. Didn’t Ronnie say he nearly broke his back bending backwards for Stan Getz?

CD4 - Gordon Beck’s ‘The Dream’ suite.

So far the major ‘find’ for me has been the broadcast of Gordon Beck’s ‘The Dream’ suite on CD4 for the ‘Jazz In Britain’ programme, with Norma Winstone and John Taylor. Really good adventurous stuff - and a shame it wasn’t worked into a studio LP release at that time. Not standard Nucleus fare, I guess.

Bad attitude from these visitors to the resident trio - which was very subtly reciprocated in the accompaniment by Tracey by way of payback.

The Shorty Rogers material also on CD1 of the Mosaic set. My first copy of that was on cassette tape ! Still have it somewhere.

You are probably right on that one. BBC Radio 4 has a ‘Profile’ programme about him currently. One of the speakers tried to interview Sanders and didn’t get much - although he was charming apparently. A man of few words ! Every time I’ve seen him in clubs he didn’t hang around front stage.

Some good Lucky Thompson photos in the book - taken at the original club in Gerard St. Stan Tracey had some scathing things to say about the attitude of both Don Byas and Lucky Thompson. Not detailed in this book but stated by him elsewhere. You might be referring to the much earlier Kitty Grime book, which had Scott on the cover. Quite a different book but Redfern contributes photos to that one too. Indeed, his photos were all over the walls of the club itself.

Looking at the Bill Evans itinerary covering 79-80 in the La Barbera book he seemed to have got as far as Stuttgart for one gig and one late-arranged private party in Germany at the end of the ‘80 tour but not Austria. Quite a few appearances in Italy though. I think Wim Wigt had a hand in putting the dates together. Anyway, I digress....

Digging through this large format photo tribute bought years ago and which came out around just before Pete King handed over. Full of great shots by David Redfern, Val Wilmer and Alan Titmuss. Added bonus - final page photo of singer Gwyneth Herbert nicely signed by Gwyneth herself, which I wasn’t previously aware of. So many great artists in this book.

First reactions on this set after listening to the first 2 CDs - very nice. Maybe not for the Carr/Nucleus ‘newbie’ but fans will be pleased with this set. About 3 hours of the music were supplied from BBC sources, with much of the rest collector FM airchecks which have been expertly remastered. A couple of the early sessions e.g. from John Peel’s ‘Top Gear’ in 1970 sound to be from lowish fi but quite acceptable AM recordings with the occasional dropout but any sonic issues are outweighed by the music. There’s a noticeable stretching out of solos (more so than on the LP releases from the band) and sense of adventure which makes these radio sessions an important listen. Even 2CDs in it is thumbs up from me on this one - like the Barbara Thompson set, an important release. Interesting that some of the audio was also supplied from the collectors archive of the guys at ‘Jazz In Britain’. Best available sources seems to have been tapped. Fun to hear Spedding and Carr doing their ‘vocal bit’ on the CD1 ‘Sounds of the 70s’ Radio 1 session from 1970. Maybe after a mainstream singles hit to get them on TOTP? (‘1916’ with b-side ‘Ballad of Joe Pimp’ perhaps?)

The McCoy group I saw was best in 80/81, to this day one of the very best performances I’ve ever witnessed. It was incendiary. Subsequent to that I saw his trio quite a few times in the 80s and then into the 90s and beyond. Always thoroughly enjoyed it but always thought that some of the modal fire left after 1985-ish. McCoy also seemed to feature more standards and less of his own compositions I think.

There was strict Retail Price Control in the shops until the latter part of the 70s, at which point some enlightenment from this nonsense finally started to appear and they were done away with. It encouraged the rise of e.g. home goods discount warehouses such as Comet, which offered half way competitive offerings. Remember getting my first music centre that way !

Have that one ready on the back-burner after Joe La Barbera’s book !

That pricing policy rings a distant bell with me - I can remember some stores labelling LPs with a price code e.g ‘L’ and then putting the prices on a notice above the rack. There again, that might have been necessitated by rampant inflation. I don’t think this MCA series was in common distribution - unlike the Savoy, Prestige and Blue Note reissue series - and the Atlantic ‘That’s Jazz’. Probably too obscure for most stores.

Thanks - yes, that is the one I was thinking of. Don’t recall seeing them here in the 70s. Maybe they percolated across in slow time by osmosis !

Another box that I need to dust off during these hols !

Covers the period when Joe and Alphonso were both in Chuck Mangione’s group.

Season’s Greetings too !