Mark Stryker

Coda: One of my favorites in the series is by my old friend John Campbell. Here' he swings the hell out of Just Friends toggling between keys. .

Here's the story of how the Maybeck series got started as reported in the San Francisco Examiner in 1992. Joanne Brackeen deserves the credit for the initial inspiration, but Jefferson -- reluctantly at first -- soon recognized the opportunity. Interesting stuff. --- "One pianist who responded to the Maybeck mystique was Joanne Brackeen, an old friend of Whittington's who was scheduled for a Bay Area concert in June 1989. Trying out the hall the afternoon of her nighttime gig, Brackeen; was so excited about it that she i phoned her record-label boss, Carl Jefferson of Concord Jazz Records, and insisted that her upcoming album be recorded at Maybeck that night. Jefferson, though he had not yet visited the hall, agreed without really believing it could be done on such short notice. But engineers Bud Spangler and Ron Davis, accustomed to live recording for the See's Candy jazz series on Sunday nights on KJAZ, brought digital audio equipment in at 5 p.m. and taped the session. The results of Brackeen's excited pianistics on Maybeck's Yamaha S400B small concert grand reportedly exceeded even Jefferson's no-compromise reputation for audio excellence. Brackeen's 'Live at Maybeck Recital Hall' became the first in a series of Concord issues honoring the format." --- A quick Detroit-related footnote: The Bud Spangler cited in the story is the Detroit-bred drummer, radio producer/broadcaster and audio engineer who appeared on a few Strata LPs and was the guy responsible for broadcasting some of the Strata Concert Gallery concerts on WDET public radio, including the Mingus appearance that was recently released commercially. He's also the uncle of the Detroit drummer and Organissimo board member RJ Spangler.

"Detroit is dominating American musical life at the moment." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/07/what-does-it-mean-to-reimagine-an-orchestra-season

Thanks

Many thanks.

Bumping to ask if anyone has heard the recent Tone Poet issue of Minor Move and whether the cymbal distortion that pops up at times on earlier issues, most prominently on “Star Eyes,” remains audible.

"When Leary noticed that Ferguson's face was glowing like an electric toaster, he decided to join them."

I learned about Dave as a by-product of following his son, Matt -- a film/TV critic and author -- on Twitter. A few years ago, Matt sent me several of his father's recordings. He was the real deal and his personality came through the music. There has been a lot of tragedy in Matt's family. He lost his wife recently to cancer, and I think that she might have been the second spouse he's outlived. Now his father. Matt has chronicled a lot of this on social media -- surely a form of therapy for him. I wish him and his children peace.

That was my first thought too ... if you go to YouTube and search “Ernie Andrews” and “West Coast Blues” it comes up.

Anybody know anything about this Riverside 45 issue of West Coast Blues? (B side is Candy.) Can’t find any discographies details. Harold Land recorded the tune in 1960 with Wes for Riverside cousin Jazzland so one possibility is that it’s from that session, but the tenor on the single does not sound like Land to me. In fact, it sounds more like Yusef, but maybe the tempo and studio are playing tricks on my ear.

Spyro Gyra's "Morning Dance" is better than you probably remember. So are Bob James' four CTI dates.

FWIW, Botti when to Indiana University (David Baker), same age group there as Robert Hurst, Ralph Bowen,

The audio from the British TV show of Nov. 6 has surfaced on YouTube.

OK, so there are three total Sonny/Max tracks from this concert -- Love Walked In, Lover, Poinciana -- that have found their way into the world via various recordings in various combinations. Yes? FWIW, I heard a pitch corrected version of "Lover" at one point -- not sure if it was done privately or if it was taken from release that's out there. In any case, Sounds is back on tenor and the track runs about three minutes longer than the one on which Sonny sounds like he's playing alto.

Not sure why the cover says 1963, but these recordings were made November 12, 1966, in Graz. I don't have this issue, but I assume the "untitled" piece is "Lover," which I have heard. I think there are two additional songs, "Poinciana" and "Love Walked In." Can anyone confirm the set list?

Max’s bio is a project I’ve been mulling seriously. I’ve made some necessary inquiries, but nothing to report yet.

Not to derail the thread, but I’m the president of the Frank Strozier fan club. Carry on ...

I haven't seen this piece, but confused by the Strozier reference. Fairly certain Frank was black -- VERY light-skinned but still identified as black. Went to the same segregated high school in Memphis as the other greats of that era like Phineas Newborn, George Coleman, Booker Little etc.

Can't recall if I mentioned this earlier, but I bought Sonny Rollins' "A Night at the Village Vanguard" in a cutout bin at a K-Mart store about a mile (as the crow flies) from my house.

There was definitely a BN mystique by 1977-78 when I started buying records in earnest. It was passed on to me by the hip cat who worked at the best local record store, my brother who was seven years older and into jazz and picking up records by Dexter, Freddie, Herbie, Rivers, etc. on the label, and it was perpetuated by musicians in interviews and certain writers who, even if they didn't use these words exactly, clearly revered the label's track record.

Yes to all of this. I never had "Our Thing" until it was reissued in the 1980s on LP when Blue Note was reactivated. I had heard about "Unity" for years before one guy in my circle managed to cop a cassette from someone c. 1985. "Shades of Redd." "True Blue" "Hubcap," "A New Jazz Conception," "Happenings," Leapin' and Lopin," "Sonny Clark Trio," all of the Lee Morgan BN dates before "The Cooker" -- these were all super scarce because they went out of print so fast.

I can't even count the number of Blue Notes I bought as cutouts while in high school, 1977-81, in Bloomington, Indiana. They were all 70s United Artists pressings (either White or Black b) and while in recent years I've replaced many of them with earlier and better pressings, I still have a lot of them from that era. Most I bought from a hip record store where an older cat (trumpet player) who worked there took a shine to my enthusiasm and started calling me when new batches would come in. But in a not unrelated note, I bought Sonny's "A Night at the Village Vanguard" at a fucking K-Mart! Coda: My Dexter pick from the decade is Swiss Nights Vol. 1.

My dad had 78s of Billie Holiday ("Strange Fruit" & "Fine and Mellow"), Bird & Dizzy ("Salt Peanuts" & "Hot House"), Benny Goodman ("Body and Soul" & "Benny's Boogie"), Coleman Hawkins/Chocolate Dandies ("Smack" & "Dedication"), Dodo Marmarosa (!) with Lucky Thompson on the Atomic label, and stuff by Kenton, Basie, Nat Cole and others. I've got all of these now. Don't play 'em -- my turntable won't play 78s and they're fairly worn anyway -- but I look at them every once and while and give thanks that they helped get me off on the right foot when I discovered them around age 9.

Until reading this obituary, I never knew that the classical scholar Maynard Solomon, who wrote landmark psychologically driven biographies of Beethoven and Mozart, was a co-founder of Vanguard Records https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/arts/music/maynard-solomon-dead.html