Mark Stryker

FWIW, Jackie McLean's "New Soil," which was recorded three months earlier, is in a similar bag. The three principals are the same -- McLean, Byrd, Davis -- with different bass and drums.I always think of these records as a pair.

Peak Donald Byrd on that record too,

Exactly. Coda: I always thought the joke at the start of Fat Jazz was the cats "tuned up" and then proceeded to still basically play out of tune. And it's great. I'll go to the mattresses to defend Jackie.One of my greatest heroes. But in a 440 world, he still (often) played sharp as a m.f.

Raw, unfiltered, sugar free.

I noticed this morning that discographies list a version of "Tune Up" recorded at this date that's labeled "unissued." Has a copy of this track ever found its way into the world via legitimate or illegitimate sources?

Many thanks. Had fun putting it together.

This I can handle.

Just so I'm straight, it's ok to be like the Robe Lowe with Direct TV but I should not be like the Rob Lowe with cable? When did the world get so fucking complicated?

I would not like to be like any part of the essence of Rob Lowe. But Tony Bennett? There's part of his essence that I wouldn't mind emulating, though not the vomiting part. Speaking of vomiting, I once saw Richie Cole throw up in a drinking fountain off to the side and back of the bandstand during a set he was playing at a jazz festival in a hotel setting. It wasn't like a lot of puke but it was definitely enough of a taste that nobody was using that drinking fountain after it happened..

Not sure if SGCIM is being facetious or not, but for anyone who hasn't read Benson's autobiography, the passage being referred to does not say Bird killed jazz. Benson is actually making the point that while Bird's innovations did not sit well originally with everyone, ultimately Bird's genius allowed the music to grow in beautiful directions. Benson recalls a post-concert conversation with an audience member, an older gentleman, who says about Bird: "They said he was going to destroy jazz." Then George follows up with: "On the way back to the hotel, I thought about what the man said, what the man felt, what the man believed, and you know what? He was right. Charlie Parker improvised in a sophisticated manner that wasn't appreciated by every jazz ear at the time. He broke the mold, but he broke it in a way that enabled those who study his work to put it together in a new, beautiful manner, with a whole new identity, an identity that brought us to where we are now. And I think we're in a pretty good place"

Thanks, guys.

Don't know this material (hangs head in shame). Is it better than or of a piece with the the 1968 Four/Three Little Words/etc from the same geographic part of the world?

Thanks all for you input.

I wonder if anyone can shed some light on some lingering questions about this well-known material that I'm referencing here under the title of the Columbia 2-LP set that came out in 1977. First, the bassist and drummer. These tracks (well, all but a few) are always credited to Curly Russell and Art Blakey, However, the usually reliable Bird scholar Carl Woideck has written that his ears tell him it's Roy Haynes drums (and perhaps Tommy Potter on bass),It's the drum issue in which I'm most interested. I confess that I have sometimes questioned whether that was really Blakey on at least some tracks, because the drummer has more technique than I associate with Art. On the other hand, some tracks do sound like Blakey. (The performances of Embraceable You and a Cool Blues coupled to 52nd St. Theme are in fact usually credited to Walter Bishop Jr., Potter and Haynes, though the vocalist is sometimes cited as Chubby Newsome and sometimes Jimmy Scott.) Second, the date for this recording is usually given as May or June 1950, but as others, including Ira Gitler, frequently noted, it's almost impossible to believe that Fats Navarro was playing so great so shortly before his death on Feb. 7. An earlier date in 1950 or l949 date would seem more probable. One explanation for discrepancies would be that the performances don't come from just one night at Birdland but from multiple nights and maybe not necessarily all from Birdland, which opened on Dec. 15, 1949. One interesting bit of speculation backing this theory is that Boris Rose was the known source of these tapes, but Rose typically recorded off the radio and none of the programs he relied upon ever broadcast this much material in a single night. So, can anyone ads some facts, enlightened speculation or fresh scholarship to help untangle all of this?

That's incorrect. The Jazz Communicators was a cooperative co-led by -- Freddie, Joe, and Louis. The group played a handful of gigs from late 1967 through 1968 and they almost got some traction. In addition to the 10-day stand at Crawford's in November in 1967 referenced above, the the same line-up played a week at Marty's in Los Angeles in late January 1968 (Leonard Feather reviewed the gig favorably in the LA Times) and what I think was a week at the Both/And Club in San Francisco in early February 1968 (another favorable review in the Oakland Tribune by Russ Wilson). Ralph J. Gleason also mentioned the group as having just formed in a short item in his nationally syndicated column at the start of 1968. The cats were back at Crawford's in July 1968 and in August returned for two weeks to the Both/And in San Francisco. There was also a night at the Washington-Baltimore Jazz Festival in Laurel, MD., where the group subbed for Horace Silver, who according to reports was suffering from arthritis in his fingers. There was also a one-nighter on July 22, 1968 at the Hartford Jazz Festival. The billing reported in the press was Freddie Hubbard and his Jazz Communicators. James Spalding was on that gig rather than Henderson, and the bassist was Juni Booth. All this suggests that on occasion they might have played under the nominal leadership of one guy or another, but the basic band was a co-op. I assume Kenny Barron did all the gigs on piano, but it's possible someone else stepped in at times. The bassist chair was filled at times by Herbie Lewis and at times by Juni Booth. My understanding is the group also played some neighborhood joints around New York, and it may well have played more out of town gigs that I haven't yet tracked down. I remember reading a reference somewhere that they were playing gigs as early as the summer of 1967 but I can't recall exactly where I saw that. Alas, no tapes of any of the band's gigs have shown up. Curiously, there are no commercial recordings that bring together Freddie, Joe, and Louis. They all recorded as twosomes -- Freddie/Joe, Freddie/Louis Joe/Louis -- but never as a threesome. I wonder if they had been able to record under the Jazz Communicators name in 1967-68 whether that would have allowed them to sustain the group.

Thanks much.

Hey, thanks for the heads up. That's one I don't know.

For those who are interested, I wrote up some thoughts about Grossman's complex legacy for Iverson's Do The Math. https://ethaniverson.com/one-that-got-away-steve-grossman-1951-2020-by-mark-stryker/?fbclid=IwAR0OABLoRyM08rjldPu_MmYD0hstSyQlOZwcJuvmiDW6uSCMY4yfHSZPZyg

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/arts/music/black-fire-records.html

Thanks

It is amazing (or maybe not) how after a lifetime of study -- I turned 57 yesterday and have been at this music thing since I was 10 -- that there is still so much to discover.

Gobsmacked to discover Yusef Lateef in a place I never would have expected and which never turned up during my book research. Maybe some of you already knew about Lateef's appearance with Dakota Staton on "Dakota at Storyville," but it was news to me. Let me start at the beginning: About a decade ago, an exceptional local record store in metro Detroit closed. During the closeout sale, I bought some 150 LPs at rock-bottom prices -- in some cases less than $1 a side. A lot of them were by vocalists -- Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Dakota Staton, Bobby Short, Peggy Lee, Gloria Lynne, Lurlean Hunter, Sammy Davis Jr., Eydie Gorme, Tony Bennett, Della Reese, Joe Williams, and others. A friend suggested I open a supper club when he heard about my haul. I've tried to listen to all of them by now, but occasionally I discover that one has slipped by me. I realized last night that I never checked out "Dakota at Storyville" (Capitol), recorded live at the Boston club on April 29, 1961. The cover identifies her accompaniment only as the Norman Simmons Quartet with no further details. Most of you know that Simmons was a pianist who worked with a lot of singers over the years. I started listening to the opening track, "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby," and the tenor sax obbligatos behind the vocal caught my ear immediately. Even before a rollicking saxophone solo erased any doubt, it was already pretty clear that it was Lateef -- there's no mistaking that sound! He also plays flute on some tracks and even pulls out the oboe on "Music, Maestro, Please." I did a little Internet searching and while there are sources here and there that do identify Lateef, the bassist and drummer remain a mystery. Discographies shed no light either. I would love to know who the other cats are and especially how Yusef ended up on the record. I did notice, however, when looking closely at the back of the LP, that the hazy black-and-white drawing of Staton at work includes a saxophonist, and it's crystal clear that it's Lateef's profile --which suggests the drawing was done on site at the club. I can't find an artist credit, but it might be buried in the drawing somewhere. Here's a taste of the music.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/world/canada/oscar-peterson-montreal-little-burgundy.html

This is awful stuff. I missed the Wall Street Journal stories from 2014 in which Rusch was first accused of sexually abusing middle school students when he taught at a private school in Brooklyn in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Rusch confessed to some of the charges in one of the stories. He’s now being sued. If I understand correctly, the suit is only now possible because of a new law in New York that allows for a “look-back” in child sex abuse cases that does away with previous statute-of-limitations restrictions. (Coda: I reviewed records for Cadence early in my career in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.) https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/07/30/three-women-accuse-ex-private-school-teacher-of-sexual-abuse-suit/amp/

Andrew Gilbert is reporting on Twitter: “Universal Music announced last night that ‘Palo Alto,’ the album documenting the 1968 Paly High performance by Thelonious Monk's quartet, has been postponed, with no new release date...I'll post more when I get details.” Confirms what others have noted in real time on this thread, though this suggests some sort of official announcement was made — tho I could be reading that incorrectly and the “announcement” was simply what folks noticed on Amazon.