Tim McG

My two 5 Disc Sony CD CE275's are just work horses. Cost me next to nothing, too. No frills, no filler, no foolin'...but they do the job.

Well...we bought the cello and the bow and the hard case. It is a beautiful instrument and has a full, round sound with plenty of volume. I figure my son will gain enjoyment for many years to come. Thank you for the help

Spend your money on a great bow. Cello as with Double Bass the bow is more important than the instrument. Go here and look around. With both the bow and the instrument you need to try a bunch of them before you make a choice. If you can arraign to take his instructor along do it. If you haven't asked you may be surprised at how willing s/he is. Buying a good cello or Double Bass is much tougher than buying a factory manufactered instrument. Talk to symphony members near by and get their recommendations as well. Thanks, Bill. In fact, his cello teacher recommended this place in Studio City and will either be there in person or have her friend there. I think we're in good hands What I found most enlightening is the comment you made about the bow being most important. Tell me....why is that? Very interesting concept.

My son is a cellist and we are headed to SoCal this weekend to Studio City where we will be buying him his own cello. I'd like to know the answer to the first question on this thread as it relates to stringed/orchestral instruments. Any help will be most appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Hancock/Shorter/Holland/Blade...saw these guys last night at the Playboy Jazz Festival. Great set...just not geared for the festival-like atmosphere, IMO.

Whatever design you guys come up with...I'd like one. Might I suggest that black as an optional shirt color?

If I lived in NYC, I wouldn't miss it! Mlies Davis is the absolute

Jazz is virtually non-existent in my Little Land O'Enchantment. Even our Smoothie station dried up and blew away. But I can offer you plenty of 'live' Country and Western. Yippee-yo-ki-yay.

Miles Davis...there could be no other. I saw Miles on stage twice in the mid-late 80s. In one concert, he held up signs with things like "Applaud", names of the soloists and various other nose tweaking phrases. It was hilarious The word was he was doing a little "in-your-face" to the Jazz critics who always lambasted him for not facing or talking to the audience. The crowd loved it!

Hey Bev, long time since the JOL daze! Nice to see you here BTW, hotter than a burnt bean in my Little Land O'Enchantment; 88 degrees today. Ack.

Question: Do you guys build these CD racks or buy them somewhere? I'd show a picture of my CD/Record/Tape collection, but, alas, no scanner. I could use some help here...my music collection(s) are like a giant ameoba: moving very slowly, consuming everything in it's path. Linen closet space in my house is a pipe dream...no kidding. TimMc

This appeared in today's LA Times: March 17, 2004 OBITUARIES Chuck Niles, 76; Voice of L.A.'s Jazz Radio By Mitchell Landsberg, LOs Angeles Times Staff Writer Chuck Niles was the voice of jazz radio in Southern California for more than 40 years — and, some might say, its heart and soul. Niles, 76, died Monday night at Santa Monica—UCLA Medical Center of complications from a stroke. He had been on the air until Feb. 25, the day before he suffered the stroke, said Judy Jankowski, president and general manager of KKJZ-FM (88.1), the station where Niles had worked since 1990. He had undergone quintuple bypass surgery in July 2001. Jankowski said that Niles' importance to the station and jazz in Southern California was immeasurable. "He lived and breathed jazz and was a living jazz historian," she said Tuesday. "Chuck had the perfect deejay's attributes — a marvelously mellifluous voice, a great sense of pacing and an innate, cool dude manner," said jazz critic Don Heckman. "But what really made him special was his knowledge and respect for the music, his capacity to present it with the sort of rich communicative understanding that could only have come from someone who, like Chuck, was a musician himself." Niles spun tracks on a succession of jazz radio stations, beginning with the pioneering jazz station KNOB in Los Angeles and ending on KKJZ-FM in Long Beach. More than an announcer, he was a one—man jazz university, introducing the music and its lore to generations of Southern Californians. He also served as an unofficial jazz ambassador, emceeing countless concerts, memorials and other jazz—related events. A former colleague, Ken Borges, once called him "the Vin Scully, the Chick Hearn of jazz." A musician by training, Niles counted many of the jazz greats among his friends, and was the inspiration for several songs, including "Niles Blues" by Louie Bellson and "Be Bop Charlie" by Bob Florence. That song memorialized one of his several nicknames; he also was known as Carlito Niles when playing Latin jazz and Country Charlie Niles during a brief, unhappy stint on a country music station. Few people had less country in them than Chuck Niles. One of the few septuagenarians who could refer to someone as a "cat" without sounding foolish, Niles had a voice that seemed perfectly suited to jazz: a deep, smooth, lilting baritone burnished by a life of cigarette smoking and deployed as a virtual musical instrument. He brought an extraordinary depth of knowledge to his radio broadcasts, which he sprinkled with telling anecdotes, heartfelt tributes and lots of exclamations of "Oh, man!" He could be found many nights at one or more of his favorite jazz nightclubs, soaking up the music and hobnobbing with friends, and his frequent on—air plugs were credited with helping to keep the Southern California jazz club scene alive. Aside from music, his principal passion in life was acting, and his biggest regret was not having achieved greater success on stage or screen. He appeared in many local theatrical productions in the 1950s and '60s, and had a bit part in "Teenage Zombies," which was released in 1958 and eventually won cult status as one of the worst movies ever made. "I was just walking around like Frankenstein, that's all, no lines, just 'gluergugluergu,' and I'm pretty good at that," he recalled in an interview in 2001. The movie, he cheerfully conceded, "was just terrible." Niles was proud to have been awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, although he might have preferred that it be adorned with a camera, not a microphone. Still, he took a journeyman's joy in his radio work and resented anyone who suggested that it was a fallback career. "My line is, 'All I need is my big fat mouth and a microphone,' " he said. "And in addition to that, my line is, 'And there's no heavy lifting.' And so when I say I go to work — that's work? I buy the best earphones, I'm down there . . . I'm enjoying myself! How lucky can you get? I'm not saying I didn't play the blues, because I have played some blues, but I'm still a very fortunate cat." Born Charles Neidel in Springfield, Mass., on June 24, 1927, he eventually adopted the name Niles because he got sick of people calling him "needle," rather than correctly pronouncing his name to rhyme with "idle." He kept Neidel as his legal name. Theater and music were part of his life from his earliest years. His father, a paper salesman, was an amateur actor in local productions. Niles took up clarinet at an early age and played his first paying gig on saxophone at age 15 —in a brothel. "As things went on and on, I started playing more often," he recalled. "I tell you, I was never out of work." In 1945, with World War II nearly over, Niles enlisted in the Navy. The war ended while he was still in basic training in Florida. Niles was sent to San Diego and briefly stationed in the South Pacific. Though largely uneventful, his stint in the military produced some indelible memories. Years later, Niles would recall hitchhiking from San Diego to Hollywood to catch a concert at the Hollywood Palladium, and searching the radio dial for the first sounds of jazz as his ship approached New York Harbor at the end of his service. He even remembered the song that was playing: "Symphony," by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra. After the Navy, Niles returned to music full time, playing alto sax in a jazz band, the Emanon Quartet — "no name" spelled backward. "How hip can you get?" he later mused. They were hip, in Niles' recounting. They wore the hippest clothes: white shirts, pegged pants, blue suede shoes and blue cardigans. They played the hippest music: bebop, which was then revolutionizing the jazz world. Jazz styles would come and go over the next half century, but Niles stayed forever true to the straight—ahead jazz of his youth. Back in Springfield, Niles earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from American International University and, in 1951, landed a job playing music on a local radio station, WTXL. By 1953, growing bored, he drove to Los Angeles. Failing to find work, he drove on to West Palm Beach, Fla., where he quickly found a job on radio station WMVD. He stayed there a year, then did a stint as a television sportscaster and dance show host before another bout of restlessness sent him back to California. It was 1956. This time, he would stay. His first job was on KFOX radio, playing rock 'n' roll—tinged pop that wasn't exactly his style. Next came KHJ-TV Channel 9, where he hosted afternoon movies and the "Strange Lands and Seven Seas" program — "You know . . . some guy goes to Africa, films a herd of elephants, comes back and tells me about it." But his real break came in 1957, when Sleepy Stein recruited him to be an announcer on what claimed to be the first all — jazz radio station in the United States: KNOB, "the jazz knob." (Jazz historian Dan Morgenstern, head of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, said the claim is probably true, but difficult to verify.) Niles stayed there eight years, honing his craft and creating a close bond with the Southern California jazz community. In the meantime, he was pursuing acting jobs and hanging out at the Master's Club, a theatrical club in Hollywood where, he said, he spent "the happiest times of my life." Niles landed roles in regional theatrical productions of "Harvey" and "Dial M for Murder," among others, and played Biff in a summer stock production of "Death of a Salesman." He married in 1964, and though he and his wife, Nancy Neidel, eventually separated, they never divorced and remained on friendly terms. Daughter Tracy Neidel inherited her father's love of music, becoming a pop and blues singer who uses the stage name Tracy Niles. In 1965, Niles left KNOB for KBCA, another all-jazz station that changed its call letters to KKGO in 1979. KKGO switched to classical music in 1990, and Niles left immediately for KLON-FM, the station of Long Beach State University, which had an all-jazz format. The station changed its name to KKJZ in August 2002. There, Niles continued to play the music that he loved, introducing Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Horace Silver, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton and hundreds of other jazz luminaries to yet another generation. A public memorial service for Niles will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Church of the Hills, Forest Lawn Hollywood, 6300 Forest Lawn Drive.

Straight Ahead. See also: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...=0entry135369 Rest in Peace, Chuck.

No charge. Straight Ahead, bay-bee.

If you are so inclined, the family will recieve condolences @ http://www.kkjz.org/

I am very reluctant to report that the greatest and most knowledgable Jazz radio personality ever has died. I cut my Jazz listening teeth on Chuck Niles' radio shows way back in the early 70s on KCBA?/KKGO. I listened almost religiously to the man who taught me more about Jazz than anyone else I have ever met in person. When he turned up on KLON [now KKJZ] at my Alma Mater, I was thrilled beyond belief! Here's a guy that is the Jazzman's Jazz man...actually doing his show on a college station. It was only too obvious to me then that this guy was all about the music. Period. My afternoon LA commute was always made better by his gravely, low-toned, bear of a voice. I am so very saddened to learn of Chuck's passing and even though I have long since left the LA/OC area, I will sorely miss hearing his voice coming through my computer's speakers from KKJZ.org, a wonderful website. This is a huge loss to Jazz and to Jazz fans world wide. He will be mightily missed...Rest in Peace, Chuck. Straight Ahead.

May I suggest a book that might shed some light on this issue? Miles: The Autobiography by Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe. In it you will find some surprizing information regarding heroin use and the musicians who used...among a great many other tidbits of Jazz knowledge about Miles specifically, and other Jazz greats, in general. A must read, IMHO.

Did someone say "speech" ? Well, then... am just all over that one

Congrats, Dan! Welcome to the last real tax write-off in the country...

Your secret's safe with me, BFrank...I won't tell a soul

Wow Great article, BFrank. As I read it, I couldn't help wonder what it would have been like if Stevie Ray Vaughn had been there... [And don't think for a minute I've stopped being jealous that you got to see Hendrix in concert...sheesh.]

I just opened this thread up and sprayed the monitor with my drink...hate Miles Davis??? Wha-?

Hm. I'd like to think everyone is allowed to voice their own opinion...irrespective of how we believe individually. Call me spoiled...

It doesn't matter what you have OR what you listen to as long as you enjoy it! I definately enjoy listening to my favorite music on a quality system as opposed to the crappy boombox in my bathroom, there is a difference. Fair enough.

A euphamism to make a point, my friend. Nothing else.