Pete C

Burnett is also on the Lyons box.

Sony owns the Mainstream catalog, and a few of their titles have been repackaged on Columbia (rather than using the Mainstream imprint)--some Sarah Vaughan & Carmen McRae, but for the most part they're sitting on the catalog which apparently Columbia bought only to acquire the first Big Brother & the Holding Company album with Joplin. Charles McPherson did a couple of nice dates for Mainstream. And McRae & Vaughan were really in their prime during their Mainstream stint. I doubt you'll ever see Sony doing anything with the Mitchell or McPherson dates, but a label like Collectables should really lease them. Mainstream was Bob Shad's label. Shad was the producer of so many great sessions for EmArcy. As far as Xanadu and Onyx are concerned, right now the back door to acquiring the material digitally is through Emusic--I believe they have basically done mp3 rips from pristine lp copies. Better than nothing. As someone mentioned above, 2 excellent Stitt Cobblestones (Tune-Up! & Constellation) ended up on 32 Jazz as Endgame Brilliance, but the Cobblestone catalog had ended up with Muse long before. If I remember correctly, Cobblestone was Schlitten's imprint with Buddah, but I guess he had rights to the catalog, as he brought it over to Muse when he co-founded the label with Joe Fields. Then somewhere along the line Schlitten & Fields had a falling out and Schlitten founded Xanadu, and apparently the Cobblestone masters stayed with Muse.

One of my concert highlights of the year was seeing the Takacs Quartet playing Bartok's Fifth in February. Yum.

A lot of Mahler's melodies, especially in the First Symphony, are taken from folk songs. There's a snippet that one can recognize as having been transformed many years later into the bridge of "If I Were a Rich Man" from "Fiddler on the Roof."

The Verve sessions from December 1952 ("The Song is You" etc.) and July 1953 ("Confirmation," "Now's the Time" etc.) are both excellent and in excellent sound.

If it were in print I'd recommend Vibrations as an essential Ayler recording--such a great quartet: Ayler, Cherry, Peacock, Murray. I agree with the choices of Maeght & Spiritual Unity.

I think the Roost date has been available in the past as bootlegs. Budd Johnson is on those tracks too, right? I seem to remember that "I'll Be Seeing You" was a feature for him. Is Konitz on that material too, or something else?

My favorite version of Black, Brown & Beige is the one on Private Collection Vol. 10, recorded in 1965-66. It's basically all the themes from the original version without the, IMO forced and superfluous, transitional passages that Duke used to make what is essentially a suite into a semblance of a unified large-scale composition in 3 movements. For me the 9 discrete tracks on this version works much better than the concert version. I love Harlem, but as I said above, I don't think of it as a suite. My favorite suites are, Far East Queen's Such Sweet Thunder New Orleans I'm also fond of Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, but it doesn't quite make it to the level of those above. I find Latin American Suite generally disappointing. Liberian & Perfume Suites are both fun too. I don't think I've ever heard Deep South Suite.

Please report on the Bud when you've had a chance to listen. Thanks.

Here's a hypothetical: Let's say Herman Lubinsky were still alive, and still owned Savoy Records. He sees that Jimmy Scott, whom he screwed out of royalties and otherwise screwed big time in many ways is now a hot property. So he issues a CD of Jimmy Scott sides, and based on his old contracts has no intention of paying Scott any royalties. Over in Europe a label issues the same Savoy sides, and the CD is half the price. In both cases Scott will not see a cent. Which CD is the more "moral" purchase: the one from the original label that's been screwing the artist for years, or the one from the label that's only starting to screw the artist? It's really just a food for thought rhetorical question.

The Village Vanguard. Since 1935.

"Harlem," which was mentioned a couple of times is great, but it's not technically a suite.

This recent DVD is very good:

5/4/39 - Paris - Rex Stewart ©, Barney Bigard (cl,d), Django Reinhardt (g),Billy Taylor (B) OSW 63-1 Monmartre Fremeaux FA 309, Affinity AFS 1003, Classics 793, EMI 780671-2, Jazz Time 790560-2, Blue Note CDP 7243837138-2 OSW 64-1 Low Cotton Fremeaux FA 309, Affinity AFS 1003, Classics 793, EMI 780671-2 OSW 65-1 Finesse (Night Wind ) Fremeaux FA 309, Affinity AFS 1003, Classics 793, EMI 780671-2 OSW 66-1 I Know That You Know Fremeaux FA 309, Affinity AFS 1003, Classics 793 OSW 67-1 Solid Old Man Fremeaux FA 309, Affinity AFS 1003, Classics 793, EMI 780671-2 http://www.gould68.freeserve.co.uk/django4.htm

In that case, what you saw was TEST, with Sabir Mateen & Daniel Carter on reeds.

I think if I had to pick one favorite Miles performance/album, period, it would be either the 1967 Paris (No Blues) or Antwerp (His Greatest Concert Ever) concert. Rooster Ties pretty much summed it up. I haven't heard other dates from that tour.

Is there documentation that they did live gigs together?

Hutcherson is still in prime form and all reports I've been hearing for several years are that Moncur's chops are totally shot.

Frank is great. I had the pleasure of seeing him do a solo gig at a little place in my neighborhood in Brooklyn this past winter. It was a really memorable concert.

I was wondering. Obviously the drummer won't be Haynes, or he'd have been announced as a headliner. Will it be a drummer from that era, like Pete LaRoca or Joe Chambers, or a younger guy? I wouldn't be surprised if Ridley was on bass, but Cecil McBee would be a great choice since he recorded with all those guys too, even if he wasn't on the "big 3."

I plan to attend the Handy gig. I doubt it'll be recorded since their 1995 reunion at Yoshi's was recorded and released as a 2-CD set.

She can play, but her music is pretty much smooth. I saw her in the Bay Area before she had a recording contract, playing with a Brazilian group, and she was pretty good, but I doubt her albums are.