Pete C

I believe Wall Street Journal has been subscription-only since they went online.

Fred Sanford Redd Foxx Peter Wolf

I once worked with a guy named Tittman. Jazzman Poetry Man Phoebe Snow

I believe if you get to articles via certain external links it's not tracked in your count. My most trusted source for U.S. political news is the Guardian's online U.S. edition. They're not vested in maintaining the status quo here the way the Times has always been.

Tatum O'Neill Johnny O'Neal Art Tatum

Judy Garland Lorna Luft Lorne Michaels

Millie Small The Notorious B.I.G. Big Mama Thornton

A candidate for the worst jazz album I ever owned. I think I paid a buck and listened once. On the other hand, Miles' Doo Bop ain't much better.

Stafford Repp Adam West Burt Ward

Buster Brown Fannie Mae Newt Gingrich

It struck me, this morning, as I was commuting to work, that there are teenagers out there, in America, in 2012, who have actually never heard of George Arliss or Guy Kibbee. Sad.

Interesting piece on the imbalance of performance royalties, or how ASCAP plays reverse Robin Hood: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120323/18055718229/how-ascap-takes-money-successful-indie-artists-gives-it-to-giant-rock-stars.shtml

Collin Walcott Paul McCandless Ralph Towner

I recently learned that Harlow was in a jazz-rock band called Ambergris. I had the album at the time, and the band opened for Mountain at the Fillmore East, my first show there, when I was 14. I remember the band and album being quite good, but it doesn't seem to have made it to digital. I wonder how many other later to be famous musicians I've seen without knowing it.

Christopher Lloyd Joe Christopher Joe Christmas

Cosmo Topper Neil the St. Bernard Bernard Madoff (no saint, he)

Froggy Andy Devine Father Divine

Mr. T Mr. Coffee Rev. William Sloane Coffin

I'm assuming the packaging of On The Corner (cover art, title) was partly a function of Miles' desire to reconnect with black audiences, yet the music is so freakin' advanced and off the wall that I'm guessing only the most advanced and adventurous listeners of any background really connected with it. It took me about 25 years to really "get it," but of course by then so much music was mining similar territory that one's ears were more prepared.

I understand perfectly where you're coming from, and it is indeed a matter of personal musical taste. But I do suspect the Surman of the trio with Phillips and Martin would have been a better match for Bley--I'd love to hear what he might have sounded like with Altschul & Bley in 1970.

I'd agree on both points, even if I'm not looking for the kind of "theory-driven" analyses that I assume you're more welcoming of. I'm just not convinced that a class-based lens would be fruitful for jazz history. Can I assume you're familiar with Hayden White's excellent work on historiography? Some of Ted Gioia's earlier essays deal with interesting "extramusical" questions about the cultural reception of jazz, like his piece on Ornette and the myth of primitivism.

I had forgotten up until now of a Bley/Oxley meeting that does work for me, Chaos. Here I think Bley goes further toward meeting Oxley on mutually fertile ground. My coolness toward the other outings may have something to do with Surman's presence too. For me, both Surman and Jan Garbarek took similar paths by the mid-to-late '70s that leave me quite cold compared to their very intense earlier work. I suspect that at one time Garbarek would have made a natural partner for Bley, considering how well his sound married with Jarrett.

Colonel Klink Otto Klemperer Otto (Make that Riff Stacatto)

When I got my Kindle last year I decided to read the complete works of Balzac in free, public domain editions (I had previously read four novels and several stories). About every third or fourth book I read now is Balzac, in the order he set out as his architecture for the Human Comedy. Right now I'm up to A Daughter of Eve.

Once we get beyond the concept in the abstract, just what do you think the contours of a class-based look at jazz would be? Do you see class distinctions, apart from race, as central to the trajectory of jazz history?