Kevin Bresnahan

Paolo Fresu - Jazzy Christmas (Tǔk Music). I love that Paolo used a bandoneon player, Daniele Di Bonaventura on this date. It gives it an Italian flavor that I just can't explain.

Urbie Green - A Cool Yuletide. What a great Christmas session. Swings like crazy. My only complaint is that I wish it were longer.

To be fair, Cuscuna may have been more excited about using those logs to read about sessions that were never released, so maybe having the recording dates of those sessions might have been what he was referring to when he mentioned them being lost?

I have heard one ear temporarily shut off a couple of times but never had it go off pitch. My right ear is pretty damaged from too many loud rock concerts in my younger days so I'll never be able to compare ears anymore.

One of these days, I should listen to this. From the beginning, it's been almost universally panned as "not a Yes album" due to the crazy circumstances surrounding the making of it. It's almost like the band should have been called Yes².

The Jimmy Smith Doubletime 2-CD set, "A New Sound... A New Star...", has also never been reissued since that release except on CD in Japan.

While I do appreciate having the recording dates for the same reasons as John, I am a bit confused by his comment that listing the recording date(s) was a common practice in the 20th century. None of the original Blue Note LPs listed the recording date(s). For some reason, I remember reading an interview with Cuscuna where he said that until he got Lion's log book in the mid-70's, that information was lost. So it seems like Blue Note's practice of listing the recording date(s) on their releases was a Cuscuna thing & not a Blue Note thing as they didn't start listing those dates until Cuscuna launched the LT series.

Kelley was writing a book about Thelonious Monk so obviously, he was going to get their take on it. I find it a bit sad that Monk's estate decided that there was no way that Clark could have written this tune and that maybe, just possibly, Monk liked it enough to write it down for him to play later. They just found the tune among Monk's pile of written out tunes and decided "Clark was a junkie and stole it". What bugs me the most though is that even if it was written by Monk, no one knows if Clark stole it or if Monk gave it to him. Add to the fact that Clark recorded this tune in 1961, more than 20 years before Monk died and that Monk never played it himself nor said anything about Clark's version being his & you have a situation where no one should jump to "Clark stole it".

The material has not been reissued in the US on any format since the 1994 2-CD set. However, it has been reissued 4 times on CD in Japan since then.

This story was floated out there by the Monk estate after they found sheet music in Monk's hand. TS went so far as to reissue the tune with writing credit given solely to his father, which was really bogus. Thelonious Monk is not the one who is on record as having wrote it. All we have as fact is that Sonny Clark claimed writing credit on "A Fickle Sonance" and that Blue Note registered it for him. That's the sum total of the evidence we have of who wrote this. The fact that all of the principals are dead means that there is no way to determine if Monk actually wrote it, so it should stay as Clark's tune.

An organissimo Christmas I love me some "Funky Drummer Boy". Thanks again Jim & the group.

Michael Cuscuna had said that when he asked Wayne about that session, Wayne answered something like, "That was Duke Pearson's idea of a fucking record". With all three of them gone now, I guess that's all we'll ever know about it.

According to the liner notes from the Mosaic box, the problems with the "Meet Me At The Jazz Corner Of The World" tapes are baked in: Although all of the sessions in this collection were recorded by the extraordinary Rudy Van Gelder, there are sonic problems on two sessions. The drums were recorded very ‘hot’ on the March 14, 1961 session and sound at times on the threshold of distortion. On the live Birdland date, there is a vibrating, fluttering distortion that takes place intermittently in the horns and sometimes the entire ensemble. These problems exist on the original master tapes. They have been corrected as much as possible, but are still aurally present.

Bette Midler - Cool Yule (Columbia). This is a very well done Christmas CD. Midler's voice is in in great form & the backing musicians, from a string orchestra to a big band, are all very good. As I listen to this, I find myself wondering why it never really got the playtime that a lot of other Christmas CDs made back then (2006) did. Maybe because she was already in her early 60s by then and radio wanted youngsters? I am still shaking my head after reading that she turned 80 this year. I had no idea she was 80.

From his numerous posts over the years, I would not have figured Brownie as someone who always listened to free jazz.