Kevin Bresnahan

A fool and his (or her) money are soon parted. If it sounds too good to be true, it isn't. A sucker is born every minute. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. All of these sayings and many more, all with the same general theme, are drilled into our psyche from a very young age. Clearly, this woman is an absolute idiot.

Wrong. These were cut from the masters by Ron McMaster at Capitol Mastering a few months back. It sure seems like people just like to bitch. "Blue Note stopped making LPs! Waah." "Blue Note is making LPs again! Bah." Make up your minds. These are Blue Note's best selling titles. If they want to find out what the LP market's like, these are the titles to use. If these can't sell, there's no way they're cutting a Tyrone Washington date. Kevin

A few years back, I picked up a sealed LP of Jerry Bergonzi's "Front End" on Bruce Gertz's Not Fat Records label. It's trio date with Jerry Bergonzi, Bruce Gertz and Bob Gulloti. Great stuff. Last week, I saw Bergonzi and Gertz at a local club and I asked Bruce if he had any more stock of the Not Fat Records LPs since there were 5 other titles I was interested in. He got back to me yesterday. He had all 5! So I ordered: Con Brio - Con Brio (Not Fat Records 01-22) Gonz - Uranian Undertow (Not Fat Records 02-22) Jerry Bergonzi Quartet - Featuring Bruce Gertz (Not Fat Records 03-22) Con Brio - The Ray (Not Fat Records 04-22) Gonz - Caught in the Act! (Not Fat Records 06-22) All delivered new to my door for under $90. I can't wait to hear them. BTW, I would E-mail Bruce through his "Contact" E-mail rather than use those PayPal links. The PayPal links don't discount shipping for multiple LPs and if you click on a title with LP & cassette, it defaults to cassette.

I left years ago, don't miss and never going back as long as Mike Ricci is running the place. The guy's a jerk.

Just spinning Gonz's "Front End" on Not Fat Records. Gonz is Jerry Bergonzi, Bruce Gertz and Bob Gullotti. The only bad thing about this record is that it has me wishing I had the other Not Fat Records recordings by Gonz.

I just got an E-mail from AUM Fidelity that they are offering William Parker's latest recording "Petit Oiseau" in a 2 LP set. Only 500 copies will be pressed. After about 10 minutes ago, there are only 499. BTW, the band on this date: William Parker - bass, cedar flute; Hamid Drake - drums, balafon & frame drum; Rob Brown - alto saxophone, B-flat clarinet and Lewis Barnes - trumpet, is the group that made "O'Neal's Porch" one of my favorite recordings of 2001. The link: http://www.aumfidelity.com/aum050-LP.html Kevin

The only person who might know is Cuscuna. "Blue Note" the company, just went through a rather large workforce reduction. I don't know if anyone is even technically working for Blue Note any more.

I thought I read somewhere that Hank's speech was on the 45 rpm record included on the original "One Night At Blue Note" LP set? Dan Gould picked it up a few years back. Kevin

I once asked Michael Cuscuna about this and he says that he tried like hell to find Mobley for that Town Hall Blue Note concert and no one knew his whereabouts. Michael was bummed out that Hank wasn't going to be there. He said it was almost a shock to turn around that night and see Hank standing there. They didn't know what to do - the whole night was planned out - so they had him just walk out and say a few things. Kevin

Well, considering it's 2008 and Milt still hasn't commanded my hard-earned $$, I'd say Savoy knew what they were talking about then too. If you ask me, most of this letter reads like a polite rejection letter. These days, you don't even get that courtesy.

I don't know that Savoy was totally misguided at the time. Check that date: July 30, 1951. Organ was not popularized for many more years and Milt Buckner was not the one to do it - JOS was. I imagine Savoy did their research and determined a Milt organ date wouldn't sell. Given that year, I'd think they were right. Now as for that "sell records to colored people and not white people"? No clue what the heck they were thinking there. I never knew that the "colored people" had all the money in 1951.

There was a while when Mosaic sold Francis Wolff prints. Their website had a link to bring up a large-sized web pic of each one. I went through and saved all of them, including the uncropped "Soul Station" and "No Room For Squares" pictures.

Chewy - I see you're over at the SH forums trying to get Steve to talk to you. Good luck. Beware the gorts. They won't hesitate to boot you outta there. Whenever you post, imagine you're talking to a judge and you'll be all set... well, you can drop "Your Honor", but you get the drift, right? As for your inquiry to Hoffman about his work in the tape vaults, FYI, in the past, Hoffman has had some unkind words to say about RVG's recording techniques. In this thread, he had this to say: Steve Hoffman - When I work with a Rudy Van Gelder master I have to spend a lot of time coaxing the breath of life out of there. It's lost in a maze of echo plate and high-end limiter distortion that drives me bonkers. If a mastering engineer just ignores that stuff the end result is less than wonderful in my opinion. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Later on, he elaborated with: Steve Hoffman - Well, it's like a constant high-pitched grating sound. Ever stick your head around the back of your TV? That 15k carrier sound can drive one to drink. Something in RVG's system was dumping a lot of high-frequency overload distortion on everything, especially when the cymbals were hit. Kevin Gray and I figured that it was RVG's limiter that was causing the overload since it was better when the drums were not being aggressively played. Do you have an LP that was engineered by Rudy Van Gelder? Turn up the volume and lightly run your finger over the vinyl, so you slow it down a bit (making the ultra high end distortion come down to a more audible range). Hear it now? YEOW!!!!!!!! I worked up a "system" for combating this in my mastering, naming it my "Van Gelder Anti-matter Generator" (a play on Van De Graff Generator) and if you hear any DCC Gold Rudy Van Gelder CD ( Coltrane LUSH LIFE, Rollins SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS, Miles Davis COOKIN', RELAXIN', STEAMIN', POOPIN', etc.) that I've remastered, you'll notice the absence of any high end oscillation distortion. Just one of those little nifty bits of musical history that a mastering engineer MUST deal with for the sake of your ears. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I've been trying to get him to tell me if he had to use his "Van Gelder Anti-matter Generator" on these Blue Note reissues for months. He ignores me. It leads me to wonder if he overstated this effect. It sounds like all he has to do is hit "Play" and "Stop" with these Blue Note masters. I'd be interested to know if that was true. Kevin

For "True Blue", the TOCJ CD sounds very nice. Much better than the Ron McMaster Connoisseur. On "A Night In Tunisia", I really like the MFSL CD. I no longer have the McMaster version, but I remember the MFSL blowing it away. For "Bluesnik", surprisingly, I like the JRVG CD. It's one of the better ones from Japan. "Soul Station"? Well, I've grown so accustomed to the original Ron McMaster CD that it's become my favorite version. I'm sure that could be improved upon. The JRVG is not an improvement. I never found a TOCJ CD of this one. I think I'm going to pick up Ron McMaster's LP version that's coming out November 11th.

I don't think saying that the 45RPM LPs sound very close to or only slightly better than the "Blue Note Works" TOCJs would go down very well with Hoffman and some of the forum members over on his site I agree with Hans. Not only would it not go over well, one of his high-handed gorts would delete your post and ban you without even a thought. They ban first and ignore questions later over there. If you want to stay posting over there, keep any hint of negativity to yourself.

I think Kevin means the early ones from the 90's, using the original blue Note album numbers (TOCJ-4219 etc). I have the same experience, comparing a few CD versions with the Music Matters LPs. The TOCJs sound closest to the LPs. Claude - Dare you to say that over on the SH forums! To be honest, I was actually expecting more differences. If I were to rank them, I think Morgan's "Lee-way" is the least improved and Blakey's "Moanin'" probably a bit better - but neither was a "Wow" moment. And since they all sounded good, if you have the cash and don't mind getting up every 8-10 minutes, go for it. I have better things to spend my money on. Like that new Victory Kingpin I'm planning to buy someday. I am so glad I decided to buy up as many of those TOCJ-4XXX CDs when I did. I probably have a little less than half of that catalog by now. BTW, over on Hoffman's forum, he started a thread titled "New dual-layer SACDs from vintage BLUE NOTE Analogue Prods, questions answered here.." and - he doesn't... well, at least not my question. I have asked him three or four times if he had to use his special de-RVG box on the Blue Note tapes and he seems to just ignores the question. Well, maybe I'm just "ignore-worthy". Kevin

Someone over on the Hoffman forums put a few of these LPs up for sale for $35 a piece. Just because I happened to have a large PayPal balance after selling a few items, I decided, "What the hell", and decided to see what the fuss was about. I ordered three of them. I got Morgan's "Lee-way", Gordon's "Dexter Calling" and Blakey's "Moanin'". In a nutshell, they sound very nice. Elaborating, to my ears, they sound very similar to the TOCJ CD versions. In fact, I am comparing them (I happen to have a TOCJ version for each) right now and they sound so close, I have to say that at $50, this would not be money well spent for this Blue Note fanatic. And getting up every 10 minutes is a royal pain in the ass!!!!! I am still on the fence for the SACDs Hoffman's working on. At least those are ONLY $30 (!!!!) and they will play longer than 10 fucking minutes before I have to get up.

He has several Arch 1750 LPs listed for sale on his website, www.dennyzeitlin.com, so he must have been successful in finding someone to press them.

Being depressed with life in general, you commit suicide by driving into oncoming traffic on the highway. Shit, and here I always figured on going in bed after a lusty encounter with my 100 year old wife.

It ends on the first weekend in October. It's a tradition.

Shit, I must be a bigger rock geek. I knew "Something in the Air" was Thunderclap Newman and that it was the Starland Vocal Band. However, I haven't a clue who played bass in the Beatles first band. D'oh.

You mean aside from Hank's squeaky reed? It was more than Hank. It's just kinda sloppy all around. Even Morgan flubs a few solos, just not as many as Mobley.

I did send Michael an "edited down" CD-R. Unfortunately, no serious editing, just picking the best take, so every tune has someone flubbing it. I called Michael later and asked what he thought. He laughed and said simply "No". I pushed him a bit, with the standard, "But even a bad Jazz Messengers date is better than some of the stuff Blue Note is issuing today", and still, "No". BTW, he gets more & more irritated every time I bring this date up so I am going to drop it. He was pretty upset when I first told him I got a copy to begin with. He's got something against this date, regardless of how we all feel. I suppose if another year goes by without any change in the EU copyright, we get a Fresh Sounds edition. I always wonder what happened to make that session fall apart. Kevin

I could swear that I read somewhere that Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials Trilogy" ("The Golden Compass"; "The Subtle Knife" & "The Amber Spyglass") were all banned in a few bible-thumping areas. After all, the main character kills a God-like archangel in the end. Can't have kids reading that!

Wow! I wish I tripped over something like this some day.