Kevin Bresnahan

Very nice date for sure. I bought the limited edition tri-colored vinyl version from bandcamp when it came out. The vinyl is sold out but the CD is still available for $10.50 (including shipping to Maine): https://waltersmithiii-whirlwind.bandcamp.com/album/twio

This is one of the better obits I've read about a jazz musician: https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/620396/swing-beat-the-late-great-tom-williams/ It's clear the author knew the man. It sounds like the DC area lost a great guy as well as a great trumpeter. This obit references a duel Williams had with Jon Faddis in Lyons, France in 1996. Video sucks, but the music lives on:

I've read on Facebook that trumpeter Tom Williams died unexpectedly a few weeks back. I am lucky to have seen Tom play several times as a sideman and he could blow that horn. I am pretty sure one of those times was with Jimmy Heath. I can only assume that the main reason we didn't hear from him much is because he chose to stay in his native area of Baltimore. He only had two releases as a leader, "Introducing" (1992) & "Straight Street" (1994), both on Criss Cross. He plays on a couple of Jimmy Heath's CDs too. I didn't find this thread earlier today during my initial search but worth linking to:

Although I know a lot of people are going to jump on this, I'm going to pass. I have the CD box set and that's enough for me.

I still play this often: "Mother" is a dud, but other than that. great rock & roll. I still crack up when someone plays "Every Breath You Take" at a wedding. Everyone I knew called that "The Stalker Song" from day one.

If losing "its organizing principal" meant signing great bands/musicians like Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Procol Harum, Humble Pie, Fairport Convention, Free, Carole King, Nazareth, the Tubes, Styx, Supertramp, Squeeze, Peter Frampton, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Joe Jackson, R.E.M., The Go-Gos & the Police, I'm very glad they lost their way. At Christmastime, I play the Carpenters' & Amy Grant's A&M Christmas CDs all the time. I'm a pretty big fan of the Police and still play their CDs pretty often. To be perfectly honest, I don't own a single record A&M made early on, even their early pop bands but especially Herb Alpert's stuff, which was never my kind of music. I suppose I have heard some Sergio Mendes on occasion, but I don't own any of it.

I can't find much on-line, but from what I remember, Alpert was the music guy in the beginning and his hits funded the label. But according to one article I did find, after attending the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, Moss started signing rock artists. As that article suggests, he was the one who wanted Peter Frampton to do a live record, which resulted in one of their biggest selling records, so i would guess he had some input into A&R, at least in the rock side of things.

Joanne Brackeen - Ancient Dynasty (Columbia/Tappan Zee). I bought this one when I saw Joe Henderson listed on the back. Henderson, Brackeen, Eddie Gomez & Jack DeJohnette - what could go wrong? What a great record this is! (so far) Really digging this. This is my first purchase of Brackeen as a leader. I probably would have skipped it if I hadn't had the chance to see/hear her perform as a sub for George Cables at a Javon Jackson show at Scullers back in 2017. Why hasn't this made it to CD? Is it caught in limbo because of the Tappan Zee label?

Charles sells his last recording on his website: https://charlesmcpherson.com/store/

Now spinning... Eddie Higgins - Eddie Higgins (Vee Jay). Mono LP is really nice shape. I thought that these were all trio tracks so I was surprised when I heard a trumpet & tenor on a few of them. I've enjoyed Eddie's Venus CDs for years so I was curious to hear him on an earlier recording. He didn't change much.

Freddie Hubbard - Classics (Fantasy). Only two tunes - one for each side. Side 1 is Red Clay and Side 2 is First Light. Killer band - Freddie has Joe Henderson & Bobby Hutcherson in the front line.

iCloud is like Microsoft's OneDrive. It's just a backup service. You don't have to use it. In fact, I got my first Apple product a few years ago, an iPhone 12 mini, and after about a month of using it, I started getting notices that my iCloud was nearly full and would I like to pay for additional storage. I looked into it and Apple was backing up my phone nightly and backing up stupid stuff like my text messages, including any pictures or videos. I went to my iCloud and deleted all of that stuff and turned off the backup. I've never heard from them since. I'm not worried if I lose some text messages to be honest and I backup my photos on my phone fairly regularly. FWIW, on my Window PC, I backup my music on multiple external hard drives (currently using 3) and I'm sure that if I ever did try to use a service like OneDrive or iCloud, it would be very expensive for me. I have hundreds of GBs of music.

I have To The Ladies on LP as well as Bush Dance. All of them have some good playing. I'm spinning To The Ladies now. The bass is all twangy on this one too but other than that, very enjoyable. Griffin was playing great then.

Watching Lioness on Paramount+. It's just OK. It kills time and the acting is decent. The story is a bit far-fetched, especially how quickly they insert the operative in the initial episodes. My wife & I keep trying to watch Only Murders In The Building on Hulu, but we just can't get into it. Nether Martin Short's or Steve Martin's characters are likeable and they seem to go into extreme stereotypes in their respective roles, if that's possible.

I've never seen that CD in my days of perusing the bins and it looks like it's going for big bucks these days. Oh well, I still have the LPs.

Johnny Griffin - Call It Whachawana (Galaxy). Not a great one, but certainly worth a spin. Mulgrew Miller plays very pretty on a couple of tunes. Unfortunately, it has that lousy bass sound from that era. This never made it to CD, even in Japan, which is odd because he seems to have had a lot of fans there.

Tomorrow night, I'm seeing George Coleman at Jimmy's in Portsmouth, NH. He's bringing Eric Alexander to help out on the front line and this new pianist that I can't wait to hear named Mike Delonne .

I don't like this at all. Certainly nothing "musical" happening here. I could see them playing this 24/7 in a prisoner's cell to break them and get them to talk. Edited for clarity.

I don't know that "salesman" captures what he did for A&M. From the stories I've read over the years, Moss went out and found talent as well. He was also considered one of the better label bosses when it came to treating the artists fairly. A pure businessman/salesman would not give two hoots how the artists were treated.

I think I bought both of these Sonny Fortune Horizon LPs for a dollar. There were often multiple copies in that $1 bin at Stereo Jacks.

It's there for all to hear in YouTube land. And while I do think "Waves Of Dreams" is much better than the "Awakening", it still has a couple of tunes that just didn't click with me.

While I do have a signed copy of "Waves Of Dreams", I wouldn't consider either of these near the top of my Sonny Fortune playlist. They sound rather dated, particularly the electric keys. I really enjoy his later Blue Note recordings much more than these 2. In particular, I think Sonny is a better sax player than a flute player, so "Awakening" rarely sees the turntable.

Over the years, I've created a huge digital library that I've managed to attach to my main listening system with a little Raspberry Pi minicomputer and an SSD hard drive. I find myself listening to this set up more than any physical media, so when I do retire, I'm going to start selling off my CDs (maybe some LPs too) and cut way back on my music purchases... well, I may still buy some downloads here & there. There's another reason I'm moving away from hard copies to mp3 rips... my hearing has gotten worse & worse as the years have progressed, to the point where these mp3 rips sound mostly fine to me. I still buy LPs because I'm having fun. The LP playback noise still sucks compared to a well-mastered CDs but fun is fun.

I am rapidly approaching a sell-off of my physical media as I am very close to retiring and don't want to keep tripping over piles of CDs & LPs the rest of my days. I don't stream much at home but I do XM radio every day going to & from work. I'll probably allow that to lapse when I do retire. I was streaming Amazon on the back deck for a few years but then they moved most of their music to their paid service & managed to strip me of stuff I actually purchased from them that were supposed to be in my "library". I'm not willing to give them a penny after that.

Ravi Shankar - Ragas Hameer & Gara