paul secor

Ordered yesterday: Johnny Dyani: Song for Biko - Have the LP. Looking forward to the extra material on the CD Count Basie: Indespensable - RCA sides - 1947-50

Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy Studio Sessions - 9/24/48 - "Perhaps"/"Marmaduke"/"Steeplechase"/"Merry-Go-Round"

Some newly released music: Roscoe Mitchell Trio: No Side Effects Miles: Monterey 1963 Older issues that I finally caught up with: Roscoe Mitchell & the Note Factory: Song for My Sister The Art of Ivry Gitlis Ted Brown Trio with Hod Obrien and Jacques Schols: Free Spirit Listen to Barry Harris ... Solo Piano Down Home Blues Classics - California & the West Coast 1948-1954 edit: one I forgot - Phil Woods/Red Garland: Sugan And a couple of boxes where I had much of the material, but enjoyed hearing it in this format: Complete Bud Powell on Verve Ellington - Small Group Sessions - Mosaic

Not the same deal, but reading this thread I was reminded of some exchanges in another thread: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...mp;#entry690837

I listened to '... and his mother called him bill' the other evening. Always make sure that I read Ellington's tribute to his friend when I listen to it: He demanded freedom of expression and lived in what we consider the most important of moral freedoms: freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from all self-pity (even throughout all the pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly doing something that might help another more than it might help himself; and freedom from the kind of pride that could make a man feel he was better than his brother or neighbor.

Looks like this might be it. http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?...43917&BAB=E

Can't this thread be moved back to the AOTW forum where it belongs?

Sorry to see that Hans has evidently left the Forum - he's now listed as "Guest". Hope that he reconsiders and returns.

There are also many blues artists listed throughout the Jepsen volumes, and in one of the later volumes Jepsen thanks Mike Leadbitter, who was the co-editor of Blues Unlimited and who, with Neil Slaven, compiled the blues discography, Blues Records, which for many years was a sort of bible to blues collectors. Mike Leadbitter obviously knew that the blues artists included in Jepsen weren't jazz artists. Jepsen speaks to the point when he writes in the introduction to one of the later volumes: "... it must be mentioned that this book contains details of recordings which strictly speaking have nothing to do or very little to do with jazz, but which have been thought "important" enough to include."

I'm truly sorry for your loss. I understand some of what you're going through. I lost two cats to renal failure in less than a year. I held the second one when the vet gave him the final shot, and can still see the look in Grachan's eyes before he died. Feel your grief and give Silver all the love you can is the only advice I have to offer.

Hope to see Hans posting on other threads soon. He's been missed!

I'm curious about this. What don't you like about it? Part of my problem with the term "technique" is just a matter of semantics. I don't know how many times I've read that Oscar Peterson has great/tremendous technique. Generally, the writer is referring to what I call facility or, perhaps, dexterity. For me, Jimmy Yancey had greater technique than Oscar Peterson, even though Jimmy Yancey couldn't (or at least didn't) play at fast tempos and had pretty much one ending to everything he played. But what Jimmy Yancey did play, he played beautifully and completely uniquely. I have no problem with your statement in your earlier post - "Technique is what a musician has to deal with everytime he/she starts to play." To me, that includes every facet of a musician's being. As I say, for me it's a matter of semantics. I have a problem when technique is used as a synonym for facility.

Duke Ellington: "... and his mother called him Bill"

I was reading an interview with Hal Galper in the new (newest issue & new format/price) Cadence, and the interviewer posed a question based on a statement from a Branford Marsalis interview (have to say that something smelled funny right away): "Branford Marsalis had this to say: 'My father (pianist and educator Ellis Marsalis) used to say people learning technique through learning Jazz exercises is the reinvention of the wheel. He says classical music has one thousand years of established pedagogy in teaching technique so what do we need Jazz technique books for? They are pointless. All they do is teach regimented performance techniques.'" In his (quite lengthy) answer, Hal Galper basically agrees with Ellis Marsalis' statement. He ends with: "Those who would make a case that you can learn instrumental technique from a Jazz book haven't experienced the disciplined training of a classical teacher, don't know what true technique is or are making a case for ignorance. As far as that is concerned, I agree with Marsalis." I assume that Ellis Marsalis and Hal Galper are speaking strictly about the piano - not other instruments. I'm not a musician, merely a listener, but my first thought after reading this was that I was happy that Thelonious Monk probably never thought this way, and that if this were the way to learn, we'd have a helluva lot of Ellis Marsalis and Hal Galper influenced players. As I say, I'm not a musician, so I don't speak with any authority, but I can't say that I hear much similarity in the piano sounds/tones of Ellington, Monk, Bud Powell, or Cecil Taylor and the sounds of the (admitedly few) classical pianists I've heard. And I don't know to what extent the jazz musicians I've mentioned use classical "techniques" learned from lessons with classical teachers. (I have to admit that I don't like the term "technique".) I don't know about jazz books on "technique". I don't think that I've ever read or heard a jazz musician I respect say that they learned from books, though that might not be the case. This is a complicated topic - more complicated than I have the background to discuss intelligently - and it's been touched upon in another thread recently. I hope that others - musicians and more learned listeners than I - will have comments/opinions. I'm looking forward to learning some things.

I'm not much on baseball All-Star games. Liked them when I was a kid, but I much prefer to watch real teams play than two teams made up of stars play. But - since you brought it up - in the years when Stanley Turrentine was in his prime, there were a few other tenor players on the scene who, if Stanley Turrentine was an All-Star, might also have been considered All-Stars: Hawk, Trane, Rollins, Ben, Jug, Getz, Ayler, Shepp, Mobley, Golson, Stitt, Zoot, Griffin, Budd Freeman, Budd Johnson, Rouse, Gonsalves, Ervin, Arnett Cobb, George Coleman, Sam Rivers. I know that I'm leaving people out, but these players came to mind. I know that some of these folks might not be All-Stars to some, and some might not be considered All-Stars to anyone. And that's the point. All of these tenor saxophonists played music that I enjoy listening to, and when I'm listening to one of them I don't start thinking about how their playing compares to other people's. All that matters is their music at that moment. I would include the best of Stanley Turrentine's playing with the people I listed above. I guess in that sense, he's an All-Star.

There have been a number discussions/comments about record producers in preveious threads. Here's one: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...mp;hl=producers

Mahmoud Ahmed: Ere Mela Mela - Modern Music from Ethiopia

Well...yes and no. If you want evaluate the music purely as "music" and eliminate all context provided by "person" (and you can), then yeah. But how do you evaluate an "Aretha Franklin Gospel Album" without considering that it is Aretha Franklin? And even if you can, does that create a real or less real picture of what the music "is"? It's like The Beatles - like it or not, whether it "should" or "shouldn't" be like that, The Beatles are THE BEATLES and will be until history fades to a point where nobody knows anything about them except the sounds coming outta the records. And will such a time ever come without some major, probably malevolently inspired, revising of history? Like it or not, an "Aretha Franklin Gospel Album" comes with a lot of backstory. Of course, almost all music does (I mean, just reading the AMG bio of Steam sent my jaw dropping...), but certain entities, and Aretha is one of them, carry a backstory that you almost have to will yourself into ignoring to ignore. And yeah, sure, that's a good thing for a little while, but how....real is it, really? Not in terms of assessing "talent" or anything like this, but in terms of knowing just where this fits in the "real world" scheme of things. EDC made the point a few months ago that by the time The Beatles released the "White Album" that they were no longer "relevant". To which I countered (and still believe) that you can't be The Most Popular And Respected And Influential Band In the World and be irrelevant. It just don't work that way, not in The Macroculture of The Popular Arena. We can all create our own little Personal Comfortable Microverses, but if we do so pretending that The Macroculture of The Popular Arena does not exist, or that it is somehow "meaningless", then we are kidding ourselves big time. Now sure, Aretha's Gospel work has been good-to-great, and yeah, others have hit it harder and longer. But for every person that, say, Inez Andrews has "touched", Aretha has done the same 100 X (or more) over. So when Aretha makes a Gospel album like Amazing Grace, one that gets heard by a lot more people than would hear anything by Inez Andrews, how it does or doesn't copmpare to Inez Andrews' work is at once germane and totally, totally irrelevant, if for no other reason than what difference does it make to somebody who is moved/touched/whatever by Aretha's work who will never ever hear anything by Inez Andrews? Not what doffernce does it make to "us", what differnce does it make to them? I'm ok with co-exisiting in "my world" and "Popular Culture". Render unto Caesar, and all that. But attempting to reconcile them in such a way that one is ultimately "more real" than the other in comparison to anything but itself is a bit of fool's game, akin to playing baseball in a full swimming pool and thinking that the game will get easier as soon a the rain lets up. I hear what you're saying, Jim, and agree in theory/in part. But I gave up on sociology as a young man. Don't think that the "Macroculture" is "meaningless" - just not worth wasting my emotions and time over. America has always fed its people the line that bigger is better, and over the past 30 years or so, it seems that more and more people are buying into that (figuratively and literally). I may be playing a fool's game, but then so are a number of other people, including musicians, I admire. Just as a matter of personal taste - Aretha's gospel records may have reached 100 X as many people, but I'll keep listening to Inez Andrews. Never bought an Aretha gospel, and unless they get better, never will.

And to think that people complained about Kobe. At least Kobe can play. And THAT's factorial.

Miles in Berlin (CBS/Sony Japan)

In a perfect (or even less imperfect) world, BN would make their entire catalogue available - RVG'd, Addey'd, whatever -make all the reissue fans happy, and get down to the business of recording good new jazz. The bad news is that this world is far from perfect, and far from less imperfect, so neither will happen. The good news is that there's a lot more to the jazz world and the music world than Blue Note.

Just watched the Knicks get blown out. Pitiful.

Good to see you back on board, MG.

Winnipeg - 42 points - complete shot in the dark