paul secor

Some T-Bone Walker sides from Black and White & Imperial

I follow Satchel Paige's advice - "Don't Look Back."

Couldn't have been better today - 75, low humidity, sunshine.

How about Zach Randolph going to the Knicks? Sounds like a marriage made in heaven.

Nice wishful thinking, but I can't imagine that Kobe will have any interest in anything that Luke Walton does or says. Kobe's in Kobe-World.

Buddy Guy: I Was Walking Through the Woods

Sonny Stitt (Argo/Baybridge - Japan) - There's conjecture as to who the members of the rhythm section are on this date, but one thing's for sure - Sonny is wailing.

Howard McGhee Sextet w. Gryce, Farlow, Silver

Lost post: I believe that Hank Medress was the big guy who wore glasses and sang background in the Tokens.

Lester Young: The Complete Aladdin Sessions Vol. 1

Ain't no place like home! Thanks, Jim, for getting all of us back together again.

The July issue of Cadence has an interesting interview with Jymie Merritt. No link available, but you can buy a copy of the magazine.

My wife and I are both firstborns. Some years ago, my wife actually did a thesis on this subject, using earlier studies and data. She says that everything she read agreed with this study. My own feeling is that people do what they do and become what they become, and I don't have any interest in studies like the one in the article.

Another for Live in Chicago. Boss Tenor is one of my favorite Gene Ammons records. There are so many others: Nice an' Cool; The Soulful Moods of Gene Ammons (these 2 have been combined on CD as Gentle Jug); the 2 Boss Tenors w. Sonny Stitt; Groove Blues - I've never been a huge fan of the jams - perhaps I'll have to listen up some more - I like this one because I can hear Trane playing alto on it; Jug - one that's somewhat overlooked, but a good one; Jug and Dodo. I guess I could include about two thirds of his catalogue as among my favorite Jug's. He was just a wonderful musician.

Grant Green: Solid

Happy Birthday, Scott! Hope you have a great one!

In 1962, I was looking for something that had more depth than rock 'n' roll. Started reading down beat and listening to records, and I was on my way.

Jimmy Knepper: Idol of the Flies

I think it was Sam "The Man" Taylor. The sleeve notes to "Atlantic R&B 1947-1974" say the group was formed with him on tenor sax. but don't explicitly say that he was on their first session. MG Found a mention on Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks http://home.att.net/~uncamarvy/Chords/chords.html which says that Sam "The Man" Taylor played on "Cross Over the Bridge", the flip of ShBoom. If that's so, it makes sense that he played on the entire session.

Mark Morganelli and the Jazz Forum All-Stars; Live on Broadway

Happy Birthday, Gentlemen!

The Singles is a good one - fun to listen to also.

Looks like someone was prescient. At least he hasn't said, "I told you so."

Well, ok, that's just about exactly what it is. You've identified what "it is", as well as your current level of attachment/attraction to it. Nothing really "difficult" about that, eh? More like the act of a mature "listening artist" (apologies to Elder Dahn). What can, and often does, change is how far into that rarefied bubble you want to go/feel comfortable going at any given juncture of your life. And that is a function of your life, which is, as they say, subject to change without warning (and boy howdy is it ever...), not of the music, which by nature of it being a fixed quantity (i.e. - a recorded document/performance of certain specific people doing a certain specific thing at/in a specific time/place) is what it is. So really, the question you're asking is a fair one, but any insight gleamed from the answers is inevitably going to be about the individual who's responding, not about the music itself. A corollary set of questions that might provide a more provocative range of responses would be to ask to purveyors of generally-perceived "difficult" musics why they do what they do, does it bother them that their music is peceived as difficult, do they feel that they "should" have a larger audience than they do, is their "message" one that can only be delivered in one specific manner, and who, if anybody, do they blame when that message is not successfully conveyed? I think, based on both perception and experience, that a lot of people who provide us with this "difficult" music don't really, as a matter of principal, give too much of a shit about its "difficulty", and that is how it should be. Why they don't give too much of a shit is where things open up into some pretty interesting and widely diversified territory, not all of it necessarily "healthy", yet some of it being gloriously so. For myself, if I'm not interested in the what - the music - I'm probably not going to be intested in the "why". If I were interested in the "why", I'd study philosophy, and that's probably the last thing I'd do in the lifetime I have. That said, my reactions to the fixed quantities of various recorded musics have changed many times over my lifetime, as my life has changed (with or without warning).

Don't care much for his playing, and don't care much about what he's got to say.