jazzbo

Brad, in the post above I say distinctly that OP is good here. BUT I'm not that big an OP fan, I recognize his technical prowess and his innovation, but don't like his sound and "feel" as much as other bassists. I really think that I'd rather hear Wendell in this session. That's me. I'm not the producer!

Al, hate to say this in a way: if you buy the first two JSP Django sets. . . you'll have the Mosaic set. . .and more material as well. And probably spend half the Mosaic cost or less.

Thanks for sharing that news. I'm excited about the Phantom on Water; it is going to sound terrific, better than the Select would be my guess!

I'll be getting all the March RVGs in a few weeks in one big whack. . . how's that for overload! I'm very looking foward to this one. . . .

I guess it depends on your system; for me the sound on the first three discs is NOT GOOD AT ALL, it has that treble grit that seems to be an artifact of the NoNoise board that McMaster has or just his frequency balance of choice. . . . I live with it, but in a system without tone controls you don't reach for it with relish! That said, there are great sessions in this box set, and as Dan has pointed out a goodly portion not on cd anywhere else. There is only one unreleased session however; the others have been released on lp and some on cd.

I don't quite see your point, thanks for correcting the typo, I corrected mine in the post. You don't think Marshall would be a better fit? I can understand that, don't agree, but understand; I just am not sure what you meant. I like him better as a bassist tone and function wise, and I like him working with Klook during this time period. But OP is very good here too.

You're welcome. Yes, OP is wonderful, but not one of my very favorites. . . if only it had been Wendell Marshall!

Here's my two cents. I got this reissue because I passed on a 29 dollar Japanese K2 of this about four years ago and never saw another copy. . . .This is one of my favorite jazz releases featuring one of my very favorite pianist playing works of my favorite composer and with one of my very favorite drummers on brushes. . . . I've loved this lp, and the cd in the Riverside Monk box for a long time. . . . I think this K2 reissue sounds better than the Monk box set, I just compared a few songs. It seems better focused. The bass is deeper, and yet also fuller and tighter (sort of an odd combination that one, go figure). The piano is more clearly presented, and oddly there is less prominent reverb. There seems to be more space in the sound, a blacker background, something like that. I LIKE the sound of the Monk box, but the K2 is an improvement. Not sure how they did that as Chuck says there are no master tapes available for this session, but they took a lot of care in the transfer I think, and the results are very good. Now let me just say I have been working on my stereo for years, have it at a point now where I feel it is very musical without being "hi fi'd up" or ruthlessly analytically revealing, and I enjoy a good remaster. If you're not a remaster-buying kind of person, and your forty year old Scott receiver is going along fine with the original filter capacitors and zipcord for speaker wire and you don't buy remasters as a general rule, fine, don't buy this one because it ISN'T one of those that are gonna rock your world.

Brad, you really should get "The Golden Flute" for the TENOR playing. It's one of Lateef's best, and you should like Teefsky.

MAN it's going to be great! MAN it's goign to be EXPENSIVE!

Many good items in this series. In the latest batch, The Golden Flute and The Cry of My People are NOT TO BE MISSED.

I have most of the Vaughn, and as Mike notes. . . there are tons of commercial pieces that I don't listen to. But there are bright moments as well! I have all the Washington sets and I love almost all of them! There are a few discs that are rather lightweight. . . but the bulk is wonderful music! The Kirk and the Merrill and the Brown-Roach are wonderful jazz resources!

News from the Supranet site. . . . March 1 2004 News Revenant Records - Albert Ayler Box Set Rumours of a box set of the unreleased recordings of Albert Ayler from Revenant Records began to appear last year in the music press. I decided to wait awhile before mentioning it here in case it fell by the wayside but I can now announce that Holy Ghost, a 9 CD set of previously unissued Ayler material, is due to be released on October 5, 2004. The importance of this can't be stressed enough. One of the reasons I started this site was a fear that Albert Ayler was in danger of being forgotten by the jazz historians and academics, sidelined as a minor figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s. The extreme nature of some of his music, its wild originality and uniqueness, combined with the mysterious circumstances surrounding his early death, have assured his cult status, but he has never really achieved 'respectability' amongst the critical community. I get the impression that while Coltrane, Coleman and Taylor are all comfortably housed in the Jazz Hall of Fame, Albert Ayler is still waiting in the corridor outside. The main reason for this is the Ayler discography. It begins with The First Recordings (which I don't think anyone would claim is a great album) and (almost) ends with the last three Impulse titles (which...ditto). In between there's some of the greatest music (not just jazz - but music) ever recorded, but in assessing Ayler's status, the critic has to deal with the entire body of work. If you'll allow me a metaphor, Ayler's recorded legacy is a jigsaw with some boring grass at the bottom, some equally boring sky at the top, an incredibly interesting scene in the middle, lots of gaps in the whole picture and no side pieces at all. The importance of the Revenant box set is that it will provide the majority of these missing pieces so that the critic will finally be presented with a fairly complete picture of Albert Ayler. Critics love consistency, they like to know where an artist came from and where he was going. Coltrane will always be king because his career was so well-documented. With Ayler there was never this consistency and his music lacked context. To give just one example, on all of his records (apart from Sonny's Time Now and New York Eye and Ear Control) he was the leader. So what was he like playing as a sideman in the band of another avant-garde genius? The Revenant box set answers the question by including the recording Ayler made with the Cecil Taylor unit for Danish TV in November 1962. The Cecil Taylor tape and some of the other Revenant material has been circulating amongst 'collectors' for years, and I don't mean to denigrate the work done by the team which produced last year's 'Ayler Tree', but that was an underground activity and the results were distributed among the cognoscenti. I'm not suggesting that the Revenant set will cause sleepless nights for the likes of Diana Krall, but what it will do is shift all of this Ayler material - 9 CDs worth - from the underground up into the light of day, thus becoming part of the canon of Ayler's recorded legacy and as such available for all future critics and academics to ponder over in the years to come. Over the next few months, as further details of the Revenant set are released, I will add them here - what's included and what's not. But for now I'll just mention two more items in the set. One is the Ayler brothers' performance of 'Our Prayer' at St Paul’s Lutheran Church, New York, on July 21st, 1967 at the funeral of John Coltrane - because of the circumstances in which it was recorded one of the most emotionally intense pieces of music I've ever heard. This will be its first legitimate release. The other is a track which I've never heard and which as far as I know has not been circulating among the 'collectors'. I mention it here partly to offset any impression that Revenant have taken the easy route of compiling the 'usual suspects' from the bootleg underworld, but mostly because it ties in neatly with the Cecil Taylor recording mentioned above. That was Ayler the sideman when he was starting out in 1962, and this is Ayler as a sideman in 1968: Pharaoh Sanders Ensemble: Sanders (tenor saxophone); Chris Capers (trumpet); Albert Ayler (tenor saxophone); Noah Howard (alto saxophone); Dave Burrell (piano); Sirone (bass); Roger Blank (drums) 1. Venus (Sanders) 22:30

That Golden Flute sure is fantastic! I've had a mono and a stereo vinyl copy. . . this cd is beautiful sounding. I love Lateef. . . one of my very favorite tenor players, and yes, I have to say it, my FAVORITE JAZZ OBOIST!

He DOES have his ordinary moments. . . . This is still probably my favorite appearance of his: This is a fascinating cd for me.

I'm with Underground! I'm liking Horace's sixties stuff more and more as time goes by. And Byrd. . . yeah. . . I don't listen to the Mazell Bros. stuff. . . .But I do listen to the others (and post Mazell Byrd) with pleasure.

There you go see, the Library comes through! Libraries in dry counties are ALWAYS BETTER--they have to be! You're gonna dig that set.

Ray, I have to say. . . I really like this box. The tin I don't think will bother you much. The notes are very nice: you get the relevant session notes from the big complete box. The sound is EXCELLENT. To have all the masters in one place. . . a great thing too. I can recommend it.

Al, being the lover of highly expensive cds that you ARE, I know you. . . . You should hold off on the Djangology because I believe it is part of the upcoming JSP set that will have four cds for twenty bucks or so (you can preorder it for that at cduniverse right now). . . . There are a number of budget options: two other JSP sets, a Proper box. . . . AND there are more expensive but more expansive ways as well to collect Django, including the Frog cds that I bet are da bomb . . . .

Yes, this is not new news, I saw similar experiments demonstrated on PBS of all places (Gosh I love PBS!) . . . seems the show was first aired a year or more ago. It's fascinating really. Totally amazing how combinations of man and machine are actually happening today!

I'm in total agreement---Costa adds to ANY session.

1957/1958: Blue Monk; Light Blue; Evidence: w/ Thad Jones (tp) Charlie Rouse (ts) Thelonious Monk (p) John Ore (b ) Billy Higgins (d) LRC [J] 32C38 7683 No idea what this one is. This one has been out on an LRC cd, paired with a Turrentine Bros. frontine Max Roach. Good cd to pick up! Both sessions have also appeared on other cds, but my memory is failing me as to which one reproduces the LRC. . . possibly a Moon?

I think we can sit and speculate, but unless we have figures from Mosaic we can't KNOW what sells hot and what sells NOT. Even getting a set in the mail with a number doesn't necessarily tell you much. Some sets vanish fast. . . because of leasing issues. Hardly any seem to really be big sellers in the way that the majors can have big sellers at the retail level. . . . In the case of the Four Freshmen and the Bobby Hackett that get made fun of on this board. . . I wouldn't go so far as to say that they don't sell well; I don't have any figures, and the bulk of their fanbase is NOT on this board (likely not even on the internet!)

I did not know that one day (today) I would say "I hate this place!" because it is making me know of wonderful stuff that I DID NOT KNOW of.

1951: Especially for You; Nobody Knows. Frankie Passions (?) on vocals This session, and some other great vocal sessions not by Monk, is available on the Spotlite cd "Cool Wailin'!"