jazzbo

Excellent! Just as Duke and I imagined it!

Yeah, I started watching that this season after being so bored with the old format that I couldn't bear to watch an episode. James Spader has done a fantastic job---but it may be over! He seems to be transitioning out of the show. Shatner, as "Dennis Crane," is a real hoot though.

I don't see how that is possible! With all that lathering it can't smell!

WORD

Listening to that Dill Jones now. . . WOW. EXCELLENT!

NOW THAT'S A BLAST FROM THE PAST! Think I first saw that an April 1 about six years ago. . .mabye seven. . . ? STILL WAITING FOR THE DAMN THING TO HIT STORES!

If EVER there was a cover just BEGGING for James T. Shatner's presence. . .

I LOVE Andy Bey. Plays a beautiful piano as well as sings so uniquely. Check out "Tuesdays in Chinatown."

I swear I STILL think about the guacamole, blackened prime rib and the cactus margarita I had there! Man, that dinner, then a nice walk around the Riverwalk, and then over to The Landing for a set. . . one of the best evenings I've had in a long time. Helen loved it all too which was a big help! Soon as I get a family obligation trip out of the way I'm going to lobby for another weekend in San Antonio!

If Cuscuna is not an audiophile. . . then the RVG thing could be a marketing ploy, eh? I think it is--either way--and am happy that it is cuz I really dig them!

Agreed! A beautiful gal!

I just bought a Yamah P120S digital piano that plays very convincingly like the real thing, even has adjustable weighted keys, and even has a quite realistic sustain feature ---sounds very much like a real piano (as well as a real electric piano or two, Hammond organ, etc.) QUITE a nice product, and I'm picky about keyboards; they have to play like a piano with wieghted keys, etc.

I haven't traveled that way in about four months, but they are ALWAYS working on some part of that road, and usually NOT the part that needs it. Boots? I wore boots. . . TIL I came to Texas. Too hot in Texas to wear boots! At least if you actually do a lot of walking, as I did and do. I soon ditched them and have been wearing Rockports and Birkenstoks (the "Chicago" model) since.

Yes, it is pretty interesting isn't it that all the hardbop leaps and the rest is there. . . . I'd be interested if I didn't have all of that earlier jazz stuff already. . . I'd definitely jump on the TOCJ of the Ellington if I hadn't recently bought for quite a lot of money the Storyville version. . . . Good stuff peops!

MIMI FOX Y'ALL!

Finally! A "Swignin' Affair" I might buy!

I'm still not warming up to this set completely. . . I've listened to it all and there really isn't too much to draw me in; it's a little outside my interests. My point about the percussion was that to me it seems the sort of stuff every beginning percussionist discovers and then moves on from, or maybe it was just ME. The rest of the music has some great moments. . . I'll probably like it more with time. . . but it hasn't really excited me. BUT it might be the cat's meow for some and a used price would make it tempting to try.

Wow. This is great news! When I moved to Burton, Ohio in 1971 and began making moves towards the Cleveland cultural scene, the hip people were still talking about that club! (Though no one I was exposed to were talking about Ayler there).

Billy Higgins! Lionel Hampton! Leo Kotke (I love his remark about his singing sounding like "Geese farts on a muggy day").

Guilty, more often than I would like that to be. There are as others will/have mentioned, different "production values" at work, and there are other "popular" musics I DO like, but. . . yeah, I really get negative feelings when exposed to some commercial efforts, especially in the "blather away" radio format, and when it is really badly performed live. I really really really get upset by bass players playing the wrong notes, singers who are out of pitch cluelessly, and noisy loud "shredding" guitarists, etc. when exposed to them. My wife used to tell me I was being "elitist" and "getting old". . . but after more than a decade of exposure to the jazz and other music I have played, she too has been getting really impatient and unhappy with some of the other music she encounters. I am NOT going to say that jazz is some sort of superior art form or anything like that. I'm moving as best as I can away from snobbishness in as many areas as I can; I really disdain snobs and jazz snobs are no different--I don't want to be one or even appear to be one. But I do think that different music moves different temperaments or persons differently. Jazz moves you and I and in a positive manner, and many other musics don't move us that way. . . that would be the safest statement I could stand behind.

I'd also recommend a not cheap dinner that is wonderful here, at Boudro's, just a short stroll from the Landing. . . . The guacamole that they make RIGHT AT YOUR TABLE is a must, and I can't wait to have their blackened prime rib again! DAMN IT! Now I'm REALLY hungry! Boudro's Web Page

Some of the best jazz experiences I've had in the last year or so was at "The Landing," a club on the Riverwalk by the Hilton. As far as I can tell you can go in there almost any night and hear great jazz, mostly unamplified. This is a traditional/mainstream jazz joint; the last time I was there there was a wonderful trombone and piano trio group of local All Stars that played a predominantly Ellington repretoire; I was in heaven from the pure sound and the great playing. This is also Jim Cullum and his band's "headquarters." The Landing website

I could believe that about the Presian clarinet. . . but . . . who knows. Here's another bio from musicweb.uk: BROWN, Pete (b James Ostend Brown, 9 Nov. '06, Baltimore MD; d 20 Sep. '63) Alto sax; also played tenor sax and trumpet. His father was from Barbados, and played trombone; Pete began on piano and violin, switched to reeds '24, went to NYC '27, gigged freelance, and became a founder member of John Kirby's Sextet '37, and played on that group's records as Buster Bailey and his Rhythm Busters (see Bailey's entry) but soon left to lead his own bands. He preferred leading and playing in small groups and never worked in a big band during the Big Band Era, and also rarely left New York, all of which kept him from wider fame. But like Tab Smith, another very different but instantly recognizable alto, he was unique: his clipped notes and rhythmic improvisations were laid back and intense at the same time; Charlie Parker and Paul Desmond were among those said to have named him as an early influence, while his reedy, almost harsh tone made an impact in another direction: he made a distinctive contribution to the 'jump band' genre which was emerging in the '40s (and thus on later R&B), recording as a leader for Decca '42, then Session, Savoy and Keynote '44--5: at the Keynote session, on two takes of 'That's My Weakness Now', he blew strange and pretty harmony behind Ken Kersey's piano and Joe Thomas's trumpet solos on one, but mostly riffed on the other: he was a Swing Era musician with bop creeping up on him, and between '37 and '44 his own solos seemed to become even more reedy and cryptic. Complete World Jam Session '44 on Progressive was a '44 radio transcription with Jonah Jones. He augmented club gigs with teaching, among his students Cecil Payne and Flip Phillips; he made an album for Bethlehem '54, appeared at Newport '57, recorded for Verve '59, but the musical world he had been comfortable in was gone: he probably enjoyed backing Big Joe Turner on Boss Of The Blues '56 on Atlantic, playing with Basie sidemen and Ellington's Lawrence Brown on trombone. In later life he was ill with diabetes.

Pete Brown was a wonderful player; here's the entry from AMG: Pete Brown had an unusual and distinctive swing-based style that sometimes used staccato phrases that were speech-like. Starting originally on piano and also for a time doubling on trumpet, Pete Brown's main ax was the alto by the time he came to New York in 1927 with Bernie Robinson's band. Brown worked many short-time engagements with obscure bandleaders in New York but, starting in the mid-'30s, he often teamed up on excellent records with the underrated trumpeter Frankie Newton. They were both members of the early version of John Kirby's small group in 1937 before departing. Brown worked steadily throughout the late '30s and '40s, often on 52nd Street and sometimes as a bandleader. However, the rise of bop in the mid-'40s resulted in him being neglected and ill health led to him being only semi-active in the 1950s. Brown's recorded appearance at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival found him past his prime and being completely overshadowed by Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge. It is best to search out Pete Brown's many sideman appearances on records from the late '30s, particularly a Newton session from 1939 with James P. Johnson. HOWEVER. . . the photo on this All Music Guide page is NOT of THIS Pete Brown. The pictured one looks a lot more like me with less hair than it does the Pete Brown Paul Desmond was speaking of!

Hey, happy birthday Norah! If you stop buy, Helen and I will buy you dinner!