jazzbo

Write more. Not necessarily on the internet! Happy holidays to all.

Dittto!

Many more happy ones! Now wait for last year!

I agree. . . great sound on those records for the most part. A few turkeys, but lots of realistic sounding gems. The Monks. . .wow. . .what a treasure trove for posterity.

I dig the cover. Whazz up with that Mosaic logo though anyway!

Well, if I live long enough, I'll grab some of their Decca years material.

Well, I'm enjoying this set. Nice basic compact packaging. Nice notes. Decent sound. I feel the price I paid (fifty-two bucks) is low enough to make me not sweat the duplication I have and enjoy the music I don't have.

I agree those were great batches! I finally got caught up for the most part on them. I guess I've cooled in talking about them because I get tired of reading about complaints about the sound. (I dig the sound!)

The Ellington Small Group. . . amazing sound.

I would really doubt it.

I knew.

Uptown is one to check out if you're not already familiar with their Mingus, Eager, Parker/Gillespie and Parker releases,

It's almost as awesome as sharks with friggin' "laser" beams mounted on their heads!

David, follow doctors orders. . . on the pain medication dosage AND other things! Want you to have a speedy recovery.

For a while my wife resented the money that I put into the collection and the stereo system, but she got over that. And for a while she hated the "sound" of jazz, but this was fixed as I finally got really nice stereo components (she has mutant hearing in the high frequency range and this hampered her enjoyment of a lot of digital media music). Over time she's come to appreciate the quality of the music we listen to. She used to laugh at my discomfort at some of the live music we'd encounter (there's an awful lot of bad live music out there) but recently she's told me that she now understands. . . that the music she hears at home is often much better executed and performed. And she's surprised me in the last few years by a) telling me she now understands the value that having a jazz "hobby" (it's an obsession, but she says hobby) brings to my life, and she's sought some of that same escapism and centering in a photographic hobby; b) really enjoying some jazz by a few artists such as Bill Evans, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington in ways she never had before.

I didn't know it was a series under its own. . . there were also recent releases from Christy, VAughn, London, Rawls and Staton I remember as a batch. I didn't get any of them; had what I would have bought on other British EMI and Mosaic issues.

I'll buy that. Luck. . . and craft. And I'll buy that. Except that I think that by and large it's political craft. That is to say I think he's a Jazz politican - maybe the first true example of that - and it is to that that he owes his success. That is he has created, along with his minders, an image - of himself and Jazz, which the public has found attractive. But he hasn't really got a great deal beyond that, at least for the majority of people. Looking at this thread, there are evidently a fair number of people to whom he is a really serious musician with a fascinating back-catalogue. But many more seem to be indifferent (some antagonistic). This only seems comprehensible to me if one asserts that his current top status in Jazz is down to extra-musical factors. Hence the idea of him as a Jazz politican, comparable to that of the Academic politician - good at climbing the greasy pole. But I think people have seen through the image. Simon Weil I'd say that was right, although not exactly without precedent. It's easy to forget (and some would rather not even acknowledge) that jazz is part of the business we call 'show'. There have been a fair few jazz musicians whose high profile has been enhanced by, if not politics, a certain amonut of spin doctoring. Ellington, Dizzy, Miles... all extremely savvy at building up a marketable persona. The difference being that all of them had a hefty amount of genius to back it up. Wynton is no genius. It's been interesting that Wynton's reputation (at least as a recording artist) has taken a slide since doing the Ken Burns docu. If the intention of the show was to place Marsalis' name- as has always seemed to be his ambition- front and center of some mythical jazz renaissance it seems to have had the opposite effect. Yeah. . . by "craft" I was thinking both of musical craft and also in the sense of "craftiness". . . .

Blue. But happy in some ways. Still. . . not full of joie de noel.

Sco does Ray is available too. I'm passin' on it and Saudades

I'll buy that. Luck. . . and craft.

Last couple of years my mind has been sort of bored or just not interested in Wayne Shorter compositions and in a large part performances. Just a phase. I've come to crave more and more down and dirty earthiness and less and less serpentine abstractness. Will probably change in a year or so and I'll be on a big Wayne kick.

lon - pardon my ignorance - which album is this? It's the second album by the band "Free". . .selftitled (but not on the front). I have a pet name for this record, but I'll not post it.

This is what I'm talkin' about:

Well, aside from a circumstance keeping me away from my stereo and in another town, I listen as much as I can to my stereo because it sounds so so much more vivid and realistic than my computers and I can't stay away from it! I've been pulled away to other musics with a lot more force the last two years, but I still reach for jazz at home. It may be habit which stimulates me: I wake and have about an hour to read and listen in the morning before going off to work on a weekday, and can put in even more hours on a weekend, and I put jazz on and sit back with a big steaming mug of organic Mexican coffee and just enjoy myself. My reading and my listening always spur on more reading and listening. It's the story of my adult life. Not as exciting as a Bond novel, but it suits me.

You're right, Volume 1 of the Black Jazz Savoy two lp sets did not come out on cd. Chewy, seek out all you can of the Wardell Gray sides. . . the Dexter sides. . . (If you don't have the Atlantic/Savoy three cd set get it), the Alladiin and Philo recordings of Lester Young, etc. The Central Avenue Sounds box set is a good one, yes there's lots of R&B in there but the lines weren't so finely drawn then, lots of crossover going on. And get the Uptown Charles Mingus disc--that's invaluable.