mjzee

Hmmm...what day is today?

Thanks!

I just tried to access the Sun Ra discography at http://www.the-temple.net/sunradisco/disco.html but all I got was "The page doesn't exist."

Thanks for posting that. I actually knew the first track way ahead of time, because Siri identified it. Since I found out through illicit means, I kept my mouth shut. As for #9, I did identify that it was a bunch of avant-garders trying to play straight.

Just coincidentally, my iPod, set on random, played this Dark Star today. Very abstract, trippy, spacey, name your adjective here... but very powerful. Phil dominates, and the interplay between him and Jerry is just exquisite. Not to be missed, especially if you love the way Dark Star morphed over the years.

Found a vinyl copy of Nat's "Hummin'" (Little David). I'm enjoying this. Polished, sure, but not slick. A little like CTI, but without that sizzling sheen. Influenced by George Benson's mid-70's output, but not in a bad way. It just aims to please, but there's a lot of substance behind the pretty veneer.

I'm now thinking it doesn't make sense to buy speakers with built-in Airplay, because of the danger of obsolescence. Much better to use a separate Airport Express or AppleTV that can be upgraded or swapped out as needed.

I'm in. I'll go through Thom's site.

I believe #4 is Larry Coryell and Philip Catherine performing Nuages from the album Twin House. http://www.allmusic.com/album/twin-house-mw0000497028 Re #10: Is this Hank Jones? Re #12: Is this Keith Jarrett or Oscar Peterson?

Artists make more off vinyl sales than streaming services - NY Post

Great interview! Thanks for posting.

Since Byard Lancaster and Dave Burrell played on the Wildflowers loft sessions, which were produced by Douglas, could it have been recorded around 1976?

One hundred years ago, the corner of Division Street and Western Avenue in Chicago was home to a less delicate sort of hipster than hangs out there today. Among the gangsters, bootleggers and pool sharks was Milton Mezzrow, a Jewish kid from a good family who was drawn to the fast life, got caught with a stolen car, and at the age of 15 was sent to Pontiac Reformatory in Joliet, where he fell in love with the blues. “Night after night we’d lie on the corn-husk mattresses in our cells, listening to the blues drifting over from the Negro side of the block,” he later recalled. After Pontiac, he discovered New Orleans jazz and learned enough saxophone and clarinet to chart a rough and riotous course through several decades of American music history. “Mezz” Mezzrow (1889-1972) eventually played alongside Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, became a pot dealer in Harlem and served as a self-proclaimed “link” between black and white culture. He also landed back in prison, in gangster-run clubs, in an opium den and finally, in his mid-40s, in a Greenwich Village bar, where he met Bernard Wolfe, a young, Yale-educated writer who was friends with Henry Miller and had read French novelists like André Gide and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Over the course of a couple years, they turned the story of Mezzrow’s life into the American counter-culture classic “Really the Blues,” a stylized oral history that anticipates the Beat novel, first published in 1946 and now reissued by New York Review Books. More here: WSJ (article title: The Hipster Odysseus)

The two Ronnie Mathews dates are strong. Could've come out on Blue Note in the '60's. Listening now to "Legacy." Look at the band: Bill Hardman, Ricky Ford, Mathews, Walter Booker, Jimmy Cobb. Mathews is an excellent pianist, very underrated IMHO.

In 1966, at the height of rock and soul’s invasion of the pop charts, Latin music in New York underwent its own cultural revolution. Rebelling against years of domination by Cuban rhythms and rigid dance forms like the mambo, young Puerto Rican musicians in East Harlem embarked on a Latin-soul style that would leave its mark on pop before disappearing in the early 1970s. Known as the Latin boogaloo, the genre featured a loose, eclectic blend of funky polyrhythms, Latin percussion, jazzy horns, bluesy piano lines, soulful vocals, English lyrics and hand clapping, which gave recordings an exciting, club feel. The music fed off the freestyle moves of African-American and Latin dancers as they personalized the twist in the early ’60s. The Latin boogaloo’s history, impact and short-lived popularity are explored in “We Like It Like That,” a documentary available beginning March 15 as a video-on-demand at iTunes and Amazon along with a soundtrack from Fania Records. Directed by Mathew Ramirez Warren, the film makes spectacular use of archival film as well as recent interviews with Latin boogaloo pioneers. More here: WSJ

Listening to the Bee Hive set, I am surprised by how much I like the two Sal Salvador dates. Hard, swinging, melodic, smart...just my kind of jazz.

Sad news from the Seattle Times.

I'm right now listening to and greatly enjoying "Gerry Mulligan Meets Scott Hamilton: Soft Lights & Sweet Music" on Concord. I found a used vinyl copy from Dusty Groove. The two of them have a very nice interplay, and the rest of the band (Mike Renzi, Jay Leonhard and Grady Tate) is very simpatico.

Something did happen... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/10/amazoncom-homepage-intermittently-down-as-users-report-widespread-outage.html

Online right now.

Are Ponos still selling?

Smith is very strong on Starfingers.

I once created a cassette for my own amusement of Zappa/Mothers material, focusing (but not exclusively) on his instrumental side: Side A: Strictly Genteel Peaches En Regalia Revised Music For Guitar And Low Budget Orchestra / Redunzl San Ber'dino Andy It Must Be A Camel Side B: Let Me Take You To The Beach Pedro's Dowry Twenty Small Cigars (from the Ponty album) Flambay / Spider Of Destiny / Regyptian Strut Drowning Witch / Envelopes / Teen-Age Prostitute

Frank Zappa campaign on Kickstarter.

I got the latest Jazz Messengers catalog in the mail today, and it listed 3 other Jim Hall albums on ArtistShare. One was called Magic Meeting; I don't have the catalog in front of me to name the other 2.