mjzee

Kurt Masur - The Complete Warner Classics Edition, disc 50.

Disc 5: Carpenter, Griffes, Grainger, Zemachson, Harris.

Reinhard Goebel Complete Archiv box, disc 35.

Correct, nope, nope, right! I especially liked your description of #11.

Kurt Masur - The Complete Warner Classics Edition, disc 49.

This box seems intriguing. I'm actually not a fan of BN's more cerebral releases, in which I include Hutcherson's Happenings. I also own downloads of Medina and Spiral, and Patterns on a Japanese CD. Having said that, sometimes a box set can force a reevaluation and lend a new perspective. I'll think about it.

#4 is actually a tenor-led date (but very much an ensemble). #6 is indeed Frisell; I think his tone and phrasing are unmistakable. However, not Moon River (track name already identified). #9 has also been identified. #14 is an Ohio Players song, and the track has been identified; put on your platform shoes!

Release date July 5: NEA Jazz Master Louis Hayes certainly personifies the term "living history." Born in Detroit, Hayes packed up his drum set and caught a train east, arriving in New York City in 1956 to join the Horace Silver Quintet. In 1959 he joined the Cannonball Adderley band, finding himself, in his early 20s, at the nerve center of the jazz world. He would visit John Coltrane in his apartment and was to make several justly famous recordings with him. Over the next 60 years Hayes amassed an impressive body of work, playing and recording with Oscar Peterson, Dexter Gordon, Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, Cedar Walton, Sonny Rollins, Woody Shaw and countless others. His latest recording on Savant, Artform Revisited, may fondly recall some of Hayes' old friends, but it also stands on the summit of today's post-bop sessions. Surrounded by his recording band of choice, Hayes' vibrant and colorful drumming supports a carefully chosen set list. Two new compositions by Hayes are featured along with some Charlie Parker tunes, the John Lewis version of "Milestones" and the beautiful but seldom-heard Bobby Troup ballad, "You're Looking at Me." Through it all, Hayes proves himself to not just a great drummer, but also a gifted and charismatic leader, inspiring his players to give their best and delivering performances born of his vast experience and exhibiting the mutual respect of all those concerned.

I would buy it.

Wow - three thoughtful, considered, incisive commentaries on the tracks; thanks for the effort y'all put in. One of the mysteries of music, and BFTs really bring this out, is how different people can hear things so differently. Indeed, I can hear the same track differently from one listen to the next. There's probably an analogy to wine here, but wine never got to me the way music does. I'm not saying I love all these tracks (especially not the more diffident ones), but I thought they'd be a good springboard for conversation. And even those, I find repeated listening bears fruit. And, to be clear, I'm not a fan of the lengths of some of these tracks. I could try editing them down, but would probably mangle them in an unpleasant way, so here they stand. As for IDs thus far, felser nailed #14 (talk about editing: I wish I could have edited out the shout-out to Jamaaladeen Tacuma before his solo!). Jim was the first to ID Fathead (#9), and Dan found the album source. Compositions Goldfinger, Wichita Lineman, Happy Birthday, and As Time Goes By were identified (I'd be worried if they weren't). Thom noticed the presence of "our host" on #12 (but he's not on #13). And Jim made an interesting John Patton reference to #13, because this artist worked with Patton. Carry on!

Disc 4: Delibes, Wolf-Ferrari, Gounod, Ravel.

Reinhard Goebel Complete Archiv box, disc 34.

Yup! Not "Funny Valentine" (mine or any other's), not Harry Allen.

A new month, a new BFT! Fellow Organissimateers, lend me your ears! 14 tracks, 79 minutes. Give thanks to the magnificent munificence of Thom Keith, and begin sleuthing! https://thomkeith.net/blindfold-tests/current-tests/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kurt Masur - The Complete Warner Classics Edition, disc 48.

Just finished listening to these two. Amazing how many great songs they did. These remastered collections smooth out the sonic differences between songs of wildly varying years and studios, and allow you to hear a consistent, coherent sound and vision.

Disc 3: Schoenberg, Honegger, Kreisler, Schumann

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/platos-burial-place-finally-revealed-after-ai-deciphers-ancient-scroll-carbonized-in-mount-vesuvius-eruption

Reinhard Goebel Complete Archiv box, disc 33.

Kurt Masur - The Complete Warner Classics Edition, disc 47.

And this is from the obituary on the BN website: Just before he passed, Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note, sent Cuscuna a steamer trunk holding all the photographs shot by Lion’s partner at the label, Frank Wolff. https://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/michael-cuscuna-1948-2024/

OK, I found it. In the booklet to Blue Note's Nichols 3-CD complete set, Cuscuna wrote: PRODUCER'S NOTE During 1980 and '81, I systematically listened to every tape in the Blue Note vaults. Among my discoveries were 8 previously unissued compositions by Herbie Nichols, but no titles were provided for them. Circulating tapes among musicians brought only one title, "Riff Primitif," provided conclusively by Roswell Rudd. The search for the Blue Note recording files was still on and getting nowhere. When Hitoshi Namekata asked me to put together a 3-LP set of unissued tracks from the Blue Note 1500 series, I used "Riff Primitif" and another original that had similarities to a Herbie Nichols composition, "Argumentive". So I called it "Argumentative Variations" (it turned out to be called "Trio"). Herbie's music is so startlingly original that making it available became something of an obsession. When there appeared to be no hope of finding Herbie's own titles for the new-found material, Charlie Lourie and I began researching a definitive set of Herbie's music. Roswell Rudd researched Nichols' life and edited the booklet for the eventual Mosaic collection, and I resigned myself to using "Untitled #1", et cetera, for the unissued material. Alfred Lion, Blue Note's founder and the producer of these sessions, was as disappointed as I was about the absence of titles, explaining that Herbie put a great deal of thought and meaning into his titles. But as luck would have it, while searching through the Francis Wolff photographs of Blue Note sessions that were in his possession, Alfred accidentally came upon the long-lost Blue Note session logs. Suddenly, we had titles. But more importantly, we had a road map to these five sessions of brilliant, complex music. With this priceless navigational chart through the session reels, it soon became evident that a wealth of worthy and different alternate takes existed. Added to the 2 tunes already issued and 6 more to come, we found 18 enlightening alternates.

Huh. I just looked at Discogs, and all titles have names. Why did I remember "Untitled Original"? Bad memory about this, I guess. Apologies.

Cuscuna himself told the story in the intro to (IIRC) the first book of Wolff's photos. He started Mosaic with Charlie Lourie, and put out the Monk box. One day, he got a long-distance call, and he recognized the voice from listening to BN session reels. Lion demanded to know who Cuscuna was and who gave him permission to release the Monk sessions. Cuscuna spent the phone call calming Lion down, and a friendship developed. Cuscuna would call Lion to see if he had any memories of particular sessions, and Lion would also call Cuscuna to chat. One day, a huge trunk arrived: Lion entrusted Cuscuna with Wolff's negatives. Even better, lurking in the trunk were session notes for many sessions that had no documentation. For example, when Herbie Nichols's "The Third World" brown bag was released, many tracks had no names. These notes contained the composition names, which is how they appeared in Blue Note's "The Complete Blue Note Recordings" package.