mjzee

There was once a mention in a thread, and it's driving me nuts that I can't find it. Re iTunes, and the cover art it displays in the lower left corner of the screen. Someone once posted that if you first drag the artwork for the back of the CD to the artwork field, then drag the artwork for the front of the CD, then you'll be able to click that corner and see both, one after the other (first front, then back, then front again). I tried it tonight and couldn't get those results. I don't know if there's a trick to doing it, or whether it was a feature on an older version of iTunes that's now gone. Does anyone recollect this thread, or can anyone shed some light on this subject???

Those aren't lyrics, though...they're more just sounds. And there aren't many of them. The sax is easily the lead voice on the record.

January 7: Chano Pozo, percussion, singer, 1915 Kenny Davern, clarinet, 1935

January 6: Bobby Stark, trumpet, 1906 Barry Altschul, drums, 1943

Saw this posted today at eMusic. The cover tries to make it seem like an official WDR release. Thoughts? The same company also posted Bud Powell, 1960 Essen, Grugahalle.

January 5: Wild Bill Davison, trumpet, 1906 Dizzy Reece, trumpet, 1931

January 4: Frank Wess, sax, flute, 1922 John McLaughlin, guitar, 1942

January 3: Preston Jackson, trombone, 1902 Herbie Nichols, piano, 1919

LOL!!!

January 2: Nick Fatool, drums, 1915 Arthur Prysock, singer, 1929

Yet two more new releases: Amazon Amazon Release date for both is March 15.

Great album!

Is America's #1 Band still in print?

No comparison; they're in two different worlds. The Mosaic box is of Dean Benedetti's homemade recordings (poor sound quality), chopped to only preserve Parker's solos. The Savoy box is the real deal: mostly studio sessions, with great sound quality. They really hit it out of the park on this one.

Jump on that Rollins Complete Prestige if you don't already have it.

I think it's worth it. There's something about Bird's alternate takes that are sui generis. It's also fascinating to see how a tune evolves during the recording session. The booklet's essays are excellent. Another thing to consider is the state of the CD business. Who knows how long this will be available, before they go to all downloads?

This is a fun thread. Let's see... Shotgun, by Jr. Walker & The All Stars: I was in love with Top 40 radio when I was a kid in the '60's, listing first on my 2-transistor radio, then on my 6-transistor, each glued to my ear. Shotgun thrilled me, but it was a few weeks until it dawned on me: I loved this song, but it had no words! How could that be? Is that allowed? Strictly Personal, by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: As a teen, I was into Zappa and all his offshoots on Bizarre/Straight, though the records themselves were awfully hard to come by in Brooklyn. Then my brother brought me home this album, which I had never heard of. I hated it; all the songs sounded the same. But something compelled me to keep listening (maybe it was Gimme Dat Harp Boy, which had a great groove). Then, one day, it was like a door opened, and I was able to get inside the music. I really understood it, loved it, and never heard music in the same way after that. The ESP Sampler: It was 99 cents (printed proudly on the cover), and I bought it as an impulse purchase on the same foray to King Karol on 42nd Street when I bought Uncle Meat and Trout Mask Replica (forget about finding those in Brooklyn). The ESP Sampler was a disk I played as much to laugh at what I heard as to enjoy - each track was 30 seconds long, there were like 30 tracks on a side, so what emerged when you played a side was more a pastiche of sounds, little snippets and impressions. It was almost certainly the first time I heard true "out" music, and I laughed at it: this people were crazy! But enough of it lodged in my head, I guess, to help me understand the language. Music from Charlie Chaplin film shorts: Back in 1971, there was a Charlie Chaplin revival, leading up to his receiving an honorary Oscar. Channel 13 (the PBS station in NYC) often played his early shorts, I think 3 in an hour program. This was before the archivists "corrected" the shorts, so they were the ones in super-fast motion with the music with all the funny sound effects - you know, the ones we grew up with. I found myself taking an interest in the music, so one day I used my portable cassette recorder with a microphone up to the TV speaker to record the music from a few of them. I often listened to that cassette, and that led me to an appreciation with the style of music from the '20's and '30's. Vivaldi: Concerti Per Mandolini, I Solisti Veneti, Claudio Scimone: Growing up, I hated classical music. You know, the stuff they forced you to listen to in school, and the stuff that TV and all the authorities insisted was the only real music. Yuck and double-yuck. All those lugubrious orchestras, Leonard Bernstein lecturing you how to appreciate music (you know, how to bear listening to something you really didn't want to listen to)...you get the idea. Still, I often tried, on my own, to sample various things, as per the Frank Zappa dictum: go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. So I'd haunt the bargain bins at Alexander's Department Store and come home with something on Westminster Gold and try to like it, really I did, without any success. There was a longstanding ad campaign by the Musical Heritage Society that offered 2 classical albums for a buck or something, and one of them was this Vivaldi album, which they claimed sold tens of thousands of copies when played on some European pop station. So I got it, and it really did help me to love Baroque music. (The album is available on compact disc on Erato.)

December 31: Jonah Jones, trumpet, 1908 John Kirby, bass, bandleader, 1908

It is 40 years since the American record producer Creed Taylor acted as midwife to the quintessential 1970s soundtrack for a generation in love with freshly fitted in-car entertainment. Taylor’s brash, soulful and sophisticated sounds accompanied slick kids with wheels on their search for night-time revels, resonating with an urban America easing back from recent confrontations. Taylor’s flair for production and market savvy was already proved when he laid down his soundtrack. He had signed John Coltrane for the Impulse record label in 1961 and, while managing the Verve label, brokered bossa nova – “The Girl From Ipanema” won its Grammy in 1965. Nevertheless, his idea that luxuriously packaged street-scene rhythms and soulful jazz would be commercially viable had few takers in 1970, the year CTI – for Creed Taylor Incorporated – went fully independent. He launched an earthier label-mate, Kudu, a year later and dominated the jazz charts for the next decade. More here: FT.com

December 30: Jimmy Jones, piano, arranger, 1918

An appreciation by Will Friedwald in WSJ

December 29: Snub Mosley, trombone, 1905 Cutty Cutshall, trombone, 1911

December 28: Earl Hines, piano, bandleader, 1903 Michel Petrucciani, piano, 1962

You might be thinking about this one: The liner notes give the date as November 2, 1949, but the actual date (as asserted by a poster on the old BNBB) was February 11, 1949 (2/11/49 rather than 11/2/49, in American parlance).