mjzee

Does anyone even know if he's still alive?

I saw Pat in Minneapolis in June. First-rate, he was really burning (pet peeve: the pianist was very McCoy Tyner-ish; I so wish young pianists would take inspiration from Sonny Clark instead!), and told an interesting story about hanging out on a Harlem street corner in the early '60's with Wes, George Benson and Grant Green.

Just got the Lou Donaldson and Bennie Green sets. Haven't listened to them yet, though. Re the Bennie Green: Does anyone know what were the tracks from the Congo Lament session that were left off this set? I'm wondering if I have them on the Ike Quebec 45s Sessions.

Sonny Rollins

Good point, Allen.

The New York Post reported that the first song the Dead played was Shakedown Street, perhaps appropos considering the surroundings!

Was just listening to this in the car. Very nice stuff! Upbeat, tuneful; reminded me a little of Horace Silver. I like Tapscott's comping and solos. And the sound is just gorgeous! Even in the car, I could clearly hear the bass, and the piano sounds bright. I liked the arrangements - even on familiar songs (Delilah, Dear Old Stockholm, Samba De Orpheo), they've rethought the approach, and don't sound like other versions. I like the interplay between trombone and trumpet - heck, I like the whole thing! Picked this up at one of the Tower closing sales, and am glad I did.

I thought this was on Prestige, not on Blue Note!

I rip mine at 192 kbps.

The collection includes I Ain't Got No Home and The Grand Coulee Dam.

Very cool. Thanks!

Does anyone have graphics of the original covers (Jazz Frontier and Two-Note Samba) that they can post here?

My first boxed set was a $3 promo box put out by Warner Bros./Reprise called "Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies." At the time, they had a great way to introduce new music to the public: a few times a year, they'd release $1 a disc compilations of their new releases. Most were twofers, but LT&MM was the first (and I think only) 3 disc set. While it was handsome, I didn't think it wore as well on the shelves - any air in the box made it collapse in spots. I came to really dislike boxed sets - I knew I just wouldn't dig to play, say, the 8th disc in a 16-disc set; it would just remain unplayed. Which, I guess, is why I truly love the "random" feature in iTunes - every song has an equal chance to get played. My first jazz boxed set? I think "The Complete Charlie Parker on Verve" lp import from Japan. Massive box, with most of the booklet in Japanese. I think when the U.S. CD box came out, it had alternate takes not included in my version.

The collection does include "Dylan"! He actually does a nice version of Elvis's "Can't Help Falling In Love." Also, the bonus songs include the songs performed in Masked and Anonymous. There's a hardass version of Cold Irons Bound!

Decided to start a Bob Dylan corner, as I've really revived my interest in him over the past year. Let me know if you think this belongs more in the "Miscellaneous Music" section (but I figure if the Grateful Dead and Roger Miller can reside here, well...). Just went for "The Bob Dylan Collection" on iTunes. Couldn't believe it: $200 for EVERY Bobby D. album released, including "Modern Times." (Well, almost every one: it doesn't include the live 1962 date sold at Starbucks last year). I got it for $180, since Costco is selling $50 iTunes gift cards for $45. Took about 5 hours to download it all. Includes about 45 additional tracks. I'm so glad I get the chance to get reacquainted with such quirky albums as "Down In The Groove," "Knocked Out Loaded," "Self Portrait"; also included are some I never owned, such as "Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid." And I'll get my first listen to "Good As I Been To You," "World Gone Wrong," and "Love And Theft." Downside is that they're encoded at a bitrate of 128. Upside is a beautiful 119-page booklet (Adobe Acrobat) containing all original liner notes. It seems like a real treat.

The Sound of Unheard Melodies By PETER PESIC December 29, 2006; Page W6 Do you ever worry about your piano? Not how to pay for it or whether the kids are practicing or why it may sometimes sound out of tune -- but what it means for your piano to be "tuned" at all? You may consider this on a par with worrying about the shape of the Big Dipper -- the notes on a piano seem inevitable, as if determined by nature itself -- but the keyboard is a deeply human device. In "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony," Ross Duffin, a musicologist and performer of early music at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, presents a delightfully informative and provocative argument that we should rethink our common musical habits at the most basic level: the way we tune musical instruments. He is not happy with the current way we divide up the musical scale -- what we call "temperament." It all began when Pythagoras discovered that the most pleasing musical intervals -- that is, the sonic distance between two pitches -- correspond to simple whole-number ratios. Thus two taut strings whose lengths match a 2-to-1 ratio (one string twice as long as the other) when struck will sound an octave, the interval between middle C and the next C above it. A 3-to-2 ratio of string lengths will sound a perfect fifth -- what we imagine to be, say, C to G on a piano. A 4-to-3 ratio sounds a perfect fourth (C to F). A whole step -- the interval between a fourth and a fifth (F to G) -- requires a 9-to-8 ratio. For Pythagoras, these primal intervals were the cosmic harmonies or ratios regulating the planets' relative motions, the mysterious "music of the spheres," as it came to be called. Missing the Octave But an odd thing happens when you stack up perfect intervals -- a kind of imperfection shows up. If you begin with a low C and go up by perfect fifths -- C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A#-F-C -- you will miss returning to an exact octave of C by a tiny but definite interval, called the "Pythagorean comma." (Expressed as a ratio, it comes to exactly 531441:524288, if you are curious.) In short, the first C and the last one will sound slightly, but painfully, "out of tune." This minute but audible discrepancy threatens to wreck music: If you begin on one pitch and keep singing perfect intervals, you might never be able to find that starting pitch again. The comma inevitably sneaks in. Theoretically, God himself should have to confront this problem, which imperils celestial harmony. HOW EQUAL TEMPERAMENT RUINED HARMONY (AND WHY YOU SHOULD CARE) By Ross W. Duffin (Norton, 196 pages, $25.95) What to do? "Temperament" is a (human) solution. It means redefining musical intervals so as to avoid the comma problem, smoothing its harshness by distributing that unruly remainder somehow throughout the scale. Pythagorean temperament does so by dividing the whole step into two unequal "semitones," one having an extra comma in it. This works if you are singing while strumming your lyre but becomes increasingly problematic when several melodic lines intertwine. A different kind of temperament was eventually developed in the 16th century, offering a draconian, ruthlessly egalitarian solution: Divide the octave into 12 mathematically equal semitones. Such a division requires that the semitone "ratio" be a highly irrational quantity, the 12th root of 2. So much for the Pythagorean dream of simple, whole-number ratios. Distributing 'Impurities' Equally tempered instruments are equally out of tune throughout. In contrast, other Renaissance temperaments (such as "just" or "meantone") kept some intervals pure and concentrated the comma "impurities" in others. By the time of J.S. Bach -- who flourished in the first half of the 18th century -- ingeniously constructed unequal temperaments were common. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier," a tour de force of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, was written for such an unequal temperament, not the equal one of modern pianos. Most of us have never heard Bach's music as he himself heard it. Mr. Duffin is bothered by this -- by what he sees as a wrong turn in the history of music, leaving us today stranded in the arid precincts of equal temperament. He makes his argument forcefully and tells his story well. He has an eye for the whimsical and includes thumbnail biographies of some interesting characters, such as the 18th-century composer Johann Joachim Quantz, who added a key to the bottom of the flute so that players could make a distinction, on the instrument's lowest note, between D-sharp and E-flat. To us, these are the same note; to Quantz, E-flat was an important comma higher. Pitch Changes, Please Naturally, Mr. Duffin emphasizes that medieval and Renaissance music ought to be heard in the unequal temperaments appropriate to their times, just as we now try to use authentic instruments and performance practices for that repertoire. When it comes to Bach, he believes that we should insist on the genuine, well-tempered article. (He mentions in passing the scholar Bradley Lehman's recent discovery that Bach encoded his own favored temperament in the apparently ornamental doodles and knotted squiggles he put on the title page of his "Well-Tempered Clavier." I would have liked to hear more about this remarkable claim.) Mr. Duffin's call for pitch changes, however, goes well beyond the 18th century. He argues that equal temperament only became prevalent after 1917, drawing evidence from texts and historical recordings by violinists like Joseph Joachim, Brahms's friend. Thus we really ought to be hearing the familiar 19th-century repertoire in the appropriate temperament, even though this would require an enormous "retooling" of the way that musicians are trained to play and sing, not just revamping our ill-tempered pianos. As plausible as the argument sounds, the real test will be how the music sounds. I wish that somehow Mr. Duffin's book could have done more to help its readers hear what it describes. (This may be one case where an accompanying CD, folded into the book, would have been really essential.) Mr. Duffin's Web site, one discovers, gives Bach chorales and fugues electronically synthesized in different temperaments. The unlovely, though precise, pitches made me uncomfortably conscious of the artificiality of all such temperaments. Indeed, I realized anew how human are the temperaments of our instruments, how varied the results of different piano tuners, how expressively cellists or singers can shade intervals. Mr. Duffin offers a striking critique of Pablo Casals's idea of "expressive intonation," in which string players are urged to raise certain pitches for additional expressive effect. He also cites Enid Katahn's interesting CD "Six Degrees of Temperament," which includes four different versions of Mozart's D minor Fantasy, each played on a Steinway grand in a different historical temperament. How much difference will temperament make, next to all the other aspects of musical style and performance? We need to hear for ourselves. One aspect of Mr. Duffin's argument is especially intriguing: In nonequal temperaments, each musical key has a distinct, individual character because of its particular distribution of commas. Many composers have alluded to such key differences over the centuries, though they make little sense to us today. For us, a C-major prelude transposed to C# sounds essentially the same, not fundamentally changed if played one semitone higher. But if pitch practice is allowed to follow Mr. Duffin's unequally tempered path, we may soon be able to hear for ourselves what Beethoven really meant when he called B minor "black."

The Electric Joe Zawinul His jazz compositions deserve more attention and respect By JIM FUSILLI December 30, 2006; Page P10 "Forecast: Tomorrow" (Columbia), Weather Report's recently released 39-track retrospective, supports the conclusion that the band was the best of the 1970s electric jazz-fusion groups. It also invites a reappraisal of Joe Zawinul, the keyboard player and composer who, along with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, founded the group. Why revisit Mr. Zawinul and not his longtime partner? For one, Mr. Shorter is on the lofty pedestal he deserves, having more or less escaped the scorn of jazz purists who loathe electric jazz. In 2000, he introduced a dazzling new quartet that builds on the beloved acoustic postbebop model he helped create as a member of Miles Davis's great mid-1960s quintet. Several of Mr. Shorter's early melodic and harmonically complex compositions are part of the jazz canon, and his recordings with his new group, particularly the in-concert albums "Footprints Live!" and last year's "Beyond the Sound Barrier," both on the Verve label, suggest his latter period will be ripe for exploration as well. As for Mr. Zawinul, his credentials ought to be beyond dispute too. He joined the Davis group as it began to explore electric jazz, coming over after a nine-year stint as pianist for Cannonball Adderly, for whom he wrote some 50 songs. From the beginning of the electric-jazz era, the Austria-born and classically trained Mr. Zawinul was the most imaginative keyboard player, blending brawny blocks of colorful chords with feathery filigrees. To hear him at work is to believe there's no sound he can't produce and that his surprising-but-inevitable choices will suit perfectly the music he's performing. He's been voted Best Electric Keyboard player 28 times by Down Beat magazine. He isn't as widely acknowledged for his compositions, though he wrote Davis's "In a Silent Way" and two of the rare jazz songs to become mainstream hits -- "Mercy Mercy Mercy" for Adderly in 1966 and "Birdland" for Weather Report 11 years later. As "Forecast: Tomorrow" illustrates, Mr. Zawinul's compositions explore the full range of human emotions -- his ballads speak of loss and yearning as well as any modern jazz composer's. But, with the occasional exception of his three most famous tunes, not many Zawinul compositions are covered by traditional jazz artists -- a baffling oversight that suggests the bias against electric jazz still lives. Last year, on its album "Trio" (ECM), the Polish acoustic-jazz combo Wasilewski, Kurkiewicz and Miskiewicz reworked Mr. Shorter's Weather Report composition "Plaza Real." Many Zawinul tunes would do just as well in such thoughtful hands. Nowadays, the 74-year-old Mr. Zawinul rarely returns to acoustic jazz and continues to rely on funk, rock and, most of all, African and Latin American rhythms and modes for his mix. At a late October performance at New York's Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the beautiful new temple of traditional jazz, Mr. Zawinul mostly played percussive funk, fronting a band of young musicians from Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco and Uganda. Not only did he avoid acoustic jazz, he barely tapped his Weather Report-era songbook, leaning heavily on his 2005 live album, "Vienna Nights" (BHM). The show was touted as the first by a fusion band at Jazz at Lincoln Center since it opened in 2004. With close to half the theater's 1,200 seats empty, who knows whether there will be another soon. An extraordinary vehicle for Mr. Zawinul and Mr. Shorter, Weather Report regularly altered its lineup, changing drummers and bass players to adapt to an audience that increasingly included rock fans. The boxed set presents the initial unit as patient and ethereal, with Miroslav Vitous's acoustic bass providing a supple anchor; the band sounded much like the quieter moments of Davis's groundbreaking and once-disparaged "Bitches Brew" album, particularly on Mr. Zawinul's "Orange Lady," which he wrote for Davis. Another Zawinul composition that Davis recorded during that period, "Directions," is more fully realized in the previously unreleased Weather Report version as Mr. Shorter and Mr. Vitous prove fusion and bebop were never incompatible. A live version of Mr. Shorter's "Nubian Sundance" demonstrates how the band became more assertive when Alphonso Johnson assumed the bass role. The arrival in 1976 of the brilliant bassist Jaco Pastorius made Weather Report a super-group that played with the power and brashness of a rock band and the adroitness and sophistication of a jazz combo. A DVD of a 1978 concert included in the package presents Weather Report at its height, though "Forecast: Tomorrow" is a reminder that while the Pastorius-era group is now legendary, it was extraordinary before his arrival and after he departed. "Forecast: Tomorrow" reveals the richness of Mr. Zawinul's compositions and raises the hope that they will be appreciated one day for their musicality and capacity to communicate on an intellectual and visceral level. At times, the band's clever, sometimes remarkable performances obscure the beauty at the heart of his writing. But beauty is there, as well as adventure, daring and real harmonic invention. Sooner or later, bias will give way to the realization that Mr. Zawinul is a rare and wonderful jazz composer worthy of intelligent and passionate exploration.

OK, it has jazz uses too. For instance, I just dubbed from LP the Oscar Peterson Jam from Montreux '77: The Art of the Jam Session. Since I want to put the set in the Oscar Peterson folder, and not create a separate Oscar Peterson Jam folder, the Artist is Oscar Peterson, and the Album Artist is Oscar Peterson Jam. That's what I figured; thanks for the confirmation, rostasi.

In the latest version of iTunes, there's a new field available named "Album Artist" (as opposed to "Artist", which is still there). Does anyone know what this new field is used for?

Very sad. RIP.

I remember that their LPs were issued in the U.S. by United Artists, and the covers had some great dye-cut graphics - covers that fold out in interesting ways. The "Fearless" cover had pages like a book, and the "Bandstand" cover had a big hole where the TV screen is. The paper was thin, though, so one had to be really careful refiling the LP. It was a great time for LP graphics - a lot of fun experimenting was going on.

This month's downloads: Charlie Parker - Bird on 52nd St Joe Pass - Meditation Charlie Byrd - Mr. Guitar The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall Bud Powell - Winter Broadcasts 1953 Art Tatum Group Masterpieces #2 (w/Roy Eldridge) Pee Wee Russell & Coleman Hawkins - Jazz Reunion Mike Ledonne - On Fire Eric Dolphy & Booker Little - Memorial Album Dave Brubeck - Live at Oberlin Russell Malone - Live at the Jazz Standard

When they started carrying Candid, they started with just a few titles; each month, they add more. Now they have a large part of the catalog. Here's hoping they'll do the same with Storyville.

CHARLIE ROUSE: Freddie Hubbard (tp), Charlie Rouse (ts), McCoy Tyner (p), Bob Cranshaw (b), Billy Higgins (dm). Englewood Cliffs, N.J., January 22, 1965 1505 tk.1 One for five 1506 tk.9 Little Sherri (rejected) untitled original (rejected) untitled minor blues (rejected) 1507 I'm glad there is you (rejected)

Exciting news - it seems that eMusic now has the Storyville label. See: Dexter Gordon - Jazz at Highschool Duke Ellington - Masters of Jazz Ben Webster Plays Ballads Plus others.