mjzee

I wholeheartedly agree! If the world is going to electronic transmission of music, covers and liner notes are the components still missing.

I wonder why Blue Note (EMI - Capitol first released them) hasn't released any of these on CD; they sold well upon first release.

I liked his description of the Gus Viseur tune: Gus Viseur was an accordion player who played musette, a kind of French cafe music... had a little bit of a Gypsy sound, a little bit of jazz. Probably the most famous example would be a guy like Django Reinhardt, who crossed over a little more into swing jazz. But there's a whole bunch of guys like Gus Viseur, Jo Privat and Vetese Guerino. The great thing about music is that when you hear it, even if you don't have a dime in your pocket, you can travel all over the world. Whenever I hear a song like this, it doesn't matter where I am or what the weather is like. Suddenly I'm on a rain-soaked street in France underneath an awning drinking an espresso noir with a beautiful raven-haired Parisian.

Referring to the Alfred Lion era, what will be improved in the new edition? Are there errors or incorrect information in the last edition?

Or just use the "Ignore" feature...a very useful tool...

One of my favorite memories is a JVC Jazz Festival in, I dunno, the late '90's, which was a tribute to Barney Kessel (he got up on stage at the end of the concert to read a speech, but the stroke had so incapacitated him that, after a few words, his wife had to complete his speech, but that's another story). It was an all-star, all-guitar concert, and a highlight was this trio: Tal, Herb Ellis, and Charlie Byrd. Backed by bass and drums, they laughed and traded licks. It was great!

Woah, I must have gotten one of the last ones out of the building. My order/shipping confirmation came through today at 11:53 PST. It will be here on Monday. You probably copped one of the very last. When you get it, could you post the #? (Anal minds are just DYING to know.) Mine was 5810.

This is how Bob introduced the Starbucks collection: When I was asked to put together this collection of songs, I wasn't sure what to do. So I just grabbed a bunch of things I was into recently. Some people have favorite songs, but I've got songs of the minute - songs that I'm listening to right now. And if you ask me about one of those songs a year from now, I might not even remember who did it, but at the moment it's everything to me. There're a lot of different ways a record can get under your skin. Sometimes it's the way they sound, sometimes it's the words. Maybe it's a guitar riff or horn line or maybe you feel like the singer is talking right to you. Some people say it's chemistry but chemistry is too much of a science. A great record is more like alchemy. Here's a bunch of folks who somehow managed to turn lead into gold for a couple of minutes. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Finally! The MusicMasters have arrived! No Jim Hall (yet), but still a nice selection. Plenty of Benny Carter.

If you email or call Mosaic, they'll send you an empty Hodges box. Thanks for the tip! I called Mosaic, and they were as nice as can be. A new box is on it's way to me. It's supposed to rain here on Friday, so I hope it arrives tomorrow.

I don't think Columbia would need permission to rerelease a remastered version of Concert By The Sea.

So I'm in Starbucks today, and by the counter I saw a new compilation: Bob Dylan - Music That Matters To Him. If you know the series, it's music the artist picks out, that he likes to listen to. What an interesting selection: Pee Wee Crayton - Do Unto Others Clancy Eccles - Don't Brag, Don't Boast Stanley Brothers with The Clinch Mountain Boys - The Fields Have Turned Brown Gus Viseur - Flambee Montalbanaise (Valse) Red Prysock - Hand Clappin' Sol Hoopii & His Novelty Quartette - I Like You Ray Price - I'll Be There (If You Ever Want Me) Stuff Smith & His Onyx Club Boys - I'se a Muggin' (Part 2) Charley Jordan - Keep It Clean Junior Wells - Little by Little (I'm Losing You) Patty & The Emblems - Mixed-Up, Shook-Up Girl Getatchew Kassa - Tezeta (Fast) Flaco Jimenez with Toby Torres & Jose Morante - Victimas del Huracan Beulah Wanda Jackson - I Gotta Know Billie Holiday & Her Orchestra - I Hear Music Junior Parker - Pretty Baby There are also great liner notes by Bob about the selections. I'll try to share some as I get more into it.

So the postman delivered the Hodges (+ the Boogie Woogie Select) to my doorstep today, and left it there in a pouring rain. Box was sopping wet. Luckily (and I do mean luckily), there was enough bubble wrap inside the box so that the Hodges box was unscathed, with only the cover separating a little from the box. Grrr...

Sam Jones - Cello Again Barney Kessel - Let's Cook Louis Bellson - 150 MPH Charlie Hunter and Bobby Previte as Groundtruther - Altitude with special guest John Medeski Marin Alsop - Brahms: Symphony No. 3 / Haydn Variations (Naxos) Jackie McLean - 4 5 & 6, Makin' The Changes Art Farmer - On The Road

I'd love for you to redo the "From Spirituals To Swing" box set. That stuff never sounds good, even after working from the master discs.

Damn this board. The Hodges wasn't even on my radar screen...

I've preordered the Stanley and the Lou. I have the prior releases of the Freddie (which I like a lot) and the Horace (which didn't do much for me).

Displays are nice - you can look at the album cover, and if you have mucho time on your hands, you can enter personnel info into iTunes (as "lyrics") for handy reference on your iPod. I love my 30gb iPod. Stick to the "classic" models (small screens) and you'll do fine. And you never know when you'll want to download a concert video to watch (and listen to) on your travels.

I love Ralph's work - very haunting and tuneful. Two faves: Ana Solo Concert I remember when I presented Oregon in concert at my college in 1974, the other 3 guys were vegetarians/health foodies, but Ralph proudly proclaimed that he loved hamburgers and fries.

Many interesting items made available today. Does anyone know about the Miles Live in Amsterdam '57, or the MussoMusic.com titles ("Improvised Music New York 1981" or the Machine Gun titles)? The Sackvilles also look interesting.

Question re Iron City: When was it first released on LP? If it was when Larry Young was still alive, did he mention to anyone that he was the organist on the date?

Thanks, Marcello.

Does anyone have session info (personnel, dates, etc.) for this record? I have a version where both discs are in one (non-gatefold) cover - only the front and back covers are reproduced. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for posting that, Lazaro. I love guys like that - he seems very real and nice. Good mentions of Chuck Nessa in there, too.

This is from yesterday's Wall St Journal: Still Funky After All These Years By JIM FUSILLI When saxophonist Maceo Parker was in his early teens in Kinston, N.C., "I had to find out what's me," the now 65-year-old musician told me during a break last week in his current tour. "With everybody wanting to play jazz, I decided I'll play funky. It'd be nice if I could play like Cannonball [Adderly] or [John] Coltrane, but I'll just be really, really, really good at playing funky." And so Mr. Parker started his journey to become the funk sax player. In 1964, at age 21, he joined James Brown's band and soon his playing on alto, tenor and baritone sax became an identifiable part of Brown's sound -- in part because the singer frequently shouted out "Maceo!" on recordings and in concerts. From there, Mr. Parker joined George Clinton's eclectic, ultra-funky Parliament-Funkadelic groups, before returning to the Brown band in 1984. He began playing in Prince's New Power Generation in the late 1990s and worked in the studio with rock acts clamoring for his distinctive sax. "They say, 'Why don't we get that guy who did that James Brown stuff?" the ebullient and effusive Mr. Parker said of the musicians like Ani DiFranco, Dave Matthews, Jane's Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers who have featured him on their discs. "The way James called my name, they think, 'He must be all right.' When they call me, they want me." And, since the late 1980s, Mr. Parker has been leading his own band too, mixing jazz and funk during countless concerts and on a dozen albums that form a body of work both mature and fun. Mr. Parker's latest recording finds him fronting not his own group but the Cologne, Germany-based WDR Big Band. "Roots & Grooves" (Heads Up) is a two-disc live set cut about a year ago: On the first CD, he plays and sings the music of one of his early heroes, Ray Charles. Mr. Parker ensures that the big band pays tribute to Charles's sax players -- including David "Fathead" Newman and Hank Crawford, who both had an influence on Mr. Parker's style. The second CD is pure Maceo Parker funk, including five of his compositions and Brown's "Pass the Peas." The disc explodes as Dennis Chambers, who also worked with Mr. Clinton, takes over the kit from the WDR drummer and, along with Rodney Curtis on bass, sets a deep groove that Mr. Parker gleefully, and characteristically, exploits. Joe Zawinul, the ex-Adderly keyboardist and co-founder of Weather Report, who has since died, recommended the WDR band to Mr. Parker's producers. Mr. Parker, in turn, suggested the Charles tribute. He said he enjoyed the temporary change of direction. "I experienced the big-band stuff in college," he said, "but I never longed to work with a Count Basie. Ray Charles, maybe. But having said that, it was great. I've always loved a lot of horns." While Mr. Parker is probably best known for his staccato bleats, melodic flourishes and impeccable timing over relentless percussion and modal vamping by keyboards and guitars, the horn sections in which he played often featured long, harmonically rich lines akin to the unison parts in big-band music. "That big-band sort of phrasing," he said, "I've always done that. That's me." It was King Curtis too, who also was an early influence on Mr. Parker, as was trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, whose music, Mr. Parker said, taught him that "if you play it right, intricate sounds simple." On "Roots & Grooves," Mr. Parker's compositions are performed with a kind of precision that seems contrary to the free-flowing funk Mr. Parker displays: If a big-band soloist is granted 24 bars, he needs to complete his statement before the band re-enters. But when Mr. Parker is running the show with his own group, the vamping goes on as long as he likes. "There's no written rules on how long or how short each tune has to be," he said. "I give a signal -- touch my head, do a turn or something -- and we move on." On Sunday night at the Roxy, here in Los Angeles, he conducted his powerhouse band with a series of unorthodox gestures -- in one he appeared to mimic a man bailing water from a leaky boat; in another, he looked like he was spinning a carnival wheel -- and his eight backing musicians responded. Mr. Parker allowed Greg Boyer on trombone and Ron Tooley on trumpet plenty of space to solo, but the show's best moments came when Messrs. Parker, Boyer and Tooley played knotty, smile-provoking lines together. In a lively mood, Mr. Parker, who wore a light-gray suit he'd drenched in sweat by the second number, donned a pair of sunglasses, imitated Charles's walk, and sang an affecting version of "You Don't Know Me." It gave way to "Uptown Up," a blast of funk that featured the horns and bassist Mr. Curtis, who turned in a remarkable night's work. The group made Paul McCartney's "My Love" a moving blues, and as if to indicate how well the horns know each other -- Mr. Boyer also plays with Prince, while Mr. Tooley backed Brown -- they tossed in a bit of the R&B chestnut "Compared to What" amid Mr. Parker's composition "Shake Everything You Got." What the horns played together embodied Mr. Parker's philosophy of making the challenging sound simple, as it often does on "Roots & Grooves." "I've been playing in front of strangers since I started in the fifth grade," Mr. Parker told me. "In the beginning it's all good -- your grandmother is showing people your picture and telling you how great you are. But when you go to the other side of town and they like you, you're onto something. By the time I started with James Brown, what was inside of me was longing to come out. I've been playing me for a long time."