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This should prove to be an interesting book. Mandel has without question picked three major giants and innovators in the music.

I agree. Miles could be very harsh and hostile depending on his mood or the situation at hand. And I'm sure he was very aware of his super star status and had a more than confident attitude. I'm not a hard core Jarrett fan but he has done number of things that I enjoy. I liked some things he did with Dewey Redman and some of his trio works. As stated in the aforementioned, you have to get past the personal dislikes and focus on the music. I know some people who detest Michael Jordon. His incredible talents as a player was never in question but his personal behavior and attitude was more than many people could stomach. But still his personal behavior was independent of his play on the court. Same applies to musicians. I picked up the Miles DVD at a sale at Towers two weeks ago. Haven't gotten around to watching it yet but I did see a few excerpts from it at the store. It seems as if there is some very historical and important video footage and interviews on it. Standby..........

Appears that you are. I have never heard anyone question Hadens ability as a bassist. I have always liked Hadens playing and I have never felt that his playng ability was overated or marginal as you have suggested. But then again, I heard someone question Eric Dolphys Out o Lunch. The person who wrote the post said the recording was over-rated and was basically a poor effort. Duhhhhh????!!! So I guess you could say that everyone hears something different. To push the point, I recall a guy telling me many years ago that Hank Crawford was a superior player to John Coltrane! And to push it to the limits, I got into an argument with a friend who told me that George Coleman was technically a superior player than Sonny Rollins!!! Donnnnngggg!!!!!!!!! Go figure.

I would spring for such a box. I loved those Braxton Arista recordings.

You should check it out. It is a very fine recording by Wynton. I'm not a big Wynton fan per se, but I'm surely not on board with this hard core Marsalis bashing and denigrating him as a trumpet player. I have noticed this seething vitriol towards Wynton for a while and much of it seems unwarranted or either grossly exaggerated. Saying the man cannot play is simply dishonest or just stupid. As I said, I'm not a big fan of Wynton (I think Bradford is much more creative and open) and I have only his first four recordings (lost interest after that) but I don't agree with the "he's not a good trumpet player" mantra. It's simply not true.

Braxton is nothing short of an interesting player with some very complex ideas. I have enjoyed his playing ever since I first heard him on the ECM Paris recording with the group Circle. Never forget when I bought the record and first heard it. Loved it! B-)

Nice interview. Thanks. Steve Lacy has always been one of my favorite artitists. I have a fairly large collection of his recordings. A very orignal and creative player.

Does anyone know any details about the re-issue of Wayne Shorters "Night Dreamer? It was mentioned.

Great to see Henry Grimes back in the playing loop. The man has some very important and creative things to say with the bass. I've always liked his playing. I first heard Grimes on the ESP label more than thirty years ago (“The Call”, ESPCD 1026). For all those who are not hip yet, checkout the www.ayler.com web site. There is some very serious hardcore music being promoted at this site. Definitely not for those who are into the white wine and jacuzzi smooth jazz genre. Only the very serious minded discriminating aficionados need to investigate.

I can relate to this impulsive buying addiction. One night I was listening to an outstanding blues program on the radio and drinking Jack Daniels. John Lee Hooker, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup and Howlin Wolf were wailing away. I became very excited and ordered what I thought was two or three blues CD's. By the time the JD had worn off and I had awaken, I found out that little impulsive "blues black out" cost me $220 in used and new CD's!

Forget the Black Friday CD sales (which does not exist). Buy used CD's and boycott the outrageous prices.

9 CDs of rare & unissued recordings 208 pg. full-color hardbound book new essays by Amiri Baraka, Val Wilmer & other Ayler scholars unpublished photos & family memorabilia artist testimonials of first encounters with Ayler's music exhaustive chronology of Ayler performance activities housed in lavish Spirit Box cast from handcarved original Spread the word!!!!!!!!!!

Glad to hear someone mention Tchicai’s name. Haven’t listened to him in a while. I never was extremely excited about him but I thought he was interesting and I like some things he has done. Loved the New York Contemporary Five and the New York Art Quartet.

Yeah, looks like you may have a bad copy. If all the releases were like that it would not take long for the word to get out on the street. Not good for business!

Good idea. I think I shall follow your lead...

My first introduction to Braxton was from the ECM recording with the group Circle. I bought the record in 1974. I also recall some very negative things Stanley Crouch was saying about Braxton when he used to write for a black girlie magazine called Players. And for the record, he was the only guy who was writing some very fresh and insightful things about the NYC music scene at the time. And yes, I’m very aware of Stanley’s reputation so I’ll leave it at that. I don’t want to set this board on fire! Anyway, he was not very complementary of Mr. Braxton as I recall. But I loved the record. When the Arista recordings came out later I was slobbering with delirium! But my first introduction to his playing started with the Circle group. B-)

I've been wanting to buy this recording for almost thirty years! Finally got around to it!

Just a quick shameless plug in for Chris’s bio of Bessie Smith. A very interesting book. I still have the original copy I purchased in 1975. Just picked up the revised edition two months ago. I highly recommend the book. It is a very good read and well worth purchasing . It is the only authoritative biography I know of about Bessie Smith.

How can anyone live without those incredible Francis Wolff photos?? Does anyone have a clue??? Blue Note Jazz Photography Of Francis Wolff Posted: 2004-03-08 By Don Williamson Michael Cuscuna Charlie Lourie Oscar Schnider 176 pages Universe PublishingFor those of us who can't erase from our minds the haunting photography of Francis Wolff, Universe Publishing offers solace in the form of Blue Note Jazz Photography Of Francis Wolff. The 1995 book, The Blue Note Years, enjoyed critical and commercial success. Thank goodness. That success has led to another compilation of Wolff photographs, this time numbering 200. Blue Note Jazz Photography Of Francis Wolff documents the creative process and brings visual life to the musicians whose music has enriched the listeners' lives. If a jazz enthuasiast's listening discoveries were contemporaneous with the original release of the Blue Note albums mentioned in this book, he or she may have thought at the time that the photographs existed to promote the music through appearance on the album covers. That was only a small part of the story, it seems. Wolff shot over 30,000 photographs of some of the most significant jazz recording sessions of the 1950's, not to mention documenting the faces of the label's artists from Meade Lux Lewis in the early 1940's to Jimmy Smith in the 1960's. Obviously, this is a massive achievement, implying Wolff's almost fanatical dedication to the music he loved. Michael Cuscuna's introduction to the book mentions that Wolff often got in the way of the musicians and of his fellow German immigrant Alfred Lion during the recording sessions as Wolff always sought the perfect shot. That perfectionism and dedication left us with a seemingly inexhaustible archive of jazz photography that was as innovative in its approach as was, say, Rudy Van Gelder's unconventional recording techniques in his first makeshift studio. Thumbing through Blue Note Jazz Photography Of Francis Wolff, it becomes evident that it wasn't just the music that spoke louder than words. So did the photography. Only recently, it seems, has the influence of Wolff's photography become appreciated. The shot of J.R. Monterose, angled upward from knee height, enlarges the bell and lower keys of his tenor saxophone and the spidery fingers of his right hand. Monterose's absolute concentration as he plays, even behind sunglasses, looks eerily familiar. Was this shot the model for Zoot, the Muppet character? Speaking of Zoot, Zoot Sims is documented as well from his 1956 session with Jutta Hipp, his trousers pulled up far above his waist and the microphone intruding above the saxophone as he too is in the zone of a performance high. In fact, 166 jazz people appear in the book. I hesitate to say that “166 jazz musicians appear” because Wolff even was fascinated by the jubilant face of Pee Wee Marquette, the doorman at Birdland and the emcee of Art Blakey's “A Night At Birdland” session in 1954. Lou Donaldson appears bemused in the background. Speaking of Lou Donaldson, the George Benson photograph from Donaldson's “Alligator Boogaloo” session has become so well known that it has been made into a postcard. Typical of the conscientious documentation now attached to Cuscuna's reputation, the book lists biographical information about all of the photographed subjects, including date/place of birth/death, as well as noting the pages on which their images appear. The caption below each photograph includes the artist's name, the name of the album's session or the location of the live performance and the date. Beyond the specifics of Wolff and Lion's stewardship of one of the world's greatest record labels, the implications of the images in Blue Note Jazz Photography Of Francis Wolff lead one to marvel at the benefits of technological advances. Consider that musical performances before the twentieth century involved directly and solely performer-to-audience communication, with only the print media (its inadequacies as a describer of musical inspiration patently obvious) perhaps as a recorder of the event. Recording technology allowed broader audiences to hear spur-of-the-moment improvisations—the essence of jazz—which otherwise would have been ephemeral. The combination of Lion's and Wolff's dedication to recording outstanding jazz and their visual appreciation, not to mention the dissemination of those images, froze those otherwise-fleeting moments in time for discovery and enjoyment by successive generations. Thus, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter and many others remain forever young on the pages of the book, even as their music remains fresh almost 40 years later. Musicians we knew all too briefly come alive in the recording sessions, allowing jazz enthusiasts to study their visage and surmise their personalities. Examples of short-lived musicians that Wolff photographed include Fats Navarro, Doug Watson, Lee Morgan, Wardell Gray, Eric Dolphy and Clifford Brown. Wolff shot mature musicians toward the ends of their careers such as Pops Foster, Baby Dodds and James P. Johnson. In a style unconcerned with age, Wolff shot young prodigies like Chick Corea and Al Foster, who were flush with excitement. As color photography went mainstream, Wolff gradually converted from his favored Tri-X black-and-white film to Ektachrome with, naturally, astounding results. Shooting Don Cherry against the gray marble of what one assumes is an office building, Wolff contrasted the rainbow of colors in Cherry's thick and long scarf against the muted burgundy of his sweater and the tan of his slacks. But those famous black-and-white photographs defined the image of Blue Note in its heyday as they were printed in dark blue or in duotones on the covers of the albums. A person could identify a record label from its cover, even upon entering the store. Ahead of their time, Wolff and Lion recognized the importance of packaging in selling a product and in creating an its image, even though their enthusiasm for the music was the actual stimulus for such extensive documentation of legendary performances. As noted, words are inadequate for describing musical and visual media. How can a person describe Lee Morgan's pensiveness or Tal Farlow's concentration or Curtis Fuller's pensive amusement or Joe Henderson's cool or Clifford Brown's finger-snapping joy or Bunk Johnson's assured ease or Tadd Dameron's obvious moment of conceptual discovery? It's impossible. That inexpressible conveyance of thought, motion and emotion establishes the value of visual art. It also creates the inestimable value of Blue Note Jazz Photography Of Francis Wolff.

A Fireside Chat with Milford Graves By Fred Jung If you like the “free jazz” or “avant-garde” or “loft” or “downtown” or whatever other bullshit name they give this music, you are a fan of Milford Graves. You may not know it, but you are. Much like Henry Grimes, Graves is one of those musicians that those in the know, know and those in the, well, not know, don’t. Albert Ayler’s Love Cry, that’s Graves. The killing ESP sessions, New York Art Quartet, Barrage, Giuseppi Logan Quartet, and Lowell Davidson Trio, that’s Graves. And Sonny Sharrock’s Black Woman, you get the picture. I was honored to speak with Graves, a musician I have long admired and never lived long enough in New York to see live. Folks, Milford Graves, unedited and in his own words. FRED JUNG: Let’s start from the beginning. MILFORD GRAVES: I had no special reason. From a talk with my parents, I was probably around two or three years old when I started hitting a drum. The drums were in the house and I tried to figure it out over the years, why did I enter music and why did I play the instrument that I play and I really can’t come up with anything that would give me a definite reason why, other than that’s what I was put on the planet to do. FJ: Every child, at some point or another, plays drum hands, but only a very diminutive minority take up the art. MG: I was in junior high school and I was playing for the assembly programs. I was asked to play for the special events that we had at our school. I formed a drum group and we had some dancers. We called it interpretive dancing at the time, but they were actually trying to do African dance. I realized that there was something happening when I would be playing before a bunch of my friends in an auditorium and that is when I started realizing it and started to get serious. FJ: When did you begin studying the tabla? MG: I started learning tabla in 1965 and I studied with Wasantha Singh. FJ: Apart from aesthetics, what are the differences between a tabla and a conga? MG: First of all, it is the make of the drum itself. The tabla is a much smaller instrument compared to the conga. The tabla is also played with each individual finger. You can do that with the congas too, but the congas really play with all the fingers really hitting at the same time. With tabla, the fingers are hitting at individual, different times. It is a sequence you do with each finger. The way that the tabla is made allows you to manipulate the skin to get these different kind of tonal properties out. That is really the big difference. I have a certain kind of personality when I play tabla and a certain kind of personality when I play conga. FJ: Talk to me about your collaborations with the New York Art Quartet. MG: That group started before me. I met that group in 1964. They had already had a group and J.C. Moses was the drummer before I was in that group. I met Roswell (Rudd) and John Tchicai through Guiseppi Logan and Guiseppi Logan asked me if I would like to a rehearsal of the New York Art Quartet, that he had met one of these guys and they invited him to a rehearsal and he told me to come along. The rehearsal was at a loft that was owned by Michael Snow, who is a Canadian artist. We went there and they played and asked Guiseppi if he wanted to sit in because he brought his alto saxophone. So he played and then he asked Roswell and John if I could play and then I played. J.C. Moses had left and they listened to the tape because they recorded the whole session and said that they liked what I was doing and if I would like to be the new drummer and that was it. John Tchicai is no longer a member of that band. At the present time, John Zorn is playing with the band. John Tchicai decided it was time for him to leave the band. FJ: Guiseppi Logan is a free jazz urban legend. Is Logan dead or alive? MG: Well, the reports that I’ve received is that he is still alive. He was spotted up in Harlem, New York. That’s what people say. I don’t know. I was approached to go up to Harlem to seek him out. Somebody spotted him in a hotel on 125th Street and I haven’t had the opportunity to do that. Someone said they saw him, but I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that he is still alive. That was the latest on him. I last saw Guiseppi Logan in the Seventies and he wasn’t in good shape. He was in the streets. He is a question mark whether he is still alive. Hopefully, he is. I was the one who told Bernard Stollman (founder of ESP) about Guiseppi Logan. I met Bernard Stollman through the New York Art Quartet. He wanted to record me and in turn, I told Guiseppi that I have some time because I’m a young guy and instead of me taking this record date and being the leader, I gave him the record date and so he took the record date. It was 1965 when we did that together. FJ: And your work with Albert Ayler, who has in death become an underground superhero. “I have a certain kind of personality when I play tabla and a certain kind of personality when I play conga.” MG: Unfortunately, some people are afraid to talk about somebody when they are dead. I have no problem with that because I think it is important to educate people about mistakes that people made so they won’t make those mistakes. I thought the positive things in him was that he was dedicated to what he did. I think that is one of the big positive things. He didn’t talk so much. He hummed a lot. He was constantly humming. His playing, the way he played was quite different from him as a person. His playing was more aggressive in volume. He, as a person, was not like that. I think his spiritual side didn’t allow him to be aggressive enough when it came to taking a certain kind of business stance. The reports that I’ve had, knowing a little bit about Albert, I think he kind of regretted some of the things that he allowed himself to get involved with, his last entries with Impulse! Records. When he was told what kind of band he should have and what kind of music he should do. He didn’t survive a lot of his errors. It really affected him. I actually saw the official coroner’s report. The rumors that he had been murdered and he had been shot in the head, well, as far as the New York City coroner’s report, there was no indication of that. FJ: He simply drowned. MG: Yeah, that is what the report read. FJ: Do you believe that report to be true? MG: I think so. FJ: Why have you not recorded more? MG: I think I would record more if people would understand that I have a telephone and that I have a mailing address. If they understood that, then maybe we could talk a little bit. When you record, people have to realize that serious musicians make a great sacrifice and you are going to give up your art sometimes. You have to help support us a little bit. Some artists are fortunate, they get what they ask for. FJ: What is a typical Milford Graves day? MG: I spend my time at Bennington College doing research on sound and holistic healing and how the body functions and circulatory system is involved with our basic internal music structure. That is primarily what I do. FJ: Is there a direct correlation between what a person listens to and his or her health? MG: Oh, I think so and hopefully, I’ll have a very good book or report on that very soon. I will tell you what is very interesting. I always tell people that being a musician is extremely important and if you are going to be a musician, you have to be responsible because people come to listen to you. You go to a restaurant to get some food and you depend on that chef or that cook to prepare some food that is not only going to taste good, but also be healthy to you. People come to see musicians with their ears. They are using their ears and asking you to put something in their ears. You have to know what you are putting in their ears. In traditional times, a musician was required not only to know the instrument, but they were also doctors, healers. You never separated those two because you are dealing with people. You are dealing with the mind. You are dealing with bodies. You are dealing with the soul. When you try and separate those things, it is no good. Other than the physical thing, you have to have some internal content. You have to have some mind stuff. The only way you are going to get mind stuff is to know about people. You have to know how people live. You have to know about culture, not only your own culture, but the whole multicultural concept because you are dealing with a multiplicity of people. Therefore, I tell them the importance of what a drummer is. Those guys over there, especially the Griots, they are the storytellers. So the more stories you know and the more you know about life, the more you can articulate on that instrument, especially if you know the relationship between the word and the drum. What I impart to them is to not only be some musician, who just blows through an instrument, pluck, or hit on a drum skin, you have to be a good person and what being a human is about. Tell your story on an instrument. FJ: Sixty plus years on this earth, it’s a good bet you have stories aplenty. MG: I have a bunch of them. FJ: Are kids these days missing out being as musically dogmatic as they are? MG: I know. I had this discussion the other day at the college. Today, people come from all parts of the world and you can’t impose just the way you have been taught, this so-called American way you have been taught, whether you want to call it Anglo or a white man’s way of doing something. You have to understand that other people have something to contribute. FJ: What is the most unique instrument you own? MG: The human voice. You can’t beat it. For me to do a drum solo, my voice has to be in there. FJ: Who do I need to have a sit down with to get you to LA? MG: I have never played in California. Business wise, I look to be treated with respect. As I get older, I am really adamant on that. When I play, I go all out. I expend a lot of energy. If the band doesn’t get a certain amount, I just don’t bother. That is why I don’t function a lot because I won’t be treated a certain way and a lot of musicians don’t want to be treated that way, but then they allow themselves to be treated like that. If you don’t like something, don’t do it. I am not going on the bandstand angry because a promoter is not paying me enough because the people suffer. You are not playing what you could play.

Very nice article about Milford. I have no idea how valid or medically verifiable his methodology is with his heart rhythms, but anything is possible. I don't know. But it was a very interesting article. I was wondering what this master of percussions was doing these days. Love the ESP New York Quartet recording.

I greatly enjoyed Extended Play- Live at Bird Land. Very fine recording. I have always appreciated Holland’s playing. He is an outstanding bassist. I enjoyed the Steve Coleman recordings also. However, Conference of the Birds is extremely difficult to replicate. I recall when if first came out. I nearly lost my mind! Outstanding recording! But I've enjoyed many of Hollands ECM recordings also.

Strange I came across this post. I'm currently doing a Saturday Monk fest.

This is an outstanding recording by Bobby Hutcherson. But what in the hell was Blue Note thinking when they approved this cover???????

Sounds good. I've always liked those early McCoy Impulse albums. His playing is very different when compared to what he is currenlty doing. How did the show turn out?