DownBeat Reader's Poll - Vote For Hank Mobley

[Dan Gould]

How about Phil Woods getting nearly 700 votes the year after he got elected?

[uli]

7 hours ago, JSngry said:

Fathead, James Clay, Don Wilkerson, Rudolph Johnson, Ray always had boss tenor players, always!

Trumpet player Harold Pudgy Attyberry told me that he put 4 kids thru college playing in  Ray Charles' band

[Kevin Bresnahan]

9 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

How about Phil Woods getting nearly 700 votes the year after he got elected?

No kidding!! I missed that until I went back to look at the previous years. I am almost positive that the names are all listed with an option to write someone in. That means that most likely, DownBeat included Phil Woods in their list, even though he was elected the year before. So I wonder who those votes would have gone to if they didn't screw up and include Phil?

[danasgoodstuff]

On 10/23/2018 at 0:40 PM, Scott Dolan said:

Don't forget about Fathead, who honed his skills with Brother Ray for a decade. 

I'm with you on not being opposed to him getting the win. Ray was just a monster (in more than one sense of the word) that crisscrossed so many genres, he should be in at least three genre Halls O' Fame. 

The masthead says 'jazz, blues and beyond', Ray Charles is all that.

[Scott Dolan]

12 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

The masthead says 'jazz, blues and beyond', Ray Charles is all that.

Excellent, excellent point. 

I wonder if there was ever a more successful genre hopper than Ray Charles? 

[Aggie87]

5 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Excellent, excellent point. 

I wonder if there was ever a more successful genre hopper than Ray Charles? 

Prince perhaps.

[GA Russell]

9 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Excellent, excellent point. 

I wonder if there was ever a more successful genre hopper than Ray Charles? 

Considering their massive popularity singing pop music, I vote for Louis Armstrong and Nat Cole.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

On 10/23/2018 at 6:53 PM, bresna said:

2014

2015

2016

2017

So Ray got less than 325 votes in 2014, less than 277 votes in 2015, less than 349 votes in 2016 & less than 378 in 2017.

And no one at DownBeat thinks it's odd that Ray got 1,764 votes this year?

Tell you what, in preparation for next year's vote, can someone point me to an app or a service to stuff this ballot next year?

It looks like Downbeat agreed with me. There was ballot stuffing last year. Why else would they be limiting the vote to subscribers this year? They looked at the numbers and realized there was someone, somewhere, with a bot that skewed the vote.

Makes last year's vote that much worse.

Funny thing is, I dropped Downbeat after last year and now even I can't vote for Hank!

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, bresna said:

It looks like Downbeat agreed with me. There was ballot stuffing last year. Why else would they be limiting the vote to subscribers this year? They looked at the numbers and realized there was someone, somewhere, with a bot that skewed the vote.

Makes last year's vote that much worse.

Funny thing is, I dropped Downbeat after last year and now even I can't vote for Hank!

Did they explicitly state that bots were involved, or are they just now limiting it to subscribers and that's the inference you're making?

Not that it's an unreasonable inference, it's not. But you don't need automation to rally 1500-1800 people internationally to do something like this for Ray Charles.  Relative to his fan base (even today!), that's not very many people. Not very many people at all.

[Ken Dryden]

Since I already voted in the critic's poll, I skip the reader's poll. One round of voting is enough for me.

 

[Gheorghe]

I had DB subscribed in the late 70´s early 80s. 

Once saw a 50´s reader´s poll and I saw names I never heard of and they were listed on top places, having better votes  than other who really were legends. 

But I also must admit I sometimes had the Impression that those who voted didn´t really know many musicians, they voted for the only Artist the new. Like let´s say Jimmy Smith. Since most of the Folks didn´t know another Name of an organ Player, Jimmy Smith would be first for decades. Oscar Peterson the same. Folks who voted didn´t know another Name of a Pianist than Oscar Peterson so he got the most Votings.....

[Big Beat Steve]

2 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Once saw a 50´s reader´s poll and I saw names I never heard of and they were listed on top places, having better votes  than other who really were legends

 

Don't know to which names you are alluding specificaly but you got to remember too that that all times there were musicians who were stars in their day but once they had passed their zenith they were forgotten more quickly than others who may still have been household names decades later. The reasons aren't always easy to pin down and aren't always the same but one factor that IMO definitely plays a role is that critics may have held a musician in high regard who may never have been as famous or popular with the listeners/record buyers/audience at large (who in turn tend to forget faster once they discover other stars). So if the audience no longer is with you and the critics never held you in the highest esteem your fate is sealed ...

So don't let latter-day perception skew your perspective ... What we remember (or are told to remember) today about a specific era of the past is not necessarily how it happened back then. The emphasis may have been quite different at the time.

[jlhoots]

Mobley wins DB Hall Of Fame Readers Poll!!!

[JSngry]

Can't wait to hear his acceptance speech!

[Dan Gould]

 

Alright now that Hank is in I propose a campaign to get the Veteran's Committee on the ball and elect this man:

 

 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Son of a b.... so I was right about the ballot stuffing last year!  When they limited the vote to one per subscriber, in he goes. That is so awesome.

I am very happy to read this. I may even renew my expired subscription.

[Dan Gould]

I think I'll just watch for the December feature about him ...

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, bresna said:

Son of a b.... so I was right about the ballot stuffing last year!  When they limited the vote to one per subscriber, in he goes.

It's just that simple!

[Hot Ptah]

I have been following the voting in the Down Beat readers poll since the 1970s. There has never been any logic, any rhyme or reason, to the results.

I agree with Jim Sangrey about the marketing ploy aspect of this. The Down Beat Hall of Fame does not physically exist in a building with plaques and physical items on display regarding the winners. (The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has plaques patterned after those in the Baseball Hall of Fame, with summary information about the musician, and display cases with biographical information and physical items regarding many of the Hall of Fame members. It is a genuinely informative and illuminating facility, no matter what you think of the music). The Down Beat Hall of Fame is a fictitious creation which exits only in the paper files, and now data base, of the changing publishers and editors of Down Beat magazine over the years.

The vote totals for the Down Beat Readers Poll Hall of Fame are so low that a single music appreciation class at a major university could place a musician into the top ten simply by passing out ballots to everyone in the class with the strong suggestion that they write down a specific name and drop off the ballot in a box on the way out of the lecture hall.

When I was about twenty years old, in the 1970s, I was all excited about whether my favorites would win the Down Beat Readers Poll. Soon I realized that it was all an artificial farce, basically.

[gmonahan]

I wonder if there's some kind of tiff between DB and Mosaic? They haven't reviewed any of the recent Mosaics, including the Savory Collection. I wrote them about it--they even published the letter--but their only response was to talk about how much they'd published on Resonance.

 

 

gregmo