bertrand

I read somewhere that Wayne Shorter did at least one blindfold test for Downbeat. Does anyone know the date? Did he do similar tests for other periodicals? Thanks in advance, Bertrand.

Mike, My source is a musician who himself got the information second-hand. All he told me was that he'd heard the tape, and that he was told '64 or '65 and that it was Peacock. I do not have a copy of this myself. You are right that it must be '65 - Shorter joined too late in '64. Brownie, You sure are lucky. I would have loved to hear the quartet you describe. It's a long shot, I know, but you don't happen to remember what tunes they played, do you? I've always wondered if Shorter played any of his Blue Note compositions when he was doing these quartet gigs without Miles (Jack Chambers mentions quite a few, and even a trio gig in Boston). I know he did some of his BN material when he played briefly with Roy Haynes. Bertrand.

I've been told there is a private tape of the Wayne Shorter Quartet at the Vanguard from 64-65. It's a actually a Sunday matinee of the Miles Quintet where Miles decided to stay home. Gary Peacock subs for Ron Carter.

I love hearing my son sing, but it would never occur to me to release it commercially!

I heard this on vinyl years ago and found the out-of-tune singing by then 7-year-old Waheeda Massey on 'Quiet Dawn' very disturbing. Was this just my imagination?

Soul Stream, More likely, Yanow hadn't a clue what a varitone was and thought it was a typo... I think Michael does a great job, and I certainly can believe a lot of the errors happen after he's signed off. But as you pointed out, I'm sure they could find a couple of enthusiastic interns to do quality review of the final product before it hits the streets in exchange for a few comp copies of said CDs. Aric would have killed for the job. He probably was not the best person to do it, but I'm sure there are others out there...What about the Blue Note Street Team?

Soul Stream, Blue Note quality control is the pits, but they are not the only ones. Verve has yet to resolve the fact that the 2-CD reissue of Coltrane has the wrong version of 'Big Nick'. At least BN corrects the problems, but those corrections were only for BN board members or anyone hipped to the corrections by a BN board member. Both Dialogue and Along Came John could be replaced by sending it in to BN, but you had to know about it - the general public did not. The correction to The Soothsayer was the worst. They fixed it, but just dumped the corrected version out there with no sticker or anything. You could only know by buying the CD and looking closely at the center. I doddled about sending it in, and now I don't know if it can still be done at the new address. Does anyone have their new address, by the way?

So it's: Along Came John The Way I Feel Oh Baby! That Certain Feeling Understanding (complete!) Michael decided to go with a complete Understanding, and no Harold Vick Steppin' Out (same line-up as Oh Baby!) I already have: Along Came John Blue John Let 'Em Roll Got A Good Thing Goin' Memphis To New York Spirit Bogaloo Accent On The Blues With the Mosaic select, I will have the complete Patton BN sessions. This box works out very nicely for me! I know others are miffed, however. I certainly would have preferred Blue John as well instead of Along Came John, if only because there are some extra tracks from Blue John that have not yet come out (for example, a version of Grant Green's 'Jean De Fleur').

Dmitry, Remember what happened to Pat Martino and Mal Waldron? They both had to re-learn to play their instruments from scratch - and they pulled it off. It may not have been as quickly as Henry Grimes seems to have done, but it happened. Also, when you reach a level of playing like these guys, I suspect you never completely 'forget'. Kinda like riding a bike...

Vincent, Welcome aboard!

Just found out bassoonist Michael Rabinowitz is playing tomorrow night in a quartet at Strathmore Hall in Rockville, MD. Michael is a bassoonist, which of course is kinda rare in jazz. I heard him once with the Mingus Epitaph band, and he was smokin'. Should I go? On the plus side, the line-up is highly unusual: bassoon, vibes, bass, drums. On the minus side, I don't know the three sidemen, and I'm still kinda fighting this damn cold. Also, it's $24, which is a bit steep for an unknown group (but reasonable considering Strathmore is a very intimate room). They will be playing 'classics from the bop repertoire' (well, that narrows it down!) - I hope that doesn't mean standards. Help me make my mind up!

Booker Little (Time) Woody Shaw: Steppin' Stones (Muse) Lee Morgan: Candy (label unknown) Freddie Hubbard: Empyrean Isles (label unknown) Woody Shaw: In My Own Sweet Way (In & Out)

Muddy Gumbo White! Sounds like something Wynton Marsalis might eat...

Kartoffel, Haven't talked to Javon in a while. I saw him in D.C. just about a year ago, but I haven't had a chance to call him since. I seem to never have time to make calls anymore. All my friends (both of 'em) think I'm blowing them off.

Yes.

Jim, I have CD-Rs of the both the gigs you described (the Ethiopian blues night and the wedding gig). You still played some pretty cool shit!

I can't agree with you more about the trickle of reissues. Take Verve (please!) - they are hogging such labels as Argo and Cadet, yet hardly putting any titles out. And when they do put out an obscurity like the Jazz Lab live at Newport, it's an over-priced limited edition. Back on the old board, I used to always get annoyed when Tom would announce a batch of six or twleve titles to be reissued, and people would start thanking him profusely for this 'generous' gift. Give me a break! Fantasy puts out a lot more than that every year, and they stay in print! It was all I could do to resist posting: 'Yes, thank you Blue Note for making your product available for purchase'. What else are they supposed to do with the stuff? It's not like putting out CDs is a little side business they're running. If EMI and Verve don't believe the jazz titles will sell and are therefore not worth reissuing, then they should sell their holdings to the Fantasy Group who will reissue them.

J. Larsen, Nope - not Louis Smith. In fact, this person never recorded for Blue Note.

I was briefly Martha Stewart.

Almost forgot 'the best of Aric'! How could I be so absent-minded. Remember 'Me and my buddy Matt just talked to Lou Donaldson'? Who was it that would translate Aric-speak into English? That was some hilarious shit!

Soul Stream, I hope you know that I didn't bring this up just to get you to 'fess up! I kept the PM that you sent me when John passed away. I was continuing to act like 'I'm pretty sure it's Larry because it sounds like Larry'. After all, that's what Ben Dixon had told me in September 2001. It's funny how you say that people would ask John this question 'all the time'. How many people on this planet would know what the hell we were talking about? But what will I do if I ever get around to writing the Larry Young bio I've been threatening to do? I'll just say that Dixon told me, I guess Now whose this Lawrence Olds that plays on that Thornel Schwartz LP Daniel, That's great news! (Thanks for your PM also). I had a lot of fun with that thread. J. Larsen, It's not Ornette, although what an idea! I'll give you the same hint I gave the others: the musician in question is still alive. Also, a new hint: the person's name just recently surfaced on the BN board. it's not a name that comes up too often.

There were some cool threads on 'that other board' that I fear we may never see again. The three I'll miss: 1. 'Who almost played trumpet on Evolution instead of Lee Morgan?'. This one I started, and made it into a guessing game. The suspense was great. I think BFrank got it in the end. I won't post the answer here, just in case someone on this board never saw the thread. There was a thread a couple of months ago related to the 'Fireside chat with GM3' where this came up again. 2. 'Who is the organist on Grant Green's Iron City'. Yes, the label says Patton, but the rumor (started by Ben Dixon who was also on it) was that it was really Larry Young, and many of us seemed to lean in that direction (some were firm, others more open to either possibility). The most poignant part was that we almost got the answer from Big John himself - I sent him a tape of it, but he passed a few days after I sent it. I really enjoyed the discussions trying to prove that it was Larry from our B3-er friends, including our gracious host - I really learned a lot about the instrument I once loathed but now love (thanks to you for that, LY). 3. The most personal one - 'Birth Of A Future Blue Note star?', when my son Matthew was born 3/7/00 (I printed a back-up of this two days ago, fortunately). It's amazing to see how he's changed in three years, although the odds of him joining the Blue Note stable have severely diminshed, since he often says 'daddy, turn off the jazz'. Wait - he doesn't want to play jazz - Blue Note will snap him up in a minute, and Arif Mardin will produce his debut! I can smell the multiple grammies already!

Has Art Farmer - Live In Tokyo ever been out on CD? I believe the vinyl was Japan-only. It's one of the rare titles I need to achieve the coveted 'Jackie McLean completist award'. I know you're all rooting for me.

Remember the guy who had posted a rather - shall we say 'unorthodox' - review of Birth Of The Cool? it gave new meaning to the expression 'sharing bodily fluids'. It took 'em a few days to delete that one.

Short history of my dust-up with Wingy (this is my first post here, and the last one where I will ever discuss this troglodyte). Someone asked for an opinion on Jackie Mac's Tippin' The Scales. Wingy stepped in, ranting and raving and being abusive. So he doesn't like the record. Big deal. But then he came in and started saying that Butch Warren had a urinary incontinence problem and making fun of him for it. Now I've known Butch casually for a few years, and I know he is not mentally 'all there' (I've heard stories of electro-shock therapy in the sixties and what-not). For me, making fun of the mentally ill is beneath contempt. So I criticized him for it (using one of my favorite lines from the book The Glittering Prizes: 'When all else fails you in life, never try to rely on your charm'). Of course, at that point, I'd made an enemy of him. The rancid postings continued, so eventually I started a thread to the board monitor suggesting some policing of vituperative threads. No banning of wingy, just policing. Of course, this earned some backlash from some who deluded themselves into thinking I wanted him banned. Birdistheword was the most hostile, and now he's out there on the board claiming things are much cleaner now. What a joke. Harold_Z, an otherwise super-nice guy, puzzled me by defending wingy based on his musical abilities. How is that relevant? Miles was a killer musician, but based on the many reports of his behavior, I would never have hung with him. Anyway, later the stream of pathetic fart-jokes started. Calling them sixth-grade level is an insult to sixth-graders everywhere. I ignored them, since they were addressed to 'Bert', which is not my name. The ultimate irony of all this is that I might have been a potential buyer of wingy's records. Now, forget it. It's like reverse-advertising for your product.