LarryCurleyMoe

Sad news...Cecil was HIP! "Bird Gets The Worm" and his work with Kenny Dorham, and the recent stuff on Delmark among my favorite....R.I.P.

Last night - at the Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, IL: as part of the superb "Sudden Sound" concert series of new and improvised music (curated by Jason Finkelman) I grooved to the Josef Ben Israel Ensemble featuring Robert Irving III on piano, Josef on Bass, Avreeayl Ra on drums and Ari Brown on reeds = OUTTA SIGHT!!! The place was packed...the music was excellent, and the entry fee was $0!!!

Exactly! Newbury Comics goes out of their way to give exceptional service and prices. Caiman, well, does just the opposite! Too many times I've ordered and never received - only to write them & find they didn't have stock in the first place. I also like importcds.com as an amazon seller - NEVER a screw up with the numerous orders I've placed.

R.I.P. Donald. I DID get a chance to meet him...backstage in Cleveland at an Old and New Dreams concert - Don Cherry introduced him as Ayler walked up - something like "Do you know who this is? His brother was a famous saxophonist." I replied, "Donald Ayler?" and was spot on. I told him how much I dug his and Albert's work and wished hime well. One of those unexpected ultra-cool moments in life. Wish he recorded more - his was a pretty fresh approach to the instrument.

Check this out: Wall to Wall 2 An amazing festival of guitar music here in east central Illinois! This is year 2 - I've got tix for Los Lobos, McLaughlin, Buddy Guy/Jorma, et al....LOTS OF COOL FREE STUFF TOO! Y'all oughtta keep an eye on this web site for next year...tix go fast- Start selling in late July I believe. - LCM

I'm wanting to jump in here to shout a big THANKS!!!! to Bluenote for getting the Kenny Cox out! Pretty nice music..."Miles-flavored" but very much it's own thing...I especially enjoy Leon's tenor work...it trikes me as being of the same source as Joe's work - but also an individual thing too. Very tasty work. I've had the vinyl of "Multidirection" for some time and really welcomed the chance to obtain "Introducing..."

I'm now hosting a temporary radio show ("Flying Home") on a local community station - jazz before 1950 and use a lot of the Chronological Classics Pops & Hot 5's/7's on Columbia. Additonally, I play music by many other early pioneers - McKinney Cotton Pickers, Moten, Trumbauer, Mole, Bechet, etc...and feel that this is a good program for the SUMMER TIME when folks may be out on the porch, cookin' yard bird, and so forth. A lot of jazz really is PARTY MUSIC!!

I Love Pops! His music from the 30's is a GAS! "Skeletons in the closet on parade" is a favorite of mine...from "Pennies from Heaven." Love "Cabin in the Sky" - pops looks groovy with horns! You're right Lon, SUMMERTIME is a GREAT TIME to listen to Louis. With the price of gas as high as it is, I just hang out in the back yard and "party!" I'm installing outdoor speakers to pipe jazz & other music to the back yard! Old-timey jazz & country music in the summer is a groove! I just ordered the "Now You Has Jazz" at your rec. Lon and can't wait to get it!

In a word, CAIMAN SUCKS!!!! At different times Ihave ordered 3 items through Amazon from them...received one and had to BADGER THEM for refunds on the 2 items they never shipped because they never had in stock! Sorry to see Tower go down...

Dusty Groove has these P-Vine reissues BUT AT $25 A POP - NO THANKS! IMO Mainstream was a very cool label - but not THAT cool! Many great releases but many not so great releases too.

Yes indeed, happy birthday Miles Dewey! I recently pulled out Dark Magus, Filmore West, and Big Fun and thought how fresh this still sounds after not listening to for some time. I also dig the cover of Big Fun when you open it flat. Miles was ONE OF A KIND!

I am a composer/arranger - no cds out yet but I have published sheet music available. Thanks in advance for any support. Some of my publications are available - Here: Pelican Music Publications and Here: Miss Jones and Here: UMMG

Sorry to hear - truly a marvel on the instrument - Batiste could PLAY THE HELL outta his clarinet - sweet stuff too. That Columbia release "Late" is tasty... By a stroke of luck - I heard Alvin play live at Chicago Jazz Festival in the 1980's and was BLOWN AWAY... A very underappreciated cat IMO...R.I.P.

Looks like this has been snagged... Used to have the vinyl of this but got rid of a while ago...then rebought Japanesed edition - glad I did...there's some groovy soul going down here - a little unpolished perhaps, but overall a quirky little album I'm fond of!

I liked Murray best when WSQ was a fresh concept...Saw them live with Hemphill & co. many years ago at Oberlin's Finney Chapel...Ming was "acting the bitch" in the green room/before & after the gig "Flowers for Albert" is a very rewarding composition/performance... But, like so many here, I'm not really blown away by David's playing...some GREAT MOMENTS though...

Here's a used copy for sale - decent price... Natural Essence ...not anything I'm selling...

IMO "...DJ Lounge" is the better of the 2; "Move on Over" is good, though.

DAMN! What a DRAG! Andrew's music has always struck me as genuinely intriguing as it was beautiful! "Point of Departure" really blew me away upon hearing back in my teens...just catching up on "Time Lines" now...and wondering how he was doing. One of my all time favorite musicians... R.I.P. Andrew!

Well I just have this THANG! for the Argo-Cadet-Chicago sound and decided to go for it! Also curious about the organ player "Buster."

"The Bastards" have "Move On Over" paired with "@ DJ Lounge" on a 2-fer import. I think they are out - I just ordered yesterday & it comes up "Temp. oostock" Am looking forward to!!! Move on Over

The Iron Post in Urbana, IL would be a cool place to have a gig! Bring your own ORGAN! Iron Post

Just picked up "Convergence Zone" myself and immediately ordered "My Museum!" Damn, Phil, you sure do write some nice charts! Very clear, yet substantial. Love the orchestrations and voicings. No excess either - your music swings and it's to the point. Plus - seems like you got a line on the top studio players Must be nice! Again, congrats on the new release - I look forward to hearing it soon! - LCM

Wednesday, September 27, 2006 Henry Townsend ST. LOUIS - Blues guitarist Henry Townsend, who ran away from his family as a boy and stayed in St. Louis for a prolific career spanning eight decades, has died at age 96. Townsend died Sunday of a pulmonary embolism in Grafton, Wisconsin, where he was being honored by a local blues association. Townsend, who wrote and published hundreds of songs, began his recording career in 1929 and continued to make records in every decade since, an accomplishment that put him in rare company, said Mark O'Shaughnessy, president of BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups, a St. Louis blues club. "He was the patriarch of St. Louis blues," O'Shaughnessy said. "He wasn't in it for the money. He believed in the music. It told a very honest story." Townsend, who often performed with his late wife, Vernell, was in in Grafton to be honored as the last surviving artist with the old Paramount Records. The label recorded one-fourth of all the blues material produced from 1929 to 1932, including so-called "race records" by black artists for black audiences. He arrived Thursday, and was hospitalized Friday evening. The Grafton Blues Association brought a plaque honoring him to his hospital room hours before he died. "He was quite a guy," the group's president, Kris Marshall, said. "We listened to his stories. He was very excited to be back here." Townsend was born in Shelby, Mississippi, grew up in Cairo, Illinois, and left for St. Louis as a 9-year-old to avoid a whipping from his father, after he had "blown some snuff," he told The Associated Press in an interview in June. He said his father played a button box accordion, but young Henry loved the guitar, and bought himself one. He also learned the piano. While working as a shoe shine boy in St. Louis, he came to know a generation of piano players who had grown up on ragtime and were teaming up with guitarists to experiment with the blues. He decided on a career in blues guitar after hearing budding bluesman Lonnie Johnson perform in the old Booker T. Washington Theater in St. Louis. In the 1930s, Townsend played with blues greats Roosevelt Sykes, Walter Davis and Robert Johnson at neighborhood parties and fish fries. Townsend recalled they would "jam up and down the street" on top of a coal-hauling truck during the Depression to help raise rent money for people being evicted. "If you got $2 to play somewhere, you were doing well," Townsend recalled. In those days, record label scouts gathered up local musicians in cities like St. Louis, and took them to a studio for a recording session, Belford said. As the Depression ended, Townsend and other blues musicians like him fell into near oblivion when the juke box replaced live music, and the materials needed for the war effort slowed down the record industry. It was not until the late 1950s, when the old blues "race records" were rediscovered during a growing folk revival, that Townsend, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Williams and others found renewed popularity. They toured the U.S. and Europe and found new audiences, Belford said. Townsend, who won a National Heritage Award in 1985 that recognized his being a master artist, never stopped performing. He told the AP he had paid a price for staying in St. Louis, and lost some good breaks, but had no regrets. "I never had an agent in my life," he said. "Just being me has got me where I am." Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press

A little late but - R.I.P. Dewey...made Ornette's sessions a little spicier in my opinion! Was fortunate enough to catch him with Old & New Dreams in the early 80's...got to go back stage & hang out at half time with the bad boys - Dewey, Eddie, Charlie, Don...