Rooster_Ties

Discovering Jimi Hendrix my sophomore year of high school in 1984 did it for me. No single album, as I think I bought all 3 of the studio albums released during his lifetime within the same month or so. And then within 18-months I had every posthumous live and studio album/collection that had been released up until that point — along with a couple dozen(!) bootleg LP’s by the end of my senior year (and too many of his pre-fame Curtis Knight stuff too) — sometime like 40 releases (legal and otherwise). Anyway, nothing could have better prepared me to get into jazz 3-4 short years later — especially electric-era Miles and Milestone-era Joe Henderson, etc. Many of my favorite live Jimi songs had long-ish solo sections over vamps and pedal-point bass, or alternating chords — a bit like lots of 60’s hard bop, and 70’s-era Mal Waldron. The seeds of my love of jazz were all planted in those 3 years that I listened to tons and tons, and TONS of Jimi — probably well over half(!) my entire listening for a 2 years there was Jimi.

Me neither. But I’m always at least 10 years behind hearing about ‘new’ people — maybe 15 years, at this point.

I think(?) somehow(?) I never picked up a physical copy of The Montreal Tapes: Tribute to Joe Henderson — which is also with Haden and Foster (and live). Guess I oughta fix that one of these days too — maybe. Opinions on that, vs. Evening?

I always thought I was the only one — but there’s at least a couple of us!!

All three of the extra tunes (only) were also available on this CD, which also features 6 other Joe Henderson tunes as recorded by various other artists, all from various other albums also on the ‘Red’ label. https://www.discogs.com/release/4366136-Joe-Henderson-In-N-Around The first one (track 4) only lists Bobby Watson (not a misprint), because it’s a solo alto sax cut with just him — and a darn good one at that. The whole disc is a dandy (I’ve actually got one, that I found on eBay 10-15 years ago). So it turns out all I’m lacking is the main Evening album. Here’s Bobby’s solo track… And BTW, there appears to have been a separate release (or maybe online only?) of just those 6 Henderson cover tunes — at least I found this playlist on YouTube, with all of them and what seems to be dedicated artwork. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n-L4dP2ZHD9NgxkJNe55ISVXcH9YSN78s&si=QffxGBDK7qSufAD3 Edit: Interestingly, the artwork seems to have 8 tunes listed — but the playlist is just 6 (I’m assuming the same six as on my CD above, but I haven’t checked). In any case, there probably was a physical release then with 8 different Joe Hen covers — only 6 of which appeared on the oddball Italian CD with just the 3 bonus tracks from Evening.

Much as I love Joe, I’ve always been nonplussed by State of the Tenor — which I’ve always thought was mostly because of the lack of Joe’s own tunes (which I think would have been more interesting to hear in a trio-only format) — but that’s definitely not the only reason (more below). Then “Beatrice” from this new Complete Evening thing comes on my Pandora the other day — and man, was I ever sucked in!! Maybe(?) is it a Haden vs. Carter thing? (no small thing whatsoever) — but then also, Al Foster’s playing on Evening (at least this one cut) absolutely danced in a way I don’t EVER remember hearing on State. So does Al play that much differently with Ron? (yeah, maybe?) Were the drums recorded differently? (yeah, maybe too — they definitely seemed hotter). Anyway, I’d never bothered with Evening back in the day, because I already had a TON of Joe on CD (and I mean tons and tons). But that one “Beatrice” cut has be rethinking that. I still have so much Joe on CD (80%+ of his commercial output, and that’s including sideman work) — but when I moved to DC, I sold my State of the Tenor, as it was always more lacking than fulfilling. Maybe I need Complete Evening instead.

Who messed with the colors of Tomcat??!!

Oops, sorry about that. A friend sent me that link earlier today, and I hadn’t realized it had been posted here before (despite my having brought it up and searched on “Sun Ra” — but I hadn’t read the rest of it until I got the link in a txt-msg today).

A relatively recent interview (early 2021) with Carla, after she’d had surgery 3 years prior, which she mentions (related to the cancer that befell her). Her acerbic wit is entirely on display, and it’s (lovely? nice? reassuring? a relief?) to see her totally being herself through it all (to see that she maintained that wit). https://thequietus.com/articles/29717-carla-bley-interview

For years I had Carla’s appearance on Night Music, on a VHS I’d taped — and I always got a kick out of this collaboration with Bootsy Collins, among others. Opening is an interview with Bootsy, then the music starts around 3:30…

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/17/1206659408/carla-bley-obituary Last paragraph is particularly nice… "I'm trying to stretch my harmonic palette to a few notes that don't belong," Bley said. "In the piece I wrote for Charlie Haden, there's one note that's really wrong. That's the wrongest note I ever wrote. And I made it right."

Lovely to see — especially nice to also see Karen. The tone and tenor of the whole thing is pure Carla (and those closest to her in perfect sympathy, but of course). Really enjoyed that clip.

Saw her but once, here in DC in early 2019 — with Steve Swallow and Andy Sheppard. Steve did a long Q&A afternoon the concert (just him), but I happened to hang around long enough to get her to autograph my EOTH CD liners, which — oddly — was somehow(?) one of the first 100 jazz CD’s I ever owned (I think on my uncle’s recommendation). Escalator grew on me a lot while I was in college, even if none of it ever made any sense — but my ears took to it in just a couple months and a dozen spins. A jazz visionary, for sure. RIP.

Ditto. I’ve only ever given PayPal my credit card, and that’s it. The idea of linking my bank account number to it gives me the willies — always has, and always will.

I haven’t been following any of this very closely, but here are some recent developments I just ran across on Reddit… Better source: https://www.vulture.com/article/epic-games-bandcamp-sale-layoffs.html Reddit post where I saw it (with about 90 comments of discussion): https://reddit.com/r/BandCamp/s/VyrhagB7pa And from another Reddit post:

About halfway thru this new doc, and appreciative of what amounts to a mini-doc on Clifford Brown for a good almost 15 minutes — and Abby Lincoln too for that matter (for another solid 10-12 minutes, or what sure seems like it). Great, and exceeding expectations so far.

Missed this entire thread before — is anyone else able to get the MP3’s to play on this blog page? I’m just trying on my iPhone (with no luck), and haven’t tried from a PC yet (but have my doubts they’d work from there either).

I’m probably the only person here who just doesn’t connect with Wes at all — and I mean hardly in the slightest. The fault is mine own, but I have nothing but a lot of respect for him, and I can’t think of any specific criticisms I have of his playing or approach. He’s just never clicked with me is all, I guess.

I actually file that Freddie Hubbard CD with Joanne Brackeen's CD's, because "Heidi B" is the best thing on that album -- a good album, certainly -- but that tune is **SO** frickin' good, and I think that may be the definitive version of it too (at least of those I've heard).

I just bought this ($12 used from a brick-n-morter!). And third time through I'm finally warming to it, which is to say it didn't bowl me over the first time. Joe Cinderella (guitar) is the strongest thing about it, if you ask me. Still, the whole thing is sort of growing on me. The US domestic CD of this includes Melle's Quardrama album too, which is very similar (same instrumentation, both dates with Cinderella, thankfully) -- but I'm glad it was included, bumping the disc up to ~68 minutes. Some of it is a little sleepy though -- but the hotter tracks are nice (almost entirely cuz of Joe). Here's the original cover of the second bonus date..

I tried to resist the 2cd release of solo piano stuff too — and I did for about 4-5 months, iirc — but I ultimately gave in, and once I heard it, I couldn’t believe I waited that long. (It turned out to be just shy of incredible, and exceeded my expectations quite a bit — and my expectations weren’t especially low before I got it either.)

I don’t know how I can resist.

Is McCann even on these extra(?) recordings? Surely yes, but the way this is written, it almost makes it sound like an entirely different group. (Or what am I missing elsewhere in the lengthy Facebook post, that would clarify.)

I was thinking along the same lines.

Continuing... I’ve always been fascinated by the German big band date on 18-Dec-1957 in Stuttgart, with the Erwin Lehn Orchestra — which has FOOTAGE!! What else is known about it? — the circumstances of how it came about, and really anything else about it — ??? Clips have been used in one or two Miles documentaries over the years, and I remember first seeing maybe a minute of this footage back in collage around 1992. Here’s the session details: http://www.plosin.com/milesAhead/Sessions.aspx?s=571218 First, here’s video of the full-length cut of “Walkin” (which at 3:30 total, is more than a minute longer than what’s listed on Peter Losin’s site) — but I’m not sure if video of any of the other tunes are available online anywhere (but not on YouTube, far as I can tell). As I said, I think the first time I ever saw any footage from this, was a part of a French(?) Miles documentary I got a 3rd or 4th generation VHS dub of back in around ‘92. Not sure this is it, but the footage is sure close in any case. And I just found this next one too -- AUDIO ONLY -- which appears to have more/most(?) of “Yesterdays” and a wonderful “Round Midnight”. Maybe this is the entire thing, come to think of it -- I haven't had the chance to listen all the way through, but skipping around and looking at the individual track times, this might be everything: And just googling around some more, and the complete session seems to possibly be as follows… https://themidnightcafe.org/2022/07/14/miles-davis-stuttgart-germany-12-18-57/ I'll cut-n-paste all that here too, just for posterity... Miles Davis – Stuttgart, Germany (12/18/57) Posted on July 14, 2022 by Mat Brewster Erwin Lehn Orchestra with Miles Davis December 18, 1957 (6 items; TT = 13:27) Beethovensaal, Stuttgart (Germany) S¸ddeutscher Rundfunk (SDR) TV broadcast (B-) Miles Davis (tpt); Horst Jankowski (p); Peter Witte (b); Hermann Mutschler (d) 1 Yesterdays (J. Kern-O. Harbach) 2:36 Splice in Davis solo at 0:50 2 ‘Round Midnight (B. Hanighen-C. Williams-T. Monk) 4:45 3 Walkin’ (rehearsal) (R. Carpenter) 0:55 With voiceover: Unknown announcer (0:06-0:21), RenÈ Urtreger’s wife talking about Davis’s 1957 visit to Europe (0:21-0:55) 4 Walkin’ (fragment) (R. Carpenter) 1:56 With voiceover: Mrs. Urtreger continues (1:35-1:56) 5 Walkin’ (fragment) (R. Carpenter) 0:58 With voiceover: Unknown announcer (0:53-0:58) 6 Walkin’ (incomplete) (R. Carpenter) 2:17 Present here are 1,2 and 6 1 Yesterdays CD: Jazz Unlimited JUCD 2050, Storyville STA 130467 2 ‘Round Midnight CD: Jazz Unlimited JUCD 2050, Storyville STA 130467 3 Walkin’ (rehearsal) Video: Treffpunkt Jazz 4 Walkin’ (fragment) Video: Treffpunkt Jazz 5 Walkin’ (fragment) Video: Treffpunkt Jazz 6 Walkin’ (incomplete) CD: Jazz Unlimited JUCD 2050, Storyville STA 130467 This concert was scheduled at the end of Davis’s European sojourn. It was broadcast on SDR-TV’s Treffpunkt Jazz. There is a lot of overlap among the fragments of “Walkin'” listed above. None is close to complete, and even when pieced together we have just an opening chorus and some of Davis’s solo. Listed in the SWR Stuttgart archives are the following titles: Probe (rehearsal) (Davis, Jankowski + Erwin Lehn Orchestra) (5:55) Tune Up (Davis + Jankowski Trio) (3:35) But Not for Me (Davis + Jankowski Trio) (3:00) Yesterdays (Davis + Jankowski Trio) (2:30) Bags’ Groove (Davis + Jankowski Trio) (3:15) ‘Round Midnight (Davis + Orchestra) (4:41) Walkin’ (Davis + Orchestra) (2:53) My Funny Valentine (Davis + Orchestra) (2:45) Several of these titles are lost. Additional titles were performed by the S¸dfunk-Tanzorchester conducted by Erwin Lehn, and the Johannes Rediske Quintet with Ingrid Werner (voc). Davis returned to the U.S. in late December, and a sextet with Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Garland, Chambers, and Jones began a two-week engagement at Birdland (January 2-15, 1958). Thanks to Alexander Keth for the details of what’s in the Stuttgart archive.