king ubu

ah well... honestly thought I could drop the names of Hot Lips and George Adams... but I don't know either of them well enough yet... got the Ferguson disc, of course, but haven't played it more than once or twice yet - that has to change!

Some spontaneous babblings typed while listening for the first time - without having done any reading above... #1 - sounds very familiar... reminded me of Woody Herman at moments, the trumpet has dizzy overtones. Very nice baritone, good alto, too... but I think I like the baritone best here! The tune's familiar, too, but hell if I could pin it down. #2 - hum... smooth production, all too smooth for my taste. Professionally arranged and played, but not quite my cup of tea, I'm afraid. The bass sounds quite good, though. The sax players (assuming the tenor in the intro and the soprano later on aren't the same guy), I'd really need to hear them in a less "produced" setting to give any judgment. Does the second tenor spot sound quite some like Joe Henderson or is that just me? Ah, but then he goes wilder and wilder... nice! But still, as a whole, I'm not sure what to say or think. Ah, gotta love the Nino Rota-tag in the end... dearly love his fantastic "8 1/2" march! Wins me over... guess this here's really good - at least my interest is definitely piqued and I'm looking forward to learning more about this cut! #3 - Latin far, blaring 'bones, fine rhythms, flowing piano. Sounds authentically Cuban to my lacking ears... the rhythm feel is definitely there in the piano playing - reminds me quite some of the late Don Rubén González! After the piano solo's over, it gets a bit boring to my ears... but it's a nice groove that could just go on and on - and would surely be great to catch live! #4 - "After You've Gone" - cute, for sure... and swinging! Phrasing sounds heavier than I'd expect from Grappelli, who's name might be the most obvious to drop in this context. Nice guitar and piano, but not quite a favorite, I'm afraid. #5 - Boogie woogie piano - I'm no good in guessing there, but this is nice! And I guess it's not very old, at least not from the days when Albert Ammons and The Lion and Meade Lux Lewis were around? #6 - Now we're back in the days... what's the name of this tune again? Do I hear strings, faintly in the background? Artie Shaw? Hmm... nice tenor, tasty trumpet... sounds almost like a JATP session during the solos, probing, bouncing, forward-looking music. Guess none of the soloists will be too big a surprise, but I can't really pin anything down... would love to pin down at least the tune though! #7 - Starts out like a variation on "Honeysuckle Rose" at the beginning... stomping rhythms, somewhere along the lines where the 52nd street scene crossed over to bop, but not quite yet. Very nice sound on trumpet! Webster-ish tenor at the end, short but sweet. #8 - The tenor sounds vaguely familiar, but I find it really hard to even pin down the era from which this comes! Wonderful track, sublime, I think! Got to listen to this with more attention... could it be a player that was pretty seasoned when this was taped? Sounds very laid-back and at ease, yet poised, committed! Beautiful! #9 - Somewhere in between Miles' tuba band, West Coast and third stream - nice to have an oboe in there... and the huffing and puffing tuba. Interesting, to say the least! Not Boyd Raeburn, I think... Thornill or another band from that era, roughly? Great opening on the trumpet solo and great passage 2:00-2:10! That trumpet solo is easily the highlight here! Tuba sounds a bit awkward in its short solo, rhythmically off... nice idea to have that short round of bit between the trombone and the oboe in the end - the later's cool, though nowhere near to the heights Yusef Lateef reached later on. #10 - Make it funky! Yeah! New Orleans stuff, I guess - love the deep horns, tuba, baritone... very cool! The only of these bands I know a very little bit is the Dirty Dozen Brass band, other than that there's plenty left to explore (ah yeah, once got in touch a bit with a tuba player called Sean Murphy - not from New Orleans, but he had/has his own brass band and he sent me the CD, very cool stuff, too!) (Reminds me of a previous BFT, quite a while ago, which had a great track by NO brass band... got to dig that up and finally order that disc, can't think of it right now, though... anyone knows what I'm talking about? If so, please help my memory!) #11 - Funky we stay... darn, another tune I know but can't name. Got to refresh my memory, it seems. What's that instrument heard first on the theme and then taking the first solo? Blues harp? Nice groove, but not a favorite track. #12 - Change of pace... tenor in a very sparse setting. Bass sounds almost like an electric bass guitar in some spots - not very nicely recorded. But the tenor is cool, takes its time to develop lines and turn out quite a great solo! I like the bouncing groove and the swing coming from deep within the tenor... bet this guy would swing as much if he was playing unaccompanied! Bass solo... well, the sound's really rather ugly, I'm sorry. But I definitely blame the engineer for that and pity the bassist. Nicely understated short drum solo at the end, before the tenor takes it out - cool idea to sort of "manually" fade out. #13 - Can't be bad if the baritone opens it! Nice mixture of swinging NO sounds and boppish elements. Nice solos... ah, more violin? And there's that struttin' beat beneath it, and the baritone... very nice! Sounds a bit impromptu there... will the piano or the 'bone take a solo now? And finally there's the baritone... cool one, lose and swinging. #14 - And here's a rhythmically fine-tuned band. Sounds like they know exactly where they're headed. Boppish head, but of recent origin, I'd say... Lovano maybe? Hmm, kind of hard to pin down... alto has a nice tone, could be someone like Kenny Garrett (though I've not heard any of his music for some time). It all sounds very accomplished, but ultimately fails to really grab my attention as it just kind of goes on and on. It feels too... how to say it? As if they're pressing their purpose a bit too hard. I'm kind of missing the fun here, the moment where they let go and loosen up a bit. (I do like the bass, however!) #15 - Nice groove set up by the bass... and then a tightly arranged ensemble tutti. Catchy! What time signature's this really? Touches of Don Ellis in the second ensemble part, touches of European Renaissance in the first strain... - is that Gianluigi Trovesi with one of his projects (maybe with the WDR big band)? Even though this might be more "purpose driven" and "accomplished" than most other tracks, there's still a looseness to it that I enjoy! And I love how the bass is left alone again and again in between, how it builds in waves. #16 - A moody closer fits the bill very well now! Vibes, interesting score for brass and saxes on a steady beat. Very lyrical trumpet carrying the line. Like how it builds into a torment of sounds, with layer upon layer, still retaining the mood and the groove at the heart of it. Many thanks for this interesting selection! As usual I'm useless when it comes to recognizing musicians, but there are several tracks in here where I'd like to hear more! And now I'm going to read this thread, hoping to find at least a few tune id's for the ones where I miserably failed...

Those Kühn-reissues were culled from various Universal-owned labels, I think - and Impulse is one of them, too... that might be all there is as far as explanations go (but I wouldn't really know - and I can't locate the CD right now).

Because laws changed - just read the interview (or the posts above)! Laws are not man's (small man, that is) best friend.

little trip ahead next week... Monday Nov. 14 - Sex Mob (in Cologne, with Niko! ) Wednesday Nov. 16 - Henry Threadgill (at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam) Friday Nov. 18 - Craig Taborn Trio (again in Cologne) Then there's Bill Frisell's 858 group coming to Zurich Monday Nov. 21 (not sure I'll go but I had a weird dream [not a wet one, mind you] about Jenny Scheinman recently, so...) And at the end of November, there'll be some great stuff at this year's Unerhört festival - planning to catch: Friday Nov. 25 - Christoph Grab, Co Streiff/Russ Johnson/Gerry Hemingway, Lake-Weber-Ulrich feat. Nils Wogram As for Ingrid Laubrock, her Octet will appear in Zurich Dec. 10 and I plan to attend - missed her previous appearances, alas. On Mar. 7, The Nu Band will ply, and on Mar. 22, I'll get to hear chapter 2 of Matana Roberts' "Coin Coin" project, titled "Mississippi Moonchile"... quite exctiting times ahead! Last live concert I saw was George Gruntz' Concert Jazz Band, in a small club, me first row... amazing! The band included Dave Bargeron, Larry Schneider, Gary Smulyan, Luciano Biondini and many others. Was half deaf in the end, but there's nothing like a great big band!

Got that Rutherford yesterday and gave it one spin so far... will certainly enjoy it many more times! What's that about "ham"? Seriously? Guess that would indeed have been an even great title!

That's great news! (To me, LP would have been even better, I guess!)

You bet! I can fully endorse that. The sun is shining and The Band is playing (Long Black Veil as I'm typing - here's a link, but clicking it may infringe copy rights!)

thanks for the tip re Sunburst , found a copy , it's a really good session. Mine's still on its way... guess it will arrive while I'm on vacation next week. Does sound exciting, for sure!

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/06/edgar-varèse-and-the-jazzmen-mp3s.html fascinating stuff!

FWIW, when they bought the Sanctuary Music Group, the jazz reissues of the ASV label completely disappeared. F So these might depend on previous reissues by labels such as ASV? But those were never complete, to my understanding... I only have a single disc and not a very convincing one. Guess we just need to wait for the boxes to appear!

I know, that's what puzzles me about these! Don't think Universal would co-operate with any such outfit as Proper, though (not even distribution-wise).

Yes, PD - but still... if a major does this, is one to expect decent sound/versions/remasterings? Would Universal get access to the best sources of RCA's Bechet catalogue? It's well-known that Universal has stepped in a European distributor for Concord ever since they took over the whole Fantasy catalogue.... and honestly, they're not doing too bad a job, bringing back many OJCCDs (with different catalogue numbers, but other than that identical). I'd only wish for a better website with more complete listings than what you can find on jazzecho.de!

In cases like this I buy the box, sell the older duplicates and both make some money back and free up some space. Par for the course for long-time jazz collectors! I've never wanted to get into all that hassle with selling stuff... some discs have scratches, some digipacks don't look like new. Too much work there, I think!

That's of course true - but there's no blaming the European labels for that (again: of course!) But as the majors don't give sh*t, it seems they're being sold widely in the US.

Is there any way to know which tracks on these Singles sets are mono and which are stereo? I don't see any general remarks anywhere in the booklets! The earlier Polydor compilations (many of them based mainly on singles, too) have alyways included that information... (I'm asking as I've been sorting out JB stuff for a few days now, ripping and ordering chronologically all Singles volumes... now I want to add the missing/extended/stereo/mono version from other compilations, but that's kind of hard if I don't know about stereo/mono regarding the Hip-O-sets!) Btw, Vol. 11 is coming soon - and it's the final volume of the great series.

Yes, just read it... but it does leave a few open questions, at least to me. 1) Why are so many Fresh Sound records of such so-so quality when they have these reel-to-reels, what are those anyway? 2) Would paying licensing fees allow Fresh Sound to negotiate about using masters? 3) Why does Fresh Sound so often put forth compilations of stuff that just a few months ago was readily available? Doesn't gain them sympathy points from me! 4) Why does Fresh Sound so often combine a wide-spread album with a rarer one? If they're really catering the serious collector, it would be nice to stop that crap and change the concept a bit! The main point, though, as BBS says, is the reluctancy of the majors, to do anything... but I'd still wish for better quality reissues! Just recently got the EMI Japan Joe Puma disc and it beats the crappy Fresh Sound disc by many a mile!

Happy Birthday! :party:

Happy Birthday, Jeff! :party:

I've been playing bits of the Wes set in the past days. Sounds fine to me (though I've yet to compare with "Impressions" and the VMEs I have). The reproduction of the covers is wonderful, the liners seem to fairly short and on the point. The only thing that bothers me a bit is that there's no real discography. You have to piece together the line-ups from the original covers and get the release info at the end. Also, in some cases the bonustracks are with the albums and in others (I assume for lack of time) they're at the end of disc 5, paired with the four Half Note overdub tracks. None of this is a big issue, but it just makes this a step away from the perfect Wes Verve collection (but what's worst is of course what Mike Weil has mentioned above... hard to find out though, as Hip-O NEVER, EVER [why the hell!?] give track timings on their sets). Anyway, I guess the Creed Taylor set remains my favorite for the time being - presentation there is absolutely wonderful (and the Ray Charles and Kai Winding albums good enough new/recent discoveries to make it of interest... the Charles is fantastic, and honestly I'm not 100% sure I'll listen to the three jazz albums on the other 2CD reissue of it all that often).

I'll want to see some tracklistings first...

Would be cool but I doubt it as most of the albums reissued on twofers so far aren't in the box. There's no news on jazzecho.de, the site where Universal Germany shares some (but never all, alas) info on their jazz releases and reissues. (edited for multi-post... love that new feature! a message about "this is a duplicate post" would make more sense!)

Savoy for me! That 5LP box (with great liners, too, btw!) was the first major chunk of Parker I heard (I was probably 16 oder 17 when I got it). Some of the most amazing music... and speaking of drama, you get "Ko-Ko"!

Okay, okay... so the Scott's not half as bad as I'd expect, then there's the Gibbs, the Rivers, the Albam, the Klemmer... will see. Stitt it's silly that you'll have to buy a 50 (!) CD set to get these!

Has this been reissued on CD? Never head this though I have a dvd of a live gig of the band which is ok but I've always fancied the studio album. No idea - I recently found the LP!