ArtSalt

Aye, there's only so many previously unreleased, newly found and break downs of Leap Frog a man can stand in one sitting. I am looking forward to this Mosaic, I've the Charlie Parker Story on the 24bit TOCJ-6875/6 from 2007 and the crackles have always got me down, along with the other Dial releases this is a must have for me.

Forest Eyes is amazing to my ears - it's that smooth "cool" Jazz FM friendly sound - only done correctly with luscious strings and production that is spot on.

I misread this thread at first, I thought Japan was moving to the cloud/downloading! That didn't fit in with my understanding of the Japanese psyche.

I am always doubtful that Coltrane's spiritual awakening was all that was needed to free him from H addiction, so it intrigues me that he may have been drinking lots of wine before he died. He was certainly overweight and wine is drink that a lot of people think a bottle a night is quite healthy, when it is nearly the equivalent to a half-a-bottle of whisky or five pints of beer plus, especially if you're getting lashed into New World 14.5% bottles of wine. The liver is very resilient and is possible to abuse it, cause damage, make it fatty and completely start the process all again. But along with drugs, diet is critical, how much energy you're burning off, stress and genetics are all crucial and in fact, other than getting heptatis from exchanging bodily fluids one way or another, may be the defining factors. In Coltrane's case, some of these factors, may have contributed to his cancer.

Certainly, Teachout is no fan of Ellington, but that shouldn't disqualify him from being a biographer of him. But there's a number of things wrong with Teachout's perspective: 1. The constant whinning that Ellington couldn't reach the dizzy classical heights of a full symphony in the classical form. 2. Billy Strayhorn was the ultimate genius behind Ellington's reputation as composer. 3. He had a high sexual drive with lots of groupies and I will return to this theme throughout the book to emphasize something not quite right with his character. 4. In the late 60s and 70s he was dressing in "gaudily mod oufits" and that he was embarrassing himself. But so wasn't everyone during this period, especially the likes of Miles Davis. He was merely following the fashion of the time. 5. The comparison at the end that he was "'minitiaturist", when that, is exactly what he was not!

I've had that 48 hour flu that's doing the rounds, so I've had some time to complete Teachout's biography of Ellington. The evidence of his hack status is in the coda of the book, where he admits that the work is un-original and based on other writers research and it is only his perspective on their research. His last trick is after character assassinating Ellington he tries to redeem him in the last couple of paragraphs. Too late baby. Still, I would like to see Teachout's play on Satchmo.

My understanding is that Norah wanted to be recorded on Blue Note to ensure the kudos as a jazz artist? In any event the record industry could do with some more successes like her first album, it might even help fund some of the more niche specialist markets, like Mosaic Records.

ZT Blues is good, you won't be disappointed with that session of Turrentine's.

You can't go wrong with Nice 'n' Easy or The Concert Sinatra: a master at the height of his game.

It's clearly been ghosted by a moldy old fig!

The whole is what counts, but image inevitably comes into, especially for performers and when you are considering the whole entity. Armour can be worn in defense of course, it is not specifically a war expression in terms of uniforms and we all dress, or at least have had to, in a uniform, be it a suit, sunday's best, or a boy's scout uniform. How one dresses can be a powerful tool and indeed, weapon. So the military terminology is apt. But so many men are frightened of wielding this power, it strikes me as oddity. And I don't mean power as in control over others, it's about walking into a room, bar, restaurant, or meeting place and commanding respect, just by the way you look. What's so bad with that?

I can understand that aesthetic - the minimalist black box in the corner with 18 months worth of continuous music on it - in fact, my missus would appreciate me more if I was to go that route, but for me, I dig that whole ritual and ceremony of searching the collection for the physical item of package, artwork and then the non physical and yet, ultimate essential quality of the music. I love to sit my Queen Anne in the music room and dig the physical presence of the artifact - with the music on and glass in hand of course!

The suit is still a powerful weapon in a man's sartorial armoury, it still conveys, at least in the common culture of our media - if not the workplace in most industries - the status of authority and power. It can also be a tool of subterfuge, Miles dressing like an Ivy Leaguer at the Andover Shop and then shooting-up backstage at the Newport Jazz Festival. It doesn't have to be a suit for me, but that style in America after WWI up until the Vietnam era, incorporating the soft shouldered collegiate to the zuit suit and beyond, reaching it's pinnacle and classical perfection in the oxford cloth button-down shirt and all to the soundtrack of American jazz is absolutey intoxicating to me.

Aye, that was where it was at!

I can relate to that. The album that got me into exploring jazz was The Style Council’s Café Bleu – that brief moment when the potential of Paul Weller and Mick Talbot was fully realised, not only musically in the many jazz infused tracks on the album, but in their image too: the expatriate Cappucino Kid in his neat French inspired jackets and American repp ties, wearing long rain coats down near the Seine. How much of this was contrived and created by a Polydor company stylist, we may never know, but it was dead right for the time, and offered something more than the modism that Weller represented before in his Jam incarnation. In fact, they were more closely allied to the original UK modernists of the 1950s who were into modern jazz and American style, brought back by the Johnny Dankworth’s and the Cunard Yanks of the era. It was about this time I caught Paris Blues on the television and the style of Sydney Poitier and Paul Newman and the whole modern jazz aesthetic had me hooked (albeit the music in the film harked back to the earlier periods of Ellington and Armstrong) – here was a different way of being, an alternative to the football focused youth cults around me. The stage was set: it was not only the music I wanted to mine, but the whole aesthetic of the modern jazz being. There’s no room for hippy flares in this! So clearly, it took me some time to even contemplate listening to jazz beyond the early 60s. And if you look at the uber-cool vision of Bill Evans in the late 50s and early 60s and compare this with his bearded and bouffant coke inspired 70s look, the prejudice is not so difficult to understand.

They wheel this article out about every six months or so, in one form or another. Vinyl undergoes a revival every couple of years or so too, but after the student, or someone living in a small apartment starts to build-up a collection, or moves in together with a partner, the limitations of the medium in terms of storage space becomes apparent. So these individuals will ditch records and go back to streaming, downloading, or whatever else they do these days. So there's always going to peaks and then troughs, when only the collectors and audiophiles are buying records. The CD revival is coming, just you wait.....! I am interviewing a young person in their mid-twenties later this week, an off topic question I will be asking them to break the ice, will be what music they like and what is their preferred medium.

Ivy League no loss. THIS was the great sartorial loss: MG Believe it or not, there are still a great many living the zoot suit riots over on the Fedora Lounge. There’s also a dude who stalks night clubs dressed like an extra in Bugsy Malone. I find the 40s style a little bit too cubist for my liking, too many angles, and then there's the ties, albeit I will sport a garish painted tie on the odd occasion, but they were exactly right for the large ballrooms of the swing and big band era. Get you noticed in a crowd of a couple of thousand. Once the bebop era starts, you see a more relaxed style coming in, berets and soft shoulders, ideal for the intimacy of small, smokey jazz club.

It all went bell-bottomed and psychedelic, contrast this with the cool of the Ivy League look and you see how much was lost, sartorially speaking. Bill Evans was still dressing sharp upto about 1969, then he reinvented himself a BeeGees impersonator. You could say a lot about Miles, but his one piece ladies swimsuit look, is probably not a good place to introduce a novice to his genius. Was it their choice, or was it just a fashion dead-end? What amazes me, when put in the perspective of what was immediately before, so many fell for the world of dog turd browns, felts and that awful hippy silhouette.

The Machito stuff with Flip Phillips is good too - a lot of it difficult to source on CD, unlike the tracks with Parker on.

The price is indeed right, with these prices, you can afford to go for completeness, even though you know there's going to a few duds in the later Blue Note catalogue. As I've said before, these Blue Note and Prestige titles hark back to the first golden age of decent jazz reissues on CD in the mid to late 1990s. But this second wave of the good stuff is even better! Happy days.

I had the Conn of "A Bluish Bag" but I traded it because although the playing is wonderful, I just found it boring. Aye, most of those later albums fall into the Bud Shank California Dreamin' period on World Pacific: an undignified attempt to be pop-popular. Still, Another Story is not bad at all, but The Look of Love and Always Something There are cringe worthy.

It is an interesting topic, funding of high and ahem, so called low art, but I didn't particularly like the tone of the article with its quaint view of jazz being somewhat still suffering from a perception of it all being Aker Bilk/Trad jazz. I am pretty much sure, that besides a few decrepid moldy-figs, that anyone in the UK considers jazz from the perspective of two-beat Fire House Five Good Time jazz.

I missed the opportunity of the Galaxy set, for reasons that are lost to me now, but what a fool am I. The booklet in the Vanguard set is interesting in its revelations of Pepper running on coke for the entire residency at the Vaguard and his increasingly sinusy nasal congested dialogues.

Then there's Perez Prado and Shorty Rogers Voodoo Suite with an exotica style cover, not quite there, but nicely seared.

Some of the later 1968/69/70 albums are not essential at all - the Stanley Turrentine ones are particularly unworthy of the remasters art, SHM or not! Other than the Elvin Jones albums, most of the latter Blue Note reissues fail to meet the classic bench mark by far.