Larry Kart

For Tapiola, Rosbaud is superb: http://www.amazon.com/Sibelius-Finlandia-K...682&sr=1-53 I also love Hannikainen's incredibly elemental Tapiola, originally on Everest with Spivakovsky doing the Violin Concerto, later on a cheap EMI twofer with more Sibelius cond. by Malcom Sargent, but both those seem to be OOP. Glad to find someone else who thinks that Alex Ross is a bottom-feeding turd.

You should check out the six or so westerns that Randolph Scott made with director Andre De Toth in the 1950s, all of which preceded the Boetticher-Scott westerns. The flavor is somewhat related to the Boettichers, as are the budegetary constraints, but the De Toth's are fine in their own right. IIRC, I particularly liked Riding Shotgun and The Stranger Wore a Gun, the latter (again IIRC) incredibly baroque and intense in its restriction in the climactic scenes to a small segment of the typical western movie town.

Some Leon Golub works, FWIW: http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424960601/53...rnt-man-iv.html http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424470637/14...-figure-ii.html http://www.artnet.com/artwork/423873622/37...-ii-detail.html http://www.artnet.com/usernet/awc/awc_thum...;works_of_art=1

I had a fair amount of Rochberg of all periods at one time but dumped almost all of it after a bout of concentrated listening led me to think that his typical muscle-bound, "gestural" thinking was mostly empty and crude. He's the musical equivalent of painter Leon Golub, whose writhing, smeary, agonized male figures were once aptly described by Frank O'Hara as "humanity hash." As for the supposed post-modern aspect of Rochberg's work, while there are potential problems there IMO, I don't hear Rochberg's musicality as rising to a level where questions of style and/or historical stance are crucial factors. Among so-called or possible post-modernists, I much prefer the luscious/ecstatic looniness of David Del Tredici or the fractured surfaces of Robin Holloway.

Yes, Joe Vito.

Johnny Frigo story from another site. The poster is former Down Beat editor/record producer Jack Tracy: Johnny was not only a fine, creative musician, a talented painter, poet and songwriter, but as my friend Don Gold so nicely put it, "great company between sets." One of my favorite Frigo moments came one day when he and I stood chatting at Universal recording studios in Chicago and an auto driver who was editing some racing tapes excitedly asked us to come into the editing room to hear what he had recorded. "Hear that?" he said, "Hear that? ...... That was my car coming down the stretch." Johnny looked over and remarked dryly, "Sounded like you were rushing."

I have no sense that Monk's technique notably faltered or improved over the course of his career. As for "idea" playing, I think the high points were during his Prestige days -- e.g. "Little Rootie Tootie," "Blue Monk," "Bag's Groove" with Miles, etc. IMO the "idea" playing got more formulaic during the Riverside and then the Columbia years, in part because there were voluble saxophonists to lean on in his working groups (Coltrane for a while, then Griffin, then Rouse); it seemed as though most performances by those working groups were set up so that Monk's solo would not be expected to be novel or climactic but rather a restatement of thematic material with trimmings/variations. The obvious exceptions would be the rediscovered '57 concert with Coltrane, where Monk is on fire, and the Columbia solo recordings, where Monk often finds the material inspiring and is also the whole show. Also, IIRC, he's at a higher than normal level for the period on the It Club recordings. Otherwise, though, I think a lot of Monk's solos during the Columbia era sound like he's filling in semi-predetermined patterns, at least by the standards of his varied and adventurous Prestige era work.

Thanks.

Many thanks, Simon.

Damn -- I posted something fairly long (and kind of important to me) on the Gary Burton thread, toward the tail end of things and in response to something Jim Sangrey said about paying attention to technical matters, and now it's not there. Can anyone help recover it?

Zitano was one of THE drummers in the Boston area in the mid- to late-1950s. Among other things, he's on Serge Chaloff's "Boston Blowup," with his frequent rhythm section partner pianist Ray Santisi. I beleive Zitano was the drummer with the Herb Pomeroy small group and big band as well.

Back in the seventh grade (1955), I had a friend who had gotten into jazz a bit, thought it was cool, and had a few records. I caught the bug and got some things of my own -- a Lew Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band 45, one of the Norman Granz Jam Session albums, a Jazztone Society sampler with the Parker-Gillespie-Norvo "Congo Blues" and a hoarse, scary Pee Wee Russell solo on Max Kaminsky's "Stuyvesant Blues" ("scary" because I had no idea a clarinet could sound like that), and, perhaps most important, a ten-inch reissue of 1940-'42 Ellington material, with "Jack the Bear," "Ko Ko," and "Concerto for Cootie." What still kind of tickles was how immediately and spontaneously my friend and I recognized how great the music on that Ellington album was -- whatever was going on there, it was an education in itself. Our home-room teacher in eighth grade was a jazz fan, found out we were interested, and offered to take us to a JATP concert at the Chicago Opera House in early fall '56. Seeing and hearing Eldridge, Gillespie, Jacquet, F. Phillips. L. Young, et al. in person was overwhelming. Likewise a bit later on when I heard the Basie Band when the Birdland All-Stars tour came to town.

Mentioned this elsewhere a while ago, but Nistico admirers should try to track down his latish (1988) album "Empty Room" (Red), made in Rome with a fine Italian rhythm section -- pianist Rita Marcotulli, bassist Marco Fratini, and drummer Roberto Gatto. The title piece, Sal's own, is a lovely tune, and he's in soulful and at times very heated form throughout.

As is well known in the business, after a certain point in his career (I believe it preceded the formation of this band) most of the charts that were recorded under Jones's name were not written by him. Instead they were farmed out to "ghosts" -- Billy Byers, for one. This is fairly easy to hear. Jones's writing for the various EmArcy albums dates he did charts for in the '50s (e.g. Jimmy Cleveland's debut comes to mind) and for his own excellent ABC-Paramount album "This Is How I Feel About Jazz" were quite distinctive -- he had a definite (if at times arguably too cute) "touch," and then it vanished. Of course, it might have been that Jones began to hear things differently and write in a different ways, but in fact he just decided to pay other guys to do the work and take the credit himself.

Last time I saw him live was last year, I think. He was in fine form. You really need to hear him live and close up at least once because his sound is so rich and complex and such a big part of his overall concept -- hearing Golson in the flesh probably would add a good deal to your sense of him, even if you know a lot of his recordings.

That's my impression, too, but then I haven't listened to a whole lot of Carter records -- his own or ones on which he's been a sideman -- since maybe the CTIs he was on that seemed to call for attention. When did the fall off occur and what were its manifestations? About the latter, IIRC his sound got kind of semi-artificially gross (thanks in part to new ways/styles of recording the instrument that were horrendous IMO -- I have nightmares about listening to Eddie Gomez), he developed self-indulgent habits of accentuation (perhaps in response in part to how he was being recorded), and didn't his intonation begin to wobble as well?

Do you know if they also copped my liner notes from the Mosaic set?

Warne Marsh (in glorious late-period form -- 1980) with Sal Mosca, Eddie Gomez, and Kenny Clarke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBwamkEGSQ4...=related&se

Sorry, the sentence above isn't a sentence. What I meant was something like "The difference between Hamilton's note-card shuffling and the disciple-shop of such players was that their disciple-ship was IMO organic.... etc."

Well, yes, but "down cold" as though he were shuffling through a pile of note cards. Listeners of a certain age will have come across lots of not-that-well-known players who were heavily influenced by Getz/Sims/Cohn et al. but were nonetheless individual and interesting -- Sandy Mosse, Bob Graf, Angelo Tompros, Al Siebert (Tompros and Siebert both from the D.C. area), Dick Hafer, etc. The difference between the IMO organic disciple-ship of such players ("organic" both in the sense that -- as was the case with Pres and these guys' own models -- something in their models spoke to something that was deep in them, and "organic" also in that their solo work at its best was a kind of story-telling, not a buffet table of licks). On the other hand, I dimly recall that one at least one Hamilton recording, his playing struck me as though it were getting to be real -- the one he made with Gerry Mulligan, "Soft Lights and Sweet Music."

Don't know if this has been posted before, but Tristano at the Half Note in 1964 with Lee, Warne, Sonny Dallas, and Nick Stabulus, from the "Look Up and Live" broadcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cByCF2IQQWU...ted&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZWumSW3O7A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DMwwsJhF7I...ted&search=

Feh.

A Maini website that includes the famous photo: http://www.hollywoodmuse.com/joe_maini_website/

I think you can get it from Jamey Aebersold.

Rich plays on Lampert's own SteepleChase recording,Venus Perplexed. Larry you should check this out. Steve is also going to have a release later this year on Bridge Records. I will.