medjuck

Elvis: Hound Dog/Don't Be Cruel. Now there's a double bill. But now that I think of it, I may have had this on '78. But the one I remember the look of the best was "That'll be the Day". Definitely on '45, though I never owned it. I just remember seeing it at parties. (So I guess you can see how old I am.)

I'll probably get this because of the Elvis connection.

Benny Carter. I think it's also the only one I have. I got it on the only occasion where I ever asked a friend to arrange a meeting with someone I admired. I brought along the sleeve from Further Definitions and asked him to sign it.

The Capital Cd is called Django Reinhardt: All-Star Sessions. You can get it on Amazon for $11.98. It also includes the Benny Carter- Coleman Hawkins sessions. (I think I have that session on more cds than anythng except maybe Bean's version of Body and Soul.

I think I have them on both a European Django cd and a capital US cd. (I'm not home so I"ll have to check later.)

I remember I once corresponded with someone who claimed to have heard a tape.I thought it was Peter Losin, but I just looked at his site and he's not sure such a tape exists.

In the meantime I went back to the cd myself and the vamp does seem to be the one from "It Ain't...". Though not listed as such in any discographies. Even Peter Losin's excellent Miles Aheaad site just calls it a fragment of "So What".

What's the vamp being played by the orchestra under the openng titles? Is it Gil's arrangment for "It Ain't Necessarily So"? BTW the show was recorded just a month after So What was originally recorded and between the 2 KOB sessions. Given Gil Evans's reputation for slowness it suggests that both Evanses -- Bill and Gil-- may have been involved in some of the composing for KOB. (And what's the correct spelling of the plural of "Evans"?)

BTW The late Shirley Clark also made a feature length film about Ornette Coleman.

Where can one get it? I'm an Evans completist (can never have too many versions of Little Wing) so I've had the cds since they came out. (Vol 1 came out in 2000 and Vol 2 in 2001). They're both still availabe at Amoeba in LA. What makes these distinctive is the use of Urszula Dudziak as a wordless vocalist. This is the Gil Evans DVD. http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=2747554 Thanks. I do have this. It's not from Umbria, but it's very good. (Herb Geller plays on it!) According some discographies I've seen there's a Japanese DVD release of this show with at least one alternate number. Hard to tell though because the songs are not identified correctly on the US DVD. Anyone here know any sources for Japanese DVD's?

Did he record with Bird in Montreal? I'm not at home but I think he's on an Uptown cd of Bird playing on the CBC and in a club.

I just got a Naxos release of excerpts from Kurt Weil's music for The Eternal Road. I believe that none of this music has ever been recorded before. And as i rmember it, it cost less than $10 Canadian.

So I dug up my Frankie Newton cd to hear some Pete Brown. I admit it: I would never have guessed he was an influence on Desmond. On the other hand I was just listening to some Miles Davis with Konitz from 1948. Konitz is (or was then) much more of a bopper than Desmond but their tones sure sound similar to me. What's the earliest Desmond anyone's heard?

Instead of editing the old post this time I'll add some names here. I somehow forgot nearly everyones I'd seen after moving to LA. That would include ARt pepper, Bill Perkins, Ella Fitzgerald (what I think was her last concert-- at Hollywood Bowl) Benny Carter and Stan Getz. Stevie Wonder sat in with Getz and a friend of mine compalined that he'd come to see Stan Getz not Stevie Wonder!

Miles's 2nd Quintet, Coltrane Quartet, Mingus with Adams and Pullen (but I can't remember who the 2nd horn was-- I think Charles McPherson), Dizzy w. Moody, Cannonball, Duke, Basie, Ellington, Herman, Gil Evans, Bill Evans, Blakey, Charles Loyd w, Jarrett, Archie Shepp, Braxton, Lonnie Johnson,Mulligan, Brubeck w. Desmond, Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner, Sun Ra, Monk, Fatha Hines, Wingy Manone(!), a double bill of Wes Montgomery and Roland Kirk, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Art Farmer. Ahh... keep hitting the edit button as I remember more: MJQ, Jimmy Witherspoon, Mose Allison, Jon Hendricks, Mark Murphy, Annie Ross, Kenny Burrell. People I missed: Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Pee Wee Russell and Ornette Coleman. Oh well I guess there's still a chance to see Ornette. I almost saw him once in Toronto but they wouldn't let me in because I was wearing jeans!

I saw the Ellington band twice in 1964 and around the same time saw the Woody Herman band-- I think at the same club in Montreal. Stranger venues were: The Gil Evans Band in a church in Paris, Count Basie at Disneyland and Sun Ra at The Horseshoe, a country and Western club in Toronto. Saw some local toronto bands at the El Mocambo where you could actually dance to them. That was fun. In concert have seen various bands recently ( recent in my case being anything that's happend since the Beatles broke up). That's not the same as hearing them in a club but never-the-less really enjoyed the Mingus Big Band at Wadsworth Theater in LA. John Handy was with them!

I was lucky. I'd never really heard of Thompson but was taken by a friend to see Richard and Linda on the Shoot Out the Lights tour in the early 80's. I became a fan of them both. (Their marriage had already ended and they stopped performing together after that tour.) Shoot out the Lights is still my favorite of their albums though I have several others by each of them as well as all the ones the did together. Last year I was offered a ticket at the very last minute to see him solo at an 800 seat hall in Santa Barbara. Turned out the seat was in the first row. Came away thinking that he might be the greatest living guitar player but I didn't care much for his personality. Seemed pretty condescending to me. A few months ago I went to a sort of benefit concert at the same place. Each performer only did a couple of numbers. Started with Jackson Brown ended with Dave Alvin with Thompsin and a few others in between. At the end Brown came out a did a couple of songs accompanied by Thompson! Then everyone else joined them for a guitar filled finale.

That's the cd from which I got this information. Actually I got it on line so so it just had the listings and not the notes. I was looking because the supposedly complete 1929- set on Affinty has no notes. I think this session is also on a Classics Hawkins disc. Sure sounds like Hawkins to me but John Chilton doesn't mention this session in his bio of Bean.

I'm trying to verify the discographical information for the sides Coleman Hawkins cut wth Jack Purvis in (I think) 1930. I finally found this information on a Purvis listing: Jack Purvis (t,v), J.C. Higginbotham (tb,v), Castor McCord (ts), Adrian Rollini (bsx), Frank Froeba (p), Will Johnson (gtr,v), Charles Kegley (d). New York, April 3, 1930 Huh!! Is Castor McCord a psuedonym for Hawk?

I just saw Frissel with his quartet in concert. I loved it but I'm not sure it was jazz, so I can understand someone who was first attracted to him as a jazz artist "losing" him. Though I had a couple of jazz cds with him as a sideman, I first really became a fan when I heard "Good Dog Happy Man". With Frisell you never know what you're going to get. This was basically the "Good Dog Happy Man" Frissell: Guitar, dobro or steel pedal, stand up bass, drums. He ended the concert with a blistering version of Masters of War, followed by Hard Rain followed by a song of his called "That Was Then" which sounds like a variation of Knockin' on Heaven's Door. His encore was "I'm so Lonsome I Could Cry". Does that sound like a jazz concert?

I have that but I was disappointed to see that despite being called " Coleman Hawkins: The Complete Recordings 1929-1941" it's missing all of his work with Fletcher Henderson from those years. There may be some explaanatin but since the box comes with no notes I don't know what it is. I've been putting together my own discography for this set but I've still got a few holes. Anyone know who played on the 1930 Jack Purvis date ("Dismal Dan", Poor Richard" and "Down Georgia Way") or "I'm in the Mood for Love" from 1936?

So about 8 months ago my wife bought tickets for a series put on by UCSB that included a performance by Joshua Redmon. By the time the date arrived it was the SF jazz Collective with Redman, Bobby Hutcherson, Nicholas Payton, Brian Blades, Renee Rosnes, Miguel Zenón on alto, and Robert Hurst on bass. Talk about an all-star band. The first half of the program was all Ornette Coleman compositions and the 2nd half originals by band members. Their encore was a Coleman blues. Great stuff though I found the emphasis on compostion made it a bit constrained. I would have liked to have have heard them stretch out some more. Ironically I think the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra just played here and featured Ornette compositions also. ( Ironic in that it's doubtful one could have heard as much Coleman over the last 2 decades as one could over the last few months.)

Thanks. I did some research in a bio of Gershwin but it wasn't clear about the original production. From your research I take it that even the original production was done with dialogue not recitative.

Who's Pete Brown?

Was it originally performed with the recitative ? I know it's been performed that way for a couple of decades but for some reason I'm under the impression that although Gershwin wrote it that way it was originally perfomred with spoken dialogue between the songs. Maybe I think that because an opera troupe in the 70's made a big deal about using the recitative. Surely the Cab Calloway production that toured in the 50's (60's?) didn't include it. Or did it?