Stompin at the Savoy

I've been slowly buying Benny Carter volumes on Chronological Classics. They tend to be kind of pricey, even used. Yesterday I came across an ebay seller who had the exact five disks in the series that I lack for sale at $10 each with combined shipping. So about 11 bux a disk total and my collection of Benny Carter Chronologicals is complete. So pretty pleased abut that and beginning a Benny Carter festival here this morning. I have a couple of euro-compilations with a dozen of Carter's later albums. There are a couple of 50's albums - Cosmopolite and Benny Carter Plays Pretty - which do not seem make it onto the compilations and I guess I can see why: they are kind of sweet, almost easy listening stuff where Benny solos over strings, Oscar Peterson trio, etc. Benny plays great as usual - such thick tone and supple phrasing - but it's all kind of tame stuff.

Haven't listened to this for years. Enjoying it!

Good points. That sounds like fraud. Spotify and youtube are a mixed blessing but I suspect they are still a blessing to the artist, because the services make their music available to the general public. If you want to check somebody out used to be you had to listen to the radio till their songs came up. Now you can go find works by the artist, listen, and if you like it, buy the album. True, millions of people are putting stuff up on youtube so it's harder to stand out than it once was. It's a different world and this is a pretty big part of how music is distributed nowadays.

Lately I have been reading The Complete Robot, a compilation of Isaac Asimov's robot series short stories. His Foundation series is engaging and popular but in many ways I think Asimov's Robot series and his 3 laws of robotics are more significant. I am particularly struck by the way Asimov's musings about autonomous control of society by large artificial intelligences become extremely relevant now in light of the advent of artificial intelligence capabilities way beyond what was possible when Asimov wrote his stories. Asimov wrote about the consequences of allowing an autonomous, artificial intelligence to control vehicles, machines, space ships, cities, governments, etc. and now we are seeing a lot of news about autonomous AI weapons systems, etc. "The Evitable Conflict" (1950) is a particularly good story in this regard. You can read it here: http://cdn.michaelgeist.ca/.../04/The-Evitable-Conflict.pdf

Yeah. Then again they did Hubbard, Hutcherson etc sets and the music was already mostly easily available. If they issue a Dexter Gordon set I'll probably buy it. Because I just reflexively buy new Mosaics. Never been disappointed. But I guess I would prefer they focus on things that are harder to find in reasonable sound.

A roommate in 1976 had an lp set of the complete Savoy masters. That was my first serious exposure to Bird. Somewhat later I bought cassette tape versions of some of the older lps. These were like sacred texts to me and I had backup copies of the cassettes! Later I got most of the Denon cds and eventually complete sets in several reissues including Japanese and finally the big Savoy and Dial complete set. Plus the live stuff and the Mosaic. Etc, etc. I would say if you don't have anything get the complete master takes. But if you are really into it eventually you get them all because he would spin off interesting and different ideas in every take. It's hard to listen to every take one after the other but in small doses it's worth it.

That's already out as a Select, isn't it? Also available as a download. Much as I love Dexter Gordon, I don't think Dexter's Blue Notes are a good candidate for a Mosaic set now. The recordings are pretty much all available as single cd's or the complete blue note set. I have the individual cds or in one or two cases hi res downloads. You can listen to the set here: https://archive.org/details/BBDex Qobuz has the complete blue note set in cd quality download. The set is also pretty cheap at the usual used sources.

Is there much more beyond this? I know there was some stuff from that movie.

Good stuff!

I've been watching an Italian tv show (set in beautiful Genoa) on PBS Passport called Blanca. It's part of the Walter Presents group of European tv shows; each episode is two roughly 50 minute parts. This follows a standard police/detective show concept where the protagonist has a super power, like Sherlock Holmes and his power of deduction, Monk with his obsessive attention to detail, etc. Blanca, a police consultant, is blind and has super hearing power. So it's kind of a formula but the scripts, acting, cinematography are way above the usual. Attractive people and a very nice dog. Beautiful interiors and outdoor scenes. It's a great show! If you know Spanish after a while the Italian dialogue is fairly easy to follow.

I'm perfectly ok with Spotify. You have to register and establish an ID and password but it's free and there is no obligation to subscribe to anything or receive emails, etc. I never use it to scout out new things to listen to. I use it to find and listen to an album I can't find on youtube. Both of them suck because of advertisements but they are better than listening to radio for my purpose because I can choose the albums and tunes to play. For discovery of music new to me I will sometimes click on recordings that come up alongside whatever I'm playing on youtube but mostly I just read this forum. Generally I use these services to listen to an album before buying - my music budget is limited.

Thanks, was not aware of this.

I like him and enjoy the stuff with Dizzy. I used to love those tv themes like Mannix but am not sure I want to go the whole 16 disks. What are his best jazz albums? Is this euro-compilation good?