ghost of miles

discs 8 and 9

Up for James Moody's centennial today. Blues For Moody: A Musical Remembrance

Still working my way through this one, with V. 17 (Saba/MPS) yet to be opened, and my local store now hipping me to an imminent V. 18 Jazz Behind the Iron Curtain V 1 & 2 coming in early summer. Such a fantastic series and glad that it continues.

Also starting an Alan Furst novel for the first time in quite awhile.

Thanks, this is one I want to get to sooner rather than later.

Excited to see that Rivera is writing a full-fledged biography of Newton, according to the NYRB's author note. I wish I could share a subscriber gift link to the whole piece, but I can't seem to locate that capacity on the NYRB website. Rivera mentions the paucity and scattered nature of available Newton music, but the Jasmine two-CD anthology apparently remains in print and is probably the best overview of Newton's music out there on physical media (not that it really has any competition).

Amazing! As you know, Mark, I've long contemplated doing a Night Lights show about Newton, and have that short biographical pamphlet that a Virginia history society published about him. Glad now that I haven't gotten around to it yet, as it seems there'll be a lot more information to draw on, thanks to the efforts of Matthew and your assistance. Can't wait to read the NYRB article after work this evening... thanks for posting it here.

Co-sign. Especially distressing to see non-problematic and longtime members (Paul Secor, Soulpope, etc) leaving the board because of a moderator’s tone of discourse. (We lost another valuable and civil contributor because of *two* moderators, one of whom is no longer active.) I stick around regardless because this is still my favorite jazz forum, a lot of great content gets posted here, and nobody’s perfect. So spare me sanctimonious edicts and condescendingly homey asides—I get that I’m free to leave at any time. (I have no inclination to do so.) I’ve been wary of stating this and honking off the resident sheriff, but given that Medjuck, surely one of our kindest and gentlest posters, has said something, I feel the need to back him up. A moderator driving away longtime civil members and always positing it all as delusions, vanity, a misguided showdown of pride, a misunderstanding, or some other personal failing on the members’ part is not a healthy pattern. This forum has had a remarkably long run, even if it’s not as active or as populated as it used to be. Given that 22 years is about a century in social media time, it’s amazing that it persists. That’s in large part because of its member core, so yeah, it’s a bummer to see people like Paul and Soulpope leave because of discourse clashes with a moderator. The forum will fall victim to time as all of us will, and the world will go on as it always does, etc. All the more important to speak your piece while we’re here.

Me as well. Hoping to do a 1950s sequel to the earlier Night Lights show I put together about Powell, and this set will be essential to its creation.

Picked this up used at Jazz Record Center—an excellent overview of Green’s 1960s Blue Note sides: Cue broken record, but I continue to enjoy well-curated anthologies like these, even when I already have just about every track that they contain. It’s especially useful with an artist like Green who turned in so many outstanding sideman appearances for the same label, making it easier for a collection like this to represent the breadth of his recording for Blue Note. I would’ve enjoyed a fifth disc of 1969-72 selections as well, but that would have muddied the “jazz years” concept of the set as described in the booklet by Bob Blumenthal.

Sorry to hear this as well. I had pleasant email exchanges over the years with him while placing direct orders, and always expressed my gratitude for the excellence and the breadth of his reissue work. Hep’s eight-volume series of Claude Thornhill’s 1941-53 recordings, for example, is and will likely remain for some time the best documentation we have of the band that helped birth the cool, etc. And glad that he kept at it long enough to get that Wilder compilation out. Forever thankful for how Alastair enriched my enjoyment of the midcentury swing era with his well-annotated, good-sounding curations. Though I didn’t know him at all beyond the lighthearted asides he often employed in his email replies, I always felt that his releases came from a place of great love for the music.

This is the excellent single-disc compilation that I listened to while preparing the show:

An oldie but goodie.