ghost of miles

Excellent! You guys are priceless--thanks!

That is quite a coincidence, Swinging Swede! And thanks for the account, Matthew--does it give a date for that performance, BTW? I'm really hoping to track down the specific night...

Hey all, anybody know of eyewitness accounts or otherwise to the night that Artie Shaw walked off the stage at the Cafe Rouge in New York's Hotel Pennsylvania circa November 1939? He gave up his big band and disappeared for a couple of months--re-surfacing in Mexico, I believe. I don't know if our library's Downbeats go back that far, but I'm very interested in any stories about this night that have been printed anywhere. Surely Shaw's talked about it before (he mentions it fleetingly in the SELF-PORTRAIT liners, I think).

WL, I'm planning to pick up CRISSCRAFT, which I think just got re-issued by Savoy. (Hell, how can I resist when AMG says its "tones" are Sophisticated, Intimate, Amiable/Good-Natured, Rollicking, Passionate, Reverent, Reserved! B) ) You're right, Hawes does show up on some of those jams... The Fresh Sounds CD I have is the 1959 session that came out on Impulse with the Dorham Jazz Prophets date (both originally ABC?). Wynton Kelly is the pianist. Didja get my PM?

Recently I've been hitting the Criss Prestige sides hard (and Late's AOTW choice only spurred me on even more). What is it about Criss' playing on these albums that make me return to them again and again of late? Even something like I'LL CATCH THE SUN, which seems to be written off as one of his lesser efforts in that (late-60s) era, still comes across to me with a magical vitality that infuses even material like the title track and "Don't Rain On My Parade"--and when he gets his hands on "I Thought About You" and "Cry Me a River," look out. Damn, I wish he'd gotten to record with Hampton Hawes more. In any even, records like PORTRAIT OF CRISS, THIS IS CRISS, and SONNY'S DREAM are in my CD player all the time these days. The other night I listened to the 2-CD Imperial set, and while it's a fine collection of 1950s Criss (hell, the only collection, I think, outside of the Fresh Sounds CD and some of the stuff that turned up on Xanadu), the Prestige years sound like a great leap forward to me. I still haven't heard THE BEAT GOES ON and ROCKIN' IN RHYTHM, but that's just one of the many, many things I have to look forward to...

A very cool book (in spite of a few copyediting errors--kinda ironic in a book about journalism) entitled PM: A NEW DEAL IN JOURNALISM 1940-48. PM was an experimental, liberal New York daily that introduced some of the design and content practices that have since become common in newspapers: And the Bangs book is awesome! Esp. the two-part piece from the June/July 1976 Creem detailing his visit to Jamaica to write about the emerging reggae phenomenon.

They're goin' fast...

Mike, yes, it's the 1992 Denon CD. I'm assuming it's OOP, although I haven't checked. Correct track listings would be great. Thanks for the offsetting opinion--I'll probably pick it up tonight.

I came across this title used last night but didn't pick it up. I'd never heard of A.K. Salim, but the lineup looked stellar. May go back today and buy it, in spite of AMG's negative review: BluesSuite Any other opinions on this one? Eddie Costa's on it--hell, that alone might make it worth the $7.

Not an artist I've checked out before, but a buddy of mine recommended his latest on Verve. Anybody have an IMO on this release?

Really enjoying this so far, wishing only that they'd included even more of his writing for CREEM. The two essays on Miles' 70's work & MAN WITH A HORN return are entertaining and illuminating. And hell, even when Bangs is wrong he's still fun to read.

Alfred Kazin, STARTING OUT IN THE THIRTIES.

Michael Fitzgerald and anybody else on the Coltrane list already know about this, but Robin D.G. Kelley, who wrote a fantastic book on African-American Communists in Alabama during the Depression entitled HAMMER AND HOE is at work on a biography of Thelonious Monk. Evidently he's been given great access to Monk's estate; this is the press release that was posted on the JC list: Man, I'd love to hear those tapes!

Heck no, Berigan... I thought I was gettin' it from you for Christmas! Ya won't let me down, will ya? :rsmile:

Thanks, P.D. I thought (or imagined) that there was more material missing than that.

Agreed. I have the two CDs that came out several years ago, but didn't he do four or five albums for Vanguard? I know that the CDs were a distillation of his work for the label. I recently picked up one of Powell's classical CDs used, but haven't had a chance to listen to it yet.

Paul, Just got an e-mail from my friend mentioning that very set--he'd just remembered it, but says it's long OOP. Clem might want to keep an eye out for it in the used bins, though; sounds like a good anthology.

Yes, Lon, I'll second your ringing endorsement--I remember you and I discussing how wonderful the Powell material was on that, erm, what was the name of that board again? Didn't Powell record some music for Commodore? I'm trying to run down all of his jazz stuff. The Capitol sides are a treasure! I think Ocium swiped them for their Powell CD, though.

Clem, here's the reply from my friend: He goes on to say that he's skeptical that such an anthology will ever be issued, owing to commercial reasons. There might be a market for it, though, with some buyers (and I'm potentially one of them) who have an interest in this stuff, but not enough to pick up individual BF boxes or even the Capitol Collectors titles, which are becoming increasingly harder to find. You know, Gennett's another label with a country/hillbilly angle to its legacy that doesn't get talked about too much. Gennett recorded some of that music, but the 78s haven't turned up as much as the jazz ones did--partly, I guess, because there was a fanatical breed of jazz collectors long before a similar class of country ones emerged.

We need look no further than "Cow Cow Boogie!" The whole Ella Mae Morse saga is an interesting study in and of itself. Clem, I have a friend who does a great 40s-60s radio show called "Rhythm Ranch," devoted to country, r & b, and pop from that period. (He writes for AMG, too, and did the review of the Bear Family Morse set.) If anybody knows of a good Capitol set, it would be him. I'll drop him a line and report back.

Mark, I, too, love this set (in fact I just pulled it out last night to listen to the Joe Sullivan/Mel Powell sides). The Carter and Williams material is priceless, and there are nice stray sets of Anita O'Day and Kay Starr, in addition to the other artists already mentioned. There is a fair amount of trad/dixie early on (just a cautionary note--don't know your feelings about that music, but it's not enough to keep me from really enjoying the set. A little bit of it goes a long way for my own tastes). Given the ongoing Mosaic/True Blue sale, this seems like a prime moment to grab the Capitol set.

I think it must be the same book. THE SWEET FOREVER does ring a bell. In addition to VOICEOVER: THE MAKING OF BLACK RADIO, I'm also reading ON A FIELD OF RED: THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL AND THE COMING OF WORLD WAR II. Fascinating stuff!

I like what I've read of Pelacanos, which is little--THE BIG BLOWDOWN and a novel set in D.C. in 1986 (can't remember the title, but the saga of Len Bias is referred to several times throughout the book). Jason Bivins, an improv musician who used to live here in Bloomington, turned me onto him. Good stuff. Art Pepper's STRAIGHT LIFE is insane! Wait till you get to the prison parts.

Chris, WDAS has eight listings in the index, and WHAT has six. I haven't gotten to any of the mentions yet, but here's the first one regarding WDAS: The first mention of WHAT refers to Ramon Bruce, a former pro football player who hosted a show called Ravin' With Ramon there.

Well, what better place for my thousandth Organissimo post than my beloved "Now reading" thread? Jim Sangrey & I simultaneously came across this title one day after I put up a thread looking for books on black radio. I'm about 60 pages into it, and it's exactly what I was looking for--scholarly without being jargonistic or pretentious, a fascinating study of how the struggle for equal rights (cultural as well as political) intertwined with the 20th-century medium of radio. I'm diggin' it!