John Litweiler

I heard him in a concert last week. There was what seemed to be a bit of real improvisation, but mostly it was set pieces. Show stoppers rather than feeling, a "Ballad" rather than a ballad. Muhal Richard Abrams opened that concert with some glorious piano improvising. Notes struck one at a time, sustain pedal down, te sound faded slowly in the high ceiling in Symphony Center, then the next note -- and so on. Beautifully sustained and developed, atonally.

Glorious, grand Wells and Reinhardt, Coleman at his best -- surely one of the greatest recording dates in history.

Bill Stern Hop Ptui Dirty Bill Hop Head (Ellington)

Paul Bowles Bollywood Dunsinane

Stephen Kovacevich playing D. 959 and D.960 are favorites.

I'm sorry to see this, Bebop, and wish you all possible healing.

Daryl Sherman is a favorite these days. Good to hear a singer with a sense of humor and who knows the verses to all the songs and who plays fine swing piano, including A Love Supreme in a sort of Earl Hinesish style. Her repertoire is otherwise mostly Broadway of the Rodgers-Gershwin-etc. era. Madeleine Peyroux sang at the Chicago Jazz Festival the year Esperanza Spalding and Dee Alexander sang there. Peyroux sang like a women, the others sang like girls. Moving album of original songs by Peyroux about 3 years ago. Behind-the-beat, faintly Ladylike, no histrionics or scatting at all. Warning: the jazz police hate her singing.

What I heard of Glasper at last summer's Chicago Jazz Festival sounded like amateur 1970s fusion music with a rapper added.

$21 total for all 4 CDs? If so, please let me in.

There was a study some years ago that concluded nearly everyone's ability to concentrate on listening to music was limited -- that listening required some effort; maybe discipline is the right word. I'm assuming the difficulty to listen closely increases the more abstract the music become. That is, we have no problem in listening to short or repetititive songs in pentatonic scales. But the further the intervals or harmonies get from the sound waves that seem most pleasing to human ears, and/or the longer of the compositions we hear, the more difficult sustained listening becomes. For instance, I believe Bill Russo or somebody taught that seconds and fourths and such add tension, thirds and sixths calm. Surely there is a book or a study that explains how human ears receive / respond to sound waves. What is that book or study? This ability to concentrate deeply may have also affect musicians as they create. How often have you heard an improvisation that started beautifully and soon ran out of gas?

Chocolat won an Oscar for best foreign film but by far the best part of the movie, I thought, was the Abdullah Ibrahim score. Especially "African Marker" over the closing credits. Billy Higgins is terrific on the recording, which is on the album Mindif.

So 36% of us don't drink at all. I'm another ex-heavy drinker who doesn't drink any more. But the last election should make us question Rasmussen polls. It used to be said that 80% of the beer-wine-liquor industries' incomes come from chronic alcoholics. That's another "statistic" that it would be interesting to verify or refute. Only 80%?

Toole and his mother were certainly fascinating characters.

Very good news, Dana.

Sometime in about 1965 or so, friends and I went to the Second City nightclub in Chicago and were disappointed to find the resident cast wasn't there. We stayed to see the replacement show, some Britons called The Oxford-Cambridge Revue. One of their routines was one of the funniest I've ever seen in my life: How To Throw A Custard Pie. Decades later I saw the same How To Throw A Custard Pie in the movie Monty Python Live At The Hollywood Bowl. Were some of the Pythons in that 1960s Oxford-Cambridge Revue? Also, did some of the Pythons perform on any of the Private Eye Christmas records? (Dear Sir, Is This A Record? and at least 2 others) Here is a somewhat weaker version of the custard pie routine:

Somewhere there are Mp3 files of WHPK shows and I can probably acquire the one(s) you want for you (it's a confusing process). Kalaparusha records on tomorrow evening's show.

I'll play a lot of Kalaparusha records tomorrow evening on Zoundz! The program will be 6:30 to 9 pm Chicago time (6 hours later Universal Time) on www.whpk.org

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/arts/music/kalaparusha-maurice-mcintyre-tenor-saxophonist-dies-at-77.html?ref=arts&pagewanted=print

I hope for a full recovery for her and health to both of you.

He was such a beautiful creator and he was so important in the evolving history of Chicago jazz - playing in his bands and in the Abrams and Braxton and Mitchell bands of the '60s, the Abrams sextet of the '70s that played every week at the Jazz Showcase. His own bands, especially in the 1970s, in time got into extremely intense, fierce music. Finally he too moved out of Chicago, and after that it often seemed he'd lost his confidence. Especially in fairly recent years. Used to play clarinet with a lovely rich sound but apparently gave that up long ago. There's good writing about him in the George Lewis book. Kalaparush said the first time he went to NYC he went to a club in Harlem to hear Hank Mobley. There, a man standing next to him said, "You're burning a hole in your pants with your cigarette." Kalaprush: "Shh! Hank's playing!" A photo from the 2010 Vision fest:

I put that joke into Mojo Snake Minuet, pages 103-4, only it was 22 saxophone players, Prez and Trane.

I hope he plays in Evan Parker style rather than in Necks style.

Mwata Bowden on bass clarinet has a distinctive, obsessive style that is quite unlike Dolphy. Mahall also played lots of Monk songs with Schlippenbach. Yes to Jason Stein - I heard him again last night at the Umbrella festival.

Crucial and brutally honest musician, yes, and also a gentle, soft-spoken man. For all his troubles in recent decades he was still a soulful, imaginative artist. Thanks for letting us know, Blue Train. And god damn it all to hell.

Keep having birthday celebrations, Brownie.