What vinyl are you spinning right now??

[HutchFan]

Now listening to:

Steve Kuhn/Sheila Jordan Band - Playground

w/ Harvie Swartz & Bob Moses

Gorgeous music.

I recently got this. Still sealed. Just $5.

[HutchFan]

The Paul Desmond Quartet - Live

[HutchFan]

Dave Liebman, Richie Beirach, George Mraz, Al Foster - Quest (Palo Alto Jazz, rec. 1981)

This first Quest LP is really wonderful. It's a shame that it isn't more readily available.

[kh1958]

Gene Ammons and Sonny Still, Together Again for the Last Time (Prestige), and Art Blakey, Buhaina (Prestige)

[Chuck Nessa]

Gene Ammons and Sonny Still, Together Again for the Last Time (Prestige), and Art Blakey, Buhaina (Prestige)

Sonny Still seems almost appropriate.

[mjazzg]

Cecil Taylor - New York R&B [Candid]

Marvin Hannibal Peterson - Live in Antibes [inner City]

two contrasting LPs from yesterday's record shop visit.

[A Lark Ascending]

Marvin Hannibal Peterson - Live in Antibes [inner City]

Back in the 80s I saw HMP in the cellar of a Nottingham pub called The Black Boy. He referred throughout to how happy he was to be playing here in The White Boy. The pub no longer trades under that name.

Great concert.

[mjazzg]

Marvin Hannibal Peterson - Live in Antibes [inner City]

Back in the 80s I saw HMP in the cellar of a Nottingham pub called The Black Boy. He referred throughout to how happy he was to be playing here in The White Boy. The pub no longer trades under that name.

Great concert.

Nice tale, Bev.Listening to this LP I can imagine he was pretty powerful in the flesh

[A Lark Ascending]

A bit strange, actually. I looked online and the pub was demolished in 1969 - caused quite a fuss as it was a much loved piece of Victorian Gothic, replaced by a standard post-war Littlewoods.

I can only think the name must have moved. The original was on Long Row on the Market Square; the place I used to go for jazz concerts was up one of the connecting streets towards the Theatre Royal.

Ah, I'm not going mad:

In 1979 Nottingham's premier jazz venues were at the Black Boy on Market Street, run by Les Eastham and Notts County Council Leisure Services.

Read more: http://www.nottinghampost.com/Evening-Post-jazz-writer-Alan-Joyce-looks-30-years-music/story-12219282-detail/story.html#ixzz3Zivqdxly
Follow us: @Nottingham_Post on Twitter | NottinghamPostOnline on Facebook

Edited May 10, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[kh1958]

Gene Ammons and Sonny Still, Together Again for the Last Time (Prestige), and Art Blakey, Buhaina (Prestige)

Sonny Still seems almost appropriate.

Oops. I can't see close up with my glasses on any more.

Continuing to catch up on some late Prestiges.

Hampton Hawes, Blues for Walls, and

Dexter Gordon, The Jumpin' Blues.

Edited May 10, 2015 by kh1958

[JSngry]

I've seen this referred to as a "jazz" album over the years, and, uh, ok, I get it, but...er....

First things first - there are three Gil Evans arrangements on this record, and all three are magnificent. Mathis himself only seems to get inside one of them, "It Might As Well Be Spring", and when that happens there is magic.

But that doesn't always happen, either with Gil's charts, or the others (Manny Albam, Teo Macero,John Lewis, & Bob Prince). It really seems like producer George Avakian contracted the writers with something along the line of hey we got a great new singer, he can sing ANTYHING, write whatever you want, and then Mathis showed up and said, ok, I can make this work, and, yeah, it all "works", but stories are seldom told. The arrangements and Mathis too often seem to echa be trying to make their own points, and although both succeed individually.

And sometimes the shit just gets weird. Side one ends with a really frantic, intense, PASSIONATE reading of "Babalu", with an eually frantic/etc Teo chart, and Mathis had no end of top range, like Clark Burroughs, but...

On the whole, the album is like Mathis is thinking Sinatra but coming out Burroughs, and nobody is in on the joke. Nobody. Plus you get a gangster-tv-syle take on Angel Eyes (aranged by Bob Prince) with R&B honking bari and recurrent solo/obbligato spots by Phil Wood that do more than merely suggest his later descent into triteness. This to close the album.

What this record shows to me is that whoever took over Mathis' production had a much better understanding of how pop music works. These jazz guys were like, ok, sweet voice, lets balance it with lead and portent. The pop guys were like, ok, we got a sweet voice, let's weave a sky of cotton candy, and, really, that was and is the right move, build around an on what you have, don't try to counter it. "Wonderful, Wonderful" is XXXX better a musical experience than is something like the "Star Eyes" found here.

But those three Gil charts (and the John Lewis chart on "In Other Words (aka Fly Me...), those are enough to where if I ever see this as a used CD in the $4.99 zone, I'll grab it. But until then, I got this record now, and now I have heard tit. Time to move on.

Nevertheless, given all Gil and a little acclimation, a whole album of this would have been SO right.

But that's not what happened.

[JSngry]

...whoa....

[HutchFan]

Ira Sullivan - Peace (Galaxy)

Chico Freeman - The Outside Within (India Navigation)

[JSngry]

I swear to god, there are times on this record when I swore it was Duke Ellington's voice I was hearing, tone, inflection, pitch, phrasing, everything.

Adam Clayton Powell could have as easily been the speaker of the introduction to Afro-Eurasian Eclipse as was Duke, this i do believe.

Sidenote - for years, I thought this record was on Capitol. It just looked like a Capitol record. But nope, Jubilee.

[Chuck Nessa]

Hah! when I saw the image I thought "that came out on Capitol?"

Maybe I thought it was Tennessee Ernie. :-)

Edited May 10, 2015 by Chuck Nessa

[JSngry]

Started, briefly, then stopped, quickly:

Harmonies move like late Beethoven, but it felt like Mozart Plus, and tonight is not the night for that. Someday/night perhaps, but breath not being held.

File this one under education of a musical illiterate...for some reason I was thinking that Menotti, being 20th Century and Italian was some kind of Berio peer/protege or something. Well, that's a lesson learned.

When in doubt, Google before purchasing. Cell phone, right? But old habits die hard, and one of mine is hey, this looks interesting and is cheap, so why not? That was ok when there was still wall space not being occupied...

OTOH, I might listen again at some point, because aside from a few pops of the "a good cleaning should get rid of that" variety, the vinyl is pretty clean/quiet, and the presence/soundstage is pretty breathtaking, even on my halfass system. And the harmonic dexterity on display is nothing I take lightly.

But the whole Mozart Plus thing...not feeling that, just not.

[kh1958]

Sonny Stitt, Black Vibrations (Prestige), and Art Blakey, Andthenagin (Prestige).

[mjazzg]

Alexander Von Schlippenbach - Globe Unity [MPS]

today's arrival. Glad to hear this one

[paul secor]

Johnny Hodges: The Smooth One (Verve)

[JSngry]

Such a difference, such differences, between the Nono & Maderna on side 1 & the Berio on Side 2. The first two seem more concerned with process, the last with going for it. I get both approches, but jeezus, it's like the Berio piece demands an all-in approach, like if you don't do it like that, you will be embarrassed at your humanity, whereas the other tow seem to be operating from a 180-opposite angle, like if you DO do it like that, THEN you will be embarrassed by your humanity.

I'll not argue with either, and when it's time to leave I'll have danced with both, but it's Berio's house I'm planning on leaving an hour or two before the sun comes up.

[Chuck Nessa]

Fascinating record. Got it and some label mates while in college. Still have this one:

[Larry Kart]

Poulenc plays his own piano music; he plays Satie on the other side. Haven't heard his Satie yet, but he plays his own work with all the flair one might hope.

I have that Feldman/Brown too, along with some of the other Time albums in that series. College for me too.

BTW, just found out from the alumni magazine that my college girlfriend, maybe the most beautiful woman I ever met and a good friend long after the romance faded, died in late January in Seattle at the age of 73. Whew. I remember so many things about her.

[JSngry]

Yeah, the liner notes to the Nono piece open with this, which to me feels right in line with how I heard the performance:

...reflects the double concern characteristic of music written in the early 1950s: first, the will to remain faithful to the sound-world defined by Webern, not to abandon any of his acquisitions; and secondly, the greater need of interpreting this new means of articulation in a personal way.

I mean, jeez, that for all the world sounds like a guy trying to get his wife into some new bedroom stuff, I love you and I will always will love you, but hey, I got this stuff I GOTTA do, please let me do it with you...hello 1960s just waiting to get started...

Sorry to hear about your loss, Larry. It's amazing how much can be remembered when somebody dies, things you thought you had forgotten. Come to find out, nope, not forgotten, just...set aside.

[Larry Kart]

Sorry to hear about your loss, Larry. It's amazing how much can be remembered when somebody dies, things you thought you had forgotten. Come to find out, nope, not forgotten, just...set aside.

Here's her obituary from the Seattle Times:

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/seattletimes/obituary.aspx?pid=174160417

The younger of the two images is the how she looked when I knew her. Her given name was Patricia (Pat); she changed it to Tichiang after she moved to Seattle to assert her Asian identity. Her father was Filipino, her mother was Polish.

[JSngry]

http://www.nwasianweekly.com/2015/02/memory-ticiang-diangson-legacy-environmental-justice/

A renaissance woman, Diangson was a world traveler, an avid reader, a lifelong writer of poetry and fiction, a cartoonist, a crackerjack Scrabble player, and a skilled amateur jazz singer.

Did she sing when you knew her?