What vinyl are you spinning right now??

[JSngry]

[JSngry]

T-Bone Walker - Very Rare

Weird record...but plenty of Fathead, as well as a little Dizzy, Mulligan, Al Cohn, Herbie Mann, & Zoot Simms. And oh by the way - Charles Brown and/or James Booker and/or Warren Bernhardt on piano and/or organ. All that, and a big band on some tunes, strings on others, arranged by Dave Matthews, produced by Lieber & Stoller, Bone sounds like he's doing vocals in a booth with headphones listening to tracks. He'd be dead not too much later, if I understand correctly.

Good intentions? Probably. Misplaced priorities? Seems to be. A two-record set's worth! And yet, it doesn't suck. It's just not very good. The road to hell, and all that...

Weird record.

[jeffcrom]

Art Blakey - Jazz Messengers '70 (Catalyst). A nice one, recorded in Japan, with Bill Hardman, Carlos Garnett, Joanne Brackeen, and Jon Arnett.

While looking for a picture of the the cover, I came across this interesting document.

[paul secor]

Paul Williams and his Hucklebuckers: Spider Sent Me (Saxophonograph)

[jeffcrom]

Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra - Monday Night (Solid State)

[jeffcrom]

Pretty Baby: Music From the Soundtrack (ABC/Paramount)

I've probably said it here before, but the soundtrack album of Louis Malle's 1978 film is one of my favorite New Orleans albums. Kid Thomas Valentine, Louis Nelson, Raymond Burke, and Louis Cottrell are among the great New Orleans musicians who appear. The New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra gets seven cuts, including great versions of "Creole Belles" and Joplin's "The Ragtime Dance." Bill Russell played violin with the NORO, and Lionel Ferbos was the trumpeter - he still plays once a week at the Palm Court Cafe on Decatur Street at age 101!. Bob Greene does some very nice interpretations of Jelly Roll Morton tunes, and you can't be a James Booker completist without this album - he sings Jelly's "Whinin' Boy."

And this album is an illustration that the influence of a producer is sometimes welcome. There's no way that Kid Thomas would have thought to open "Honey Swat Blues" with two choruses of unaccompanied trumpet. That was presumably Jerry Wexler's idea, and the effect is striking.

[brownie]

Bill Watrous & Carl Fontana (Atlas)

[kh1958]

Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders (Contemporary, English Vogue)

Barney Kessel, To Swing or Not to Swing (Contemporary)

[sidewinder]

Clare Fischer 'Surging Ahead' (UK Fontana, mono)

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Ben Webster Meets Don Byas (BASF). Kinda sucky pressing. Is the Prestige version of this date any better? This pressing is all crackles & pops, even though it looks mint.

[kh1958]

Ben Webster Meets Don Byas (BASF). Kinda sucky pressing. Is the Prestige version of this date any better? This pressing is all crackles & pops, even though it looks mint.

The Prestige reissues of MPS LPs sound quite nice and can usually be had for $10 or so on ebay.

[kh1958]

The Rockin' Tenor Sax of Eddie Chamblee (Prestige, blue label)

The Three Sounds, Feelin' Good (Blue Note, NY USA)

[jeffcrom]

Slavic Soul Party - New York Underground Tapes (Barbes red vinyl)

Johnny Coles - The Warm Sound (Classic Records reissue from Epic)

and "Babe's Blues" from the Johnny Coles session, but not released until 1983, on Instrumentalists: Almost Forgotten (Columbia)

Then I switched to the mono cartridge for:

Jimmy Smith - Bucket (BN NY mono)

[vinyltim]

yeah baby, yeah!

http://www.timenjoysrecords.com/records/quincy-jones-big-band-bossa-nova

[brownie]

Ben Webster Meets Don Byas (BASF). Kinda sucky pressing. Is the Prestige version of this date any better? This pressing is all crackles & pops, even though it looks mint.

The Prestige reissues of MPS LPs sound quite nice and can usually be had for $10 or so on ebay.

My BASF copy looks like this...

...and plays very nicely!

Now spinning:

Artie Shaw 'The Jazz Years' 'Sounds of Swing)

[kh1958]

Dodo Marmarosa, Dodo's Back (Argo)

[sidewinder]

John Coltrane 'Sun Ship' (MCA Impulse)

[Clunky]

Johnny Hammond Smith - Black Coffee- (Riverside - stereo)

[clifford_thornton]

Paul Motian/J-F Jenny Clarke/Charles Brackeen - Le Voyage - (ECM)

[brownie]

Zoot Sims 'Goes to Jazzville' (Dawn, mono)

[JSngry]

(Doctor Jazz, round, with hole in middle of both sides)

For chronological completeness, yeah, sets like this have been superseded any number of times. But as a simple listening experience, this is pretty darn nifty.

[JSngry]

Nostalgia time...

Stuff was excellent fun back then. Excellent, serious fun.

[Clunky]

But as a simple listening experience, this is pretty darn nifty.

something that's too often ignored in the pursuit of completeness ( by producers and listeners alike)

[JSngry]

There's a lot to be said for taking advantage of those moments of clarity when they appear.

[JSngry]

The music (Continental-label stuff, I believe) is good enough (the Maxine Sullivan with strings stuff is more than a little useless for my wants, needs, and dining pleasure...otoh, there's a J.C. Heard session w/Budd Johnson & Jimmy Jones that tickles several fancies quite nicely), but the real treat is the liner notes by Dan Morgenstern, one of those long, fact-rich yet conversational ("When Mary Lou Williams appears in New York these days...", "I shouldn't have to tell you about Jimmy Crawford...") things that might take longer to carefully read in full than it does to do the same to the record. None of that that dull, Jack Webb "just the facts" yawn-inducing stuff that is so popular these days (yeah, I'm talking to you Bob Blumenthal).

Good stuff.