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So, What Are You Listening To NOW?


JSngry

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7 hours ago, optatio said:

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Oh I loved them, those strange ESP LP´s , they had cult status over here. With that modest back cover with tipe written personnell .

In this special case of course I don´t know who was Lowell Davidson, but Gary Peacock and Milford Graves proove that it must be something great. 
ESP has done so much for me, I mean it was an important guide for me to listen to the more free forms, but it´s never completly out of rhythm. Like on BN records of free jazz artists there is always somewhere a point where it "must schwing" . 

Since I never was really a collector of records, my ESP discography as other stuff is quite scarce: I think I have or I know I have the Ornette Coleman Townhall Concert, I have the Sun Ra , I have the only Henry Grimes trio during that time, and though I never had heard about a "James Zitro" I have his album since it´s my mentor Allan Praskin playin on it, and I love that album, Zitro´s a helluva drummer, and the group is great, and Allan is superb. 

But all those stories around ESP. I never heard a musician talk positive about them, even if they offered them the first recordings. Money was zero, and it´s easy to put a logo of "The Artist decides what´s on this disc", if he was not paid. 

Or did near to death Bud Powell, who "recorded" for ESP just a few month before his death, "decide" what´s on the record ???? I doubt he even knew about it after a few hours since he got 50 bucks and was let out into the cold winter streets......

That´s the ugly side of it, but what remains is tons of non commercial music of huge value, all of ´em , Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman......

3 hours ago, dougcrates said:

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I have heard it and enjoyed it. I think I was very impressed by the unorthodox lines Wilbur Ware plays on his bass. 

And very very nice hard bop, with top hard bop players, but I didn´t listen to it again, there were so many many albums in that style and conception, sure they all is great but I didn´t have the patience to study them all.....

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22 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Was this record big at the time? I had never heard of it until recently but the contexts in which it comes up online suggests that it might have made a splash, perhaps with the Phil Woods attuned bop revival crowd at the time.

I think the next year's "Tiger of San Pedro" made a bigger splash IIRC - 
especially the chart heard 'round the world, "Sweet Georgia Upside Down."

Edited by rostasi
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35 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Was this record big at the time?

I had never heard of it until recently but the contexts in which it comes up online suggests that it might have made a splash, perhaps with the Phil Woods attuned bop revival crowd at the time.

I don't know the answer to your question; I was just a kid at the time.  But I've read similar things about Watrous making waves back then.

It always surprised me that Manhattan Wildlife Refuge was released on Columbia.  Given the year (1974), the music seems like something that would more typically be issued on a small/indie label.  Then again, Maynard Ferguson was recording for Columbia at that time.  They released MF's Live at Jimmy's in '74.

Maybe Watrous appealed to the same college kid "lab band" and/or big band crowd as Ferguson -- or, as you say, the bop revivalists.  Or both.

 

Edited by HutchFan
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Big band brassy jazz-rock was a thing in those days.
Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chicago, and a slew of others.
My uncle, was an agent for Chase and Ides of March
and worked with Woody Herman too during that time.
Other labels jumped on the bandwagon as well, so you
had Chase on Epic, If on Capitol, those Don Ellis sides,
Maynard, Buddy Rich, and so on. I was swept up in it
as well. Watrous got a lot of play on my radio show in
those days because people called in and asked for him.
 

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1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

Maybe Watrous appealed to the same college kid "lab band" and/or big band crowd as Ferguson... 

 

Bingo.

Wherever you had lab bands you had trombone sections, and wherever you had trombone sections you had trombone player, and wherever you had that combination, you had that record being sold.

Let the record show that MWR was produced by Bill Watrous and... John Hammond!!! 

The only Watrous album I really love is his Avant-Musakjazz record:

 But I do love the Pro Tip he allegedly gave before saying such things would get you in trouble (and before he had his own run-in with the law): If you're going to play high, then practice high! 

Great player, though. Flashy technique, but almost never empty technique. 

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