Every so often, I indulge myself and start chasing down obscure albums or even just songs. In some cases, I end up buying the item, though I prefer to find the music on iTunes or Naxos. This process usually takes a few hours, so I try not to indulge too often...
As one typical example, I stumbled across a Youtube channel, Cheap Heat, with 4 videos covering the Enja label, along with others (which I haven't played yet). The first is here. (Note that you absolutely need to put Enja in quotes, as otherwise you end up with an endless list of Enya videos...) I believe many, though probably not all, of the recordings are on the Naxos Jazz app, so that is something that I will start exploring. (And indeed at the bottom of the post, I will just make a list of all the records that I will see if I can listen to on Naxos or borrow at the library or decide if I do want to break down and buy them...) I believe I originally came across the Youtube video, trying to find out more about Abdullah Ibrahim's Children of Africa. I've certainly listened to some Enja in the past, mostly the Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy recordings, which may be their best known releases. And probably I have the Mal Waldron somewhere, as I have an awful lot of his recordings. The Chet Baker "Peace" album is actually on iTunes, though many Enja albums are not, so I'll go ahead and listen to that now.
As a digression within a digression (a recursion?), I remembered that one Chet Baker album was left out of the massive Jazz in Paris box set, and I had misremembered it was Peace, but in fact it was Broken Wing. I think it was probably a strange rights issue that kept it from being included, even though it was actually listed as part of the contents of the mega box! Anyway, I was able to track down a copy fairly easily at that time (2004!). I also got general advice from the Organissimo jazz board on replacing a different missing disc from the series. In fact, I basically joined Organissimo back in the day based on finding advice on things like the Jazz in Paris set to be so helpful.
Sadly, they were not able to help me track down a Thelonious Monk compilation (that I listened to in college 20 years before then!), and oddly those posts seem to have been deleted, maybe because some posters use to flounce out when they quit and try to remove all the threads they had posted in! At this point, I really don't remember the details, though I think it probably wasn't the Hal Willner project, That's the Way I Feel Now (as great as that was -- and I probably should find that* and listen to it again).
I was trying to track down a cassette, and I think it probably had Nutty and Friday the 13th and then Monk's version of Gershwin's Nice Work If You Can Get it. This Something in Blue cassette is likely not it, but may be close enough that after I burn a version of it (as I have the complete Monk London Collection from Black Lion where this material comes from) and combine it with That's the Way I Feel Now into a super compilation, I can finally rest easy. 😉
It was quite the nostalgia trip looking through those old Organissimo posts. What was particularly weird was in one post, I said I was picking up Jazz in Paris from Best Buy, and then in another one, I said that it had taken me 6 weeks to get the box from France after I ordered it on Amazon.fr! I suppose the most likely reason for the discrepancy is Best Buy didn't actually have the item in stock after all, back in those early days of internet shopping when there was a huge mismatch between what the computer and the storeroom thought was "in stock"...
Organissimo is only a pale shadow of what it used to be 10 or 15 years ago, but I still get tipped to some interesting new or old releases, as well as a bunch of LPs that never made it to CD. There is a thread solely covering LPs that never made it to CD, which is particularly threatening to my wallet, though with the passing of time, some of them get added to iTunes or just Youtube (for instance I am currently listening to Buddy Montgomery – This Rather Than That). Not sure it has really been discussed in that thread, but there is a whole series called Jazz Slows, most of which are late night mood music from France's Black and Blue label featuring Buddy Tate and Milt Buckner, but sadly/oddly these have not turned up anywhere else or been digitized. I might finally break down and order some, though I have to say the very risque covers makes it a bit of a challenge to send to family and friends (for those many cases where shipping to Canada is prohibitively expensive or just prohibited altogether).
To get back to the specific rabbit hole from this morning, which I have been chasing for a few hours, someone's Organissimo post tipped me off to Lloyd McNeill's Treasures, which is on iTunes, and this led quickly to McNeill's Washington Suite. I liked this quite a bit. One of the tracks, "Fountain in the Circle," opens with a blat from a bassoon. While there have been a few jazz tracks that include bassoon, it's a fairly rare thing. Anyway, this particular bassoonist, Kenneth Pasmanick, also played on a couple of albums by Charlie Byrd and some tracks by Mel Powell. The Charlie Byrd albums are not available as stand-alone items, but the music itself is available through some PD (public domain) compilations on iTunes, so I'll listen to them tonight.
But I was really struggling with the Mel Powell tracks; Powell is mostly known as a side man for Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman, but he had a few recordings under his own name. It turns out that most of his Capitol recordings are available in various places. Avid actually has a 2-fer that covers 4.5 of his albums (and it is just within the realm of possibility that I actually own this!), but there is a compilation called Piano Prodigy that combines some Capitol recordings and some very early Commodore recordings. (There is also weird compilation of Mel Powell and Mary Lou Williams called Two Cats and a Mouse (on Definitive) though this seems to lean on Capitol recordings which are still available.) Piano Prodigy kicks off with three very early Commodore tracks, and two of these show up on the Commodore Piano Anthology, but "Hallelujah" (1943) was left off. I mean I am a bit of a completist, but I am not going to buy a CD for a single track that I am sure I would only listen to a couple of times!
What makes this extremely frustrating is that the Mel Powell bassoon tracks are on something called "Sketches," which apparently is more of a classical piece or maybe the precursor to Third Stream music. While I am sure it is interesting, it isn't bassoon in jazz proper, and again I wouldn't listen to it more than a few times. This doesn't seem to show up anywhere except in the Complete Commodore Recordings Vol. 3 box from Mosaic, which is long OOP. (And "Hallelujah" (1943) is in the Vol. 1 box!) I remember ages ago, some of these Commodore boxes were on sale at Reckless Records in Chicago, but I can't remember which (or indeed if they had all of them). If it weren't for the fact these are LP only sets(!), I might have been more tempted. Frankly, it is a bit inconceivable that Avid or some other PD company hasn't put out a Commodore set by now as it should be in the public domain in the States despite the shenanigans of periodically extending copyright, though I suspect it is simply the sheer work that would be involved in transferring these from LP to digital that prevents them from doing so. So this sadly, seems like it will end as a dead end, as I can't see picking up these Commodore box sets any time soon (or indeed ever), though maybe in a few years if the trade wars wind down, I would at least consider it, though shipping that many LPs would cost an arm and a leg, even within the States. So unless I run across a Canadian collector who decides to part with one or more of the Commodore boxes, I think I will just have to put this out of my mind, and focus instead on the vastness of the music that is available to me...
Enja Recordings of Note:
Bobby Jones “Hill Country Suite” (enja2046, 1974)
Hal Galper Quintet “Speak With A Single Voice” (Century Records CR-1120, 1979)
Franco Ambrosetti Quintet w Bennie Wallace “Close Encounter” (inner City 3026, 1978)
Bennie Wallace “Big Jim’s Tango” (enja4046, 1983)
Bennie Wallace Trio “… & Chick Corea” (enja4028, 1982)
Bob Degen Trio “Celebrations” (Calig CAL 30 602, 1968)
Bob Degen “Sequoia Song” (enja2072, 1976)
Bob Degen “Children of the Night” (Inner City IC3027, 1979)
Marty Cook & the New York Sound Explosion “Trance” (Circle Records RK31279/20, 1980)
Marty Cook Group “Red, White, Black & Blue” (Enja / Tutu Records 5067, 1988)
Marty Cook Group w/ Jim Pepper “Nightwork” (enja 5033, 1986)
Jim Pepper “Dakota Song” (enja 5043, 1987)
Abdullah Ibrahim “Mindif” (enja R1 79601, 1988)
Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) “Children of Africa” (Inner City 3003, 1977)
Kenny Barron “Scratch” (enja 4092, 1985)
John Stubblefield “Bushman Song” (enja 5015, 1986)
Reflexionen “Remember To Remember” (enja 5057, Germany — 1987)
Reflexionen - "Reflexionen" (Timeless – SJP 199 Netherlands — 1984)
Reflexionen “Live” (Timeless - SJP 234, Netherlands — 1986)
Marty Ehrlich “Pliant Plaint” (Enja 5056, Germany - 1988)
Mark Helias “The Current Set” (Enja 5041, Canada - 1987)
Mark Helias “Split Image” (Enja 4086, Germany - 1985)
Ray Anderson “It Just So Happens” (Enja 5037, Canada - 1987)
Aki Takase Trio “Song For Hope: Live at the Berlin Jazz Festival” (Enja 28MJ 3136, Japan - 1982)
Charlie Rouse “Upper Manhattan Jazz Society” (Enja 4090, Canada - 198?)
Attila Zoller “Memories of Pannonia” (Enja 5027, Canada - 1986)
Attila Zoller “Dream Bells” (Enja 2078, Germany - 1976)
Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) “African Space Program” (Enja 2032, US - 1974)
Elvin Jones “Live at the Village Vanguard” (Enja 2036, US - 197?)
Nana Simopoulos “Wings and Air”
David Friedman “Futures Passed”
David Friedman “Of the Wind’s Eye”
David Friedman “Shades of Change”
David Friedman “Winter Love, April Joy”
Bennie Wallace & the Biloxi Blues Ensemble “Sweeping Through the City”
George Adams, Hannibal & Friends “More Sightings”
Hannibal (Marvin Peterson) “Angels of Atlanta”
Hannibal (Marvin Peterson) “…in Antibes”
Franco Ambrosetti & Friends “Movies”
Barbara Dennerlein “Hot Stuff”
Benny Bailey “Islands”
Blue Box “Sweet Machine”
Blue Box “Stambul Boogie”
Chet Baker “Peace”
Mal Waldron "Black Glory"
Mal Waldron - “Mingus Lives”
Mal Waldron - “What It Is”
Mal Waldron - “…Plays The Blues”
Mal Waldron & Gary Peacock - “First Encounter” (Catalyst CAT-7906) not on ENJA!
Marc Levin - “Social Sketches”
Joint Venture - Joint Venture
Various Artists (Hutcherson, Shepp, Krog, Evans) - “Live at the Festival”
Karl Berger - “With Silence”; “Crystal Fire” (CD)
Albert Mangelsdorff - “Live in Tokyo”
Mangelsdorff w/Masahiko Sato - “Spontaneous”
Masahiko Sato “Trinity”
Yosuke Yamashita & Adelhard Roidinger - “Inner Space”
Yosuke Yamashita Trio - “Clay” and “A Tribute to Mal Waldron”
Takeo Moriyama - “Green River”
Terumasa Hino - “Vibrations”
* I actually found the 2 LP set in the first place I was looking for it, and I am sure at some point I digitized this, but don't see those files, so I may listen to it tonight and plan on digitizing it again in the nearish future. The LP version has 6 songs missing from the CD version, so it is really the way to go.
