Oh for all the Regency Polish of them Alden days, what?

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 19 May
4pm - Jazz Record Requests
Responding to listeners' requests, Alyn Shipton plays a wide range of jazz including tracks featuring two very different American guitarists: mainstream player Howard Alden (along with trombonist Dan Barrett), and avant-garde player Mary Halvorson and her octet.

None of this courtesy The Royal Roost.

http://www.alynshipton.co.uk/blog

5pm - J to Z
The cream of jazz past, present and future [if they're going to repeat this intro every week I think I'll omit it in future, if people don't mind], today featuring Polish pianist Vladyslav Sendecki in concert, and guitarist Pat Metheny, sharing some of the musical moments that have shaped his own playing.

There was once a great interview in The Wire (when it was still Prime Mary Lee a jazz organ) in which Metheny described to perfection how he had been strongly affected by Herbie Hancock's immaculate sense of timing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b39sh9

12midnight - Geoffrey Smith's Jazz

The Ray Charles repeat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04tvnp8

Mon 21 May
10pm - Jazz Now
For Jazz Now's second visit to this year's Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Soweto Kinch presents a concert from Cheltenham Town Hall by guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan, including music from their recent album Small Town. And acclaimed American trumpeter Keyon Harrold drops into the Jazz Now studio.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b48dvd

Fri 25 May
5pm - In Tune
BBC Music's Biggest Weekend celebrates myriad genres of music across the BBC and across the UK, with Radio 3 today in Perth. Featuring live music, concert highlights and interviews with the festival acts, including Jamie Cullum, singer Eddi Reader, percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. Presented by Sean Rafferty.

You show me yours, and I'll show you mine being the name of the game, right, now - who's got the biggest weekend?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

A nice set of tracks on the GF "Ray Charles" but oddly nothing from his first "pure" jazz album (and album), "The Great Ray Charles" (Atlantic) from 1957. Which leads off with Quincy's The Ray.

I will however be listening to my 18 CD box set of Harry James in honour of Prince Ginger and his far more agreeable wifelet, Meghan. Sadly I have no records by the Rockin' Romanovs so I can't really get into the festivities the way I'd truly like.

[Ian Thumwood]

An 18 box CD set of Harry James would be hard to bare. Amazing how quickly his star waned since his passing as his is a name you rarely encounter these days yet the likes of Ziggy Elman and Charlie Spivak were starry-eyed enough to follow in his footsteps. I quite like his playing with Benny Goodman but his change in musical character thereafter is difficult to take even if my Dad used to try to convince me that he had a decent enough band in the 1950s which he saw in Berlin with Buddy Rich sitting in on drums. Despite poaching arranger Ernie Wilkins from Basie, James' bands never seem accepted by jazz fans and he has become something of a forgotten figure these days despite enjoying a massive profile in his heyday. James' subsequent brush with the commercial in the 40's is even more unforgivable than the "pop" stuff Miles churned out in the 1980's.

An 18 CD box set of Bunny Berigan would be more interesting but not sure you would be able to scrape that much music up with him on even if you added the stuff with Goodman and Dorsey to the list.

Why does kitsch played on trumpet sound so much worse than kitsch played on a saxophone ?

[Serial_Apologist]

An 18 box CD set of Harry James would be hard to bare.

Or even to bear - too many people taking their clothes off in this sunny weather right now!

Amazing how quickly his star waned since his passing as his is a name you rarely encounter these days yet the likes of Ziggy Elman and Charlie Spivak were starry-eyed enough to follow in his footsteps. I quite like his playing with Benny Goodman but his change in musical character thereafter is difficult to take even if my Dad used to try to convince me that he had a decent enough band in the 1950s which he saw in Berlin with Buddy Rich sitting in on drums. Despite poaching arranger Ernie Wilkins from Basie, James' bands never seem accepted by jazz fans and he has become something of a forgotten figure these days despite enjoying a massive profile in his heyday. James' subsequent brush with the commercial in the 40's is even more unforgivable than the "pop" stuff Miles churned out in the 1980's.

An 18 CD box set of Bunny Berigan would be more interesting but not sure you would be able to scrape that much music up with him on even if you added the stuff with Goodman and Dorsey to the list.

Why does kitsch played on trumpet sound so much worse than kitsch played on a saxophone ?

Sheer blare factor, I'd say - Blair factor 8.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

There was a Harry James EP with Albert Ammons or maybe Pete Johnson that was much played by friends of mine in my yoof, and indeed by Humph. Boogie was at a premium back then, like bananas and Bridget Bardot running up the beach in her gingham bikini... Vadim, "God created woman", a cultural turning point.

*Kenny Dorham said Harry James was his first trumpet influence...so there you go, jass fans.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Or even to bear - too many people taking their clothes off in this sunny weather right now!

Well - now we all know What Maisie Knew!

[Alyn_Shipton]

The Harry James who plays on this seems a long way from Ian's broad brush dismissal (with Teddy Wilson, John Simmons and Red Norvo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3lE61IsxdA

[Serial_Apologist]

Excellent opening track on J to Z - bassist Dave Manington's Riff-Raff - whom we saw a few years ago when Kentish Town was still happening jazzwise - re-channelling Herbie Hancock's 1971 Sextet by way of Jeff Clyne's Turning Point - one of our overlooked fusion groups of the late 1970s which had vocalist Pepe Lemer foreshadowing Bridget Beraha's role here, Brian Miller on electric piabno and synth, Dave Tidball tenor sax and Paul Robinson, drums. Sadly Dave Tidball is no more; Brian, one of our best post-Hancock people, is now retired, though Paul Robinson has been re-appearing in or around London in recent times. Riff-Raff allows lots of space for individual creativity and interconnections around asymmetrical but funky time signatures - which with this kind of music is what is needed - and which Manington underpins and nudges on acoustic without over-obtruding.

Sendecki who follows with his quartet is competent if not particularly original.

Time for the computer to rest - I'll follow this on the lawn with my shaky still just about Walkman.

[Ian Thumwood]

I had forgotten about the Dan Barrett / Howard Alden quintet record. My Dad had this disc and it was a record that he loved. We went to hear them at the Concord Club and they were excellent. It was a real shame that this band was not prolific and that Barrett doesn't seem quite so high profile as he once was. Alden remains an interesting player, firmly in the mainstream but another musician I believe who is a Herbie Nichols fan.

Good also to hear the Bob Curnow band. Again, a shame that they never made another record of Metheny's music as it is exactly the kind of to contemporary jazz that lends itself to big band writing. I am not aware of Curnow making any other recordings and know next to nothing about him but this record is really good. "Queer notions" by fletcher Henderson is another favourite of mine - you could view this as the starting point for Modern Jazz, the jarring harmonies and use of diminished chords must have shocked audiences at the time. Appropriate to have the excellent Mary Halvorson track follow shortly afterwards. I like the older material that tends to get neglected these days but it is nice to learn that listeners are also checking out more contemporary styles too.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

It was a good edition but the Bruce Hornsby track sounded like it had escaped from the Royal wedding drinks marquee. I don't care if it was "all star", it was bloody awful. (A "critics term"). Although Pat M's choice of key tracks on the following programme was quite illuminating. Give him a two hour show as a DJ. And Brad M playing Elmo Hope? I'll stick firmly with Elmo, but it shows awareness.

[CGR]

Or even to bear - too many people taking their clothes off in this sunny weather right now!

What! Don't fancy a naturist Jazz & Real Ale festival ?

21st to 24th June at the Naturist Foundation, Orpington, Kent

Expose the inner-hippie. Let it all hang out !!!

https://www.naturistfoundation.org/the-naturist-foundation-jazz-real-ale-festival/

[Serial_Apologist]

What! Don't fancy a naturist Jazz & Real Ale festival ?

21st to 24th June at the Naturist Foundation, Orpington, Kent

Expose the inner-hippie. Let it all hang out !!!

https://www.naturistfoundation.org/t...-ale-festival/

Except for the fact that our "summer" will probably be over by then, surely that has to be preferable to this morning's substitute for "The Big Questions" on BBC1: "Feel the Spirit: A Live Jazz celebration Service for Pentecost" featuring Will Todd (who he?)'s Jazz (anyone hear a single jazz improvisation?) Missa Brevis at St Martin-In-the-Fields. A hour to "celebrate" the moment their god permanently divided humanity for daring to challenge his superior spiritual authority, replacing an always stimulating, if often frustrating, interfaith and no faith programme debating moral and ethical issues. While not religious myself I hate the way religion, especially black religion, is being co-opted as a cover for sanctioning the present political status quo, embellished as multicultural. Bad faith at the superstructural level, Karl would have Jean-Paul Sartre.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Round about 7am this morning Radio 3 played Tadd Dameron/John Coltrane's "Mating Call" (1956) backed by bird song at the close! A summer sequence. I can forgive a lot for that. "Coming up, "Albert Ayler and some Whales"...

[Serial_Apologist]

Round about 7am this morning Radio 3 played Tadd Dameron/John Coltrane's "Mating Call" (1956) backed by bird song at the close! A summer sequence. I can forgive a lot for that. "Coming up, "Albert Ayler and some Whales"...

Followed by terrible old Bristolian joke:

How do you get to Wales by road?
Take the right fork for the Wells Road off the Bath Road by that old signpost, just past Temple Meads.

Or...

One in the front, one in the back.

[Alyn_Shipton]

BN, we did give Pat Metheny a chance to play a lot of his own stuff on radio 3 eleven years ago... https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02r5wyz