Jazz for aficionados

*****Rok has sometimes alluded to the issue of "too much knowledge". While I don't agree that there can ever be too much knowledge*****

Of course as a professional musician, you cannot have too much knowledge of music. But in the sense I was speaking I offer three examples:

(1) Watching people prepare your food in a restaurant, or the old thingy about making sausage. I think we all know what I am speaking of here. Also, think chicken farms and slaughter houses.

(2) Flying on commercial airliners. Watch a few episodes of AIR DISASTERS or WHY PLANES CRASH, and I guarantee you will never sleep or rest easy on one again. The things your life can depend on.!!

(3) Music: This morning I was listening to The Barber of Seville. Thomas Allen, Agnes Baltsa, St Martin in Fields -- Marriner. (Highlights) My favorite operatic recording. All Opera should be this well recorded. I always listen to it from start to finish.

Today I just went to amazon to see if my enthusiasm was shared. It was, but, one reviewer gave the Highlights disc one star. Went into chapter and verse on how the opera was butchered by the cuts made. I am sure he is correct, but it is also true that, I was/am blissfully unaware of anything he was talking about.

Cheers

Let's take our present conversation into relatively unknown musicians, you saw live, that you thought were fantastic. Fantastic female vocalists don't make it when they're not pretty. "Koko Taylor" must have gotten her start before television.

Rok, when you lived in Endicott, N.Y. you liked the house organist; that's what I'm talking about when comparing live versus recorded. The range of an organ is too great for any recording equipment; that guy you heard probably sounded better live, than Jimmy Smith sounded on record.

I saw a blues guitarist in Lovejoy, Ill. that was too fantastic for words. Albert King lived in Eagle Park Acres; that was a suburb of Lovejoy, Illinois; talking about the boonies, when it got dark in Eagle Park Acres, bright headlights was like lighting a candle. That must have reminded him of Mississippi; but it was an easy drive to St. Louis.

Share your experiences of hearing fantastic unknown musicians live.

Enjoy the music.

****Share your experiences of hearing fantastic unknown musicians live.****

Never had the opportunity to hear much Jazz live. I used to frequent a nice Jazz club in Tuscon, Arizona. Very nice bands, but I have no idea who they were. A few Jazz bands played the Military Club system in Germany, but again, no names I can remember. Also great Blues groups in El Paso, Texas.

The best live music I have ever heard was from 'soul' bands out of Yugoslavia, playing the U.S. Military club circuit in Germany. They sounded, live, better than any Motown I have ever heard on LP/CD. Great stuff.

Not being a member of the Warsaw Pact, they traveled freely in the West.

The only Big Time acts I have heard/seen live, Lou Rawls and Nancy Wilson.

I am sure I have heard folks like B.B. King, Lightin' Hopkins, Bobby Bland, Howlin' wolf et al. The only thing is, I was too young to get in. Had to listen from the ouside.

Cheers

Rok, if there were only two people I would want to say that I saw live, they would be Lou Rawls, and Nancy Wilson. When I saw them on DVD they projected as live, and Lou Rawls was close to live on records when he sang about the Chicago South Side. He brought a fantastic place to life, that is no more.

"South Side Soul" is a record Alex brought to my attention of this fantastic place that is projected in the music of John Wright. They even honor John Wright to this day in Chicago for capturing the soul of "The South Side", and putting it on a record. Lou Rawls put "South Side Soul" on records in the form of his words and song. It was one of those places that is left to live in the memories of the people who experienced the magic of "South Side Soul", and nowhere else. This was the "hippest" coolest place I've ever been in my life, unfortunately I was in my middle teens and could only read signs like "Miles Davis appearing nightly"; and this was at a small club that I passed on my daily walks.

Chicago nights were cool at that time, and I liked to borrow one of my cousins best sport coats, or sweaters and stroll Cottage Grove between 65th and 63rd street where the El Train ran. It was just as brightly lit at night as it was in the day, and you might even get a glimpse of "Dinah Washington" going to the Pershing Lounge; she both entertained there, and went there to be entertained; that's where Ahmed Jamal made his famous record, and he was also the "House Band". I think Dinah Washington lived in the neighborhood back then.

When I went back to Chicago as an adult, the place had changed so much I hardly recognized it. We, all the people who rode on that magic carpet, still have the music of Lou Rawls, and John Wright.

Enjoy the music.

*****When I went back to Chicago as an adult, the place had changed so much I hardly recognized it.*****

The writer, Thomas Wolfe, nailed it when he said "you can never go home again".

You did set me straight on one thing. I always thought the LP 'Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing' was recorded at a club in Pittsburgh. I guess I got my wires crossed due to Jamal being a native of Pittsburgh.

I have hated on those people all these years because of the perfunctory applause he received for the tune 'Poinciana'. Along with all the chatter.

Now I will have to transfer my wrath to Chicago.

Thanks for the post

Cheers