The Feel It Advent-ure 2021: Door 17

Here's a nice swingin' little number for another late night here.

Paul Bryant, Curtis Amy – Goin' Down, Git Me A Woman 1960

The Feel It Advent-ure 2021: Door 6

Feeling very tired tonight. Something mellow is in order.

I picked up three '50s UK Vogue Jazz EPs at a car boot earlier this year. All of them very nice and I am a sucker for the simple but striking Vogue label design, especially around a tri-centre.

The Chico Hamilton Quintet – The Wind 1956

 

The Feel It Adventure 2021: Door 2

From a 1961 obscurity on a California based label to a Noughties one.

As with Debra Lewis (yesterday) I can offer you zero information about the Liparis Nervosa Sextet beyond the fact they were LA based, as was the short-lived AllCity label I believe. However, in trying to discover some information on the band I did manage to expand my botany knowledge - Liparis Nervosa is apparently a species of tropical orchid.

This single was released in 2007 I believe but as it's 21^st century and about 40 years newer than most of the 45s I'm buying nowadays I think of it as “new” and for that reason something that wouldn't ordinarily be on my radar. 2007 is 14 years ago now though, so it is hardly “new”. Putting it into context, when I first started buying records in 1971 if I had been buying a 14 year old single then this record would be the equivalent of some obscure Cool Jazz 45, or maybe a Rockabilly 45. Something definitely from a different era music wise from a 1971 viewpoint. Likewise in 1980 when it was mostly about the latest club/disco music for me it would have equated to a purchase of a mid 6os Soul obscurity that had been no doubt for most of its life, criminally, languishing forgotten in a dead stock warehouse somewhere (it wasn't unknown for me to buy such a record then, and of course now it's mostly what I do!). What I'm trying to say is that this 45 is hardly “new”; it is certainly obscure – and obscurity is a thing I am attracted to. So this could be the start of a whole new digging experience – trawling releases from earlier this century that will somehow always seem “new” to me but are in fact quite old now, if you see what I mean. And, who knows, maybe in another 30 years or such records, maybe even this one, could be worth a lot more than they are now. 

I was alerted to this track when Kris Holmes played it on his show The Long Way Home recently and promptly ventured onto Discogs and purchased a nice minty copy for peanuts. The intro certainly evokes the theme from Taxi and then it develops into a nice jazzy groove with a certain filmic quality I think.*

Liparis Nervosa Sextet – Prayer 2007

* To be clear this is not typical of Kris Holmes' show which is very much rooted in the 60s and early 70s and is big on  Soul and R&B – i.e.  the stuff I really really go nuts for.

The Feel It Advent-ure 2020: Door 16

Plenty of Ps in the 45 soul box but I fancy a bit of jazz tonight.

I was over the moon to find this in a charity shop not so long ago, buried in a large boxful of (very) easy listening – James Last, Mantovani, the usual charity shop fare.

It has been on my project list all year to expand my wall of album covers, and when it finally happens this is one that will be going up.

The headgear cocks a snook at Covid-19. Definitely not de rigueur at the moment... but when the vaccine roll out properly kicks in you just see – it will be all the rage.

An Atlantic album of this vintage just has to have the label shown too – those colours!

And as a bonus, with this being some very cool jazz, here is a picture of "Lord" Claude – one very cool cat.

Dave Pike – Devilette 1966

PS: And the "Lord" is a Devilette

Fresh stock

I have retrieved the small batch of singles from the hole in the ground at the bottom of the garden. Good job too as it's raining now. The unseasonably high winds we have been having lately certainly should have seen off any lingering virus particles that may have been lingering on them :)

I can now reveal the small batch of singles with the Week27 price sticker on them (see last post). These are not the usual charity shop fodder, in my experience at least. Three are on the Tru Thoughts label and one is on Red Earth, and they all date back to around 2008. The recent past you could say, although that is already twelve years ago!

A nice little batch, all are well worth the 99p each I paid.

Kinny – aka Caitlin Simpson – was the buzz of the DJ world back in the late 00s. This was her first single. Two albums followed, in 2009 and 2011. Earlier in the decade she had been recording with producer Espen Horne as Kinny & Horn, and Kinky & Horne. Since her second album almost nothing, at least in the recorded form, has been heard of her. This single has two good sides, which would I guess fall into the Neo Soul genre (I am no expert in recent trends!).

Nostalgia77 – aka Benedic Lamdin – was another darling of the Tru Thoughts label and also very active during the 00s, but again his recorded output has tailed off significantly in the last few years. On this single he collaborated with the jazz couple Keith & Julie Tippett (nee Driscoll) to create a gorgeously moody piece. Keith passed away just a few weeks ago. RIP Keith Tippett.

Kinny– Enough Said 2008

Nostalgia77 featuring Keith & Julie Tippett – Film Blues 2008

What's in a number?

I went cruising in the car yesterday. No, not doing that! I was looking for charity shops with an open door. Yes, I really really wanted to dig. And I found one! And I bought some records too! Get the bunting out.

It did feel a bit strange, as I walked up to the boxes of records – reassuringly in the same place as always - I wondered if I was just supposed to gaze at them from a distance of two metres? I felt like I was being a bit naughty as I dug in. I was almost waiting for a tap on the shoulder and a voice saying “should you really be doing that, sir?”. I mean, all this riffling through records, picking the occasional one up for a closer look. Can this be safe? The feeling soon eased as I found some records that were worth a punt!

This particular chain of charity shops always puts a week number on the price sticker, so you know how long it has been in the shop. Which can be quite helpful. My first post-lockdown real world find (presented to you here) had week number 4 on it meaning it was first put on the floor in late January. So it was a pre-lockdown veteran, it's charity shop life had entailed being passed over by I don't know how many diggers for about seven weeks, and then being hunkered down it its box - with the likes of Mozart and Johnny Cash for company - in an eerie silence for the last three months or so. As such it was sort of comforting to know that it would certainly be virus free. Or would it? When did this shop re-open? And it was three in the afternoon – how many, potentially infected, diggers had already riffled through it or, perish the thought, sneezed on the whole box of records it was sat in?! I couldn't resist a dip into the pocket for a reassuring touch of my own personal mini bottle of hand sanitiser.

Madness ultimately results from such thoughts of course. So. allowing the paranoia to take a back seat for a moment, let's talk about the record I found. First things first, it is probably quite rare, but rare doesn't always mean valuable. I am sure this album will never be described as a “holy grail”, and it will never grace the wall of a record shop. I was attracted to it because a) I had never seen a copy of it before; and b) it was obviously some form of jazz record; c) it had a rather nice multi page gatefold sleeve; and d) it was in great nick. Simple pleasures.

The sleeve contains extensive details by way of a track by track personnel breakdown and there are some notes too (with some slightly inaccurate English spellings resulting from what was evidently a “home made” translation from Dutch). From all this I got the distinct impression this was most probably going to be trad or swing jazz. Not my favourite jazz landscapes, but my hopes were raised somewhat as I read the words “[the group's] enthousiasm [sic] made it possible to 'cut in wax' this diversity of songs and styles”. That was the clincher, into the buy pile it went. A little nugget or two of something more adventurous in the jazz world may lie in the grooves, I thought.

Alas no. Zenja Damm and the various band ensembles here give us fairly faithful reproductions of early jazz idioms throughout, with a blues touch here and there. So, nothing arresting, but no matter, the bands are very competent, Zenja Damm sings well, and the whole thing swings well. The sleeve notes tell me it was recorded in Holland, January 3-10 1979.

Looking at the back cover I think the charity shop staff have actually gone the extra mile with this particular record. It looks to me like they have given Madam Zenja a face mask to wear (she is, of course, just “wearing” .. er .. wear), and have also allowed her to venture into a pretty (if rather chilly) park, but reminded her she needed to do some serious social distancing.

As you can see as I walked down the road clutching my purchases and the daylight shone on the front cover this caused Madam Zenja to awake and ask “Was It A Dream?”

The other records I found have week number 27 written on the price sticker, meaning they were fresh stock. A completely different kettle of fish from a virus potential point of view (and musically too as it happens). Had they had the 72 hours lay over treatment as the charity shops have promised? Who knows? I think for my protection and yours it is best I do not speak of them further right now. They will spend a few days in a hastily dug hole at the bottom of the garden and I will reveal them in my next post.

Zenja Damm with Wik's Big Band – Stop, You're Breaking My Heart 1979

Zenja Damm with Wik's Big Band – I'm Pulling Through  1979

Catch me if you can

I have had more dreams lately. In this new lock-down life I am not alone in this experience it seems. One scientific explanation being put forward is that we dream more in REM sleep and, as a good proportion of the world are now less active (furloughed etc), we are getting more of this because we are not being woken up by alarm clocks but instead sleeping longer and waking more naturally. I briefly gave myself a pat on the back when I read that because I had been thinking about this the other day and had come to the same conclusion..... BUT I have been retired almost a year now so my sleep pattern, in lock-down, has essentially not changed (I'm an owl, I go to bed late and wake up when I wake up! Much to Mrs Darce's exasperation as she is a lark). So, why am I experiencing more dreams?

Also, since our lives have been restricted, I have noticed, in my wakeful state,  tiny fragments of memories are now being triggered by trivial actions on a much more regular basis. For instance tonight I was filling a watering can and as I watched the water swilling around the brim in a particular way a memory was triggered of a snatch of music. In fact more often than not it is music that pops into my mind in these instances.

I suppose this lock-down life is quieter, even for a retiree, and maybe my mind is just filling in the gaps.

So this is the perfect springboard for a series of posts I hear you think! Unfortunately it isn't because, for me, it is the same with these little memorettes as it is with dreams – in the very moment I become aware of them I am there trying to hang on to them, but in another moment they are gone.

Fragments .....

     You Stepped Out Of A Dream .....

          Where Have I Known You Before?

Fragments - Andrew Hill 1970

You Stepped Out Of A Dream - Joe Pass 1963

Where Have I Known You Before - Return To Forever feat. Chick Corea 1974

Still in the other world

The Rainfall Rescue project I mentioned recently is now complete. In a little under three weeks 65,000 pages of records dating from 1960 back to 1678 were digitised by an army of 16,000 volunteers. Each page contained up to a decade's worth of monthly readings for a particular gauge and , in all, 5.25 million observations were rescued. Quite a feat. Looking at my own stats I made 1061 classifications (a classification being either 12 monthly readings, or some location information, and the earliest year I was asked to process was 1682 . So I went way back!). To be fair some of those entries were blank if the year from a sheet I was asked to process had no readings recorded. Even so, I like to think I played my part. As I think I said before it is amazing what a bit of crowd sourcing can achieve (and of course Captain Tom Moore's exploit is another extraordinary example of that).

I miss the engagement in this project. I have found another one – Southern Weather Discovery – which is focussed on weather in the Southern Hemisphere and at the moment is asking people to digitise weather records made in New Zealand in 1939. Topical for me as I have just returned from a holiday in NZ. I've made my start on this project as I thought it would be interesting to see how many places I would recognise, and I am recognising quite a few, although the location detail is not so precise and doesn't offer the same opportunity as the UK records for heading off down internet rabbit holes researching places and people. So I don't think this project is going to capture my imagination in the same way.

The last time I was banging on about this (Rainfall Rescue) project I was back in the 1890s. It was at this point I got completely obsessed with one particular UK location identified on a Met Office sheet I was asked to enter. The gauge location was Cattistock Lodge at Cattistock in Dorest. Cattistock is only a few miles from Evershot, a village Mrs Darce and I spent a few days at on a short holiday a couple of years ago. It is possible we have driven past it. If you Google the Lodge you will quickly find a number of threads on a forum where people discuss and show pictures of derelict or semi derelict places. I am fascinated by derelict places myself. So that was enough to get me burrowing down the Lodge's rabbit hole!

As recently as 2011 Cattistock Lodge appeared to be in at least a half decent state of repair judging by Google Street View. However by around 2015 it was in a sorry state, and following the death in 2016 of an old lady who had lived there at least until the time of that Street View snap, and who may or may not have owned it, the place was finally sold last year and just last month a planning application was lodged to build a number of new dwellings on the site. Whether or not any of the existing Lodge can be saved as a part of that development I don't know but it would be a shame to lose a building which undoubtedly has a rich history. The earliest reference of its existence I have found states it was where The Cattistock Hunt was started by a parson in the mid 18^th century.

Late in the 1880s it started to be mentioned in rainfall records. Initially an A Chapple was making the recordings, but soon he was joined by a Henry Hamilton Palairet. The Lodge returned rainfall records until 1922. The end of the recordings coincided with HH Palairet's death and it seems no one then continued the job.

I have established HH Palairet was a Justice of the Peace, played cricket for the MCC and was a national archery champion. His son, Lionel, played cricket and amassed a prodigious number of runs for Somerset, holding their run scoring record until recently.

Although Palairet seemed to record the rainfall at Cattistock for many years between the 1890s and his death in 1922 he doesn't seem to have always lived there. Kelly's Directory 1895 lists him as of Cattistock Lodge, but the 1901 census states Edward Sitwell as the principal resident (and he returned the rainfall records in 1903). by 1911, and 1915, Kelly's listed a Major H H F Fagan as living at Cattistock Lodge. During this time Henry Palairet was listed in Kelly's as a Dorsetshire County Magistrate but he was residing at Norton Court, Pensford, Somersetshire. (His family had a lot of links to that area).

The next references I can find to Cattistock Lodge are from 1951. Detailed diary entries from a retired Royal Navy Captain, and latter day Reverend, lovingly (no doubt) transcribed by his grandson. The diaries are incredibly detailed and I spent more time than I really should have reading them. A fascinating insight into the life of an elder gentleman in 1950s England, they are a delight. He lived in a thatched cottage (a rather grand one) in the centre of Cattistock (it is still there, but not looking as “chocolate box” as it did 15 or so years ago judging by a few pictures I have found) and I have worked out that his mother moved into nearby Cattistock Lodge in the latter years of her life. There are a number of entries where he states they have tea at the Lodge. Whether the Lodge was still a private residence or it had become a hotel, or a nursing home or something similar I don't know.

As I said, and the above I think you will agree has clearly demonstrated, I have become obsessed with with this place, and the people who have been associated with it. Much too much time on my hands in these strange times.

I guess I could pursue more Kelly's Directory records, and Met Office records, to put more meat on Cattistock Lodge's bones (a place I didn't even know existed two weeks ago) but I really should move on!

Enough of this! It's time for some music. I can't believe I haven't featured Judy Roberts here before. She got a mention and a Youtube link back in 2009, but that is it. Talking of obsessions, I have always been mildly obsessed with her ever since I bought her album The Other World back in 1980. I love her brand of, often, latin tinged soul-jazz and, to be frank, I love her staring at me from the album cover in that seductive way even more (there, I've said it!). I won't expand any more on her career here now, she deserves her own dedicated post, which I will attempt do in the near future.

Here is the title track from that 1980 album. An appropriate title as I have been talking about ancient rainfall records, a Justice of the Peace who died more than a hundred years ago, and a retired Royal Navy Captain. Their worlds seem far removed from now, as in fact does our recent holiday in New Zealand and the pre-lockdown life we all led just a few short weeks ago.

Judy Roberts – The Other World 1980

In my own little world

Still digging those rainfall records (back in the 1890s now)....  and still digging the jazz.

Something soothing for a Sunday night:

Billy Cobham - Heather  1974 
(Billy ably assisted by George Duke and Michael Brecker)

Date with the rain

I hope you are all well. We are all living in strange times indeed.

One might have thought with this life lockdown I would have time for more blog posting. And yes I have been thinking I should, although retirement should in theory have also enabled that and look what's happened - or not happened! - here in recent months.

About a week ago I did kick myself up the proverbial and determined to get more active here.. but then I found a new addiction. Last week I saw a brief BBC news item that pointed me here , and so for a few days now I have been punching the keys digitising pre 1960 UK rainfall records! And I am by no means alone in this pursuit, as I write more than 14,000 other volunteers are doing the same and between us we have swiftly moved back in time through the 1950s, 40s, 30s and 20s and are now well into the 1910s. The 19^th century records are probably in reach by later next week. The people responsible for this project have been overwhelmed by the response. The power of crowdsourcing! Also, if this particular project doesn't sound like fun (but really it is) then you have other options – you could count penguins in time lapsed photographs of the Antarctic for example.

I have found the task surprisingly enjoyable, and interesting in a number of ways. Each sheet has a decade of handwritten monthly readings recorded for a particular rainfall gauge station. You have to either copy type a certain year's readings or transcribe location information. It is the location information, the recorder's name, and the various other random notes on the sheets that are so interesting.

The gauges were/are located in all sorts of places, quite a few Water Works, pumping stations, sewage works which are not so interesting but then I have also come across lighthouses, country piles, cottages, lunatic asylums, Kensington Palace Gardens, and yesterday morning Wolf Hall Manor. Many have caused me to run off down a Google rabbit hole as I pinpoint the locations and try to find out more about the history. Quite a few of the places I come across are of course no longer there: country piles demolished or now turned into flats; pumping stations now turned into houses. My UK geography has improved no end. It is interesting to note that before 1960 Somerset and Dorset were both referred to as 'shires.

The recorder names offer more opportunity for research. All the men, and they are mostly men, were Esq rather than Mr, many have C.E (Civil, or Chartered? Engineer) after their name, but then there are also Sirs, Earls, Majors, Lt. Cols, Headmasters. One of the most interesting to me was a Sir who lived in a country pile in Norfolk. I looked him up to find that his first wife was the daughter of a baronet and I share their surname, which is not a common one. Now that has me thinking I must trace my family tree!

There are lots of notes, some barely decipherable, on many of the sheets. The notes typically describe the site of the gauge and its immediate surroundings – hedges, trees, walls, outbuildings. You can sometimes build up a wonderful picture of a person's garden, right down to the height of herbaceous borders, raspberry canes, apple trees and the like.

On most of the sheets the location's nearest railway station and church are also specified, only sometimes a grid reference. This presumably for the benefit of inspectors who needed to travel to these gauges to check them periodically. Rail was probably the favoured mode of travel then, and also these would be landmarks easily found on an OS map.

As I have looked at the sheets I have built up an understanding of how the data was collected. It seems recorders would usually take daily readings. These would be aggregated to monthly values and then sent in (or telephoned in?) periodically to the Air Ministry Met. Office. This information would then be transcribed (sometimes years later it would seem) onto the official sheets that we are now digitising. For example while I was entering 1926 readings from a sheet I found this note: “Back years 1920-1928 copied from diary 6/1/53”. That comment blows me away. Just think, the recorder was making notes of the rainfall readings in their diary (nearly 100 years ago now). Then 25 years later their diary somehow finally made it to the Met Office (maybe the person died and the diary was found in their effects and was passed on?) where the readings were eventually officially collated. Now another 67 years have passed and I am transferring this data into a spreadsheet. Could the original recorder have possibly imagined his diligence would now still be relevant and causing so much feverish work? Certainly not in this way. (Incidentally, as I type this Al Green is on the radio singing Ain't It Funny How Time Slips Away!).

The whole exercise is a window into the past. And as I start recording 1919 data I'm thinking that with the current state of the world we all of a sudden have a lot more in common again in some respects with people's day to day life as it would have been 100 or so years ago – we are once again on Shank's pony, not straying too far from home, and closer to our family.

As I have been performing my task I have randomly noted down some things that have caught my eye, here are a few of them:

From a sheet for a Guildford gauge: “recorder Mr X, died 1942, then read by Mr Y until end of 1946, then read by Miss X 1947”. Readings stopped at the end of 1947. A note says house owner died at the end of 1947 and Miss X leaving. This paints a stark picture of lives changing. Miss X was presumably the daughter of Mr X, but who was Mr Y? A relative? A lover? In any event you feel for Miss X. But the rain will have kept falling on another gauge nearby.

From a sheet for West Ayton, North Riding: readings stopped Sept 1949 with the note “Too old to bother now”. It's interesting to see that more conservational, and less formal, notes like this tend to be much less frequent as I step back through the decades, or maybe I'm just not lucky enough to come across them.

From a station in Argyll Ardnadam Hafton House 1942 insp: Miss Allan says must give up reports as the gardener does not seem able to grasp how to do it.

At a girls county school in Glamorgan: 1945 unreliable , no amendments made to record. Observations probably taken by inexperienced pupils. No readings were recorded after 1945.

From Parkham, North Devonshire 1937: Letter from Parry saying that when Harding moved he took this gauge with him. No knowledge of where Harding now lives. Gauge missing in action!

Many people are recording their favourite observtions in chat threads related to the project. This was one that I wish I had seen: the few months' hiatus in 1948 when the Abbot of the Benedictine monks at Belmont Abbey in Hereford had to wait for the bullet hole in the gauge to be repaired before he could continue recording.

Oh, and as for the rain, I have noticed that 1921 was very dry in the UK.

Give it a go, you might be surprised how much you enjoy it.

A song title to perfectly match this topic immediately sprang to mind – Eddie Kendricks' Date With The Rain. Unfortunately I don't have that one in the collection as it is a bit pricey. So Youtube to the rescue:

Another phrase that came to mind was “observations in time” which is the title of any early Ohio Players album, and of a related Feel It post dating back to 2006. I have re-uped a track from  the album, which you can find here.

I will also leave you with another track. I have found jazz to be the perfect accompaniment when rescuing these rainfall records and I have been rooting through quite a few of the albums in my collection and giving them a proper listen for the first time in ages. One of those albums has been Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers' Ugestu. Here is side 1 track 1 from that album.

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers – One By One 1963

PS: The picture shows a Snowdon Rainfall Gauge, the gauge of choice judging by the rainfall sheets I've seen. The picture was found here

The Feel it Mini Advent-ure: Door 22

Nothing too racy late on a Sunday night...

Karin Krog, Warne Marsh, Red Mitchell - Speak Low 1980

(Nice jumper)*

*EDIT: I mean Karin's attire, not the record!

The Feel It Mini Advent-ure: Door 15

Here is another random pull from a "recents" box in the record room. (In fact I just looked up when I bought this and can't believe it was over two years ago now, so the box is in fact a "not so recents").

It was the first release on the Outstanding label, which was relatively short lived and primarily seemed to be a vehicle for one Paul Thatcher Smith (P.T.S.). Paul had been around on the jazz scene for a long time by the time this record was released (1972 apparently, although some people seem to date it to 1968 which actually I think kind of fits better with the feel of this record and other early releases on the label that I have heard.). Paul worked with a number of great names on the jazz scene including being a conductor and pianist with Ella Fitzgerald's band for many years starting in 1956.

I love the sleeve that this record comes in. It's been around the block a bit, and has some tales to tell now lost in the mists of time. A good old fashioned blue/green light card sleeve, faded around the edges, tape residue along the bottom and somebody's catalog system number stamped on it, in a really vintage looking typeface. $10 price scrawled on it and “Rock – Inst'l” as a description, which is a somewhat misleading as it sits more comfortably in the jazz/funk genre I think. Of course the sleeve might have been married to a different record originally and it does scream early 60s or even 50s to me. Could be 1968 I suppose, but surely not as late as 1972.

This is a nice laid back instrumental for a Sunday evening. Something my dad might have appreciated. If he was still alive we would have been celebrating his 101st birthday today.

The P.T.S. - Dragon Rock 1972

The Feel it Mini Advent-ure: Door 12

I can't help feeling that tomorrow morning, whatever the outcome, we Brits are all in the do do (as if we aren't already!).

So ...... let's dance. 

Cannonball Adderley Quintet - Do Do Do (What Now Is Next)  1967    

More holiday notes; and RIP Sonny

As I said in my previous post, during our recent holiday opportunities for digging were limited but I did manage to hit a few stores and thrifts.

I had a couple of record shops in Boston on the radar but couldn't work them into the itinerary. As we worked our way up coast on a gloomy and rainy day, foregoing a stroll around Rockport, the first record store I visited was Mystery Train in Gloucester, MA. Mrs Darce and my daughter generously left me to my own devices for over an hour.

Mystery Train is a great shop which I only really scratched the surface of. Tim was a very pleasant host. When I said I was from the UK he asked whereabouts. When I told him it was Bristol he said he was currently reading Original Rockers and had I read it? I have – written by Richard King it is about his time working in Revolver Records in Bristol, and the shop's history. Revolver just happened to be my go to record shop in the the late 70s! Mystery Train has an extensive range of albums and a fair amount of little ones too. Apart from a few racks of “recent arrivals” all are arranged by genre which, with my limited time, suited me very well. I furiously sifted through the Soul and R&B 45s and gave the Jazz albums section a scattergun attack. But, as I said, to do the shop justice a few hours would be needed.

In attacking the Jazz section, knowing that time was limited, I decided I would target certain artists only. One of those is Sonny Fortune. Until earlier this year I had been unaware of him, but then I picked up a copy of his 1976 album Waves Of Dreams. It was so much more than I expected. Being released in 1976 I think I expected it to be a fusion album and maybe a tepid one. But it contains much in the straight jazz vein, Sonny's playing is terrific and it is very enjoyable. 

So Sonny has been on my radar ever since and I was happy to find two more of his albums at Mystery Train. 

What I have only just discovered is that Sonny Fortune died from complications of a stroke on 25/10/18. That just happened to be the day we were flying back home from our holiday, with two Sonny Fortune albums – Serengeti Minstrel and Infinity Is - in our luggage. Here are two tracks from Sonny, one from each of these two albums for you to enjoy. From 1977 and 1978 these albums do see Sonny moving into an increasingly funkier fusion setting, consistent with the times and his, then new, label, Atlantic. Where have I heard that before? I was left thinking on a few occasions on first listening to Infinity Is. None more so than on the track A Ballad For Our Times. On this album was Sonny simply being derivative? Or was he in fact laying down melodies and motifs that others would follow? Given that Sonny was a well accomplished, and respected, player I suspect it would have been the latter. As for A Ballad For Our Times, he must have simply been paying homage to an iconic track and album, I will leave you to identify which piece of music that is.

Sonny Fortune – The Afro-Americans 1977

Sonny Fortune – A Ballad For Our Times 1978

I was going to expand a little on Sonny's career here but in fact his recent obituary in the New York Times does that much more ably and concisely than I could manage.

RIP Cornelius “Sonny” Fortune 19/5/1939 - 25/10/2018.

Filed

I've just completed another reorganisation of my vinyl horde. Long overdue it was too, Mrs Darce had been giving the record room (formerly the dining room) some increasingly pointed looks lately. Now, at least for a while, the random piles have been sorted and filed, or moved out. It got worse before it got better as it entailed a fairly fundamental reorganisation. There is once more some genre separation, and my long standing desire to keep records I acquired in my “youth” separated from more recent acquisitions has finally been abandoned. So, I suppose you could say the collection has become more and less integrated at the same time! Makes things much easier to find though.

During this enjoyable exercise (you don't have to play records to enjoy them if you are a vinyl nerd) quite a few albums surfaced that I had forgotten about, and a fair few I have probably never played before!

As an example, this album by Amina Claudine Myers has, I estimate, been in the collection for about four years now and I think has had only one previous play. It has had another two plays now in the last few days and is finally fully appreciated.

Amina has released a total of eight albums since 1979, but I suggest has been well under the radar. As a child she played the organ and sang in and directed church and gospel choirs. She then moved into the jazz world and has toured and played with the likes of Archie Shepp, Arthur Blythe, Sonny Stitt and Charlie Haden among others. She has also been involved in various theatre productions.

The album Amina admirably showcases her many talents: composition, arranging, vocals, and,last but not least, keyboards.

So where have I filed this album in my new regime? It's difficult. It could be argued that she is a singer-songwriter; there is a flavour of soul and gospel to her work; and she also almost approaches classical music at times There is a strong jazz element to her work though and so she has taken her place in the contemporary jazz section, which in my collection really encompasses everything 70s and beyond that has a jazz leaning.

Reading more about her just now I learnt that it is Amina's birthday today (just). So, Happy Birthday Amina.

Amina Claudine Myers – Arms 1988

Milestones (aka the iceberg)

I promised to expand on some recent scores at the charity shops. If we're talking about pure potential monetary value, in the space of 24 hours last month I scored my two best ever finds. (They score on more than that though as they are both excellent albums).

The haul mentioned in my last post included some records from a shop I almost didn't visit. Going down the road near the start of my charity shop trawl one Friday back in January one of the shops was closed with a note on the door saying “back at 13.30”. By the time I went back up the road I had had a call from Mrs Darce and my daughter requesting a pick up from 'their' shops. Did I have time to call back into the shop on the way back up the road? Just about I thought, it usually only contained one small box of records so shouldn't take a minute. Am I glad I dropped in! There was only one box, but it contained some gems! As I was paying for the haul (that included the soul 45s featured last time) the girl said “I thought these wouldn't hang around long, they only came in this morning”. Right place, right time! As well as those soul 45s I came away with a few albums that included a first press Pink Floyd Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. It's in pretty good nick. I will leave you to check out how much it could easily be worth, if you're interested, but let's just say it is comfortably in the three figure range (that's three figures before the decimal point, as opposed to the £2.99 I paid for it knowing it was likely a good find but not at the time understanding it was a first press.)

Twenty four hours later in another charity shop in another part of town I stumbled across another record whose worth probably nudges into the three figure bracket: Waltz For Debby by the Bill Evans Trio, an original mono UK Riverside issue. A highly desirable Jazz album found amongst a pile of albums that were typical charity shop fare i.e. definitely not highly desirable, and not Jazz. At times like this you wonder: why was it there?, and had there been any other similar records keeping it company that had already been snaffled? The picture you see of it's front cover was taken after I removed the 99p sticker.

In such situations should one feel guilty of taking advantage of the charity shops' lack of knowledge of the worth of their wares? Well, I figure I spend enough in charity shops – for instance I'm always buying records I don't need, or find I don't like, and often end up being retuned to another charity shop! Also there is every possibility I will keep these albums, and if I do end up selling them for a tidy profit then I can always give a donation. So I'm OK with it.

Waltz for Debby is a beautiful album, one to put on on late at night, or on a calm Sunday morning. It was recorded live at the Village Vanguard in New York on the 25^th June 1961. The trio comprised Bill Evans on piano, Scott LeFaro, bass and Paul Motian, drums. I have read that this was the only time Bill Evans ever performed Miles Davis' Milestones.

Bill Evans Trio – Milestones 1961

PS: Things often come in threes, but it was too much to hope for another find of similar magnitude, I'm still waiting.

All Dud but no duds

Here's Dud dressed for the season. Although this album was recorded in Australia, where I doubt he would have needed the coat.

Looking back at this year's forays into the fields of England it was once again disappointing and represented a worrying continued trend of diminishing returns from the car boots. There were a few highlights though, and this album is one of them.

Dudley Moore – actor, comedian, musician,composer as his wiki entry states. Oh to be so talented. Depending on your age I guess you might know him best as an actor, most notably in Hollywood blockbusters 10 and Arthur, or alternatively you would know him primarily from his earlier role as a comedian, initially in Beyond the Fringe and then as one half of the achingly funny comedy duo Pete & Dud. That partnership was forged on his BBC TV shows that aired in the mid to late 60s - Not Only... But Also. A phrase that neatly leads into the other strings to his bow: jazz pianist and composer. Wikipedia tells us he had played harpsichord and organ (and violin) from an early age and fell in love with jazz during his university years, playing with John Dankworth in the late 50s. Through most of the 60s and into the 70s he played jazz piano and was leader of an excellent jazz trio, and in that guise was vastly underrated in my opinion.

The album that this track comes from – Today – was recorded in 1971 and released in 1972. I picked up this copy at a car boot back in May. Today, giving it only its second or third spin, it hit me as to what a great album it is. In truth I could have featured any track from it, there is nothing that is just ordinary, and it certainly presents a paradox – it is all Dud, but there are no duds.

The Dudley Moore Trio – The Staircase 1972

Fridays on my mind

I am surrounded by people I know who are either recently retired, talking about retiring, or reducing their working hours. It's my age – and theirs - of course. So, for a few months now, this topic has been in the forefront of my mind, and it had made me a bit restless. Retire as soon as you can and enjoy life while you are still able is something I often hear – but what would I do to fill the time? I feel like I need at least some sort of plan - don't worry about that, just do it and you will soon find things to fill your days. Hmmm. I don't feel ready to retire just yet, but at the same time working five days a week holds no attraction anymore (and we are in the fortunate position that I don't really need to work full time from a monetary perspective). So I made the decision recently to reduce my working hours, something my employers were amenable to. Today, therefore, was my last working Friday. Four days (also slightly shorter) working and three days play seems a good work-life balance for the time being. That gives me a bit more space to think about what shape retirement should actually take. I guess I'm on retirement's nursery slopes.

The car boots have shown some promise this year in the early weeks of the season proper. Let's hope this continues after a fairly dismal 2015 and 2016. I was chuffed to pick up a copy of Kool & The Gang's Wild And Peaceful album for 50p last weekend. Kool & The Gang, at least in their early Seventies incarnation, have always been a favourite band of mine but I had never owned this particular album before. Singles such as Funky Stuff – which is on this album – and Jungle Boogie* were some of my earliest clubbing memories, and on the back of such singles they became known a s a funk band. But they were always so much more than that, and there was always a large dash of jazz to be found in the grooves of their albums of the time, as you will here on the title track.

Kool & The Gang – Life Is What You Make It 1973

Kool & The Gang – Wild And Peaceful 1973

[* EDIT: I must be going blind in my old age; Funky Stuff and Jungle Boogie are both on this album, as is Hollywood Swinging. I was probably as guilty as the rest of us at the time for thinking these would be the highlights of the album and the other tracks would probably be just funk heavy soundalike tracks.] 

A collective R.I.P.

Feeling sad at the moment.

We have kept rabbits for at least 15 years now. Pets for the children initially, but always family pets in reality; and it is we, not our children who have elected to keep having a couple of rabbits around. Until this week. We have always put them out in a run on the back lawn during the day. On Wednesday Mrs Darce arrived home and found an empty run. At first, it wasn't clear what had happened, we wondered if a person might have taken them. There was evidence something had lifted the wire at one end but the hole there didn't seem big enough to be relevant. But Whisper and Hector were nowhere to be seen. We looked around but found nothing. Later that night I was restless and went out with the torch to have another look around the garden, and it was then I found both of them – buried separately. A fox must have got them (at least we assume it was a fox). It seems foxes will do this, kill and then bury in a cache, possibly to return later. I retrieved them and we gave them a proper burial yesterday. Rabbits do not like to be alone. Whisper was an old lady and after her old partner died last year we got a new mate for her. Hector was only young. Anyway, they are together again now.

It is strange, the rabbits we have kept have never been house rabbits but right now the house seems so empty and quiet . This is the end of an era for us, we have decided there will be no more rabbits.

I learnt this week of the death of two jazz artists – Al Jarreau and Barbara Carroll R.I.P. I originally became aware of them as a result of my love of jazz-funk in the late Seventies . It prompted me to play the albums you see above for the first time in quite a few years, and make me wonder why I've ignored them for so long. The names from our youth continue to fall.

Barbara Carroll – From The Beginning ~ Together 1977

Al Jarreau – This Time 1980

For Whisper and Hector R.I.P.

A northern dig

Northern as in up towards the Arctic, not Soul.

So we were more than two weeks into our “trip of a lifetime” to Canada and Alaska, and I had not had a sniff of vinyl apart from this, which we stumbled across in a coffee shop in Canmore, Alberta on our first day

Withdrawal symptoms had set in, so I jumped up and down as if I had just spied a grizzly juggling salmon when I saw this in Ketchikan, Alaska...

Yes, a Sally Army thrift store! – and it had some records!! Two boxes of albums to be precise, which included a fair amount of mid 70s jazz-funk of the smooth variety – George Benson, Quincy Jones, Roy Ayers, that sort of thing- something I wouldn't have expected in deepest Alaska to be honest. Quite a few of the albums I already have in the collection, but I happily picked up three that I didn't for the princely sum of $2. For the record they were Bob James One, Material's Memory Serves (which is very good), and some live jazz in the form of Eastman Jazz Ensemble, Live!

Eastman is a highly regarded School of Music founded in 1921, based in Rochester NY, and still going strong. It offers degrees in many forms of music. In the jazz world Steve Gadd and Chuck Mangione are just two of the more well known names I picked out of their alumni list on Wikipedia.

This album collects some live performances made by college students at the Eastman Theatre during their '75 – '76 season. There are a mix of styles represented, although it is basically a big band. The small group Auricle, a jazz-fusion group who went one to have two releases on Chrysalis, is also featured on one track. It is rather good throughout. I was impressed by fidelity of the sound too, the vinyl is quite heavy. Not bad for 66c!

The track featured here is a Chick Corea composition. The sleeve notes tell us: “This chart is the sort of deft group piece that would seem to defy through its very intimacy any big band treatment. But drummer Ron Wagner turns it into a dynamic vehicle for a band that has the technique and time-sense to handle it. Soloists are graduate student Nelson Hinds on trombone, undergraduates Norman Rax on tenor and Rick Braun on trumpet. John Serry on piano and Ron Wagner on drums.”

Eastman Jazz Ensemble – Nite Sprite (Chick Corea) 1975