Thursday, June 30, 2016

Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass - A Foggy Day


A Foogy Day (feat. Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel and Ray Brown)



A Foogy Day (feat. Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel and Ray Brown) · Fred Astaire · Oscar Peterson · Charlie Shavers · Flip Phillips · Barney Kessel · Ray Brown

The Continental (feat. Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel and Ray Brown)



The Continental (feat. Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel and Ray Brown) · Fred Astaire · Oscar Peterson · Charlie Shavers · Flip Phillips · Barney Kessel · Ray Brown

I Won´t Dance (feat. Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel and Ray Brown)



I Won´t Dance (feat. Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel and Ray Brown) · Fred Astaire · Oscar Peterson · Charlie Shavers · Flip Phillips · Barney Kessel · Ray Brown

The Way You Look Tonight (feat. Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel...



The Way You Look Tonight (feat. Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel and Ray Brown) · Fred Astaire · Oscar Peterson · Charlie Shavers · Flip Phillips · Barney Kessel · Ray Brown

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Fats Waller & Art Tatum play Stardust, piano solos



1. Fats Waller, 1937
2. Art Tatum, 1938 (3:14)

Log Cabin Blues - Clarence Williams' Washboard Five (w Buster Bailey) (1928)



Ed Allen, c / Buster Bailey, cl / Clarence Williams, p / Cyrus St. Clair, bb / Floyd Casey, wb. New York, April 18, 1928.

Pretty Baby - Louisiana Rhythm Kings (Red Nichols, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Adrian Rollini)



Red Nichols, c / Tommy Thunen, t / Glenn Miller c, tb / Jimmy Dorsey, cl, as / Babe Russin, ts / Adrian Rollini, bsx / Jack Russin, p / Wes Vaughan, g / Gene Krupa, d. New York, January 27, 1930

Bud Freeman - Satanic blues


Bud Freeman - You're my everything


Monday, June 27, 2016

Doc Severinsen - Airmail Special



Mike Bryan Electric Guitar 
Georgie Auld Tenor
Doc Severinsen Trumpet
Harry Sheppard Vibes
Derek Smith Piano 
Jack Lesberg bass 
Mousie Alexander Drums

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Ralph Stanley - Bluegrass legand dead at 89

Please follow link to original  --  and complete obit.  We lost another great one.
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http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2016/06/23/ralph-stanley-bluegrass-legend-dead-89/86038242/

Bluegrass legend Dr. Ralph Stanley died Thursday night after a battle with skin cancer, according to aFacebook post by his grandson, Nathan Stanley.
Dr. Stanley was 89 years old and a member of the Grand Ole Opry and the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. After receiving an honorary Doctorate of Music from Lincoln Memorial University in 1976 (and another one from Yale in 2014), he was known to fans worldwide as "Doctor Ralph."
Singing was as natural as breathing for Ralph Edmund Stanley, who was born Feb. 25, 1927, on Big Spraddle Creek in Dickenson County, Virginia. His first public performance was in church, and when he was 11 years old, his mother said that he could either have a pig or a banjo. Luckily for music fans everywhere, he chose the latter. His style of banjo picking—which, like the man himself, had no frills—would go on to influence countless musicians.
"You don't replace a Ralph Stanley," said Eric Gibson of bluegrass duo The Gibson Brothers. "His voice sounds like it has been here since time began."
"He sang mountain music, and he took what he did very seriously," added singer-songwriter Paul Burch, who recorded with Dr. Stanley and opened for him on a UK tour. I think he wanted other people to hear the beauty of the region that he came from." .........

I Saw The Light / The Stanley Brothers


Ralph Stanley - Ill Fly Away


Ralph Stanley and Patty Loveless - Pretty Polly


Ralph Stanley and His Clinch Mountain Boys - "Oh, Death"


Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Howard McGhee Quartet - Shades of Blue



Personnel: Howard McGhee (trumpet), Junior Mance (piano), George Tucker (bass), Jimmy Cobb (drums)

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Thoughts on Orlando

Has anyone else noticed how pro and anti gun talk has crowded out every other issue of late?  No more about first, fourth, and fifth amendment rights.  All we seem to talk about is either supporting or repealing second amendment rights.  Does anyone other than me remember how "all honest people" (not really) wanted to void the fifth amendment during the era of all the anti-Mafia hearings?  After all, it was said, honest folks have nothing to fear.  Today in the era of "thought crimes" ALL of our Bill of Rights are more important than ever  --  even though we have given up rights for some sort of illusory "security".

By the way, if Mateen does not represent ALL Muslims  --  why does he represent ALL gun owners? 

Blue Mitchell - Step Lightly - Mamacita


BLUE MITCHELL, Samba de Stacy (Boone)



Blue Mitchell (trumpet); Junior Cook (tenor saxophone); Chick Corea (piano); Gene Taylor (bass); Al Foster (drums). Recorded at Van Gelder Studio on Jul 14, 1965

Thursday, June 16, 2016

If I Were A Bell - The Miles Davis Quintet


Miles Davis - trumpet
John Coltrane - tenor saxophone
Red Garland - piano
Paul Chambers - bass
Philly Joe Jones - drums

Miles Davis Quintet - It Never Entered My Mind



Personnel: Miles Davis (trumpet), John Coltrane (tenor sax), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), Philly Joe Jones (drums)

Miles Davis Sextet - Freddie Freeloader



Personnel: Miles Davis (trumpet), Cannonball Adderley (alto sax), John Coltrane (tenor sax), Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), Jimmy Cobb (drums)

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Wynton Marsallis - Second Line - Everyone - 8/17/1990 - Newport


James McMurtry "Carlisle's Haul" (Live at Lagunitas)


Hot House 』Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker



Town Hall 1945.6.22
trumpet : Dizzy Gillespie
alt sax : Charlie Parker
piano : Al Haig
bass : Curley Russell
drums : Big Sid Catlett

Islam’s Jihad Against Homosexuals The rise of modern Islamic extremism has worsened an institutionalized Muslim homophobia.

This from Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Wall Street Journal.  Please follow link to original.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/islams-jihad-against-homosexuals-1465859170

The Orlando massacre is a hideous reminder to Americans that homophobia is an integral part of Islamic extremism. That isn’t to say that some people of other faiths and ideologies aren’t hostile to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community. Nor is to say that Islamic extremists don’t target other minorities, in addition to engaging in wholly indiscriminate violence. But it is important to establish why a man like Omar Mateen could be motivated to murder 49 people in a gay nightclub, interrupting the slaughter, as law-enforcement officials reported, to dial 911, proclaim his support for Islamic State and then pray to Allah.
I offer an explanation in the form of four propositions.
1. Muslim homophobia is institutionalized. Islamic law as derived from scripture, and as evolved over several centuries, not only condemns but prescribes cruel and unusual punishments for homosexuality.
2. Many Muslim-majority countries have laws that criminalize and punish homosexuals in line with Islamic law.
3. It is thus not surprising that the attitudes of Muslims in Muslim-majority countries are homophobic and that many people from those countries take those attitudes with them when they migrate to the West.
4. The rise of modern Islamic extremism has worsened the intolerance toward homosexuality. Extremists don’t just commit violence against LGBT people. They also spread the prejudice globally by preaching that homosexuality is a disease and a crime.

Not all Muslims are homophobic. Many are gay or lesbian themselves. Some even have the courage to venture into the gender fluidity that the 21st century West has come to recognize. But these LGBT Muslims are running directly counter to their religion.
In his 2006 book “Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law,” the Dutch scholar Rudolph Peters notes that most schools of Islamic law proscribe homosexuality. They differ only on the mode of punishment. “The Malikites, the Shiites and some Shafi’ites and Hanbalites are of the opinion that the penalty is death, either by stoning (Malikites), the sword (some Shafi’ites and Hanbalites) or, at the discretion of the court, by killing the culprit in the usual manner with a sword, stoning him, throwing him from a (high) wall or burning him (Shiites).”
Under Shariah—Islamic law—those engaging in same-sex sexual acts can be sentenced to death in nearly a dozen countries or in large areas of them: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, the northern states of Nigeria, southern parts of Somalia, two provinces in Indonesia, Mauritania, Afghanistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates. Death is also the penalty in the territories in northern Iraq and Syria controlled by ISIS.
Iran is notorious for hanging men accused of homosexual behavior. The Associated Press reports that since 2014 ISIS has executed at least 30 people in Syria and Iraq for being homosexual, including three men who were dropped from the top of a 100-foot building in Mosul in June 2015.
No fewer than 40 out of 57 Muslim-majority countries or territories have laws that criminalize homosexuality, prescribing punishments ranging from fines and short jail sentences to whippings and more than 10 years in prison or death.
These countries’ laws against homosexuality align with the attitudes of the overwhelming majority of their populations. In 2013 the Pew Research Center surveyed the beliefs of Muslims in 36 countries with a significant Muslim population or majority, including asking about their views of homosexuality. In 33 out of the 36 countries, more than 75% of those surveyed answered that homosexuality was “morally wrong,” and in only three did more than 10% of those surveyed believe that homosexuality was “morally acceptable.”
In many Muslim-majority countries—including Afghanistan, where Omar Mateen’s parents came from—LGBT people face as much danger from their families or vigilantes as they do from the authorities.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Islamic extremists condemn homosexuality in the strongest possible terms. The Middle East Media Research Institute reported in 2006 that when Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the world’s leading Sunni clerics and chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, was asked how gay people should be punished, he replied: “Some say we should throw them from a high place, like God did with the people of Sodom. Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement. . . . The important thing is to treat this act as a crime.”
Such ideas travel. In 2009 Anjem Choudary, an infamous London imam and self-proclaimed “judge of the Shariah Court of the U.K.,” stated in a press conference that all homosexuals should be stoned to death. Here in the U.S., Muzammil Siddiqi, former president of the Islamic Society of North America, has written: “Homosexuality is a moral disorder. It is a moral disease, a sin and corruption . . . No person is born homosexual, just like no one is born a thief, a liar or murderer. People acquire these evil habits due to a lack of proper guidance and education.”
Farrokh Sekaleshfar, a Shiite cleric educated in London, declared of homosexuality in 2013: “Death is the sentence. We know there’s nothing to be embarrassed about this. Death is the sentence.” He was speaking at the Husseini Islamic Center outside Orlando. Yes, Orlando. He spoke there again in April.
These men express their hostility toward the LGBT community only verbally, but the Orlando attack was hardly the first manifestation in the U.S. of Islamist antigay violence. During a New Year’s Eve celebration in the first hours of 2014, Musab Masmari tried to set fire to a gay nightclub in Seattle; he is serving 10 years in prison on federal arson charges. Law-enforcement officials say that Ali Muhammad Brown, an ISIS supporter who is now in prison for armed robbery, also faces charges for terrorism and four murders, including the 2014 execution of two men in Seattle outside of a gay nightclub.
Following the horrific attack in Orlando, people as usual have been rushing to judgment. President Obama blames lax gun laws. Donald Trump blames immigration. Neither is right. There has been comparable carnage in countries with strict gun laws. The perpetrator in this case was born in the United States. This is not primarily about guns or immigration. It is about a deeply dangerous ideology that is infiltrating American society in the guise of religion. Homophobia comes in many forms. But none is more dangerous in our time than the Islamic version.
Ms. Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, is the author of “Infidel” (Free Press,

Monday, June 13, 2016

Some thoughts on Orlando

Yesterday, a mentally unbalanced man, reputed to hate gays, Jews, women, etc. opened fire in a gay club, just after last call, and killed 49 while wounding over 50.  He was a Muslim, who used the "teachings" of his "religion of peace" to justify the slaughter.

"Isis" has claimed him as one of their own.  His ex-wife says he went from a "normal guy" to an abuser who would fly off the handle at anything or nothing.  His father stated he was "proud" of his son, who was a "good man" and "good father".  Perhaps his "good" is not the same as mine/ours.

Various right-wing "Christians" actually applauded the killer.  Even Texans said "as you reap, so you shall sow" (Lt. Gov. Patrick). 

At this point it seems as if EVERYONE is using this horrific attack to further their own agenda.  Kill Muslims, ban guns, etc., etc., etc.  None of this will solve the problem.  If you ban guns we will not have a means of self defense against ANYONE.  A defenseless people are not "Citizens", they are SLAVES. 

Our long term best defense is Western Civilization.  We have not remained in the 7th century as have many in the Muslim world (by the way, right now I don't give a damn if they "invented" algebra  ---  that was awhile ago, ya know).  Another defense would be teaching Citizenship, Civics, History, American History, The Constitution, Civil Rights, etc.  It would be good if folks recognized our rights cover ALL of our people.  Anything else and those supposed rights are privileges, given to just the special few. 

Immigrants MUST be taught that we are a secular society  --  so must many of our extreme "Christians".

The world isn't ending, there will be no "rapture", YOU (any of you) are NOT "called on" to bring about any one of the many apocalyptic ends to the current world.  We are all doing that very well by ignoring and denying climate change.

God does not love you more for killing innocent people  --  no matter who they love.

By the way, to the rabid anti-gay folks, I think there are more pedophiles among clergy than there are in the gay community.

I worry about many of our Muslim-Americans who are much more Muslim than American.  Sharia Law does not fly in American society.  Owning slaves, restricting the rights of women, are not exactly "American values" either.  Our society has slowly progressed toward being more fair, open, and inclusive over time.  Those on the left who decry our flaws often do not realize how much we have moved forward over the years.  We have been the light of the world for a long time.  Please do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

By the way, if you don't like gay folks  --  don't go to gay clubs or areas.  If you hate abortion, don't have one.  If you oppose "gay marriage", don't marry a same sex partner, etc., etc., etc.

Also, if you attack me  ---  I WILL defend myself.  I will NOT be led to my death to fulfill  ANYONES aganda. 

Monday, June 6, 2016

Clifford Brown & Max Roach - Cherokee



Clifford Brown (tp), Harold Land (ts), Richie Powell (p), George Morrow (d), Max Roach (ds). Cherokee. 1955. Study in Brown.

Why SRV "Texas Flood"

The SRV "Texas Flood" post describes the situation in Texas over the past couple of weeks.  We have been lucky - our only water damage this year has been caused by a broken line from the main to the house.  Could have been much worse.