Good call....... I got the remastered two-disc set with the studio album and the live one....damned good stuff. Can't get it out of my stereo!
LeGrouper, Maybe you can help me with this. I don't have anything by Benson as my only jazz stuff from the late '60s on is fusion type stuff by Miles or Herbie ("Headhunters") and Jaco Pastorius' debut CD. I know who Benson is and he is someone that I would be interested in buying. Who in jazz from the late '50s to early '60s would you compare him to? And this is a question that is open to anyone who would know. Thanks
Man, too many favorite albums to choose just one. my current playlist: Oliver Nelson: The Blues and the Abstract Truth Clifford Brown and Max Roach Abbey Lincoln: A Turtle's Dream Ella Fitzgerald: Like Someone in Love Grant Green: The Quartets with Sonny Clark
and five more all-time faves: John Hicks/ Bobby Watson: Naima's Love Song Bobby Watson: Post-Motown Bop Ray Brown/ Ralph Moore: Moore Makes Four Sonny Clark: Cool Struttin' Dinah Washington: The Best of the Roulette Years
Artist: Mingus! Album: "Mingus Ah Um" Solo: None really. I'm more impressed by composition. If a solo works within the context of the composition, then it's good. If it's just improvised squawking over standardized chord progressions - then it's mind-numbingly boring. Improvisation is the musical equivalent of masturbating: it's enjoyable, but you have to make sure that your neighbor isn't using a zoom lens and internet camera to film you and then selling it to sexyladyboys.com because if your friends see you on sexyladyboys.com they'll make fun of you and start calling you "the baloney master" but then you'll be like, "dude, why were you on sexyladyboys.com in the first place?" and they will probably make some lame excuse about how they were just looking for information on how to trick out a Ford 150 so it's capable of carrying large quantities of carpentry supplies and when they searched for "carrying wood" they got tricked into clicking on the wrong link, but then you'll say, "But you drive a Nissan sentra, biatch!" and they will just be all embarrassed and at precisely that moment a sexy-lady-boy wearing an eyepatch and an asthmatic parrot on his shoulder will roll up on one of those Honda mopeds that all the rich teenagers had in the early 1990's and say, "oh, hiiiiiiiiii Greg, I really felt fulfilled playing the booty buccaneer game last night at your party, arrr matey! pieces of eight! please swab the poop deck!" and then you will look at the sexy-lady-boy and say, "What the hell do pirates have to do with jazz improvisation?" I think.
