Author: Seb Palmer

Not much happening of late.

Sleep, eat, work. Antonio’s away, with Ali n’ Sofi, staying with Dad n’ Claire. We’ve got Pat round.

I was delivering in Ketton, which is utterly gorgeous.

Almost all of Ketton is gorgeous. An olde-wolde place, grown out of the local Ketton stone. I’d love to live somewhere like that! So pretty.

The Euro-Footy started. Germany thrashed Scotland, 5-1. Indeed, it was a German player who got Scotland’s only goal.

Hank Mobley was one of Blue Note’s star attractions. Mosaic have issued two Blue Note boxed sets, one covering his ‘50s output, another for 1963-70. I have the latter, but not the former.

The first box contains the following Blue Note releases:

There’s a gap, in the Mosaic coverage, during which there were several Blue Note Releases not included in either set. These are:

I’ve ordered these gap-fillers. And I’ll be looking into how I can get either the first Mosaic box, or the albums it covers.

The second Mosaic set collects the following:

And then there are the non-Blue Note releases, for Savoy and Prestige:

Like many jazzers of this era, Mobley struggled with substance misuse. Heroin addiction lead to his incarceration for spells, in the fifties and sixties. And later in life his smoking – which finally killed him – would lead to a decline that saw his star fade into obscurity.

Very sad. But on these recordings, as leader, and many more as sideman, he left a lasting legacy, of great joy and beauty. I intend to fully savour that more positive bequest to the ages.

Wow!!!

Every now and again, you hit the absolute motherlode. And for me, Walter Bishop Jr’s ‘theme’, on Soul Village, is just that.

I feel like I’ve heard it elsewhere, before. But I can’t be sure. I recently became aware of it via the version on Blue Mitchell’s eponymous 1971 Mainstream Records release. That album is sometimes referred to as Soul Village (it’s the opening track).

The theme gives me goose-bumps! It’s the epitome of groovy cosmic jazz funk, to me. A lithe snaking bass-driven melody, that just tickles my third-eye, so to speak. To the extent that music is magical – we can’t explain its occult effects upon us – then this is, for me, a real humdinger.

Perhaps oddly, it alternates what I’ll call the ‘theme’, with a much simpler, earthier ‘groove’ or jam section. Initially this bugged me a bit. But over time I’ve come to appreciate it. It’s like the band of an engagement ring, setting off the jewel that is the theme.

It’s also an instance of a single track, or even musical moment, making the seeking out and purchase of an entire album – even if it’s quite costly – worthwhile. Even if the rest of said album were shite. But of course, in this case, it ain’t. Far from it!

Another locked church. I’ll have to come back another time. Here’s a few outside snaps, in the meantime.

I found this website, which shows that a revisit is well worth the effort.

Earlier the same day…

I was delivering in Polebrook on this day. A very beautiful village (but with lousy – verging on zero – network coverage!). One of the drops was for Polebrook Hall, the place pictured above and below.

Here’s a link, to an Estate Agent’s listing from a few years ago. The best part of an eye-watering £4,000,000!

This arrived today.

I already have the paperback edition of Volume 1. This smaller hardback version collates all of both volumes 1 and 2, obviating the need for me to seek out Volume 2 (which is both pricey and rare).

It also means I can use my older larger Volume 1 to cut up and frame some groovy album cover prints.

The hardback edition is nice and robust. But it is smaller. And that is a pity. But it’d be churlish to dock even half a star. This remains a very beautiful treasure trove.

I just counted the covers, in both of the above editions. I may have over- or under-counted a bit? But the new one came out at about 435! The old one about 230.

So I’m glad I got the new one. As I already said, I no longer need search for rare and overpriced copies of Vol. 2. And I can now chop up my older copy for wall art. That’ll take some doing, as it’s a nice thing as it is.

Blue Note really established a benchmark. For not just great music, but a unified aesthetic, across the whole gamut: beautiful music, beautifully recorded and produced, and beautifully packaged.

To this day the many productions of the Reid Miles dominated era remain a high water mark in the area of sympathetic artistic cross-disciplinary homogeneity.

Just as the discerning ear can revel in the beauty of great musicians captured masterfully on recordings, so too the discerning eye can peruse with exquisite pleasure these wonderful visual creations.

One of my delivery stops was this place, where they specialise in olive trees. A guy working here told me this tree is 8-900 years old, weighs about 8 tons, and would cost a buyer £25K!

I’d like to visit this place for a proper look around some time. They also had lots of very large/mature palm trees.

Another very tall olive tree. I didn’t ask the price of this one. Eye-watering, no doubt. And behind, enormous olive oil jars.

I’d love to see how these jars are made. They are pretty amazing.

I tried to get a selfie beside the larger of the two. But I failed. So I opted for a snap of me by the aperture. I could’ve climbed in!

I’ve heard Ahmad Jamal a little on and off over the years. But I guess I’ve never really paid attention, until today.

With a long and prolific career, there’s a lot to catch up on. But I just started with something that I liked the look (and price!) of, The Awakening.

Recorded Feb’ 2-3, 1970, in NY, with Emil Nasser on bass and Frank Gant on drums, it’s a very interesting and ultimately, I think, rather beautiful album.

One very interesting thing is the material, and how it’s handled. The first three pieces are not familiar standards. Whereas three of the last four are. Or are they?

Ahmad and co, but particularly Jamal, take all the material way out, from its origins. Not ‘out’ as in appalling free jazz. But out as in the version of Jobim’s Wave is barely recognisable as such. But in a good way.

If some of the core qualities of jazz are freedom, expression, improvisation, change, surprise, and so on, then Jamal and his sideman deliver all of that, and more, right here.

I’ve stopped to look at Holy Trinity before. On that occasion I didn’t look too hard, re getting in. I just assumed it was shut!

This time I found the entrance, and it was open. In fact there were a couple of ladies in there practicing piano/singing. A nice old hymn.

The church itself feels quite modern. And is rather plain and unremarkable, truth be told. I won’t be hurrying back!

There are stairs up to a gallery. As there are in a number of churches of different vintages. But so far they’ve all been locked, and inaccessible.

I got that eloquent expression – ‘bugger balls’ – from an episode of Sharpe. He’s saying he’d rather not go to a dance. But I like it as an earthier more testicular ejaculation.

And why that title under ‘health & wellbeing’? Because I had a boozy blip, yestereve. Several times of late I’ve had a single beer, or a small glass o’ vino. All the while trying to maintain control.

Last night I had a bottle of Shipyard IPA, a tipple I really love. I feel compelled to confess that the alcoholic version is sooo much nicer than the sans alcohol one. On its own that’d’ve been fine.

But I followed it up with a little 20cl bottle of neat rum. And that was, I believe, a mistake.

There is, or was, a part of me that’d like to be able to be a Tom Waits or Charles Bukowski type, all fags n’ booze. But I’m more like Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam. And the truth is that those vices are – as everyone ought to know – pretty shitty.

They’ll do a Kerouac on you, and speed you towards a fat, grumpy oblivion. The ‘bad liver and broken heart’ that once sounded tragically romantic is now purely tragic.

There’s only one saving grace, as far as last night’s mini-debauch goes. And that’s that I didn’t go further, and compound my sins with even worse behaviour.

A very large part of why I’ve been on the wagon has been the further consequences of boozing. Fortunately the only such issues today are a bit of bloating and a slight headache. Could’ve been far worse!

When I first posted this, I started at the end. So I’ve gone back, revised it, and I’m now – kind of? – starting at the beginning.

Well, the real beginning of all things Mainstream, for me, was my dad’s acquisition of this:

… on vinyl.

I fell in love with that album as a child. And I still love it to this day. Indeed, it’s only now, sooo many years later, that I’m really starting to explore both the Mainstream legacy, and other related stuff.

So, for example, I’ve been collecting Kynard’s recordings on other labels, and albums he’s on as sideman.

The next stop was the ‘blogosphere’, perhaps around a decade or longer ago? A blogger was attempting to catalogue the entire Mainstream 300 series. I followed his progress, and subsequently learned a lot more about some of the fabulous music the label produced and/or released.

And then some time soon after that, the BGP label started putting out stuff by Mainstream:

I got the Complete Alice Clark and Loud Minority CDs (have I got The Message? Guess I need to check!). And that drew me further in to the web of Bob Shad and his musical emporium.

Running alongside a lot of this, my work writing Recycled, a monthly classic album column, for Drummer magazine, lead to a very specific and intriguing personal epiphany.

I was writing a piece on Funkadelic’s 1972 album America Eats It’s Young. Reproduced in the liner notes was an R&B chart for a month or week in 1972. It blew my mind! It was more or less wall to wall fabulousness. What a year ‘72 was, I thought.

And so an obsession was born.

The above gallery – not a complete list or catalogue – is just for Mainstream albums either recorded or released (or both) in 1972. Below are some other non-‘72 albums on the label that I either have, want, or would like to explore further.

In addition to now having all three Kynard Mainstream albums, all of which are terrific, I’ve been finding out that some other artists on the label produced recordings that totally blow my gaskets.

Two in particular that I’m really diggin’ are Blue Mitchell’s Soul Village, and Curtis Fuller’s Smokin’.

And here are a few links:

Mainstream - WIKI
Reggie Moore - Furioso