News from Fantasy Records - November 2005 Update

"The Soul Stirrers were very well named," Specialty Records' Art Rupe told Peter Guralnick, whose brand-new biography “Dream Boogie: The Triumph of SAM COOKE" (Little, Brown) offers several meaty, dishy, revelatory chapters' worth of Soul Stirrers and Specialty history. “They tried to get [that] feeling, emphasized and built themselves up on soul-stirring--slower singing, very melismatic. That's why Sam [Cooke] was the way he was. Sam was shaped in large measure by the Soul Stirrers during their rehearsals. He reacted to them as they pushed him, like a good rhythm section inspires an instrumentalist..."

The music discussed in Guralnick's book can be heard on “Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers: The Complete Specialty Recordings." Released in 2002, the 3-CD box was nominated for two Grammys, in the Historical category as well as Best Album Notes (by Daniel Wolff, himself a Cooke biographer).

Writing from the road “somewhere in New Jersey," pianist Bill Payne--co-founder, with Lowell George, of the beloved 70s rock group Little Feat---shared his thoughts last week about the music in the new Bill Evans Village Vanguard box.

“In the pop-prism mentality of success in today's world we are inundated with numbers, numbers, numbers, as if that is representative of any kind of quality. The music in this box is a rejoinder to the false dialogue of what defines success. Listening, we are witness to live performance between a trio of dedicated musicians in front of a very small audience.

“In his wonderful notes, the original producer Orrin Keepnews mentions his agreeing with drummer Paul Motian that the sounds of clinking glasses and conversation only add to 'the strong feelings of immediacy and reality that still surround this material.' From my years of playing live dates in front of thousands, hundreds, or a room with a handful of people in attendance, it is not about the numbers. You play for who shows up. Above all, you play for yourself and those with you onstage. There is a magic to performance that Bill Evans understood more than most.

“Bill was a master of voicing chords. The strength of those voicings is in part due to the use of his left hand (he was, in fact, left-handed). This remastered version bolsters the sound, making it a rewarding experience, particularly with headphones, in hearing Scott LaFaro's bass, which blends with Evans in what I think of as the ultimate in musical handshakes.

“The art of playing in a trio is an exercise in balance, trust, and shared experience. Bill Evans, Paul Motian, and Scott LaFaro exemplify the highest standards of that art."

SONNY ROLLINS's farewell tour of Japan begins today (10/31) with a concert in Nagoya. He'll also be performing in Osaka (11/2), Fukuoka (11/4), Tokyo (11/6 & 11/11), and Sapporo (11/8). These are his final dates for the year; his 2006 schedule resumes on 3/14 in Miami.

New content on Sonny's web site includes a segment from the 1986 Robert Mugge film “Saxophone Colossus," in which the saxophonist (sitting alongside his wife Lucille) discusses how he prepares for performance: “Before a concert I try to meditate on what I have to do, I try to block out any extraneous thoughts, I try to think about what it's going to be like, I try to will the band to sound good, I try to act in a positive way, and I try to create a picture of what I hope is going to happen on the stage."