Good morning! 9:53 and 74 degrees at the moment. I don't know any other songs by Martha and the Vandellas, but I sure remember Heat Wave. And we've certainly had one- with more to come. This is the first day in quite some time when the air-conditioner here in the Lab hasn't been cranked. You almost get used to that level of noise. Nice and quiet this morning.
Music news. I've learned a couple new tunes this week. Billy Strayhorn's Upper Manhattan Medical Group(usually just abbreviated to UMMG), and Benny Golson's Along Came Betty. Also looking at Golson's composition Stablemates. I've got a pretty good rendition of UMMG, which I'll probably post to YouTube sometime today.
In case you didn't know this, Billy Strayhorn was Duke Ellington's arranger. He wrote Take the A Train and Lush Life, among other classic tunes. Benny Golson is a saxophonist and composer, who also gave us Killer Joe.
Not all jazzers are the best composers. Sonny Rollins has written some wonderful pieces like Oleo and Airegin and Tenor Madness, and also some unlistenable stuff. I'm thinking of the album The Bridge: both the title tune and one called John S. Lee Konitz was a wonderful player, but his tune Sub-Conscious-Lee(based on What Is this Thing called Love)is butt-ugly.
Just my opinion. I have a more euphonious version of Konitz's composition, called Unconscious Sam, which I may get around to posting.
Feeling the itch to get back to playing music with other people. We'd talked about it at the end of my gig back in May. It was tentatively scheduled for the 10th, which came and went. And then we had all this damn heat. So, note to self, I need to get back on this.
And that's my news for now. Thanks as ever for stopping in and reading. Happy Saturday to you! I'm outa here. More later. PS today's pic was taken by Jim Laurie in 1986 or so. I was visiting him in Las Vegas. PPS today's tune is a weirdo electronic piece of mine called Dance Squared. Hope you like it. PPPS: I didn't mention Sonny Rollins's composition St Thomas. To me, it's kind of middle-of-the-road. Not a bad tune at all, just never did much for me.