[Dixielandjazz] What's your favorite Turk Murphy album?

[Augustine Daniel]

    Interesting idea, Mike (thanks!).  As it happens, my favorite Turk Murphy album is also "Music for Losers", for a number of reasons (the following items are not listed in order of importance, or maybe they are, but i don't know it):

1) the original cover photo was taken by a Carson City photographer (Blake Fendrich (?spelling?) at a Carson City casino, the Nugget; not only do i think it's a very nice image, and title, but i went to highschool in Carson City and had extensive (if slightly illegal knowledge) of that casino;

2) not germane, but what the hell: i've heard (but not found documentation to this effect) that Turk liked Carson City so much that he named is son "Carson Murphy" (Turk also has an album recorded at the Carson Hot Springs);

3) great songs and great arrangements (even if Turk did use a Chicago string-bass player)(more later);

4) the trumpet player is Don Kinch, who was mostly a very fine tuba player, but played fine leads on this album;

5) one of the few dixieland (or jazz in general) songs featuring the bass clarinet ("Yama Yama Man"; sorry, Howard, you do a wonderful, supernatural vocal on it, and you're a great tuba player also, but i heard this version first and i prefer it);

6) Turk loved "Gettysburg March" and i do too; apparently the players hated it (according to Bob Schulz, i think); but i love the arrangement (but not necessarily the original march); in fact, i'm transcribing it, but this time with tuba (for which i have written out a number of my tuba harmonization-licks);

7) great songs (cf. supra).

     Dan

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On Apr 12, 2015, at 3:35 PM, M J [Mike] Logsdon <mjl at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

Many are obscure, and never reissued either later on LP or CD, but there's enough that were readily available for this to be an interesting thread.  All elements of the album are up for scrutiny (content, sound quality, etc).

I'll start things off by saying mine is the Verve "Music for Losers".  Both the selections and the sound quality are top-notch.

**-------------------------------------------------------------**
** Dan Augustine  --  Austin, Texas  --  ds.augustine at mail.utexas.edu
**     "What is strange is this."  --  Gertrude Stein          
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