In retrospect it’s easy to understand why these superstars would want to write and perform this codger-esque novelty stuff under assumed names. They must have figured that while writing and singing this lighthearted fare inspired by the music of their formative years was fun, they were hardly washed up artists and had more greatness within waiting to pour forth.

Having been drowned to within an inch of its life, New Orleans, source of great musical innovations and revivals, birthplace of early jazz and classic rock, purveyor of fundamental funk, and mother of idiosyncratic geniuses beyond number, is still in the process of washing off the mud and putting the pieces back together again.



And the cultural wetlands of the city, neighborhoods that previously housed more than 125,000-plus black working-class inhabitants, remain mostly silent, decimated by an enforced migration unequaled since the Dust Bowl.

This is a weird, squooshy, watery record. The music is soft and squooshy, the lyrics are soft and squooshy. Songwriter Art Halperin’s voice is particularly squooshy, the background musicians play softly and squooshily, and even the veteran recording and mastering engineer Barry Diament has captured it squooshily in real stereo in a pleasingly reverberant church using a pair of carefully placed microphones.

Listen: I did stand-up comedy in Boston before any comedian at any comedy club in Boston got his sorry ass on stage and opened with “Hey, how you guys doing?”



I know that to be a fact because I began doing my stand up in Boston back in 1976 before there were any comedy clubs in Boston.





I played the Inn Square Men’s Bar (not what it may sound like today) in February of 1976.

Frank Zappa acknowledges the influence of Edgar Varése, Igor Stravinsky and other modern classical composers in much of his music but did he ever mention Charles Mingus?

Head Shin James Mercer is one of those artists like James Taylor who arrived whole and utterly original, though you can occasionally hear Morrissey channeling through his high-pitched vocals and more significantly, his melodic constructs.

Despite hailing from Albuquerque, NM (later relocating with the rest of the band to Portland, Oregon), Mercer’s tight-lipped pronunciation sounds more European than Western.

Sonny Rollins sparring with Freddie Hubbard (title tune only) backed by the reunited Coltrane drum’n’bass section of Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison sounds like an enticing lineup for this May, 1966 session at Van Gelder’s and it is!

Jones had left Coltrane earlier that year, as had McCoy Tyner, but Garrison remained, uniting again with Jones to back Rollins in this session recorded around the same time Coltrane’s Live At The Village Vanguard Again! was recorded.

Whether the release of this album or Dylan's "plugging in" at Newport in 1965 enraged fans more is debatable, but whichever way you see it, everyone agrees that this record was reviled when first released back in the Spring of 1969.

Gone was the angry, sarcastic, rebellious Dylan. In his place was a new, mellow homebody. Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident woke him up to a feeling of having been exploited and a realization that he no longer wished to be a generation's spokesperson.

The acclaimed violinist Salvatore Accardo commissioned arranger Francesco Fiore to re-imagine his dear friend Astor Piazzolla’s “Adios Nonino,” for, violin, piano and orchestra. Not a bandoneon can be heard on this lush, extraordinarily moving tribute to the great tango composer’s father, whose middle name was “Nonino.”



The powerfully nostalgic piece, written in 1959, has a similar emotional tug on the heartstrings as much of Nino Rota’s Fellini film scores, with fond, almost lighthearted memories giving way to waves of uncontrolled sadness and longing.

A young James Taylor arrived on the crowded late ‘60’s musical scene a mature, fully formed artist. His voice was unique, rich-sounding and immediately identifiable, as was his acoustic guitar playing. His songwriting was accomplished both lyrically and melodically well beyond his 20 years.