Atlantic Cigar is offering a sale on Kristoff cigars. Buy a case of 20 and get ten more free! That’s less than $5 a stogie for these normally $8+ cigars. And they’re tasty.
News flash:
Sunday May 23–The Revenge of BIG TEN INCH! An early Sunday evening of listening to scratchy old 78 RPM records. Dig it as collectors play the platters that matter for your drinking and listening pleasure.
These collectors of the Fast Discs–including such luminaries as Billy Miller of Norton Records, Michael McMahon of The Susquehanna Industrial Tool and Die Company, noted photographer Ted Baron and Pat, James Longo of the Primitive Sound System (and others, including a cat who takes the Chinatown bus in from Boston!)–will select items from their personal respective collections that they have deemed to have high interest and noteworthy value, and they shall share them with all comers. The BIG TEN INCH has featured jump blues, doo wop, hillbilly, novelty, rock’n’roll, R&B, blues, be-bop and swing records spinning at 78 RPM.
This event is hosted by Phast Phreddie the Boogaloo Omnibus, who will drag out some of his mambo 78s for the occasion. Action for this starts at 5:00pm and swings to 10:00pm and it will take place at The Bell House [149 7th Street (between Second and Third Avenues), Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY, between the Smith & 9th Street and Fourth Avenue stops on the F & G Trains; near the 9th Street stop on the R Train.]
Admission is free.
Check out this YouTube video and description below:
These are excerpts of the early jazz art movie : Black And Tan Fantasy
It shows the band in a setting very close to what the band did in the famous cotton club, backing dancers, singers and other acts.
Black and Tan Fantasy is one of the first pieces Ellington recorded in what is now called jungle style. Originally in 1927 it was a kind of solo piece for trumpeter Bubber Miley. There also exists a lovely version (even 2 takes) where Jabbo Smith substitutes for Miley, also 1927.
When the time was ready in 1929 to make a movie recording, Miley had already left the Ellington band. What makes this movie very interesting is that Miley’s follow up is not Cootie Williams who normally plays the solos, but instead it is Arthur Whetsol. Cootie was already in the band, but self declared in an interview that at first he did laugh about the growl/plunger solos and only after a while started studying it seriously.
Arthur Whetsol was more known for his lyrical solo work, a famous example is the haunting beautiful tone on “Creole Rhapsody”. Another striking lyrical solo by Whetsol can be heard on “Black Beauty”, also in this movie. Also note that Whetsol plays the muted solo on “Black and Tan” with a harmon mute, usually it is done with a plunger by others.
Also an interesting note is that the alto saxophone solo, that used to be played by Otto Hardwicke, is not played by his follow up Johnny Hodges, but instead by Harry Carney, more famous for his baritone sax contributions.
Tricky Sam Nanton plays his usual plunger solo, which is pure magic!
Duke Ellington – piano, composer
Fred Guy – banjo
Wellman Braud – double bass
Sonny Greer – drums
Arthur Whetsol, Cootie Williams, Freddy Jenkins – trumpets
Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton – trombone, Juan Tizol – valve trombone
Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Barney Bigard – reeds
Freddie Washington – dancer
A complete Widerange system with three TA4151, two 597A Bostwick tweeters and two 15A horns with 555 drivers on a large(!) W.E. baffle. The baffle is probably 11′ x 8′ for a scale reference.
Manufactured by Western Electric beginning in 1928. Originally used as a full range speaker system utilizing the 555W compression driver covering 100hz-5500hz. Later, the 597A tweeter and Western Electric TA4151 13.5″ woofers were added to make the “Widerange” system. This covered roughly 60hz to 12khz+/-. The 15A is 14′ long and has a mouth of roughly 56″ x 57″. The cut off frequency is 57hz. Sensitivity is 111db and efficiency is around 25%. The first film to use th W.E. 15A or the concurrent horns 12A and 13A was Don Juan starring John Barrymore.
The Beacon Theater is renovated to its full 1929 glory…. almost full 1929 glory. Somehow I doubt they reinstalled the Western Electric 15A’s. Must visit, it looks outstanding. 1000 workers and seven months. 
Now if you can wrap me in this…
