Jazz

I shared this on the 'Whats Spinning' thread but thought you guys might find it interesting:

I have been slowly reading the Thelonious Monk biography (its a brick!!) and interestingly read a section last night about the significance of the Palo Alto show. Crazy to think that it was mentioned in this book (first released in 2009) and 11 years later tapes were found and they released it.

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It's even more complicated because Craft subcontracted Second City Prints to handle the distribution, so Second City may be on the hook with Craft if 500 disappear. The CS supervisor at Second City has been updating me by phone. It's confirmed that there's a whole pallet of missing Lateef LPs, and that's not the only missing pallet of LPs (!), but they're prioritizing this one because of the small batch (and expensive) nature of the pressing. USPS escalated the claim to an Operations Specialist who has a call scheduled with the head of Second City Prints tomorrow. Fingers crossed...

Eagerly awaiting your updates!
 
As a Canadian, I can only comment on my experience getting packages coming to Canada through USPS. Without a doubt, service time was declining well before Covid, but Louis DeJoy cuts made it worse. However, I do appreciate that USPS in its present form is unsustainable without a significant and ever increasing annual taxpayer donation, while USPS has a mandate to be self-sustaining.

At the end of the day, it's gotta come somewhere - government funding endless losses (which every American pays for inevitably), modernization and rationalization (which DeJoy, despite being a Trump guy, started) as well as service cuts.

Perhaps it is time for Americans to wake up on USPS. Perhaps 3 or 4 days delivery isn't the worst thing instead of taxpayers funding one to two day. And do you really need Saturday delivery? For what?

Canada did away with Saturday delivery in the 1960's. No other country I know of, of significance, still does Saturday delivery. Just eliminating that would probably go most of the way to resolving USPS's problems.
Yeah... they’ve recently expanded to Sunday deliveries.
 
All I have to say is shout-out to Sheila who delivers my mail for USPS. She's always friendly and treats me like family. She carefully puts any packages inside my screen door out of view and knocks on my window to let me know that there's something there for me. With Fedex or UPS, it's just random different people showing up and throwing my packages like they clearly don't give a shit. Being on a first-name basis with your postal worker is one of those luxuries that I'd like to hold onto as long as possible.
 
All I have to say is shout-out to Sheila who delivers my mail for USPS. She's always friendly and treats me like family. She carefully puts any packages inside my screen door out of view and knocks on my window to let me know that there's something there for me. With Fedex or UPS, it's just random different people showing up and throwing my packages like they clearly don't give a shit. Being on a first-name basis with your postal worker is one of those luxuries that I'd like to hold onto as long as possible.

Hell, with UPS there's only a 50% chance I receive my package at all!
 
Hell, with UPS there's only a 50% chance I receive my package at all!
Yeah and their process for asking them to hold your mail is both expensive and convoluted (and, in my experience, they don't follow your directions anyway)...and you have to go through that process for each individual package that's delivered. It's such a pain to deal with UPS if you ever want to take a vacation or something because you have to have the alerts set up on your account and then watch your e-mail for notifications (which you typically only receive about 24 hrs before the scheduled delivery). You can pay $5 to pick a different delivery date, but you can only push it back like 2 weeks or so. You can pay $5 to have it delivered to a different address. Sometimes you do this online, and then when you call them, they tell you that they can't deliver to that address or on that date that you specified and then you have to ask for a refund for the fees you've already paid. Whereas with USPS, you can, for FREE, place a hold on all mail deliveries during the specified timeframe and then either pick up your accumulated mail or have it all delivered in bulk when you return.

With Fedex, my issue is that they send me e-mails saying they delivered things that haven't been delivered, and when you call them to report it, they just argue with you..and then somehow the package shows up a day or two later haha.
 
Yeah and their process for asking them to hold your mail is both expensive and convoluted (and, in my experience, they don't follow your directions anyway)...and you have to go through that process for each individual package that's delivered. It's such a pain to deal with UPS if you ever want to take a vacation or something because you have to have the alerts set up on your account and then watch your e-mail for notifications (which you typically only receive about 24 hrs before the scheduled delivery). You can pay $5 to pick a different delivery date, but you can only push it back like 2 weeks or so. You can pay $5 to have it delivered to a different address. Sometimes you do this online, and then when you call them, they tell you that they can't deliver to that address or on that date that you specified and then you have to ask for a refund for the fees you've already paid. Whereas with USPS, you can, for FREE, place a hold on all mail deliveries during the specified timeframe and then either pick up your accumulated mail or have it all delivered in bulk when you return.

With Fedex, my issue is that they send me e-mails saying they delivered things that haven't been delivered, and when you call them to report it, they just argue with you..and then somehow the package shows up a day or two later haha.

Ugh!

I've been fortunate to have minimal interaction with FedEx, and have just worked at dealing with UPS as absolutely minimally as possible. Particularly if it's cross-border anything as they like the inflate their "brokerage fees" an absolutely absurd amount until your often spending double what the item originally cost in the first place. I've had them charge me a $10 fee on collecting $0.50 worth of tax that wasn't paid when the shipper sent a package my way - and, of course, they hold the package hostage until you've greased their palms with their extortion demands. If I| know a business uses UPS for shipping, I will find another business to buy from instead.

Canada Post may have their own issues at times, but I've got mad love for them. Especially my regular carrier, who is an absolute delight.

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Very sad to hear of the passing of Curtis Fuller. Seems like there are less and less legends still with us from the golden era of jazz.

It's sad, but 87 is a good age.

I was going to pick out a record & have a listen, but realised I don't have any Curtis Fuller albums as leader , any recommendations?

(good excuse to listen to Blue Train again)
 
It's sad, but 87 is good age.

I was going to pick out a record & have a listen, but realised I don't have any Curtis Fuller albums as leader , any recommendations?

(good excuse to listen to Blue Train again)
As lead I would recommend The Curtis Fuller Jazztet on Savoy. Fuller, Benny Golson, Lee Morgan, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Charlie Persip.....quite the line-up!
 
It's sad, but 87 is a good age.

I was going to pick out a record & have a listen, but realised I don't have any Curtis Fuller albums as leader , any recommendations?

(good excuse to listen to Blue Train again)
Blues-ette is also excellent. I think it is in need of a reissue though. Anyone have a recent copy? I need one.
 
Crickets yesterday. As soon as I hear more, I'll post an update.
Update this morning is kind of a non-update: (1) the case "got moved up to a higher person at USPS" (2) "USPS will be looking at our local hubs for the pallet" (3) Craft is fully aware and (3) The Windy City manager "is expecting another call in the next day or so" The email ends with "This should be resolved shortly and a new update coming!," so maybe that's a reason for optimism?
 
Update this morning is kind of a non-update: (1) the case "got moved up to a higher person at USPS" (2) "USPS will be looking at our local hubs for the pallet" (3) Craft is fully aware and (3) The Windy City manager "is expecting another call in the next day or so" The email ends with "This should be resolved shortly and a new update coming!," so maybe that's a reason for optimism?
So basically Craft, Second City Prints, and the USPS have no clue where the pallet of $50,000 worth of records is? Seems like there is a lot of back and forth, and no real answers.

I appreciate the update.
 
I’m thinking there was either a heist, or more likely, the pallet was deliberately lost and will soon be found to discourage using media Mail for luxury goods.

Either way.
 
I’m thinking there was either a heist, or more likely, the pallet was deliberately lost and will soon be found to discourage using media Mail for luxury goods.

Either way.
Only two possibilities here. First is that whoever transported them from Second City to the USPS stole them - a heist. Second is that the pallets got misdirected and are sitting somewhere.
 
Regarding the Craft One-Step Lateef, I talked to the USPS Office Manager in Fox Valley, IL (where these are all supposedly sitting, per Craft's Customer Service response). She had mentioned they had zero mail backup at the moment, and they did not have them. She had said that since the tracking number wasn't physically scanned into their system, she could not locate the package. She had also mentioned that she would check with other nearby hubs for the package. Basically it seems like Craft is full of shit and is trying to blame it on USPS delay.
 
Update this morning is kind of a non-update: (1) the case "got moved up to a higher person at USPS" (2) "USPS will be looking at our local hubs for the pallet" (3) Craft is fully aware and (3) The Windy City manager "is expecting another call in the next day or so" The email ends with "This should be resolved shortly and a new update coming!," so maybe that's a reason for optimism?
Quick update: Craft is sending Windy City an email to forward to "all customers who are affected while we give USPS time to investigate." This email should go out tomorrow at latest.

Just a guess but this wording kind of sounds like an apology email plus a credit?
 
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