text:
Q: Editing string with analyze-string in XSLT I am using the following function in php to load an xml doc into an xslt document, output xml, and replace document.xml in the word docx:
$xmlDocument = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDocument->load('xml/' . $xmlfile);

$xsltDocument = new DOMDocument();
$xsltDocument->load($xsltFile);

$xsltProcessor = new XSLTProcessor();
$xsltProcessor->importStylesheet($xsltDocument);

So I usually use this function in the XSLT file to pull an XML var:
<xsl:value-of select="PORT_REQUEST/WICIS/REMARKS" />

However, because XML vars are loaded directly into the XSLT document, I cannot use my friendly PHP reg exp's, and I am struggling greatly trying to figure out how to make this work. I just need to pull the XML var (Telephone # in 1112223333 format) and put it in 111-222-3333 format.
This is what i have:
            <xsl:analyze-string select="PORT_REQUEST/NUMBER_PORTABILITY/ADMINISTRATIVE/ATN"
                regex="(^.{3})|(.{4}$)|((?<=(^.{3}))(.*?)(?=(.{4}$)))">

                  <xsl:matching-substring>
                  <xsl:number value="regex-group(1)" format="001"/>
                  <xsl:number value="regex-group(2)" format="001"/>
                  <xsl:number value="regex-group(3)" format="0001"/>
                  </xsl:matching-substring>
                </xsl:analyze-string>

And it is not working, what I get instead of the re-formatted telephone number variable is an empty xml document, as whatever error I'm causing kills the entire thing.
Help

A: Are you sure you have access to XSLT2? By default PhP is likely to have XSLT1 unless you have hooked up saxon's XSLT2 engine somewhere. In which case xsl:analyze-string and replace() are not available, and you want something like
<xsl:for-each select="PORT_REQUEST/NUMBER_PORTABILITY/ADMINISTRATIVE/ATN">
<xsl:value-of select="substring(.,1,3)"/>
<xsl:text>-</xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="substring(.,4,3)"/>
<xsl:text>-</xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="substring(.,7)"/>
</xsl:for-each>

A: xsl:analyze-string is overkill for this situation. Instead, assuming you have XSLT 2.0, I would use a single regexp replace:
<xsl:value-of select="replace(PORT_REQUEST/WICIS/REMARKS,
             '(\d{3})(\d{3})(\d{4})', '$1-$2-$3')" />

This parses any 10-digit number into the 3-3-4 blocks, and outputs them with hyphens between them.
However as @David Carlisle pointed out, XSLT 2.0 is not normally available with PHP. So neither xsl:analyze-string nor replace() is available. See his answer.


I'm really not a technical person. I struggle even to understand the concept of cookies. It took me half of yesterday afternoon and the entire evening to get it from looking like a dreadful mess to a slightly less dreadful mess, and it's still not great.
The TV now has no digital signal, but that's not because of the surplus cables. Coincidentally I had a bizarre dream in the early hours of the morning about a fortnight ago, in which I met the Twelfth Doctor and we had to set up a projector and DVD player so we could show an REM tour film to an old friend and a bunch of her workmates. This proved to be very difficult, although we managed it after a couple of hours, during which they all had a nap. Your guess is as good as mine.
I may leave the cabling to the Doctor. Or MacGyver. Or, in the real world, my other half, who is an easy match for both.


text:
« December 2019 | Main | February 2020 »
Jimmy Heath (1926-2020)
Jimmy Heath, a tenor saxophonist with exceptional gifts as a composer, arranger and player who spent critical years of the 1950s in prison for the sale of drugs but rebuilt his career in the 1960s and beyond, died on January 19. He was 93. [Photo above of Jimmy Heath by Francis Wolff (c) Mosaic Images]
Nicknamed "Little Bird" for his Parker-like fluidity when he played alto saxophone in the late 1940s, Jimmy didn't start recording leadership albums until 1959, when producer Orrin Keepnews signed him to Riverside Records. In 1975, he formed the Heath Brothers, with drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath and bassist Percy Heath, who played in the Modern Jazz Quartet. [Photo above of Jimmy Heath and producer Orrin Keepnews]
Jimmy was among the jazz giants who grew up in Philadelphia, a group that included John Coltrane, Benny Golson, McCoy Tyner, Lee Morgan, Philly Joe Jones, Reggie Workman and Shirley Scott. But unlike these musicians, Jimmy was pulled off the scene between 1954 and '59—a critical five-year period in jazz history when jazz flourished on 12-inch albums. Jimmy's big band compositions and arrangements on recordings are especially notable for their swing and sophisticated construction. [Photo above at New York's WOR Studios in 1953, from left, Miles Davis, Kenny Drew, Art Blakey and Jimmy Heath; courtesy of Temple University Press / Jimmy Heath collection]
In tribute to Jimmy, here's my two-part 2009 interview combined into a single post:
Tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath is best known as the timeless anchor of the famed Heath Brothers band. When Jimmy's brother and bassist Percy died in 2005, Jimmy and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath continued on. Their most recent album, Endurance (2009), is a perfect example of how greatness only improves with age. On the CD of originals and standards, Jimmy exhibits a firm, smoky sound while Tootie's touch remains shrewd and motivating.
Jimmy's career began in the mid-1940s, and he played with virtually every modern jazz trumpeter, including Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, Art Farmer and Freddie Hubbard. In prison, Jimmy continued to compose and play, and upon release he was determined to succeed and flourish.
JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Jimmy Heath: In Philadelphia. There were four of us—my sister, Percy, Tootie and me. My father was an auto mechanic, but for a period we were on welfare. It was the Depression.
JW: Why did you initially choose the alto sax?
JH: I had heard Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter, and later Jimmy Dorsey. The alto just appealed to me. I began playing in high school, in the marching band, for football games. I played the fight songs of all the colleges I couldn't attend economically or racially, like On Wisconsin!, Notre Dame Victory March and so on. I also had a couple of private teachers and learned from mentors and the band director down in North Carolina.
JW: You mean Philadelphia, no?
JH: No, Wilmington, N.C. My older brother Percy and me used to go down there to live with my grandparents and go to high school there. Because of the economic problems my father had in Philadelphia. My grandmother and grandfather ran a grocery store that supplied all the teachers who taught at the black high school. They were like the neighborhood store where teachers would get things on credit. Percy and I would stay with my grandparents during the school year and then go back to Philadelphia in the summer.
JW: Could you read music at that time?
JH: I began to learn. I learned in high school. My private teacher was in Philadelphia, so I'd study more intensively when I'd return home in the summer.
JW: Did learning to read music come easy?
JH: No, no, no. It took time. Nothing that's good is ever easy [laughs]. After graduating from high school in 1943, I put together a band in Philadelphia. We played locally and out of town once in a while. We played swing and dance music. Bebop was just beginning. I didn't hear Charlie Parker and Dizzy until 1945.
JW: When did you lead your first serious band?
JH: In 1947. I had a couple of well-known guys in there. I had trumpeters Johnny Coles and Bill Massey, who knew John Coltrane and introduced me to him. And I had tenor saxophonist Benny Golson and bassist Nelson Boyd. Percy couldn't play the bass that well yet. He had just gotten out of the service. Percy was drafted in 1944 and became a Tuskegee Airman, a second lieutenant, a pilot. We played a lot of cheap little gigs in bars and at dances occasionally. That was a way to survive. Specs Wright was our drummer. Looking back, it was almost like a feeder band into Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra. Nelson, Coltrane, Golson, Specs and myself—we all eventually went with Dizzy's band.
JW: Your earliest recordings were with Howard McGhee in 1948.
JH: McGhee [pictured] was a very nice guy. He was the first one to get me on the road as a professional musician, before I got with Dizzy in 1949. By the time I was with Howard, I was copying Charlie Parker and sounded so much like him that they called me "Little Bird."
JW: Did you like being called Little Bird?
JH: I felt great about it at the time because he was the man. Later I wanted to get my own reputation going, which is still very difficult. When you're an alto player and you come from the Charlie Parker school of playing, it's hard to get away from it regardless of what instrument you change to. I changed to tenor, but I'm still playing some Charlie Parker in there.
JW: Was McGhee frustrated as a trumpeter in the shadows of Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis?
JH: Not at all. Howard and Fats lived together and made records together in late 1948. The thing is, we have a system in this country that promotes No. 1. "He's No. 1." "You're No. 1." "We're No. 1." When the culture rewards No. 1, it means everyone else is nothing. It's corny the way they rate things. Because No. 3 could come up and kick your butt the next day [laughs]. Everybody has something to offer. Howard McGhee made a living out of music. He just tried to play and enjoy himself as a human being. That's what we do. If musicians worried about the polls, we'd go nuts. Everyone can't be No. 1.
JW: You and your brother Percy went with McGhee to Paris in May 1948.
JH: Howard was one of my heroes. We actually flew to Paris.
JW: Was flying scary?
JH: Sure was. First time? Seventeen hours to get there? In May 1948? On a jet prop—not a jet. Jets weren't there yet. It was called a Constellation. We had to stop in Newfoundland to refuel and stop again at Shannon Airport in Ireland for more fuel before going on to Orly Airport in Paris. I was scared to death with the fire coming out of the back of the jet engines. Percy was telling me, "Be cool, James, it's alright" He had been a pilot, so he knew what was going on. He calmed me down.
JW: How long were you in Paris with McGhee?
JH: Only a week. It was the first jazz festival. I don't understand how documentation says that the one with Miles [Davis] was the first. This was a year before that, in May 1948. While we were there, we were big time. We were accepted. However, the headliner was Le Grand Coleman Hawkins. But the guy who got over best with the people was Erroll Garner, with bassist Slam Stewart and guitarist John Collins. Erroll took the French by storm.
JW: How did the Paris experience change you?
JH: Even for that short period of time, we were accepted as artists, and it felt great to be respected that way. We weren't getting that kind of respect here. You know, that's all artists need, frankly.
JW: You joined Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra in 1949. How were you hired?
JH: There was another fellow in my band named James Foreman. He was my piano player. He got with Dizzy's band also. Me and Percy used to follow Dizzy's band, wherever they played. We would stand in front of the band with our artist ties and berets, imitating Dizzy's guys. Dizzy kept saying, "Hey, there's the Heath brothers from Philly." Eventually, Dizzy and Gil Fuller, the band's arranger, decided to hire us. Coltrane and I got in within a month of each other. Both of us played alto because Dizzy's two alto saxophonists had left. Coltrane had played alto in the Navy band.
JW: Did it feel good getting hired by Gillespie?
JH: Oh man, that was it. That was the top of the heap. Dizzy had the bebop, the new music, and his band was incredible musically. That was the top. I felt I had made it. Dizzy loved my playing. He said in his book To Be or Not to Bop that this was the best reed section he'd had. It was me, Coltrane, Jesse Powell, Paul Gonsalves and Al Gibson. [Pictured at center, from left: John Coltrane, Jimmy Heath and Paul Gonsalves in Dizzy Gillespie's band; click to enlarge]
JW: What did Gillespie teach you musically?
JH: He'd say, "Hey, come here. Let me show you something on the piano." The first time I had him at my home in Philadelphia, he showed me things on our piano. He said, "If you want to be an arranger and composer, you have to learn this keyboard." He showed me harmonies that I still use. I can't explain it for your interview but I can play it [laughs]. Very modern chord voicings on the piano. He'd voice chords differently than anyone else. He was the first to show me the 9th next to the 10th, and how to create note clusters and harmonic devices that I still use today.
JW: What made Dizzy special?
JH: Dizzy was a teacher all the time. Every day he was showing you something new rhythmically or harmonically on the piano. Dizzy was the most accessible genius I have ever met. Dizzy would stop to talk to the garbage man, kids, everybody. He was not a guy who had an entourage like some people. He was an ordinary human being with a world of talent. And he would give his talent to others. He would show you a lot of things. We all learned from Dizzy, and those who passed through Dizzy's bands all went on to become the giants of the music.
JW: When you recorded with Miles Davis in 1953, you switched to tenor saxophone. Why?
JH: I had switched to tenor a little earlier. I did that to get my own thing. I wanted to be Jimmy Heath, not Bird [Charlie Parker]. The tenor was the way to get an identity. It also was an economic move. The tenor was the fourth instrument hired around Philadelphia after a rhythm section. They wouldn't hire no alto in the early 1950s. They wouldn't hire a trumpet either. And [laughing] they sure wouldn't hire no trombone. If it wasn't the guitar, it was a tenor as the fourth instrument. When I switched, work picked up for gigs.
JW: What was Miles Davis like back then?
JH: Miles said the only reason he didn't play like Dizzy is because he couldn't. Miles wanted to play like Dizzy, but he found his own niche.
JW: What was that niche?
JH: Ballads. Miles loved Freddie Webster, who had played with Jimmie Lunceford. Freddie was a guy with a beautiful sound. Miles knew him. Freddie didn't make but a few recordings in the 1940s, and all were historic for trumpet players. Freddie got a sound curve that Miles wanted to get. Nobody wants to be just like someone else. But they're inspired by their predecessors, and they learn what they did. Then they come up in a matter of time with their own sound. Nobody can play sax like Coltrane, Sonny Rollins or Hank Mobley. But eventually you get your own sound. Clifford Brown loved Fats Navarro, and Lee Morgan loved Clifford Brown. But each had his own thing. It's a continuum. Miles was very talented in organizing groups and stylistically moving forward.
JW: Did you enjoy listening to Davis when you played with him?
JH: Oh yeah. But when I was with him, he was missing notes and stuff, but you know, we all had to crawl before we could walk.
JW: Missing notes or leaving notes out?
JH: No, it actually was missing notes. Miles played with such a good feeling that no one cared about the missing notes. He showed that it's about the feeling, not about perfection.
JW: Is it hard not to get caught up on perfection?
JH: You have to learn to let things go. When you practice and try to get everything in there perfectly, you wind up kind of stiff.
JW: You played baritone sax with J.J. Johnson and Clifford Brown in 1953, on Turnpike and Sketch One.
JH: [Laughs] I played a couple of tracks on baritone. They were John Lewis' compositions, and he asked me to do that.
JW: What did you think?
JH: Eh [pause, followed by laughter]. I just got the horn and tried it, you know.
JW: What did you think of the baritone? Too big?
JH: Oh yeah. I didn't even want to carry it around. I could just about carry this tenor [laughs]. I had already played with Clifford [pictured] around Philly before this record date and before he went with Max and made his rep. He always was a Fats Navarro follower, and I had heard Fats. But you knew immediately Clifford was exceptional.
JW: What made Brown exceptional?
JH: His facility. And his mind. And his ideas, and his sound.
JW: You also recorded with Kenny Dorham in late 1953.
JH: Kenny was a romantic composer of the bebop generation. He and Tadd Dameron wrote the most beautiful melodies. Most people aren't aware that Kenny was a guy who could play the tenor sax, piano and the trumpet—and compose and sing.
JW: Why isn't Dorham better known and celebrated?
JH: Again, it gets back to the system of No. 1. Fats didn't get the same as Miles. If you're not No. 1, people don't think there's much value, and you're forgotten. It's a crazy world.
JW: Dorham was kind of low-key, yes?
JH: No. What do you mean, "low key?"
JW: Reserved?
JH: Not really. Miles was no gregarious guy, either. Kenny Dorham was great. He was one of my favorite guys to play with. I liked his whole musical knowledge. He was a person I would want to be considered. He was a person who could write, play, orchestrate and do all of the phases of music.
JW: You were shaped by trumpet players, weren't you?
JH: Nooo. It's just that the trumpet and tenor sax was the instrumental combination of the period. I also played with Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Blue Mitchell, Art Farmer and so many others.
JW: When you practice, what do you do?
JH: I practice [laughs]. As a creative musician, when you practice, you are trying to find your own way of improvising and your own sound. You're not reading anything. To be able to improvise is another kind of technique that needs a lot of work. Sometimes you take standards and improvise on them. Or you take sequences and work on them. You want to be able to play all over the instrument. You want to play everything you know in every key so that you're fluent and articulate in what you're doing when you stand up and create music on the spot. Improvisation is a life's work.
JW: How does a musician's sound change over time?
JH: Well, physical problems emerge sometimes due to your teeth or body, sometimes for the worse mostly. But if you keep practicing, you can overcome the aging issues.
JW: How long will you practice today?
JH: An hour. Not as long as Trane but I don't play as much stuff [laughs].
JW: Is there a jazz artist you wished you had played with?
JH: Yeah, Duke Ellington. We met when [tenor saxophonist] Paul Gonsalves was in the band. But I never had the opportunity.
JW: Your arrest for drug possession in 1954 must have been horrible.
JH: Oh yeah, it was. But you try to adjust to prison life and try to create as much as you can there. While I was there, I was still writing tunes. I wrote Picture of Heath and For Miles and Miles in prison. I got them out to Chet Baker by passing them to my brother Tootie. He gave them to Jimmy Bond, who was Chet's bass player on gigs at the time. Jimmy gave them to Chet, and Chet and Art Pepper made an album [Playboys] that included mostly my songs.
JW: Was your sentence unfair?
JH: Sure there's an unfairness to it. There's an unfairness when you're an addict and you sell something to somebody to support your habit. You're not trying to get rich as a dope pusher. You're an addict peddler. You're selling drugs so you can get more. There should be a difference in that when it came to a sentence. But they didn't care if you were creative or not. A lot of people had longer sentences than I did. I was in prison for 4 1/2 years. I think Gene Ammons and Frank Morgan were in for longer.
JW: Do you look back and resent that?
JH: What can you do? I can't go back and change it. I had to restart my career, like the computer. When I came home, I had to restart. It was hard trying to catch up. You can't catch up to the 4 1/2 years that are gone. Just missed. But you have to try.
Bonus 1: Bret Primack recently filmed Jimmy Heath for a documentary he produced called Passing the Torch. Here's the documenary...
Bonus 2: WKCR-FM in New York will be presenting special programming featuring the jazz of Jimmy Heath today, Monday, from noon to 3 p.m. (EST), tonight from 6 to 9 p.m. (EST), and again tomorrow morning (Tuesday) from 5 to 9 a.m. (EST). Listen from anywhere in the world on your phone or computer by going here.
Tags: Jimmy Heath
Tobias, Hank and Jack
In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed author Tobias Wolff for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Tobias talked about his difficult childhood and the inspiration for his memoir, This Boy's Life, which was made into a 1993 movie. In short, Tobias traveled around the country with his mother, who left a cheating husband in Connecticut, only to wind up with a boyfriend in Florida who abused her, escaping the boyfriend on a cross-country trip to Oregon but winding up marrying a man who abused her and running away from him back across the country to Washington, D.C. [Photo of Tobias Wolff at his home in Stanford, Calif., by Winni Wintermeyer for The Wall Street Journal]
Here's the movie trailer...
And here's Tobias...
Hank Mobley. Following my post on Hank Mobley last week, I received the following from Doug Benson [Photo above of Hank Mobley by Francis Wolff (c) Mosaic Images]...
Marc, Third Street Jazz in Philadelphia was a record store and meeting place for fans and musicians in the 1970s & '80's. Each Friday afternoon, I'd stop by and check out the latest batch of cut-outs and promotional copies, usually on sale for $1.99 or $2.99 per copy. Once, while flipping through the alphabetical regular priced items, I looked to my right and noticed Hank Mobley flipping through the section on the tenor saxophonist Ike Quebec.
I said: "Hank Mobley..." Hank responded with "Ike taught me so much about the saxophone and the business of jazz." I asked Hank which was his favorite Blue Note album. He replied: Reach Out!, which was already out of print. I told him I could send him a cassette copy if he would provide his mailing address, which he did.
As we were leaving the store together, I offered to buy him a drink at the nearest bar. He said OK and off we went walking west on Market Street toward the In & Out bar south of Market & 8th Streets. In the bar, Hank had two drinks and was very conversational with everyone around him. I paid the tab and headed home with a promise to send him a cassette copy of Reach Out!
Maxine Sullivan and the Bard. Following my post on the 1971 album, Sullivan, Shakespeare, Hyman, I received the following from Joe Lang...
Marc, I also love this album. The first time I saw Maxine in person was at one of Jack Tafoya's Friday noon concerts in New York at La Martinique on 57th Street. After, I got a chance to speak with her, telling her how much I dug her Close As Pages in a Book album. She smiled and told me that I would also like her next one—an album of songs with a Shakespearean twist. I bought it the day it was released and loved it immediately.
The Monmouth-Evergreen label was a special one that fortunately was purchased by George Buck's Jazzology group of labels. Bill Borden did a wonderful job of making available much music that had long been unavailable, like the Lee Wiley Songbook albums and a lot of the Al Bowlly/Ray Noble sides, as well as much new material by the likes of Eddie Hazel, Bucky Pizzarelli and Ronny Whyte. There is a complete list of them on the Discogs.com site.
Jack Sheldon farewell. Following my post on the late Jack Sheldon, I received the following from JoAnn Kenton, Stan Kenton's wife in the late 1960s...
Hi Marc, the tribute to Jack Sheldon was a sold-out evening. I don't know the capacity at Catalina's in Los Angeles, but I would guess at least 200 people were there. The event was emceed by radio personality and columnist Doug McIntyre and ran about three hours. It opened with Dave Tull singing Yo Mama, accompanied by Tom Kubis and his big band. The next names are in order of their appearance:
Trumpeter Chuck Findley
Trumpeter Wayne Bergeron
Singer Calabria Foti
Trombonist Bob McChesney
Trumpeter Ron Stout
Gordon Goodwin, leader of the Big Phat Band
Singer Tierney Sutton (my favorite vocalist)
Singer Patrick Tuzzolino
Bassist Chuck Berghofer
Trombonist Dick Nash
Songwriter Alan Bergman, who sang Nice and Easy and Where Do You Start? (Marilyn was not there.)
Melissa Manchester
Bassist Trey Henry
Drummer Ray Brinker
Keyboardist Mitch Forman
Pianist Christian Jacob
And Bill Holman sat quietly at the bar so was only announced. Tierney Sutton closed the show with songs from My Fair Lady and, finally, I'll Be Seeing You. A magnificent farewell to a man who was genuinely loved. Love your work!
Linda Ronstadt. Last week, Mike Cobb, sent along the following...
Hello Marc, I read your interesting article on Linda Ronstadt in The Wall Street Journal last year and thought you might enjoy reading a recent article in her hometown newspaper, The Arizona Daily Star, by columnist David Leighton about Linda's grandparents being honored with two street names on the former ranch property where Linda grew up in Tucson, Arizona. This came out about a week after the CNN documentary. Go here.
What the heck. From the West Coast list above, let's dig a pair of aces. Here's Texting and Driving by Dave Tull with the Ron Jones Influence Orchestra...
And here's the marvelous Calabria Foti singing Man With a Horn...
Oddball album cover of the week.
Don't be too shocked. Given that the label is incorrectly spelled on top (Capital v. Capitol), clearly this is a jape. The strange thing is it wouldn't be too far-fetched back then or now, with vaping.
Billy Collins on Hank Mobley
My favorite poet digs Hank Mobley. Billy Collins, the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and author of 16 books, was so moved by the tenor saxophonist's sound late last year that he wrote a poem about him. Billy has been a jazz fan since childhood (go here), and I've featured his poems on Sonny Rollins here and Roland Kirk here. [Photo above of Billy Collins by Bill Hayes, courtesy of Penguin Random House]
But first, if you're unfamiliar with Billy, here's a video of him delivering a talk last year in Martha's Vineyard, Mass. I must warn you, poets aren't supposed to be this funny...
And now, here's Billy's Hank Mobley poem that he kindly sent along on Wednesday after my Mobley post...
Listening to Hank Mobley around 11 O'Clock
After a Long Fun Boozy Dinner, the Four of Us,
at Captain Pig's, Our Favorite Restaurant in Town
I'm lying down now, solo on a couch,
imagining along with the music
that if I were, say, 15 or 16 tonight
and in possession of a fresh can
of pink or orange spray paint,
I would climb the 4th Street overpass
and write in big letters
HANK MOBLEY SWINGS
for all to see on their morning drive to work.
But having sailed some time ago
into the quiet cardigan harbor of my life
out of earshot of the siren songs
that lure men onto reefs of foolishness
not to mention the bridges of bravado,
it's enough to let the soap bubble
of that Hank Mobley thought drift
slowly across the living room and burst
with no warning, much to the amazement of the cat.
—(c) Billy Collins, 2019
Tags: Billy Collins, Hank Mobley
Hoagy Sings Carmichael
Hoagy Sings Carmichael has been called many things. I used to refer to the album as a recording by an aging songwriter singing his own songs in the shower. Others have likened Carmichael's voice to something on a fence you throw shoes at to get it to stop. Or a saloon-song album sung by swinging doors that need oiling. All funny and unfair. Carmichael's voice on the album may sound rusty and off-kilter, but he's still the guy who wrote all the music and, in many cases, the words.
Songs like Georgia on My Mind, Skylark and Baltimore Oriole remain bucolic snapshots of America between the wars, when coveralls, dirt and integrity were part of the landscape, before the place was handed off to advertisers and developers who fabricated the American Dream and suburbia. Carmichael's voice and songbook today is a journey back in time, like the sound of horse hoofs or the squeak of a wooden floor.
Hoagy Sings Carmichael was the brainchild of Dick Bock, who produced the music for his Pacific Jazz Records label. Recorded over three sessions in September 1956, the music was arranged and conducted by Johnny Mandel, who wisely colored Carmichael's vocals with just enough jazz to give it a contemporary feel without disturbing the nostalgia or mood. [Photo above of Johnny Mandel in 1953]
The band on the first session on September 10 featured Carmichael (vcl); Harry "Sweets" Edison and Conrad Gozzo (tp); Jimmy Zito (b-tp); Harry Klee and Art Pepper (as); Mort Friedman (ts); Marty Berman (bar); Jimmy Rowles (p); Al Hendrickson (g); Joe Mondragon (b) and Irv Cottler (d). The songs on this session were Baltimore Oriole, New Orleans and Georgia on My Mind. [Photo above of Jimmy Rowles]
The next day, bassist Ralph Pena replaced Joe Mondragon, and Carmichael plus ensemble recorded Memphis in June, Two Sleepy People and Lazy River.
On September 13, Don Fagerquist and Ray Linn (tp), Joe Mondragon (b) and Nick Fatool (d) were in and Harry "Sweets" Edison, Conrad Gozzo, Ralph Pena, Irv Cottler and Marvin Ash were out. The songs recorded were Winter Moon, Skylark, Rockin' Chair and Ballad in Blue. [Photo above of Don Fagerquist]
Most exceptional on this album is Art Pepper soloing throughout on alto saxophone. His yearning, aching sound is a perfect match for Carmichael's rye-soaked rocking-chair voice. Jimmy Rowles's piano bleeding through the arrangements also is perfect. Credit is due Johnny Mandel, whose sensitivity and good taste appear on every track. After all these years, the album's music and Hoagy's voice is still what late night sounds like just as you're heading home. [Photo above of Art Pepper by Cecil Charles/CTSImages].
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Hoagy Sings Carmichael here.
The album also can be found at Spotify.
JazzWax clips: Here's Winter Moon, with Art Pepper on alto saxophone solo...
And here's Skylark. Dig Rowles's piano tinkling in the background like a light rain...
A special thanks to Dennis Galloway.
Tags: Art Pepper, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy Rowles, Johnny Mandel
Hank Mobley: Blue Note, 1963-70
Between 1963 and 1970, tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley recorded 12 albums' worth of hard bop. Seven were released by Blue Note during this period, while the rest wound up sidelined in the vaults. When discovered in the CD era by producer Michael Cuscuna, the lost Mobley tracks were assembled and released as five additional albums. [Photo above of Hank Mobley by Francis Wolff (c) Mosaic Images]
Now, Mosaic Records (with Michael producing) has released The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions, 1963-70, an eight-CD box with a lush booklet and poignant notes by jazz writer and author Bob Blumenthal. In many respects, this 75-track set is the other shoe many Mobley fans have been waiting to drop.
In 1998, Mosaic released The Complete Blue Note Hank Mobley Fifties Sessions. That six-CD set is now out of print and selling online for around $200. Though all of the Mobley albums on the new box have been released as individual CDs, several have been hard to find or were in need of fresh mastering.
In giving the albums between 1963 and '70 a new listen, I think it's fair to say that Mobley's Blue Note recordings during this period were nearly on par with the Horace Silver Quintet for spunk and compositional excellence. His writing was consistently sharp and distinct, and his arrangements were simultaneously optimistic and mournful in tone—a hip duality of sighing moods and flavors.
Which begs the question: why did Mosaic choose 1963 as the starting point for the artist's second phase rather than pick up in 1960, where the last box left off? Left behind were Soul Station, Roll Call, Workout and Another Workout. Michael says Mosaic skipped them for several reasons: the already large boxed set would have required another two CDs, the albums are still in print and most people already have them in their collections.
From a narrative and stylistic standpoint, 1963 is a valid demarcation. The year was a comeback of sorts for Mobley. In 1961, he was hired to replace John Coltrane in Miles Davis's quintet. But while the idea seemed to be brilliant, it wasn't. Mobley and Davis didn't click, and Mobley was ruthlessly criticized by Davis. So Mobley left the group in 1962. When he returned to the recording studio in '63 as a leader, his attack was more forceful and dynamic, leaving one to wonder whether his brief period with Davis had altered his feel.
If there is a story to be told here over these seven years, it's about a vibrant tenor saxophonist finding his way as the music business began to close in like a vise. On one side was John Coltrane's muscular flamboyance. On the other was soul-jazz and Latin-soul rising in popularity. Standing out wasn't easy. Many other tenor saxophonists ran aground, either joining the Coltrane camp, playing in Las Vegas and on cruises, quitting the business to teach, or continuing to record exhausted material as if the calendar still read 1959.
What's remarkable about Mobley during these seven years is that he remained unique. His original compositions were, for the most part, shrewd and sophisticated. Listen to the ballads My Sin from The Turnaround! and No More Goodbyes from Reach Out! He also advanced hard bop with fresh energy and elan. Dig Pat 'n Chat (from The Turnaround!) and Third Time Around (on A Caddy for Daddy).
Even the bossa-boogaloo bag Blue Note became famous for pioneering during these years were crafty and complex in Mobley's hands, such as The Turnaround!'s title track and The Dip from Dippin', to name just two. On A Caddy for Daddy, Mobley applied a new cool that was likely influenced by Wayne Shorter. You can hear this on songs such as Ace Deuce Trey and An Aperitif.
By his last album—The Flip, recorded in 1969 and released a year later—Mobley had grown noticeably weary. Many of the tracks featured dull phrases or were pocked by repetitive soul riffs. Lung problems forced Mobley to retire from playing in the mid-1970s. He did perform again in New York in late 1985 and early '86 but died of pneumonia in May of that year.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions, 1963-70 (Mosaic) here.
The set's sound is rich and vivid. The box's material was mastered from high-resolution files of the original analog masters by Malcolm Addey, using 24-bit technology.
JazzWax tracks: Here's the complete Dippin' album...
And here's the complete Turnaround!...
Tags: Hank Mobley
Carl Saunders: New Standards
Carl Saunders is one of jazz's best-kept secrets, and he kind of likes it that way. Born in 1942, Saunders is a trumpeter, composer and educator of the highest order who has worked with a long list of jazz giants, from Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald to Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson. Many factors set Saunders apart, including his skills as a player-composer, his warm tone and his exquisite taste. [Photo above of Carl Saunders]
Even more significant is his vast catalog of original compositions that are built to stand the test of time. Fortunately, the brilliant minds at Summit Records decided to release four albums dedicated to his music, featuring different leading jazz musicians. Summit was founded in 1988 by trumpeter David Hickman and trombonist Ralph Sauer, and the Saunders series began in 2013.
Born in Indianapolis, Saunders fell in love with the sound of Don Fagerquist's trumpet and the Dave Pell Octet. He began playing trumpet in the seventh grade and became a high-school star without taking lessons. After graduation, he joined Stan Kenton's band. His first recording with Kenton's orchestra was Horns of Plenty Vol. 1 (Tantara) in 1961, in the mellophonium section. For a more robust bio, visit Saunders's site here.
Much of Saunders's career in the 1960s and beyond has been spent in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. All of his recordings are worth owning. Start with Phil Urso & Carl Saunders Salute Chet Baker and Phil Woods & Carl Saunders Play Henry Mancini.
Now, for the Summit series. Each of the four albums features New Jazz Standards in the title. While that claim may seem brash, once you hear Saunders's works, you'll realize that "new standards" is hardly an overstatement. All of Saunders's songs are richly melodic and engaging in their construction. At the heart of each piece is a singable melody that builds neatly and tells a story.
The New Jazz Standards series features albums by flutist Sam Most (2013), trombonist Scott Whitfield (2016), pianist Roger Kellaway (2018) and guitarist Larry Koonse (2019). All of the songs are by Saunders, and each album provides takes on songs chosen from his catalog. The artists chosen are impeccable. I wish I could tell you that one of these albums is the best of the bunch or that one is a perfect gateway to the series, but they're all marvelous. I'd buy all four. Each is executed at a high level, deeply personal from the artist's perspective and captures the spirit of Saunders's remarkable talent. [Photo above of Carl Saunders]
Of the four artists, only Sam Most is no longer with us. He died in 2013.
JazzWax tracks. You'll find the New Jazz Standards series for Most, Whitfield, Kellaway and Koonse here, here, here and here.
The albums also are available at Spotify and at YouTube.
JazzWax tracks: Here's Larry Koonse playing Saunders's A Poor Man's Mister Evans, with Josh Nelson (p), Larry Koonse (g), Tom Warrington (b) and Joe LaBarbera (d)...
Here's Roger Kellaway playing Saunders's Calming Notion, with Jay Leonhart (b) and Peter Erskine (d)...
Here's Scott Whitfield playing Saunders's Prudence, with Scott Whitfield (tb), Christian Jacob (p), Kevin Axt (b) and Peter Erskine (d)...
And here's Sam Most playing Saunders's Twinkling Eye, with Sam Most (fl, alto fl, clarinet, bari, voc), Christian Jacob (p), Kevin Axt (b), Santo Savino (d) and Leddie Gardia (perc)...
Bonus: And here's Carl Saunders and tenor saxophonist Phil Urso playing Line for Lyons...
Tags: Carl Saunders, Larry Koonse, Roger Kellaway, Sam Most, Scott Whitfield
Maxine Sullivan: Shakespeare
One of the most interesting albums singer Maxine Sullivan recorded in the 1970s was Sullivan, Shakespeare, Hyman in June 1971. The album's subtitle says it all: "Maxine Sullivan sings the songs of William Shakespeare as set to music by Dick Hyman." Dick, of course, has been one of the most prolific and versatile jazz pianists as a performer and recording artist and as a composer and arranger. Recorded for Monmouth Evergreen Records, the album at first glace would seem like a yawn, a high-culture overreach that imposes the Bard on Sullivan, draining jazz of its essential oils.
Quite the contrary. The album is alive with original music and arrangements, and Sullivan was put to the test, giving listeners an opportunity to hear how she takes on material that wasn't readily familiar to anyone except Dick. The musicians on the album accompanying Sullivan were Rusty Dedrick (tp,flhrn), Dick Hyman (p,harpsichord), Bucky Pizzarelli (g), Milt Hinton (b) and Don Lamond (d). [Photo above of Dick Hyman]
Dick was first asked to come up with melodies for a series of Shakespearean ballads in 1961 while working with the Arthur Godfrey TV and radio shows. Paul Kapp, who founded General Music Publishing Company and was associated with the Godfrey shows, suggested the idea. [Photo above of Maxine Sullivan at the Village Vanguard in 1947 by William P. Gottlieb]
Columbia's A&R executive Ernie Altschuler heard Dick's songs on the Godfrey show and asked Dick to come up with Bardian tunes for Earl Wrightson, a singer with an earnest and seemingly dated musical-theater voice. The result was Shakespeare's Greatest Hits. Wrightson's album has not aged well, though the songs retain their charm.
Fast forward 10 years. Though the liner notes on the Sullivan album say that the pieces were performed first by other singers, Dick said he had Sullivan in mind when he originally wrote them. Dick knew Sullivan from accompanying her on two earlier albums produced by Leonard Feather—Leonard Feather Presents Maxine Sullivan (1956) and A Tribute To Andy Razaf (1957).
All of the lyrics on the Sullivan songs were based on original Shakespeare verses. The album goes by fast, since the longest song is 3:18 and the shortest is 1:34. Here are the songs and the related Shakespeare plays:
When That I Was a Little Tiny Boy (Twelfth Night; Act V, Scene 1)
O Mistress Mine (Twelfth Night; Act II, Scene 3)
Will You Buy Any Tape? (The Winter's Tale; Act 14, Scene 3)
Winter and Spring (Love's Labour Lost; Act V, Scene 2)
It Was a Lover and His Lass (As You Like It; Act. V, Scene 3)
Take O Take Those Lips Away (Measure for Measure; Act IV, Scene 1)
Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind (As You Like It; Act Ii, Scene 7)
Under the Greenwood Tree (As You Like It; Act Ii, Scene 5)
Sigh No More, Ladies, Sigh No More (Much Ado About Nothing; Act II, Scene 3)
Come Away, Come Away, Death (Twelfth Night; Act II, Scene 4)
When Daffodils Begin to Peer (The Winter's Tale; Act IV, Scene 2)
Lawn as White as Driven Snow (The Winter's Tale; Act IV, Scene 3)
What I love about this album is that the songs are unknown, so instead of listening to familiar standards, this is off-beat, forcing you to listen to the quality of Sullivan's execution. In addition, the music is bouncy and upbeat, as if they were written for a musical. Interestingly, Sullivan sounds a lot like Peggy Lee here. She leaves lots of space, her voice is soft and all of the songs are jaunty. And it's a joy to hear Dick Hyman play piano and harpsichord behind her. [Photo above of Maxine Sullivan and Bob Wilber in 1969]
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Sullivan, Shakespeare, Hyman here.
The album also is available at Spotify.
JazzWax clips: You can listen to the entire album at YouTube here...
Bonus: To give you a feel for Wrightson's voice...
...here's a clip from Shakespeare's Greatest Hits...
Tags: Dick Hyman, Maxine Sullivan
Susan, Steve and Maxine
In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed Susan Mailer, daughter of novelist of Norman Mailer, for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Susan talked about her mother moving her down to Mexico City when she was still a baby after she divorced Norman. Susan also talked about her years spent with her father in New York and Connecticut. [Photo above of Susan Mailer in her Manhattan home, on a desk that belonged to her father, Norman Mailer, by Matt Furman for The Wall Street Journal]
Over the holidays, my column interviews were with actor Masi Oka (go here), Booker T of the MGs (go here) and Arlo Guthrie (go here) on his father, Woody Guthrie. [Photo of musician Arlo Guthrie at the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington, Mass., by Jason Grow for The Wall Street Journal]
SiriusXM. If you missed my December appearance on SiriusXM to talk about my "Anatomy of a Song" column for the WSJ on Steve Miller's Fly Like an Eagle, you can listen for free here...
Maxine Sullivan. After my post on singer Maxine Sullivan, I received the following from photographer and author Hank O'Neal...
Hi Marc. Nice to see such good words and clips about Max. I met her in 1965 at the Manassas Jazz Festival where she was possibly the classiest person there. She was married to Cliff Jackson at the time and
Cliff was playing regularly at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. I visited Max and Cliff at their home on Ritter Place in the Bronx in 1986. The street is now called Maxine Sullivan Way. I recorded Cliff at Sherman Fairchild's within the year, his last solo record, I think, and then did an album of Max with Earl Hines in 1970. I hadn't thought about Max and Cliff in some while. Glad you made me remember. [Photo above of Maxine Sullivan in 1986 by Hank O'Neal]
I also heard from Danilo Morandi in Italy...
I really enjoyed your clips on Maxine Sullivan, a beloved figure in Europe at the beginning of the 1980s, where she made five delightful records with the Swedish All Stars on Kenneth Records. Here is a great version of Fine and Dandy led by alto saxophonist Göran Eriksson, who also solos.
La Notte. Over the holidays, during my "JazzWax Film Festival," I received the following from Ettore Ulivelli in Italy on my post about the film, La Notte [Photo above of Jeanne Moreau]...
Dear Marc, there are two mistakes in your post on La Notte: While much of the film was indeed shot in Milan, the jazz performance scenes and party scenes were shot at a villa in Barlassina, about 25 miles from Milan. It was a sprawling villa that was more like a country club with a pool and golf course.
As for the musicians, let me correct the information you provided: the tenor sax player was Eraldo Volonte, the pianist was Giorigio Gaslini, the bassist was Alceo Guatelli. I should know, since I was the drummer! By 1959, Gaslini was considered one of the top European players. [Photo above, on the set of La Notte, from left, Alceo Guatelli, Eraldo Volontè, Giorgio Gaslini, Jeanne Moreau, Ettore Ulivelli and Marcello Mastroianni]
As for the film at large, director Michelangelo Antonioni was famous for using 5,000 meters of film and then cutting it down to 3,000. Unfortunately, I have no particular recollection of the two leading actresses except their ravishing beauty.
I was the only amateur musician in the group. I continued drumming for three or four years after the film but soon quit to pursue a career in marketing. As a last remark: all in all, the film was a terrible bore, believe me. I have a VHS of La Notte that I've repeatedly watched and have never changed my opinion.
Thanks for your efforts. Keep it up, man!
My post has been updated.
Movies Til Dawn. Director Raymond De Felitta's podcast interview with director John Sayles (Lone Star, Matewan, Eight Men Out, Honeydripper, Go for Sisters) is up at Raymond's site here (click on the "episodes" tab for Sayles and other directors). [Photo above of John Sayles]
Lorez Alexandria radio. Sid Gribetz will present the singer Lorez Alexandria on Sunday (January 12), from 2 to 5 p.m. on "Jazz Profiles" on WKCR-FM in New York. You can listen on your phone, iPad or computer from anywhere in the world by going here.
What the heck. Here's Gene Pitney singing Town Without Pity...
Two monogrammed towels and a woman in a pink dish who looks like a bar of soap.
Doc: Jack Sheldon, 2008
Who was Jack Sheldon and why does he matter? Part of the answer can be found in Trying to Get Good: the Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon, a documentary released in 2008. Produced by Doug McIntyre and Penny Peyser, the film is part biography, part confessional and part intervention as Sheldon and his music colleagues shed light on the West Coast jazz scene in the 1950s and Sheldon's playing gifts and puckish personality. Jimi Mentis sent along links to the documentary below.
My only quibble is that the film missed critical moments to follow up on. For example, early on we learn that Sheldon's father abandoned Sheldon's mother and that she spent years looking for him. That thread is dropped instantly. Wow, I have at least five followup questions on that alone, since the abandonment surely had everything to do with Sheldon's personality and life.
But more to the point, the documentary is a loving tribute, and it's a joy to see so many talented artists talk about one of West Coast jazz's trumpet greats. To purchase the documentary, go here.
Here's Part 1...
And here's Part 2...
Tags: Jack Sheldon
Maxine Sullivan in 10 Clips
The female jazz vocal starts with Maxine Sullivan. No knock on Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday or other great vocalists of the 1930s and '40s, but they were really show-time swing singers at the time. Sullivan was first to bring a conversational intimacy to the jazz vocal that was better suited to small rooms than theater stages. She began her singing career in the mid-1930s and her first recordings were in June 1937, with Claude Thornhill. Two months later, she had one of her biggest hits, Loch Lomond, again, with Thornhill. Her voice throughout her storied career was a work of relaxed perfection and sublime beauty.
Sullivan was married four times, and exchanged vows with her fourth husband in 1950. Which helps explain why her 1950s discography is so light. Spending time at home was probably a better move for Sullivan and her family than recording and touring. A shame she didn't record much more at her peak in the 1950s, when albums would have made her a superstar, like many pop singers of the period. Also a shame she wasn't in film more. She had the most amazing smile, and the camera loved her.
Despite Sullivan's towering significance as the first modern female jazz vocalist, she's just a name to most people today. So I figured I'd provide you with 10 audio and video clips so you have a sense of her qualities and an understanding of why I rave about her.
Maxine Sullivan died in 1987.
Here's Maxine Sullivan in 1938 with Bobby Hackett on cornet singing Easy to Love...
To hear Sullivan ace Loch Lomand in 1939, move the time bar up to 1:37...
Here's Sullivan with Teddy Wilson in 1944, with Charlie Shavers on muted trumpet singing Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye...
Here's Sullivan singing I'm the Caring Kind with Benny Carter's band in 1946...
Here's Sullivan with the Ellis Larkins Trio singing Takin' My Time in 1946. Larkins was one of the great accompanists...
Here's Sullivan singing I'll Remember April with Lionel Hampton's band in 1952...
Here's Sullivan singing Stompin' at the Savoy from the album A Tribute to Andy Razaf in 1956 with a pack of Leonard Feather All-Stars, including Charlie Shavers on trumpet and Dick Hyman on piano and Milt Hinton on bass...
Here's Sullivan on Art Ford's Jazz Party in 1958 singing I Can't Get Started and Ace in the Hole. That's Sir Roland Hanna on piano, another brilliant accompanist, Tyree Glenn on trombone and Mary Osborne on guitar...
Here's Sullivan singing We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye with Ernie Carson (cnt), Jack Howe (ts), Spencer Clark (bar), Art Hodes (p,arr), Johnny Haynes (b) and Tom Martin (d) in 1978...
Here's The Lady's in Love With You with Glenn Zottola (tp), Phil Bodner (cl,as), Keith Ingham (p), Marty Grosz (g), Phil Flanigan (b) and Jackie Williams (d) in 1985...
And here's Sullivan singing Something to Remember You By in Tokyo in 1985 with Scott Hamilton on tenor saxophone...
Tags: Maxine Sullivan

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Standardisation brings enormous benefits to industry and users alike. It is the single most important factor in economies of scale. It allows equipment manufacturers to focus on the same technical solution, thus providing a healthy and open competitive environment.
ESA has always been a strong supporter of standardisation in the many fields of telecommunications. In particular, ESA has been heavily involved in the definition and development of the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) standard which is used today in Europe and many other parts of the world.
In recent years, the multimedia revolution has created a huge demand for high speed connections to the network. Satellite systems have been designed to respond to that demand. In particular, regenerative satellite systems will form the heart of the next generation of telecommunications satellites. They will provide very high speed internet connections to corporate and consumer users equipped with small (60-80cm diameters) antennas. This is achieved by employing high frequency bands, multi-spot coverage areas and high speed digital signal processing onboard the satellite.
Following the emergence in Europe of a number of proprietary regenerative multimedia satellite systems (Skyplex, Domino II, Web/West, Euroskyway), ESA in 1999 took the lead in studying possible ways of facilitating the convergence of different systems on a common standard in order to maximise commonalities. By adopting an open-systems approach, satellite operators, satellite manufacturers and terminal manufacturers will ensure mutual compatibility of services and equipment, securing significant economies of scale and reducing business development risk.
On ESA's initiative, and with the cooperation of the main parties concerned, a group of experts was set up in late 1999 with the aim of formulating recommendations that could form the basis for standards for satellite terminals to be designed to operate with a variety of regenerative satellite multimedia systems.
The group includes representatives of ESA, a number of satellite operators (Eutelsat, Hispasat, Intelsat, SES, Telenor), various satellite system designers (Alcatel Space Industries, Alenia Spazio, Astrium), CNES and independent entities with observer status, such as ETSI (European Telecommunication Standards Institute).
Meeting regularly throughout 2000, the group of experts reviewed a number of reference models, service requirements and system architectures for regenerative satellite multimedia systems.
Star and mesh network topologies were considered. The connectivity topologies range from point-to-point or multipoint-to-multipoint (physical or link or network layer) scenarios to point-to-multipoint (including broadcasting) and multipoint-to-point.
The main outcome is full convergence by a number of systems that were mutually incompatible at the outset on definition of a common air interface and hence on the ability to provide services using the same terminals. Since the proposed terminal characteristics are based on the DVB-RCS (Return Channel for Satellite) standard already adopted for interactive services, the potential economics of scale will be even greater. In fact all regenerative and non-regenerative systems operated by the group members will make use of the same terminal.
In January this year the group's findings were presented to the DVB Technical Module and to ETSI for consideration and possible adoption. The DVB-TM decided unanimously to accept the group's input and initiate a top-priority work item on regenerative satellites within the DVB-RCS standard, which would lead to incorporation in their standards of the common requirements expressed by the group of experts.


The Changing Face of Global Advertising Networks.
All change! With the departure of Sir Martin Sorrell, there's going to be changes at WPP and I hope, opportunities for independent networks like Tribe Global.
Several years ago, I sat next to Sir Martin at a Marketing Society Scotland dinner and had the pleasure of introducing him. I was asked to provide a brief resume of his career, which was particularly challenging as there was nothing brief. He was a man of boundless energy and was able to conduct what seemed like intimate, one-to-one's with all the clients round the table. An enviable skill.
But a lot has happened since then!
WPP has lost a third of its share value in the last few months. At the same time, it has found it increasingly difficult to compete with mega-platforms such as facebook and google.
WPP is very different from the independent networks. In trying to meet the new challenges, they kept adding more and more companies in what looks like an insatiable desire for growth. But when I talk to clients they are not all looking for size, they are looking for talent, creativity and the ability to respond and move quickly. Summed up - they are looking for smart solutions.
I've often been asked if independent networks and their agencies are more at risk from global change, whether that be political, economic, cultural or social than the multi-national networks. My answer has always been no, but with recent events it's an even more definite no.
Independent agencies that are truly local are more likely to have their fingers on the pulse of a country as their people have a vested interest in the success of their country.
Independent agencies tend to be more agile and nimble and are able to move and change much faster than the likes of WPP. That's what independent is all about.
Recently, I read a very thought-provoking article by Joy Bhattacharya from Accenture Interactive talking about the role of agencies and how agencies need to establish the disruptor vision. As WPP will testify we are in an age of disruption. For Tribe Global this age of disruption is a positive because agility and quick decision-making beats size and scale. The culture of agencies is incredibly important – at Tribe Global we talk about working together because we want to, not because we have to. And finally, whilst Independent networks are making huge leaps forward we are still challenger brands, which suits us as today challenger brands are increasingly well positioned to take on and win against the industry behemoths.
Ian Wright | Managing Director, Tribe Global.


However, considering women's weak body shortly after giving/birth to the baby, it is essential for them to stay away from work for several months, during which they can recover from the delivery and take good care of the baby. A good health and happy family can offer long-lasting support on a woman's path towards career success. Besides, taking maternity leave seems to belong loss to the company in the short term, but what the company will reap in the future is the dedication of its employees as a return for its corporate welfare and humanistic concern.


At the Digestive Health Center we believe that you cannot fix a problem until you find it; therefore, an in-depth diagnosis is your first step to lasting relief.
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Our approach is basic, but comprehensive. We analyze your health and lifestyle, and then we tailor a treatment plan that is precisely right for your condition. Using the very latest endoscopy, medication therapies and nutritional guidelines, our experienced specialists can help you recover quickly so you can have a healthier, more active lifestyle.
We provide a comfortable zone for discussing uncomfortable topics. We understand that a digestive problem can be as difficult to discuss as it is to live with. Our entire staff is knowledgeable about your digestive problems and also compassionate in their approach to help you through all the stages of evaluation and treatment.
You are welcome to ask any questions about your condition, our treatment recommendations, or our long-term prognosis. And we encourage the participation of family members in all phases of your return to good health. It is our progressive, comprehensive care that makes the difference. We work as a team with your referring physician. Our goal is to improve your health and get you feeling better fast. Even if you have been previously diagnosed and especially if you have resigned yourself to "just living" with a digestive disorder, you can trust our specialists to give you a fresh prospective and outlook.
Over the years, we have helped thousands of people win the war against digestive problems. Our practitioners enjoy making a difference by restoring health and providing relief, especially to those who thought that they could not be helped.
If you are suffering from a digestive problem, you want the most advanced care possible and a doctor who is exceptionally caring. At the Digestive Health Center, you will find both.
At the Digestive Health Center we are committed to delivering personalized, state-of-the-art services and quality care to every patient.
It is our hope that your visits to our office will be efficient, comfortable and, most importantly will provide a satisfactory outcome to your medical problem. We are constantly striving to maintain the highest standard of medical care and physical and emotional comfort. We appreciate receiving any comments you might have regarding your visit to our office.
Our office provides a friendly and caring atmosphere. We treat each patient as an individual in a prompt and professional manner. We hope that your experience is a positive one. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any concerns or suggestions in how we can improve our service to you.
To us, patient service means quality care and good communication. Nothing is more frustrating than being misinformed or uninformed about your treatment. Therefore, every patient appointment includes time to discuss procedures and treatment progress.


Hoo boy. This is going to be fun.
Even though this blog has been around for quite a while, I realize I don't have that many regular followers. I'm working on it though.
That means there is a good chance that not many people will read this, and it will wither away into the ether, nothing more than a whackadoodle's rant lost forever in the vast expanse of the innerwebs.
But maybe it is a hot enough of a topic within the DGI blogosphere that we can generate a little bit of buzz?
Hear me out…and share the link…and join the discussion by adding your comments. Please? This is supposed to fun.
I realize that the dividend payout ratio is holy canon in the Church of DGI. After all, how else do we know if a dividend is "safe"? Or if there's "room for it to grow"?
But I have come to question how useful this metric is as a function of evaluating dividend safety and future growth potential.
Now full disclosure: I use the payout ratio too. It's the first quantitative metric I calculate when working up an investment thesis.
But since I came up with that thesis process, I have found other more rigorous ways to evaluate the safety of a dividend, and I value them a lot more than the payout ratio.
I think it at least deserves further discussion. So here we go.
Before I go into the issues I have with the payout ratio, let's make sure we're talking about the same thing. Maybe you have a different definition, but most everyone agrees that the dividend payout ratio = dividends paid/net income.
Problem #1 – A Ratio of What to What?
First of all there are all kinds of ways you could express this ratio using totally different numerators and denominators. A strict interpretation of the formula would call for taking total dividends paid from the cash flow statement and dividing by total net income from the income statement.
But no one does that, because 1) looking up the financial statements is kind of cumbersome, and 2) it's obviously silly to divide things from different financial statements (see issue #2 below).
Dividends and income are conveniently displayed everywhere in "per share" values. So you can divide the dividend per share by earnings per share (EPS) and get the same number…right?
Well…which dividend per share? Are we talking about the trailing twelve months (TTM) of dividends that HAVE BEEN paid or the forward annual dividends that WILL BE paid? What about preferred shares?
For that matter which EPS are we using? TTM? "Forward" earnings? Do you believe the analysts' projections? Can/should we use the non-GAAP, "adjusted" earnings that companies are so fond of reporting these days?
What about REITs? Common REIT wisdom suggests to ignore earnings altogether because of all the property depreciation and use funds from operations (FFO or their "adjusted" cousin AFFO).
I read so many stock evaluations that will just throw out a statement like, "the dividend payout ratio is X% so the dividend is pretty safe and has room to grow"…but there's no discussion of what "version" of the ratio we're even talking about, much less if that actually indicates a safe dividend that truly has room to grow.
Look, I get it. Companies can't pay a dividend if they're not making any money. So evaluating the size of the dividend payment in the context of how much money the company is making is pretty smart.
I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't consider the safety of a dividend in this context. I'm suggesting that dividing by the EARNINGS is silly.
Earnings are a pretty abstract measure of profitability. There are all kinds of weird accounting things that may get included or excluded from earnings. The income statement is vulnerable to much more gamesmanship than the cash flow statement.
Besides…dividends don't get paid out of earnings; they're paid in CASH MONEY. You can show phenomenal paper profits but still not have any cash in the bank (lagging accounts receivables, heavy capex spending, etc).
If you want to evaluate the "safety" of a dividend payment, it makes much more sense to me to at least divide by the free cash flow (FCF) rather than the earnings.
I may feel a lot more confident in a payout ratio that divides by FCF rather than EPS, but even that doesn't describe the whole dividend safety picture, because it doesn't speak to the company's debt situation.
Debt is negative cash. Since dividends are paid in cash, their safety is affected by debt. Period.
If a company faces a cash crunch, and their debt is due, you know that the bondholders are going to get paid first. The dividend will become a secondary priority and might risk getting cut. Maybe they can refinance and kick the can down the road for a while, but eventually there will be a reckoning.
A company's ability to maintain (or even grow) a dividend through hard times is going to be affected by the health of its balance sheet regardless of whatever payout ratio you use, so any dividend safety discussion really needs to include a conversation about debt.
So how should we evaluate the safety of a dividend? Based on the discussion above, a comprehensive review should incorporate 1) cash flow and 2) debt into the consideration.
Enter the Dividend Cushion Ratio, which elegantly considers both.
Full disclosure: I didn't invent this. The good people at Valuentum did, and they publish their formula and reasoning for the whole innerwebs to read, so the concept at least is in the public domain.
They offer a subscription based service where their experts calculate the dividend cushion ratio for you based on their expert opinions about future cash flows (as opposed to my dumb version that makes a bunch of dumb assumptions). Also they incorporate momentum analysis into their recommendations.
I'm not a subscriber, and that's not an affiliate link. I just really like the concept and have incorporated it into my investment thesis process.
You can read all about the formula, the reasoning behind it and the different elements from the people who invented this ratio here.
Or you can follow along with me today.
A value of 1.0 or better indicates a "safe" dividend, i.e. over the next five years the company will have generated as much or more excess cash than it's going to pay out in dividends.
Less than 1.0 is a cause for concern (where will the cash come from?), and a negative value is just bad juju.
Let's walk through each of those formula elements and why they mean so much in terms of dividend safety.
This is pretty simple, but it's critical, because this is where we account for the company's debt situation.
While a negative net cash position doesn't cause an automatic fail (you can make up for it with strong FCF), it's pretty nice when this starts out as a positive.
A healthy balance sheet is the first step to a healthy dividend.
This is a little more complicated. My crystal ball is perpetually cloudy so I'm hesitant to "project" anything. Like I said, a Valuentum subscription comes with someone's "expert" opinion of what FCF will be over the next 5 years.
I prefer to just multiply the TTM value by 5, i.e. leave it flat for the next 5 years. A healthy company should be growing its cash flow, so this is theoretically a conservative scenario.
If the ratio comes out greater than 1.0, you can always back calculate how much of a drop the TTM cash flow could absorb and still cover the future payments. Kind of a cushion of the cushion if you will.
Another slight difference between "my version" of the formula and Valuentum's version is that I like to look at FCF as a function of cash provided by operations less TOTAL cash used for investing.
The GAAP definition of FCF is cash from operations less capex spending, which is only a portion of the total "cash used for investing" line from the cash flow statement. Often these are the same because most of the cash used for investing is going towards capex, but sometimes it's different.
One reason it might be different is that a company could spend very little on capex and elect instead to acquire whole companies. Or they could have sold some assets or whatever.
It's a little hand wavy, but sometimes I'll use GAAP FCF if there appear to be one-off line items in the cash used for investing section. Otherwise I'll just use the net cash generated value.
I'll also look at the last five years to see that whatever number I do go with is at least somewhat consistent with historical patterns.
This is much simpler to calculate. Rather than assume the dividend is going to be flat, I assume it's going to grow (I'm a dividend growth investor after all). I apply the market implied DGR to the TTM total cash dividends paid (compounded over 5 years).
So if the company paid $100M (TTM) in dividends and it's currently yielding 3%, we compound the dividend growth at 7% per year for 5 years: (100*1.07)+(107*1.07)+(114.49*1.07)…etc.
When calculated this way, a dividend cushion ratio of 1.0 or better implies that the company can pay off ALL OF ITS DEBT in 5 years, and still grow the dividend while free cash flow generated remains completely flat.
I think that is a pretty darn safe dividend.
You would be surprised how often a company has a "high" payout ratio (even in terms of FCF) and still has a healthy dividend cushion ratio because of a strong net cash position.
The corollary, which is much scarier to me, is the company that has an allegedly "healthy" payout ratio in terms of dividend/EPS, but due to either goofy income statement shenanigans, weak cash flow generation, or a bloated balance sheet (maybe all three), it doesn't really have that "safe" of a dividend.
Take Lithia Motors Inc. for example (ticker: LAD). At the the time of writing, this is a dividend challenger sporting 8 years of increasing payments, the 1, 3 and 5 year dividend growth rates are in the high 20% range. The forward annual dividend is $1.08/share against a TTM EPS of $8.19, which is good for a ~13% dividend payout ratio.
Sounds like a solid dividend stock right?
Well the company has $2.4B in debt, $30M in cash, and only generated $100M in FCF in the trailing twelve months. At that rate, it would take 24 years just to pay off their current debt with FCF generated…and that represents the best FCF year they've had in the last 5 years.
The dividend cushion ratio (calculated according to the catfishwizard standard) is -11.
Sorry, but a 12% payout ratio implies a much safer dividend than the reality of the company's financial situation (which is actually pretty ugly).
The point is, it can be a very misleading metric, and that's why I don't give a crap about the dividend payout ratio.
Let your thoughts out below!
Like it? Hate it? Want to block me on twitter for tearing down holy DGI canon?
Yell! Yell anonymously on the internet! Let it out.
I think that is the whole point of the DGI community, to think differently. Everyone has/ brings different knowledge and skills to the game to share with others. Like you mentioned, the accounting world is cloudy. These days, companies can basically make their financial statements say anything they want. So nothing is certain. That is why everything is an "estimate" or just an "analysis" not a guarantee. Wither it be doing calculations with numbers from different financial statements, or trying to predict future earnings/ revenue/ cash flow/ new debt. There is really no best practice and everyone also has different risk tolerances to invest on whatever they want, how they want. But I do agree, cash is king. I feel much better when a company has a stock pile of cash just in case. That is one of the reasons probably that AAPL is so popular. Thanks for sharing this theory.
Hey DD, I appreciate the comment.
You're right there are so many different reasonable ways to evaluate stocks, it's silly to pretend that one is "the best"…or even distinctly "better" than another. Especially considering the personal aspects of risk tolerance etc.
I think any serious long-term DGI investor knows that looking at payout ratio alone is not enough to determine the safety of a dividend. When it comes to dividend safety I look at cash flow more than earnings. I also pay attention to net cash available and cash flows (both operating and FCF), interest expense, debt maturity, credit rating, and management's commitment to paying and growing a dividend.
When I read quarterly reports, I search for "cash flow" and "dividend" to see what the management is saying about these two items and if there is any suspicion or doubt on health of these two items, for example when management tries really hard to convince analysts that dividend is safe, or when analysts start to question company's ability to pay a dividend, I take those signs as warning signs.
In any case, nice write-up and a good reminder that payout ratio alone is not sufficient to determine safety of a dividend.
Interesting post. I'm still just learning and so I don't have tons of experience with valuations of companies. There are so many different ways to try and analyze whether or not a company pays a safe dividend and can sustain its dividend over the long haul that sometimes it makes it hard to know where a beginner should start.
My method is less math intensive. I rely on history and my own understanding of the company. So, if a company has previously paid and increased its dividends for the past 25 years, they are likely to keep doing so in the future. Then I make sure that I at least understand the company before I invest in them. Now, I do realize that past performance is no guarantee of future results and that with new technology, and threats from competitors such as Amazon, that how the company is doing today and their ability to compete in the future are what really matters. But, it says something if a company can weather the great recession we recently had, or any of the other economic or political turmoil in recent history, and didn't cut dividends.
So, I don't pay attention to payout ratios either, but for totally different reasons. Definitely not the best approach I know. And I certainly don't recommend it. But you did ask for our thoughts and there you have mine.
I did ask for thoughts! I appreciate the comment and participation.
I think looking at the dividend history is crucial. Generally speaking, companies with a history of paying a growing dividend are more likely to continue that pattern provided they're in a situation of financial strength to do so.
I agree that it can be very difficult to know where to start in terms of how to evaluate individual stocks.
Fortunately there is a lot of material out there. Keep an open mind, absorb as much information as you possibly can and read, read, read!


text:
air force -- waf (3)
army -- aaf (3)
wv0022 ethel leblanc palma papers (1)
wv0023 elna allran jones papers (1)
wv0029 mary williams elder papers (1)
wv0030 henrietta stevenson ingram papers (1)
wv0034 reva ingram fortune papers (1)
wv0036 margaret marian smith papers (1)
wv0039 helen bonner eshelman papers (1)
wv0049 charlesanna l. fox papers, 1942-1947, 1999, 2008 (1)
wv0073 dorothy h. jordan papers (1)
Item description: especially
Oral history interview with Ethel LeBlanc Palma, 1999
Documents Ethel LeBlanc Palma's early life; her work as a Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) recruiter stateside and a foreign mail censorer in the Pacific during World War II; and her personal life after the war.
Prominent pre-war topics...
WV0022 Ethel LeBlanc Palma Papers
Oral history interview with Mary Williams Elder, 1999
Primarily documents Mary Frances Williams Elder's service with the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the Women's Army Corps (WAC) from 1942 to 1945, and her life after World War II.
Elder recalls her life before World War II, including...
WV0029 Mary Williams Elder Papers
Oral history interview with Dorothy Ahlswede Baker, 2007
Primarily documents Dorothy A. Baker's nurse's training and service with the Army Nurse Corps from 1945 to 1947.
Baker describes her childhood, including her German ancestry and being raised by her grandparents in Wisconsin. She discusses...
WV0385 Dorothy Baker Papers
Oral history interview with Christine M. Knott, 2010
Knott discusses her early life as part of a military family living in Libya and many parts of the United States, her early life and early adult life, her service and life after retirement, as well as her perspectives concerning military culture and...
WV0498 Christine M. Knott Papers
Oral history interview with Charlesanna L. Fox, 1999
Charlesanna Fox primarily discusses her time at the North Carolina College for Women (NCCW) in the late 1920s and her work at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in the Navy Library Service from 1942 until 1947.
Fox...
WV0049 Charlesanna L. Fox Papers, 1942-1947, 1999, 2008
Oral history interview with Janet Froome, 1999
Primarily documents Janet Hester Froome's experiences with the Army Nurse Corps in Australia and New Guinea from 1941 to 1945.
Froome chiefly discusses her service during World War II. She details her decision to join the Army Nurse Corps;...
WV0120 Janet Froome Papers
Oral history interview with Winona Franklin Walker, 2003
Primary documents Winona Franklin Walker's career as a librarian, especially her service in Germany with the Army Special Services in 1945-1946.
Walker briefly describes her family, undergraduate education, decision to attend library school...
WV0284 Winona Franklin Walker Collection, 1945-1964, 2003
Oral history interview with Henrietta Stevenson Ingram, 1999
Primarily documents Henrietta Stevenson Ingram's military service with the Women's Army Corps (WAC) from 1943 to 1944; her career in allied medical professions after the war; and her experiences with racism during both time periods.
Ingram...
WV0030 Henrietta Stevenson Ingram Papers
Oral history interview with Helen Bonner Eshelman, 1999
Documents Helen Bonner Eshelman's education at the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (WC, now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, UNCG) during the Depression; her service in the South Pacific as a dietitian for the...
WV0039 Helen Bonner Eshelman Papers
Oral history interview with Gretchen C. Davis, 1999
Primarily documents Gretchen Davis's experiences at the Woman's College (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) and U.S. Army from 1973 to 1993.
Davis details her parents' education and...
WV0098 Gretchen C. Davis Collection, 1973-1993, 1999
Oral history interview with Maxine Pierce, 2006
Primarily documents Maxine Newcom Pierce's background; her twenty-year career in the WAVES; and the impact of her military service on the rest of her life.
Pierce briefly discusses growing up in Southern Illinois in the 1930s, including her...
WV0348 Maxine Newcom Pierce Papers
Oral history interview with Marilyn Bobbi Earp, 2000
Documents N. Marilyn Roberts "Bobbi" Earp's early life, education, and flight training; her service as an air traffic control tower operator while in the U.S. Navy WAVES from 1944 to 1949; her experiences singing with the choir throughout her...
WV0174 Marilyn Roberts "Bobbi" Earp Papers
Oral history interview with Reva Ingram Fortune, 1999
Documents Reva Ingram Fortune's early life in rural North Carolina; her military service in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) and later the Women in the Air Force (WAF) from 1943 to 1952; and her experience as a student at the Woman's College of the...
WV0034 Reva Ingram Fortune Papers
Oral history interview with Elna Allran Jones, 1999
Primarily documents Elna Allran Jones's early life; her service with the Cadet Nurse Corps and Army Nurse Corps (ANC); and her post-World War II career as a nurse.
Jones discusses her parents and her background, then comments on her decision...
WV0023 Elna Allran Jones Papers
Oral history interview with Margaret Marian Smith, 1999
Primarily documents Margaret Marion Smith's service with the War Department and Marine Corps Women's Reserve from 1943 to 1947 and work at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) from 1963 through circa 1994.
Smith primarily...
WV0036 Margaret Marian Smith Papers


text:
Finding Release or Getting Trapped in Kiss Me First.
So, has there ever been something so traumatizing, something that's rocked your world that you wanted to go into another world to, if not take away the trauma or pain, but make you forget…even if it's just for a bit? Netflix's new series, Kiss Me First, goes there.
Based on the book of the same title by Lottie Moggach, we open to the funeral of Leila Evans' (Tallulah Haddon) mom. The thing is, Leila's the only one there. Leila's got a secret that's really in her best interest to keep. To make matters worse, Leila's essentially an orphan now, forcing her to get her first job cleaning at a restaurant when the owner has pity on her. When she's not working, Leila's a gamer on the online game, Azana as the character, Shadowfax.
She has friends she connects with while gaming but has never met in person until she has to take in a roommate to keep her mom's pad…enter Adrian Palmer (Matthew Beard), a wanna-be actor that spouts off movie quotes at random, but he's mainly a freeloader.
On one of her gaming seshes, Leila meets Mania, immediately falling in online lust…until Mania finds her in real-life. Tess's her name, and she comes with A LOT of baggage. Even then, everything's copasetic…until life and an online predator starts bumping off friends online that crosses over into real-world.
Kiss is a loaded movie with multiple layers covering everything from being bi to escapism to addiction to euthanasia to the lines between reality and fantasy blurring. I'm going to take these topics in regards to real world instead of in regards to the movie for those of you, who might give it a check, which you should.
Being gay or bi should be a non-issue these days, but, for some reason, it still freaking is. People are the way they are, no matter how many shrinks, no matter how many "reprogramming" workshops professionals try to cram down throats.
I asked at the beginning if there was something traumatic that's happened to you. God knows there's a buttload of stuff I wish I could unsee in my life. Growing up, I did everything I could to escape those demons. Thankfully, drugs wasn't one of the things I've tried short from drinking, but porn, stealing, doing stupid stunts just to tempt death, yeah, I've done it.
I don't have any personal stories about euthanasia, but I've done research. Surprisingly, it's legal in 10 countries, and 8 states in the US. Otherwise, it's done behind closed doors.
Addiction and the blurring of the reality/fantasy lines "could" go hand-in-hand. Nowadays, whether gaming's an addiction's a hot topic. Some say it expands the imagination, gives children the opportunity to work collaboratively, and sharpens cognitive skills while the other side of the coin say it becomes an addiction when every day "need to do" things get pushed to the back burner for said gaming. Of course, we've all heard the school shooters attribute their skills to the first-person shooters that've been around since the 90s, blurring the reality/fantasy line. The argument there's that, yes, the amount of school shootings seems to be rising, but the number of shootings that could be contributed to these games compared to the population of players of these games as a whole is small.
Wow, I'm tired. Like I said, there's a lot going on with Kiss. I'm interested to check the book out now to see if it fills in things we might've missed with this first season. Then again, it might just be one of those repeat watches to get everything.
Anyway, give it a go.


text:
One-line Reviews (41)
" But it's enjoyable for a watch.
" Working from a script by the team that penned the trilogy, produced by Yen and blessed with Zhang Jin reprising his role as loser Cheung Tin-chi, all the elements for a swift, creative wuxia entertainment are present and accounted for, among them exciting fights, luscious 1960s costume design and So.
" two guys will stand and posture and look intensely/admiringly at each other for far too long before a fight resumes (Sigh...
" too much fighting and lack of storyline .
" Enjoyable .
" And luckily so, because this turned out to be a rather good and entertaining movie.
" Great movie, definitely worth watching - Mites comes to director Woo-ping Yuan, Best performance by Jin Zhang, and Michelle Yeho.
" Also, the set design feels really empty or too open.
" Great movie, definitely worth watching .
" And also, it's sort of predictable.
" Action scenes are pretty much perfect to accompany a daily basic but still compelling storyline.
" There are a lot of characters thrown through tables or windows and a lot of slow-mo and close up shots that embody the cliche of the 90s and it goes all the way with it.
" An enjoyable movie though and glad I watched it.
" Entertaining if formulaic tale of Wing Chun Master Cheung Tin-chi, basically following up the events of 2015's "Ip Man 3", with Jin Zhang reprising his role from the earlier movie.
" The fluidity of the fight sequences is stunning.
"I think it has the right balance of fight scenes and drama and the story is engaging enough.
" Apart from that, all of this film is still worth watching
" The plot was very formulaic tho and predictable.
" Outdated ,repetitive formula that stuck in the 2000s .
" The final fight between Zhang and Bautista was very well-choreographed and fully entertaining.
" In my opinion, this movie would not outshine its prequels (Ip Man 1 & 2) due to the simplism in storyline, nevertheless it is still an action-packed, fun and entertaining movie.
" The acting is good, although the characters are a bit cliché, but overall, it's an entertaining and enjoyable martial arts film.
" Nearly every fight in this movie is cartooney and unrealistic but it is so entertaining with superb choreography.
"If you enjoy martial arts movies, then you should watch "Master Z: Ip Man Legacy" because it is both entertaining and also have an abundance of nicely choreographed and executed martial art scenes and sequences.
" Thank you so much Woo-Ping Yuen (the director), Edmond Wong and Tai-lee Chan (the writers), Jin Zhang, Dave Bautista, Michelle Yeoh for allowing us all to experience this action packed story.
" There are many intense fighting scenes.
" Acting acceptable; outcomes predictable.
" Quite entertaining...
" A lot of the fight scenes have the actors do a lot of floating and gravity-defying moves with one memorable acrobatic fight scene on neon signs way above ground that was very thrilling to watch.
" Instead ended with something that left you feeling empty and wanting more.
" Visually Stunning & Just Plain Funny .
" Entertaining with Flaws .
") Regardless of whether you've seen the Ip Man movies or not, those who are into Asian action movies should find this enjoyable enough.
" Very dramatic and action packed with elaborate set pieces and destructive fight scenes.
" Not only that, the story is stretched out to a considerable length, leading to some dull patches and long sections where characters disappear for a long time (such as the hero's son.
" I thought it was a good film at first but I found myself often falling asleep on several scenes, which proved the entire film pointless and it's only a quick grab of cash.
" Mildly entertaining, only comes alive during the last 10 minutes.
" Furthermore, the make-up works and the costumes also looked so fake and pretentious.
" It's predictable when you only like watching films from a certain country or continent.
"I wish the makers would have worked on to bring more realistic and authentic touch to the movie to make it exciting.


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Northern Ireland manager Ian Baraclough forced to make squad changes ahead of World Cup qualifiers
Northern Ireland FA
Tuesday 5 October 2021, 10:34am
Northern Ireland boss Ian Baraclough has been forced to make a number of changes to his squad for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Switzerland and Bulgaria.
Dundee United goalkeeper Trevor Carson, Hearts defender Michael Smith, Preston midfielder Alistair McCann, Oxford winger Gavin Whyte and Blackpool striker Shayne Lavery will all miss the matches in Geneva and Sofia on October 9 and 12 respectively.
Those players have withdrawn due to injury or illness, with Baraclough calling up Liverpool goalkeeper Liam Hughes, Leyton Orient striker Paul Smyth, Sunderland midfielder Carl Winchester and Morecambe defender Ryan McLaughlin as replacements.
Baraclough said: "We've dealt with injuries coming into a number of previous camps and, unfortunately, this one is no different.
"But this is a resolute group that has come together through adversity and I have no doubt they will do it again.
"We are still waiting for a few players to join us and we look forward to a few days' training in Belfast before we fly out to Switzerland."
One of the players yet to report for duty is Leicester defender Jonny Evans but the vice-captain is expected to join up in the coming days.
Winchester's call-up sees him return to the squad more than a decade after winning his only previous senior cap, as a substitute against Wales in May 2011.


text:
Affluent Children with Low Test Scores Have a 71% Chance of Being Affluent Adults at Age 25 Compared to Only a 31% Chance for Poor Children with High Test Scores, Says New Georgetown University Report
WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The great sorting of the most talented young people into haves and
have-nots starts long before college, according to a new report from the
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) in
partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Born to Win, Schooled
to Lose: Why Equally Talented Students Don't Get Equal Chances to Be All
They Can Be finds that the most talented disadvantaged youth don't
do as well as the least-talented advantaged youth. A child from a family
in the highest quartile of socioeconomic status (SES) who has low test
scores in kindergarten has a 71% chance of being above-median SES at age
25. However, a child from a low-SES family with high test scores has
only a 31% chance of reaching above-median SES by 25.
This disparity is even more severe by race. Black (51%) and Latino (46%)
tenth graders with top half math scores are more likely to earn a
college degree within 10 years than their peers with bottom half math
scores (23% and 22%, respectively). But, they are still less likely to
earn a college degree than Whites (62%) and Asian (69%) tenth graders
with top-half scores.
"To succeed in America, it's better to be born rich than smart," said
Anthony P. Carnevale, director of CEW and lead author of the report.
People of all abilities and backgrounds stumble throughout their
academic journeys. But advantaged students have safety nets to keep them
on track while their less-advantaged peers do not and as a result, are
more likely to fall behind and stay behind. Among children who show
similar academic potential in kindergarten, the test scores of
economically disadvantaged students are more likely to decline and stay
low during elementary, middle, and high school than the test scores of
their high-SES peers.
"The fact that children's test scores go up and down over time shows
that there is room for intervention," said Megan L. Fasules, an
assistant research professor and co-author of the report. "With smart
policy changes, education can mitigate the effects of inequality."
There is some good news. Students from low-SES families who show
academic promise do have higher odds of success, particularly if they
maintain high math scores in high school. If they score in the top half
on math assessments in high school, 10th graders from families in the
lowest quartile of SES are twice as likely to reach the top half of SES
as young adults.
The bad news is that even talented poor students who make it through
high school and college cannot keep pace with affluent students in the
labor market, regardless of their academic success. Top-scoring
kindergartners from low-SES families who earn college degrees have a 76%
chance of reaching high SES by age 25 compared to a 91% chance among
their low-scoring, high-SES peers who earn college degrees.
The opportunity gaps between those with higher and lower SES can be
narrowed. The best chances to level the playing field lie in the
education pipeline. But, to help make this a reality, policymakers must
consider several options:
1. Interventions in early childhood education increases the odds of
success, but they are still not enough.
2. Continue academic interventions throughout K–12.
3. Improve and expand high school counseling so that more students have
the information and social supports they need to transition from
high school to postsecondary education and training.
4. To ensure that talented low-SES students, who have limited exposure
to education and career pathways, get the most for their education,
integrate career exploration and provide access to high-quality work
experience at the high school and college levels.
Other Findings:
The highest-SES families spend almost five times as much on enrichment
activities as the lowest-SES families.
Almost all children from the highest-SES families have at least one
parent with some postsecondary education, compared to less than a
third of children from the lowest-SES families.
Regardless of SES, Black kindergarteners with top-half math scores are
more likely than other kindergartners to have bottom-half math scores
as eighth graders.
10th graders from families in the lowest SES quartile are half as
likely as their highest-SES peers to earn a college degree by their
mid-20s—even when their test scores suggest they are equally prepared.
For the full report and a video highlighting key findings, visit cew.georgetown.edu/Schooled2Lose.
The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce is an
independent, nonprofit research and policy institute that studies the
link between individual goals, education and training curricula, and
career pathways. CEW is affiliated with the Georgetown University
McCourt School of Public Policy. For more information, visit cew.georgetown.edu.
Follow us on Twitter @GeorgetownCEW,
and LinkedIn.
Note: Family SES is determined by considering household income,
parents' educational attainment, and parents' occupational prestige (a
measure of social standing, power, and earnings ability). In addition,
standardized math scores are used as a measure of academic achievement
since the data analyzed did not include 12th grade reading scores.
However, data on reading scores indicate similar trends.
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Los niños ricos con puntajes de pruebas más bajos tienen un 71% de probabilidad de ser adultos ricos a la edad de 25 años, en comparación con una probabilidad de solamente 31% para los niños pobres con puntajes de pruebas más altos, según un nuevo…
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When a black teenager gets shot by a cop, Starr, the only eye witness, has to decide if she will speak up about what she saw or stay quiet.
I have bought the book last year and was about half way through when the movie came out.
As I started watching, the characters did not quite look like I initially imagined them, especially Starr's father and Mother, or any of the police staff. However, every important message I read in the book was transferred to the movie.
Soon the actors became the characters of the book, and I was glued to the screen. The movie was as engaging and powerful as the book itself.
I cried out loud during the final scenes. This movie is so deep.
The story is so real and simple like life itself: it's a story that we witness almost every other day. At a time and age where we are able to see the tragedies and injustice that happen to unarmed people of color, we can't be silent any more. We need to talk about it, we need to discuss what we can do about it.
I have had this conversation with many people who didn't get it: When someone says black lives matter, it doesn't mean that nothing or no one else matters. It's a cry for help and outrage for those lives that have mattered but couldn't be saved due to reasons that many can't say out loud: Racism or simply the fear or blackness and brownness. And even though it is clear what happened there is hardly any justice.
If anyone actually takes offense in pro- black statements, THEY ARE THE PROBLEM.
If a non-black person acts black, but is scared of black people, THEY ARE THE PROBLEM.
Listening to Hip Hop, embracing black culture, but not standing up for it…?! Pathetic.
If anyone calls this movie anti-white propaganda, THEY ARE THE PROBLEM.
If anyone calls this movie anti police propaganda, THEY ARE THE PRBLEM.
In a scene Starr's uncle who is a cop, actually defends the action of police officers who may have had their reasons for killing someone who is unarmed. It was a very emotional conversation and i actually held my breath.
The Hate U Give is full of teachable moments and an amazing cast, and it's a shame it didn't score better in the movie theaters. WHY WASN'T MORE MONEY INVESTED TO PROMOTE THIS MOVIE? I am aware that our society cares more about making money off of comic book adaptations than movies that can actually make a change, but I thought I should still point out this problem.


text:
Banning order for football fans following assault at Cardiff City Stadium
THREE MEN have received football banning orders following an incident at the Cardiff City Stadium. Lee Thomas, from Pentre, was given...
Police seek football fans in connection with incident at Bristol City ground
POLICE have released photographs of the Swansea City football fans who are alleged to have caused trouble at the Bristol...