I'm currently listening to Grant Green's Goin' West album on headphones. At times you can hear someone singing along as they play. Given where the voice is coming from in the stereo image I'm guessing this is probably Billy Higgins. Unfortunately neither of these musicians is still with us.

I've been on kind of a jazz buying spree the last few months, picking up titles by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, John McLaughlin, and Horace Silver along with Green. Part of this has been because the local A&B Sound has had a bunch of Blue Note albums in a 50% off clearance bin. Someone else is obviously hip to these, as when I went looking again this week most of them were gone. Fortunately I picked up Horace Silver's The Cape Verdean Blues, and there's a Jackie McLean CD still there I'm hoping to snag next week. These Blue Note titles are all from the 2003 reissue series mastered by Rudy Van Gelder himself, who recorded them in the first place. If I have a criticism its that there's some tape hiss audible which I'm kind of surprised at. Perhaps he didn't find the various digital de noising programs currently available to his taste. Of course this kind of noise is somewhat more audible when you've got a pair of headphones on and aren't listening through speakers.