I switched on the TV last night and Dirty Harry was on. Some of the incidental music caught my ear so I looked it up and it was by Lalo Schifrin. LS was one of the arrangers who worked with Jimmy Smith in the early 1960s - along with Oliver Nelson. I tracked down a bit of commentary on the JS album The Cat:

'Jimmy Smith fans will likely have this album already. If you're not one of these take a listen. The fact that Smith moved the Hammond organ from the dance floor to the jazz scene and upgraded it to become a fully-fledged improvisation instrument is to be found in every good dictionary of music. The results of this transition can be heard here. However when Jimmy shifted from Blue Note to Verve in the early '60s his outings for the new label were not always considered as impressive from a jazz perspective. But he redressed that on this album. Here he uses some full-blown big band arrangements by Argentinian Lalo Schifrin as a backdrop for his mainly blues oriented material. If you dig the interplay between these two, suggest you track down "The Unpredictable Jimmy Smith", his first release for Verve. It's another with big band backing -- this time with arrangements by Oliver Nelson.'

The Cat album provided that famous eccentric time piece that was used for decades as the introduction to the Money Programme and never stopped sounding fantastic. I prefer the Verve albums to the Blue Note ones - it is a glorious combination to have these really well written charts with the steaming blues oriented bebop from the Hammond. I looked up Tim Hodgkinson and found he has a website and a page on Myspace where I listened to some of his pieces - very sound oriented. On the website he says that it wasnt Schoenberg but Varese who started modern music.

I have been doing more with Soundforge and SMS - especially with the resonance filter. I sent Gilbert a couple of pieces and there is one which is still evolving. I switched over from Dirty Harry to hear PJ Harvey on Later. Dr Z wrote about Wagner and he posted a lot of updates about his new kitten. He also mentioned that his favourite of Bartok's SQs is the first - quite an uncommon choice but is one I like too - the only one I have the score too. The late night film about the boy and girl who met on the train and go round Vienna all night was good fun.