AllenLowe

I love Smith. One interesting thing that I was told was that he was born in Mississippi to a mixed-race couple (I think his mother was African American). This could not hve been easy, especially in those years. I won't order CDRs; but if you figure that each blank costs them maybe 25 cents, and if they charge $15 for each and sell 100 they are making at least $1000 profit, subtracking some production costs. So that's not bad; if they sell out they just make 100 more. And, I will add, it's a pity they didn't do more work on those; the sound can be improved hugely through a simple re-EQ.

as long as they give me a good review, I'm ok with Kenny G. on the cover.

or pay some dues.....

thanks, I had seen something by Tom but not that. As I like to point out, I am pretty much the only non-working musician who makes these lists; same thing happened two years ago. I have a few things next year, but these days the gigs in NYC are controlled by young musicians who don't know me and who tend to book their friends. But I will keep trying.

https://jazztimes.com/blog/2024-year-in-review-part-2/

well, I can barely get gigs where I live. Maybe with Ted Cruz on vocals....

people used to get mad at me here when I criticized jazz players for only scratching the surface of deep blues playing (or the Hard Blues as Julius Hemphill used to call it). Well, I never get much response here, but eff-it, I carry on although, as I said recently, I seem to have reached the jazz mandatory retirement age; meaning, I cannot get gigs. A lot of the clubs in NYC are being booked by very young players, who, if you are not famous or their friend, will not even check you out. So here is something we did with my new trio, the bassist (Colson Jimenez) and drummer (Ethan Cogan) of which are absolutely stunning players. Colson is the first bassist I have found recently who does not sound like 50 other guys, and has almost a Mingus-like drive and persistence. This is Beneath the Blues, recorded in October. Roots, schmoots, jazz players usually play blues like Oscar Peterson on a good day. The blues is a syntax, a way of phrasing and punctuating, not just hitting certain intervals. As a matter of fact I avoid minor thirds whenever I can. We have created a real interactive trio and I have got to get these guys on a cd:

that whole period is amazing, and that performance, yes. Years ago I tried to stop sounding like Sonny. It is beyond impossible. Better men than me have died (musically) trying. I remember when Wayne Escoffrey was a local kid and one night I heard him trying to replicate Sonny like this. I had to admire the attempt and even the execution, but it just wasn't there. Even if I had heard it blind, I think I would have been able to clearly discern the disconnect between style as art/form and style as mannerism.

I haven't read everything here, but the RCA stuff, IMHO, is epochal - coinciding as it does with a lot of film of Sonny, in Denmark in particular (IIRC) that is astounding; maybe 1964-66. His harmonic approach is amazing (I can say this as I try to copy him all the time; unsuccessfully of course) - he is playing these stacked, chromatic lines that, coupled with his amazing time and technique, are among the most amazing accomplishments by anyone, ever, in jazz. This is the period of which Larry Kart told me he thought Sonny to be, and I am paraphrasing, "one of the greatest artists in anything, ever." I concur.

I'm disappointed - I liked to watch those other idiots crash and burn -

no argument here; my tone is everything.

If you are implying that I am looking for a problem, that's not really fair. It implies that I come to Sonny's music looking to pick it apart. The truth is really the opposite; for years I cut him a lot of slack, saw him more than a few times through the '70s and '80s and always thought I should like what I didn't, so I kept going back. There were moments of illumination but they were like listening to someone whose feet were trapped in mud. There was no way out, and Sonny, I soon realized, wasn't looking for a way out so I gave up. I'm not questioning his right to do whatever he wants, but that doesn't make it interesting. like with all of Sonny there are some amazing possibilities. He is one of a handful of saxophonists of that generation who made a smooth and real transition to harmonic adventures that shadowed the free jazz/post-Trane movement. That's an amazing thing. But the way they recorded this isn't appealng to me, boomy bass and airless. And his performances don't really go anywhere. But it does make fascinating listening. Sonny's was a great musical mind and listening to him on something like this is like listening to a great scientist strugglling to invent something he knows is within his grasp. This is def. one of his best later things.

Ok I'll put out an APB. But to me that performance is part of the problem. And the rhythm section is like finger nails on a blackboard. Sonny, who spent the first half of his career jettisoning extraneous accompanists spent the last half flooding his music with obstructions.

I love Sonny, he is probably the reason I play the sax, but I have a lot of problems with the book. Years ago Jamil Nasser said to me (and I quote as closely as I can remember): "Sonny was completely thrown by the fact that Coltrane became the dominant saxophone player in jazz. That's why he started all those gimmicks, the Mohawk haircut, the thing about playing on the bridge - it was all to try and get some attention back." And I will add what Paul Bley said about the Our Man in Jazz Group: "We don't need Sonny to play free; we need him to show us how to play standards." (I know that group played standards but they went outside a lot) I love Sonny, and I only read a part of the book (I could not get through the massive and irrelevant, unedited detail) so I don't know how he dealt with the above. But I think it's important to look dispassionately at genius artists like Rollins. Otherwise, if we treat everything as the same, as in "Sonny was great for his entire career," then we diminish the parts of him that actually were great. I know this is not a popular opinion, but I am not the only one who feels this way (I cannot name names without permission).

she sounds good on that later album, her voice is lighter. The only thing is that the mix sounds terrible on the Youtube versions, and there is way too much reverb, which might have been to compensate for an aging voice.