AllenLowe

had to because of the high-intensity radiation I had on my jaw in 2019. My embouchure died at that point; still having some trouble.

I agree but they really both helped create the style. As did Earl Bostic.

does he talk about predecessors? Louis Jordan? Pete Brown? Horsecollar Williams? I somehow doubt it, but those three - at the least - should be in a book like this.

I haven't read, and probably won't - I think this deserves more of a magazine article than an entire book - but I do worry about the anti-art and anti-intellectualism of books that seem, from the description, to create straw man arguments. I know this is probably promo written by a third party, but dumb stuff like: "The New Thing,” as personified by Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and a few others." doesn't help the cause; "a few others" - ? no, hundreds of others of musicians who were feeling a certain way in the 1960s. Or: "Avant-garde jazz, made by musicians indifferent to public perception" is just total crap. Many of the avant garde-ists had a very populist perspective, and saw the music as addressing a deeper and much more direct kind of musical reality. There was a strong black nationalist bend to the new music, and any book that ignores it is only worthy of contempt. These musicians - like Hemphill and BAG - saw themselves as community organizers. So this book, instead of breaking new ground, is trying to reinvent a perspective that has already been expressed. Write about it - but don't try and sabotage musicians who were also in the middle of if all. Include it all. And if you really want an alternative jazz history...well, read my book That Devilin' Tune, which shows there is an entirely different perspective that most jazz writers have ignored.

I wasn't aware of that, thanks, I just have to insist, on aural evidence, that what Pullman thinks was '49 sounds, ballad-wise, nothing like Bud from that year.

well, not ready for prime time.

I find Melle's soloing on the Blue Notes and Prestiges to be....well, a bit amateurish. I don't think he was at the level he wanted to be at.

as all the 1947 Roost recordings - with Curley and Max Roach.

new picture? I would like to hear that; I don't think his Blue Note era stuff has held up well, but when I talked to him (I think it was the '90s) he was most proud of the soundtrack/synth work he had done. And I think this one is pretty cool:

Yes - but it is because of the ballads (I Should Care, for example) - his ballad approach is significantly different than what it would become in the next year or two, a little more decorous and even lush. Compare a ballad from '47 to those from '49 and I think you will hear the difference. Also - and it is less scientific - but I had some long talks with Curley Russell about these sessions, and though I did not ask about the year (this wasn't an issue back in the 1970s when I knew him) he always sounded like those Roosts were from the same session.

well, that's not a good idea, to think differentiating the time period is unimportant. Bud was an amazing figure, and his development as a musician is an amazing and essential thing to witness - and he was a different player in 1947 than in 1948 through, perhaps, 1953, which were his peak years. To say the time period is unimportant is like also saying it might as well have been 1956, when he was audibly deteriorating. Or that what a writer wrote is unimportant to recognize, even if his early work is different than the later. In 1947 Bud is playing great, but he does NOT have the depth to his playing that he has in '48 and '49. How can this be unimportant? It is important because Bud is changing, deepening, expanding. BUT MOST IMPORTANT: How can you trust a writer who cannot differentiate between different sounds and approaches, especially one as clear as this? To me this shows how poor Pullman's judgement is, and it tells me NOT to trust any other musical observations he makes - because the difference in Bud's playing is plain and obvious. And if you yourself don't make the distinction, you should go back, because it is so artistically blatant, and it will lead you to appreciate Bud even more. As for Paudras, I knew him a little, and you seem to be dismissing him. He was a great guy who really saved Bud's life. He deserves better treatment.

He growled at me once, but I still like his music. I hit him over the head with a newspaper and he went away.

always glad to see something about Bud, but I am not a fan of Pullman's bio. Aside from one very bizarre discographical error (he is definitely wrong about some performances which he claims were not recorded in '47 - and clearly they were), he does not write very well. I don't think I ever finished the book, and I am a Bud fanatic.