soulpope

sonny fortune

sonny rollins is not obliged to fullfill the dedicated follower s expectations. the (dedicated) follower is entitled having these - for some of the latermentioned it s satiesfying having a great rollins album after more than 25 years (aka in 1996) and for others not so much, both views possibly based on choices and not necessarily on verdicts.

another interesting aspect, thnx for sharing...

My view is this: Sonny wanted to play for the people, specifically the middle class. He did not want to play avant garde; he wanted to groove. In a way, he took a very challenging stance: to force his hardcore jazz audience to accept musicians like Stanley Clarke, George Duke and Larry Coryell as real, substantive jazz musicians. He reaffirmed that melody, rhythm and (perhaps most of all) approachability were core to his jazz experience. He wanted to be the opposite of an elitist. interesting thoughts....

as the last couple of posts deals with why rollins was not more successfull in identifying hornplayers in the db blindfold test, i want try to reinstate the question reg the choices of musicians rollins made following his second recording hiatus (1969-1972) and to which exent these influenced his further development/recording output....any further points of view ?

I think I once saw/read an interview where it was explained that Bob Cranshaw was no longer able to cope with the demands of playing an upright bass, hence the bass guitar. thnx for the info, explains the situation reg bob cranshaw. nevertheless it does give no answer, why rollins (hey he could have hired virtully every bassplayer he wanted !!) remained bound to a musician with this limitation(s)...which again leads back to the prediscussed topic reg rollins and his choices of musicians.....

as i already outed myself being a sucker reg acoustic bass players, it always left me wondering why rollins stopped using these end of the sixties permanently and IMO robbed himself (aka his music) of a natural fundament......

Don't know if I give credence to the model that what's good for an individual as a person is ultimately less important than what is important for the industry in which they labor. I tend to see it as an art form. Well. ok. but an "art form" that entertains the wants of its consumers as well as its creators is a business, and a business that is about getting product to market eventually becomes an industry. So, if Sonny Rollins has failed to provide you with what you want/need, he has failed his industry, even though he might have served his own personal wants and needs just fine. I don't expect anybody to listen trough all the 40+ years of brilliances and thudbooms of misses and "worship". But hostility on the grounds that the man had a faulty personal agenda/business plan, that if he HAD done XYZ then everything would have been allright, that's supremely industrial in it evaluation. Sonny "failed" because he didn't have the right parts installed, something like that, like the only thing that effects a player is who's on the stand that night or in the studio that afternoon, just show up and execute. Get that model SR back into R&D and don't come out until all the glitches and bugs have been removed. Sorry, just not feeling that. If the guy wanted to play with David S. Ware, he would have. As it is, didn't they practice together for a while? That's where you'd really learn, one on one practice sessions. The whole "record/concert=reality" thing, that's basically industry glimmer to get in you eyes when the smoke clears. Now, sure, ther are plenty of peole who WANT to fo it like that, but not everybody does. One size does not fit all. It's art first, commerce second. I think Sonny failed his art after 1970 or so. Commerce has succeeded brilliantly in marketing him. Money has been made, so no complaints there. I give Sonny the respect of looking at him as an artist, a person, not a myth or a god. Serving one's own personal needs and wants doesn't necessarily translate into serving the art. It's just solipsism. Sonny's greatness came as much from other musicians as from himself; in other words, he fed off them, and they fed off him. When he began playing with sock puppets, there was nothing to feed off, except himself, and that's the sound of on hand clapping. love rollins but following his impulse albums he faded away from me (or me from him ?)....the musicians he "used" thereafter may have been a reason......always admired his capability to "reinvent" himself, which IMO was exhausted or lost from the 70s onwards.....

based on the reactions/feedback here this blindfold test at least helps to broaden down beat s marketing zone ;-)

nice one !!

this red garland trio keystone corner recording from 1977 looks tasty indeed.....

a beloved record to me.....

Based on my numerous experiences items described "3-5 days" were shipped within the lower end of that timeframe + service and packing are impeccable to me. If targeting an "older" item it may be worth to give a shot to Hmv.jp - I encountered that they would eventually fulfill orders with "2-4 weeks" items too (probaly cheing stoch with their outlets....) - once received a rare item I`ve already gave up on after a couple of months..... Furthemore some japanese Amazon Platform sellers quite often offer "older" items, of course sometimes honoring the items rarity with a higher price.

actually have a soft spot for this one....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Hj5Fh6fwc J.P Robinson "Keep Me Satisfied" (Blue Candle 1504) - upflifting......

Ron Mathewson "Mexican Green" (Savage Solveig SS001)

What were the odds? Upon further review, it was 1980, so the odds were better than 50-50. I recall the time on Board Krypton, somebody asked tomatbluenote, hey, these recent Jackie McLean Blue Note records have been great, when's the next one, and tomat, honest man that he was/is, had to say, well, they're not really blue Note, they're leased from Japan, and you now, we'd love to have the money to make Jackie McLean records from now until infinity but we don't, and we're not, and that was that. Honest answer, and reflective of the reality, but if Jackie developed sort of a detached protectiveness about playing being all he did to define himself, well hey, no money for no records, c'est la vie, am I going to be the one to say, oh Jackie, no, don't do that? No, I'm not. Having a casual/random listen to Nature Boy right now, and that's just a sweet record, the kind of thing that has no real "moment", yet leaves the cumulative effect of wow, that's deep. Jackie, Cedar, Billy, and that kid, David Williams, "sound of surprise" my ass, this is the sound of, like Donny Hathaway said (through the pen of Leon Ware), there's no need to look, cause you know who's there. Not that I don't value the sound of surprise, hell, yes, I do, but I Know It's You is of no small importance as well. At some point, the shift of investment moves from music in the abstract to the ongoing-ment voices of the people. "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", damn, that's pure I Know It's You, and if it's not my baby's arms having been around me a long time, it IS Jackie/Cedar/Billy's voices, they too have been around me a long time, and they too have passed the test, through the good and the bad, and THIS is why I want to post... ok, I gave up (or in ?) and will play :

Conducted by Ormandy.

The way to go...

Agreed........but had by concidence "New and Old Gospel" with a friend and got it back the day following the fire ......giving me the chance to re-evaluate a platter i never really understood....

Carmell Jones - ongoing problem with his trumpet`s mouthpiece ??.....I`ve read that somewhere but unfortunately can`t rememeber the source.... Edit : The Live at Pep's and Tentet stuff was given back to Horace I'm told and I also asked Horace about it and he said the tentet stuff was quite sloppy, the ensembles a mess etc etc. I think I was told the Pep's stuff was rejected because Carmell Jones was having chop problems on this, can't remember for sure though. (Quote : David Weiss)

But maybe another Don Draper quote appropriately describes some (of our) estimations on McLean`s later career : "People tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be."

For what its worth, I'll take post 1975 Art Pepper any day over the early stuff. I happen to agree with you about Pepper, but disagree with where you take it. Larry really put the case best, so I won't attempt to restate it, but to me, Pepper in late career was working against desperation (or maybe it was disaster), while McLean was working against fatigue (or maybe exhaustion). There's a different frisson associated with each. I prefer Pepper late, but not McLean. Had the chance to witness both artist during live performances in their "late careers". To me Art Pepper played with an urgency and intensity as if his life would depend on each single note played......Jackie Mclean in the early eighties left impressions with me as somebody who physically was "there", but either couldn`t or did not want to to cross certain inner personal "security lines".....so based on that Pepper`s visibility made it IMO easier to appreciate his efforts (don`t get me wrong, I admire Art Pepper anyway) whereas McLean somehow remained "in the shadows"....