Larry Kart

McLean BN leader dates 1959 • Jackie McLean - Jackie's Bag (Blue Note BLP 4051) • Jackie McLean - Vertigo (Blue Note LT-1085) • Jackie McLean - New Soil (Blue Note BLP 4013) • Jackie McLean - Swing, Swang, Swingin' (Blue Note BLP 4024) 1960 • Jackie McLean - Capuchin Swing (Blue Note BLP 4038) • Jackie McLean/Tina Brooks - Street Singer (Blue Note (J) GXF-3067) 1961 • Jackie McLean - Bluesnik (Blue Note BLP 4067) • Jackie McLean - A Fickle Sonance (Blue Note BLP 4089) 1962 (age 30) • Jackie McLean - Let Freedom Ring (Blue Note BLP 4106) • • Jackie McLean - Hipnosis (Blue Note BN-LA483-H2) • Jackie McLean - Tippin' The Scales (Blue Note (J) GXF-3062) •1963 • Jackie McLean - One Step Beyond (Blue Note BLP 4137) • • Jackie McLean - Destination... Out! (Blue Note BLP 4165) • Jackie McLean - It's Time! (Blue Note BLP 4179) • Jackie McLean - Action (Blue Note BLP 4218) 1965 • Jackie McLean - Right Now! (Blue Note BLP 4215) • • Jackie McLean - Jacknife (Blue Note BN-LA457-H2) • Jackie McLean - Consequence (Blue Note LT-994) 1967 • Jackie McLean - New And Old Gospel (Blue Note BLP 4262) • Jackie McLean - 'Bout Soul (Blue Note BST 84284) • Jackie McLean - Demon's Dance (Blue Note BST 84345)

The idea that "Swing Swang Swingin'" is a step backwards makes me laugh. Is Jackie any less intense there than on the other dates mentioned, excellent though they are? I don't think so. Also, has anyone mentioned "New Soil" (I know, recorded in 1959 but surely part of the early '60s sequence stylistically)? When that one came out, Jackie's fierce, stripped down solo on "Hip Strut" was a revelation to a lot of us, quite unlike anything he or anyone else had recorded before, I beiieve. And that "abstract" Pete LaRoca solo on "Minor Apprehension"!

Majestic, perhaps?

Just listened to "Lake Michigan." Great to hear Threadgill in this context. The sound of Smith's trumpet is one of jazz's great "sounds," at once so expressive and... not sure if this is the right word, calm.

About Johnny Janis -- he's still with us, thanks be. His website is no more, but he says that his albums can be purchased from him at: johnnyjanissr@gmail.com They're all worth hearing if you enjoy the style of jazz-tinged popular singing singing that Frank D'Rone and Janis represent in their individual ways. I particularly recommend "Jazz Up Your Life" (with Ira Sullivan and Dodo Marmarosa) and "Once in a Blue Moon," romantic ballads with Don Costa, which for me is right up there with Sinatra's "Only the Lonely."

Still remember what it felt like to hear that for the first time. Talk about your "new music"! With apologies to Geoff Dyer: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last..."

Hef had good taste in jazz or jazz-tinged singers. Another very talented Chicagoan Hef liked and who like D’Rone played guitar, was Johnny Janis. Hef bankrolled Janis’ superb album “Once in a Blue Moon”: http://www.amazon.com/once-blue-moon-JOHNNY-JANIS/dp/B00410ZEZQ/ref=sr_1_9?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1416695757&sr=1-9&keywords=johnny+janis I was in touch with Janis a few years ago; he lived in Nashville and had a website where his records, including an unreleased at the time it was made (1962) gem with Ira Sullivan and Doda Marmarosa (!), were available, but the website is no more.

That's the one I got. Comparing it last night to other performances on Spotify and elsewhere (there are several), this one seems to me to be miles ahead -- for the conducting (those crucial orchestral surges early on, for instance) as well as for the great Blachut.

Just picked up a copy of this recording on LP: http://www.amazon.com/Janacek-Eternal-Gospel-Pinkas/dp/B000025YFF Top drawer Janacek. There’s a CD version on Hyperion, favorably reviewed here: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2005/Oct05/Janacek_gospel_CDA67517.htm I haven’t heard it, but it’s hard to imagine that Hyperion’s tenor could match the fervent Beno Blachut on the Supraphon LP.

Geshrei on toast, with a side order of weeping. I fell for it way back when (a Dorati LP recording of Symphony No. 7), but when batch after batch began to emerge, I checked out. Perhaps I've missed something mighty important, but I doubt it.

And Sharon Stone as Helen Keane.

Steve Buscemi? Christopher Walken?

Let's hear it for arranger Mike Abene. Alto solo by Lanny Morgan. Truth be told, that's a very good album by a very good band (as I know you know), anachronistic though it was becoming, claustrophobic as it might have been feeling from a lot of different perspectives. It was a lucky day for me when I found a used copy of that one. Got to know Abene a bit when he was Chris Connor's accompanist and then when writing the notes for a fine album by singer Anita Gravine, "Welcome to My Dream," for which he wrote some remarkable big band arrangements -- in the Gil Evans class but all Abene. Quite a guy. http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-My-Dream-Anita-Gravine/dp/B000005HJN/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1416284736&sr=1-2&keywords=Anita+gravine

Let's hear it for arranger Mike Abene. Alto solo by Lanny Morgan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDaHz1f3L-4&spfreload=10 From about 6:33 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLiqNnbyqIw&spfreload=10 Art Pepper, Warne Marsh, Ted Brown, from about 2:37 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ2vCjgIR60&spfreload=10 Warne and Ted Brown from about 3:56 on

Lee and Warne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQMSPEi6WPc&spfreload=10 From about 1:28 on, but listen to the whole thing — my gosh! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VdR9KNfurQ&spfreload=10 From about 4:10 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay33m_WL0x4&spfreload=10 Off and on throughout

What is "cod period mummery"? ​If it means that you think Marsh and Pepper are just horsing around here in some neo-old fashioned manner, I couldn't disagree more.

Fertile? Wide hips? No history of insanity in the family?

The beginning and end of this track: Also, many Konitz-Marsh recordings.

George Walker's Trombone Concerto is excellent.

About Getz playing with other people, there was a Chicago Jazz Festival (almost certainly 1985, for reasons that will become evident) where both Getz and Gerry Mulligan were booked, each with his regular group. Because Zoot Sims had died that year (thus 1985), it was suggested that Mulligan and Getz play a short additional set dedicated to Zoot. When the time came to sketch out what they would play -- in the afternoon before that evening's performance -- Mulligan insisted that his rhythm section be used, not Getz's, and that he call the tunes. Apparently angry words were exchanged between the two, and the planned run through was broken off. Driving Getz back to his hotel afterwards, Penny Tyler, head of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, which booked the fest, was concerned that the set might have to be cancelled, such was the enmity between Mulligan and Getz. She expressed this to Stan, who said, "Don't worry. I've played with the fagelah before, and I can play with him again."

People are who they are, by and large. Evans was not about guts. If pigs had wings... Larry, Evans displayed plenty of guts in the right setting. Listen to Israel and Someday my Prince from the Jazz 625 show I alluded to in the OP. He's employing the same concepts of rhythmic displacement and block chord soloing (and some of the same tunes) as in the VV sessions, only, to my ears, with so much more vitality. I wonder if it was an internal change besides, obviously, one of personnel. 'Gutsy' Evans can also be heard on the title track of A Simple Matter of Conviction and throughout Interplay---to give just a few examples from the '60s. Evans himself resented, in interviews, being pigeonholed as the sensitive ballad player. He said decisively in one that he worked much harder on 'energy, swing, whatever' than the delicacy and moodiness he was said to exclusively mete out. I think great drummers brought this side of him out. Gutsiness to me is at once relative (gutsy compared to Horace Silver? Bobby Timmons? Sonny Clark? Eddie Costa? the list could go on and on) and a matter of how a person plays by and large. The recordings you mention are exceptions in BE's body of work IMO and even then they are not that gutsy compared to the playing of Silver et al. Yes, I remember that moment in that video but not in photographic (i.e. auditorily precise) detail. I recall having much the same reaction as you did.

People are who they are, by and large. Evans was not about guts. If pigs had wings...

Glad it was so good.