Larry Kart

Very interesting. I see by comparison that Austbo, for one, "does" something with this piece in particular, but I find Ausbto's logic (or "logic") compelling and/or attractive, while also responding to the more or less a-rhetorical rhetorical approach of Barbier.

Now that you mention it, Mike, that was my eventual verdict on Cohen, too. My initial somewhat positive reaction might have been based on listening to Roge's prettified Satie just before that. P.S. Is there a way to sample Barbier's recording?

Also, here's a list that Justin V posted in 2013. You can cross off those who won since then, and I think that P. Bley doesn't qualify as a Canadian or D. Holland as a Brit.. Saxophone George Coleman Odeon Pope Billy Harper Joe McPhee Charles McPherson Sonny Simmons Trumpet Joe McPhee (again) Bobby Bradford Tom Harrell Trombone Julian Priester Piano Paul Bley Harold Mabern Richard Wyands Steve Kuhn Carla Bley Ran Blake Vibraphone Gary Burton Bass Cecil McBee Buster Williams Henry Grimes Rufus Reid Reggie Workman Bob Cranshaw Dave Holland Steve Swallow Drums Mickey Roker Billy Hart Donald Bailey Joe Chambers Barry Altschul Victor Lewis

I'll have to do some research, but by the standards that arguably ought to prevail, I don't know how many prospective NEA Jazz Masters there are left. Roscoe and Threadgill to be sure. Would Kenny Barron be on the cusp? Billy Hart? De Johnette? A quick glance at the CDs on the walls gives me at least one name that might be worthy in some eyes and might get in down the road, Pat Martino, and a few names that it might be nice to see there, depending on one’s tastes, but probably will never get in: Lennie Niehaus, Don Friedman, John McNeill, Jack Sheldon, Ted Brown, Marcus Belgrave. Does Cuscana have one? He should. Chuck, too, but that won't happen. Heck, I’d pay good money to see Sheldon’s acceptance speech, which probably would end the NEA Jazz Masters Awards forever. In any case, time has and is taking quite a toll. And when the NEA gets around to say Christian McBride, I’m outta here.

Ira Sullivan, for one

did you in mentioned survey also have a chance listening to Anne Queffelec`s Satie recordings from the late eighties for Virgin ? No, didn't hear her. Some of of the others I listened to were Pascal Roge, De Leeuw, Patrick Cohen, and Peter Dickinson. There were more. Ciccolini I knew from back when. Roge was a perfect example of why elegantly shaded French pianism is not the way to Satie. Cohen IIRC was interesting/eccentric, but I no longer recall in what way. Dickinson, like White a composer, had a similar grasp of how Satie's music ought to be handled IMO -- a certain plainness/absence of rhetoric, a la John Cage's string quartet, perhaps.

Hefti was East Coast at the time.

Listened to a few tracks on Spotify. Pretty sure it isn't Quill or Phil Woods (if it was Quill, he was taking Quaaludes.) My first guess was Hal McKusick, but the photo doesn't look like Hal, and though the tone resembles his, his familiar twiddles/motifs aren't there. Maybe some relatively faceless guy, like Dick Meldonian? BTW, there's a Hefti big band album from 1955, "Hefti, Hot and Hearty," that IIRC has a lot of Phil Woods from when Woods was at his early best. I see it's on a Collectables CD, unfortunately it's paired with Hefti's "Pardon My Doo-Wah," big band plus vocal ensemble.

Yes -- I knew about Hemmings and Britten. Here is Hemmings' take, as told to a fellow who wrote about a book about Britten and his boys: "He was not only a father to me, but a friend – and you couldn't have had a better father or a better friend. [...] Everybody asks me whether or not he gave me one, whether or not it was a sexual relationship. The answer to that question, as I have often said, is: no, he did not. I have slept in his bed, yes, only because I was scared at night...and I have never ever, ever felt threatened by Ben at all because I was more heterosexual than Genghis Khan!" Now I need to watch "Zabriskie Point" again. It's been a long time.

P.S. In the scenes of "Medium Cool" where TV cameraman Robert Forster pursues a story about a cabdriver who turns in $10,000 that was left in envelope in his cab and then, when he visits the cab driver's apartment, encounters his black militant friends, the cab driver is played by jazz DJ and record producer Sid McCoy and two of the militants are Muhal Richard Abrams (very foxy) and John Jackson. Again, quite a movie -- holds up like gangbusters. Somewhat related in feel to Antonini's "Blow-Up" but a good deal more intense.The accompanying documentary on the Blu-Ray version goes into detail about how the film was shot amidst the sometimes chaotic events of the 1968 Democratic Convention and its "police riot." In fact, given the significance of the theme of the media shaping the reality it allegedly interprets, director Haskell Wexler's own experience, and that of his cast and crew, in making the film is in effect a crucial story within the story.

Just saw "Medium Cool" on DVD. Superb. And, contrary to what I had feared, it allowed me to preserve and even amplify the confusion I felt at the time ... and probably still feel in a good many ways. In fact, the film's emphasis on the media as filter and shaper is remarkably shrewd. And wouldn't you know it, I went on to become a journalist.

'I think Ira's "multi-tracked" performance is just dandy.' Sure is, IMO. Listening to it for the first time in some years, I pretty much forgot it was multi-tracked. Ira really interacts with himself.

Carlton Holmes -- Can be heard on his own trio album "You and Me," on Cindy Blackman"s "Works on Canvas," and on several albums by the Bill Kirchner Nonet (where I first heard him). Damn fine player. Also Ben Patterson, formerly Von Freeman's pianist. Not obscure exactly but up and coming: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Elements-Ben-Paterson/dp/B00F9PTKVG/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1403568695&sr=1-1&keywords=ben+patterson

I semi-obsessively compared a lot of Satie piano recordings a few years ago. This CD from English composer-pianist John White struck me as special, though of course it's not the complete works: http://www.amazon.com/Erik-Satie-Piano-John-White/dp/B000005I6H I also liked Haukon Austbo's set, which is not complete but contains a good deal.

Just listened to the reissued with added tracks Hal Russell. My gosh! I was reminded once more of the remarkable clarity and -- this may sound crazy, given Russell's wildman reputation -- orderliness of this music. Yes, it often is near unbelievably intense, but there's not a wasted gesture.

Really? Could you give me an example from your own experience. I mean, when I was about 10 or so I dug "Lisbon Antigua" and Something Smith and the Redheads's "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie" and Perry Como doing "Kokomo"and maybe some Les Baxter for a minute (no Leroy Anderson, though later on Cannonball played the s--- out of "Serenata"), but it's been my experience and observation over the years that young people tend to go for some version of peppiness/excitement. To me, "bland" = "common". When everything's spicy, nothing is spicy, and/or only the most extempore ends of the spectrum really stand out. Youth tends to be very able to find enthusiasm in things common, and good for youth for being able to do so, becuase in the end, most things are common/bland. To me, "common" means readily available and widely appreciated. In my circle (or rather in a nearby circle) when I was 14 or 15, one of the things musical that was readily available and widely appreciated was the work of Hank Ballard and the Moonlighters. It wasn't bland.

Shoot -- I just looked on the shelves and for some damn reason the Flying Fish LP isn't there. So I guess I can't do a comparison. OTOH, I listened again to the CD in the car today and enjoyed the heck out of it once more. Scratch the Miles comparison, though -- or at least I think so; the fluidity -- e.g. solos flowing into and under each other -- that's so striking to me here actually is present to a good degree on Ira's Parker Memorial Concert at the Birdhouse album from 1962 or so (with Jodie and Wilbur on board). BTW, Dan Shapera plays his ass off.

Really? Could you give me an example from your own experience. I mean, when I was about 10 or so I dug "Lisbon Antigua" and Something Smith and the Redheads's "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie" and Perry Como doing "Kokomo"and maybe some Les Baxter for a minute (no Leroy Anderson, though later on Cannonball played the s--- out of "Serenata"), but it's been my experience and observation over the years that young people tend to go for some version of peppiness/excitement.

FWIW, don't think that what I didn't care for in A.A.'s playing on that Binney album had anything to do my age or his. I like a lot of players who are younger and edgier than either of those guys (heard three of them on Thursday -- Josh Berman, Jason Roebke, and Frank Rosaly, then the next day listened to relatively young alto saxophonist Greg Ward tear things up on one of Roebke's two new albums). Again, it's A.A.'s relative blandness IMO that put me off.

Only time I heard him was as a sideman on a David Binney album "Barefooted Town." Cerebral elevator music just about describes it, but I'm not even sure about "cerebral." What A.A. played struck me as bland, disjointed noodling, maybe like an "advanced" Hugh Masekla? Indeed, A.A.'s vibe on that album seemed to have infected the previously interesting IMO Binney with the same tendencies. Made me think about getting rid of what else by Binney I had.

Just got the Ira Sullivan and the Hal Russell in the mail (thanks Chuck) and have listened to the Ira. Haven't A/B-ed it with the Flyrish Fish LP yet, but it's as though I've never heard this music before -- what back then seemed a bit too loose at times now strikes me as delightfully fluid and mercurial, a trip (as they used to say), an adventure. I would guess that Ira had Miles of "Bitches Brew" and beyond somewhere in his mind, though Ira is so much himself that the music is all his own. Also, I didn't recall how INTENSE this music is (the rhythm section, for example, is on fire, Jodie Christian in particular). In fact, time (and what I would guess, again without comparing it to the LP yet) and a magical (and perhaps tricky) job of remastering suggests that what was happening in October 1978 was a forecast of what was destined to fully flower and be fully heard in 2014.

I'm thinking of Bobby's role as an admiring associate of Joe McCarthy and also of his key role a bit later on as part of the Kefauver Commission. In both cases, leaving aside if one can in McCarthy's case the ideological aspects, there was the basic approach to political-social problems (or "problems"), which might be described as an inseparable blend of investigation (or "investigation") and intimidation, even though there is (or so most of us would say) a vast disparity between Joe McCarthy's targets and those of Kefauver and his ilk (labor racketeers). But, again, the typical means were typically under the table and behind the scenes. And one could talk about or argue about this in at least two ways 1) that for a long time in this country, given the nature and the means of the mostly extra-governmental powers-that-be, under the table and behind the scenes means are the only ones that might curtail or defeat those powers-that-be when they need to be curtailed or defeated, and 2) (and in this I'm influenced by Theodore Draper's vast book about the Iran-Contra affair, "A Very Thin Line") that the resort on the part of the government to means that are under the table and behind the scenes eventually becomes habitual and ever-growing and can disastrously infect virtually all policy-making with oligarchic strains and impulses. It seems to me that Bobby was a significant player on this swatch of our evolving political landscape, and that a Bobby as president ... well, I'm reminded of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz's response to Columbia studio head Harry Cohn's statement that he knew whether a picture was good or bad depending on whether or not his ass twitched while he was screening it. "Imagine," Mankiewicz said, "the whole world wired to Harry Cohn's ass." ***** Oops. I forget -- no politics on Organissimo anymore. Allen, if we want to talk about this further, I think it will have to be by e-mail.

Medjuck, I didn't realize it; obviously they worked it out & Wexler was 1000% correct not to change it bc that sequence, visual & audio, is brilliant. Curiously, in the commentary to the Criterion, Wexler doesn't mention the hold up. (Unlike most commentary tracks, this one is v. worthwhile.) LK, though, as you know, the film enfolds the Democratic Convention, it's about quite a bit more & some of its most interesting sequences are before and besides it. I don't know offhand if you were a Kennedy, McCarthy or Humphrey supporter in the spring of '68 (I was Bobby all the way, though I did like Gene also) but there's a great, great (chilling) Bobby scene leading into the Mothers of Invention music that you will-- but a lot of younger folk-- don't recognize. Of course a large % of the film's original viewers would have recognized it also. Watch "Medium Cool" back to back with stunningly brilliant "Zabriskie Point" for fullest period effect. My view of some of this was affected a good deal at the time (or in the run-up to that time) because I knew some of the Free Speech Movement people at Berkeley fairly close up, and they gave me a stiff taste of how personally exploitive some of those people could be. I don't recall having a gut favorite candidate in '68 -- McCarthy seemed very appealing in all the ways so many found him to be, but I felt certain he couldn't win. Bobby did almost nothing for me -- while I could see his populist appeal, I thought he finally was about Bobby and the Kennedys and also was compromised by the thuggishness of his earlier days, which I thought he could revert to readily when pressed; Humphrey had been de-balled by LBJ, though I've heard goodish arguments recently from some on the Left that in terms of policies his likely road would have been the best to travel given what Nixon and then Reagan gave us.

Ashamed to say I never saw it. Will try to rectify that. Didn't see it IIRC because I had more or less lived through the events the movie deals with -- not on the front lines, so to speak, but I was living and working in Chicago in 1968, and I never felt like I wanted or needed to have all that "interpreted" and/or dramatized for me. If anything, perhaps, I wanted to preserve the raw sense of confusion of that time, plus there was the fact that I was involved in something new, absorbing, and dramatic in my own little life -- having just switched from my first post-college job, as an editor at a textbook publishing firm, to working as assistant editor under Dan Morgenstern at Down Beat.

Brian Lynch and Ralph Moore were the frontline in 1982.