Larry Kart

I don't know anyone crazy enough to collaborate in the behind-the-sheet experiment, at least not without laughing so hard that they might knock things down. As for whether I hear a difference, one of my standard "test" CDs is the title track of Louis Smith's "Smithville" -- because it's such a vividly great RVG recording job (albeit great of his style) and because it proceeds in layers: first, solo Paul Chambers walking, then only Chambers and Smith, then with Sonny Clark and Art Taylor and finally Charlie Rouse added. My key tests here (or if you will "tests") are the entry of Taylor's ride cymbal (its relative prominence and crispness in relation to the rest) and the relationship (spatially and in relative prominence) of Clark's comping to the rest. I swear that with the cables on the lowest level (as described in my initial post) Taylor's ride cymbal is barely distinguishable, while with the speaker cables one level up it is just about where it should be in relation to everything else; likewise with Clark's comping (which I feel should be somewhat, but only somewhat, spatially separable from what it supports), though Clark's comping doesn't virtually disappear with the cables at the lowest level the way Taylor's ride cymbal does. I'm pretty sure that unless I'm imagining all this, it has something to do -- as you suggest -- with something in my rack interacting with something else. The simplest way to test this, with or without the sheet, would be to leave everything else as is and, say, switch the positions of the amp and the CD player and see if I hear any difference. But that's annoyingly hard to do physically by myself -- the space between the rack and the back wall of the basement is awkwardly tight and both those units weigh a ton -- so I think I'll just live with things as they are. Besides, there are practical reasons for keeping the CD player at the second level from the top; I don't want to have to kneel down on the floor every time I put in or take out a CD. Or I could run those speaker cables through my rectum.

Well, at least I haven't spent a dime on cable elevation, unless you count the cost of some sticky tape.

Knew I could count on you.

Any thoughts on this problem, which may not be a problem, would be welcome. My sound reproducing equipment (from the bottom up: Marantz integrated amp, mostly useless these days Yamaha tape deck, Marantz CD player, Rega turntable) is placed on 4-shelf QS-Entree stand between two B&W 805 speakers, each elevated on its heavy-duty stand. My speaker cables (six feet of each) are Flatline Gold. Some time ago, I read that it’s not a good idea to let your cables trail along the floor, then up to the speaker terminals, so I moved the cables up off the floor and thought I heard an improvement. Eventually I ended up taping the cables along the outer edges of the top layer (about waist high) of the QS equipment stand, from where they run to the speaker connections, and long have been happy with the seemingly airy, albeit somewhat treble-y at times, resulting sound. But, as usual, there’s a worm in the apple, which manifests itself in a quirky recording — in this case a version of Mozart’s K. 452 Quintet for Piano and Winds with Robert Levin on fortepiano. There’s an obvious balance-of-volume problem with that recording, given the inherently reticent nature of the fortepiano versus the winds and the apparent decision of the engineer not to shove a mic into the fortepiano's innards, but while that difference in the volume levels did seem extreme, I thought I had no choice but to accept it (because the playing as a whole is excellent) or just junk the recording. But then a little birdie said, “Why not lower the speaker cables from the edge of the top layer of the equipment stand and tape them to the edge of the second layer down from the top?” I did, and the sound of the fortepiano became more prominent in relation to the winds, this because (I’m fairly sure) of an increase in bass response and also in what I'll call the "compactness" of that response. I tried taping the speaker cables to the edge of the third layer down; the fortepiano became more prominent still, close to ideal. I tried the edge of the fourth layer down (about three inches from the floor); sound was too bass-y now and also kind of clotted, lacked “airiness.” Back to the third level down from the top. So in one sense I don’t have a problem. But even so, what’s going on here? Why does the height at which the speaker cables are placed in relation to the speaker themselves affect/“color” the nature of the sound when those cables connect to the same terminals in the backs of the speakers no matter at what height the cables run horizontally before those connections are made? One could understand the negative effects of electronic devices interfering with each other, as in the presence of a “hum” or a “buzz,” but that’s not what’s happening — rather, as I said, the treble-bass balance of the sound (plus some sense of “airiness” versus "compactness") alters depending on the height at which the cables are placed. Or am I just imagining effects that don’t in fact exist? That last might seem likely, but why then I wonder are the effects I think I hear consistent in their direction, so to speak — that is, the higher the cables, the more treble-y and airy the sound, the lower the cables, the more bass-y and “compact” the sound, until, at the lowest level, the sound gets too bass-y and a bit scrunched up/muddy. Maybe someone should stage an intervention?

Don’t know the details here, but based on a 2011 post by Pattitucci: http://www.notreble.com/buzz/2011/01/17/flying-with-an-upright-bass/ the TSA and/or customs can leave your instrument and its case in a state where fairly normal baggage-handling behavior can damage/wreck it. See the sentence below (from the above): "TSA and customs can be a nightmare, so expect them to do things like fail to strap your bass back in after inspection, forgetting to put your bow back in the case (I travel with mine as a carryon) or not re-latching all the latches."

Now have acquired three late Lanphere discs and three by the recently deceased Strazzeri. Standouts so far are Lanphere's "Like a Bird," with an organ trio, and Strazzeri's solo disc "Nobody Else But Me." Lanphere may not be as inspired on some tracks as he is on others; I'll have to check again to be sure -- the album was recorded over two days, and maybe he felt a bit better on one day -- but I'm very taken with his deep tone and overall inventiveness. Just a highly individual player. Also, the drummer on the album is Motown vet Mel Brown, who is in a laid-back Vernel Fournier bag and is in the same class. The Strazzeri is a gem; solo playing may have brought out the best in him. What a harmonic conception/imagination, yet always rooted in melody. I'm reminded at moments of Elmo Hope. Also, bless him, Strazzeri delivers the only performance of Johnny Mandel's "Emily" I've even been able to endure. For some reason -- its coupling, I think, of harmonic subtleties and a certain melodic whininess -- that tune always makes me gag, but FS, as I thought he might, totally transforms it.

Unfortunately I can't see the the record you`re rerefering too - could you pls specify in writing ? And your damn right about his playing with the Crusaders, which for me raised them another level..... No problem - Nancy Wilson's Tender Loving Care, or just TLC. If you're going to like Nancy Wilson at all, you're going to like this one, I'd think. Oh yeah. Lovely creative Buster there -- he's like a whole section of the orchestra.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10152380949652025&id=131251177024 How this happened I think I know. The TSA regards wooden musical instruments as outside-the-box (so to speak) problems and is inclined to wreak vengeance upon them. OTOH, I have heard tell of basses, cellos, guitars, etc. being pried open to make sure that there's nothing hidden inside.

Just ordered the Earl Hines. Got a lot of it on old LPs but am hoping for completeness, a sonic upgrade, and good liner notes. How does anyone who has the Hawkins set feel about it? I'm in a similar situation there as with the Hines -- already have a lot of what's on it -- but the Hawkins set doesn't claim to be complete for its period (that would be close to impossible), just adept in in its selections. Do you find that to be so?

Just getting into it, but I can say right off that Laurie P. is a darn good writer with a narrative voice that sweeps you along and that one implicitly trusts. Also I was tickled to discover in the acknowledgments that her cousin is novelist and woman about town Eve Babitz and her uncle is violinist Sol Babitz. Info about Eve: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Babitz http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/03/eve-babitz-los-angeles-party-scene and about Sol: http://www.maebabitz.com/about/sol-babitz/

???? OP = Oscar Peterson EI = Ethan Iverson Cranshaw is a big fan of the former; Iverson I assume is not.

I found the passage about Duke Pearson not being at the piano amusing.

Fascinating interview. Used to hear Cranshaw at sessions in Evanston in the late '50s. Didn't take a genius to figure out that he was going somewhere.

Fascinating interview. Used to hear Cranshaw at sessions in Evanston in the late '50s. Didn't take a genius to figure out that he was going somewhere.

Some probably too categorical thoughts (from 2004) about latter-day Rollins, followed by some related thoughts about Wayne Shorter, from the introductory chapter to my book: "The rich complexity of Rollins’s musical thought, and his ability to at once dramatize and ironically comment upon virtually any emotional impulse that came to mind, led him to express multiple points of view--one could even say summon up multiple selves or characters--within a single solo. This was, however, not an approach that Rollins could sustain during the 1960s, in the face of rapid stylistic change in the surrounding jazz landscape. Responding to those changes in his own work, as he did quite strikingly up to a point, also meant that the broadly shared musical-emotional language of romantic sign and sentiment that had so deeply stirred Rollins’s own sentiments and wit was now becoming historical. It was a language that could still be referred to and played off of, but for him apparently not with sufficient immediacy. "Shorter’s temperament--also deeply, even subversively ironic--led him at first to toy brilliantly with the idea that any soloistic gesture could or should be taken at face value. In the typical Shorter solo of the early- to mid-1960s, seemingly forthright, “heated” musical-emotional gestures are disrupted, even mocked, by oblique, wide-eyed shifts to other levels of speech (cool, chess-master complexity, blatantly comic tonal and rhythmic distortions, and so forth). Rollins had said, in effect: “There are many selves at work here, and I am present in all of them.” Shorter took the next step: “Why assume that any of these selves is a self, that any of them is me?” Significantly, this aspect of Shorter’s music emerged at the same time that Coltrane was plunging headfirst into the expressionistic sublime, although Shorter’s seemingly innate distancing diffidence also seems to have played a role. In any case, after he left the Miles Davis Quintet, Shorter increasingly withdrew from the solo arena (from 1970 to 1985 he was a member of the jazz-rock group Weather Report), and on the rare occasions when he has returned there, it is his diffidence that he essentially expresses. (That Shorter returned to the concert stage and the recording studio beginning in 2002 is a hopeful sign, though the rather studied elegance of the results so far suggests something less than full engagement.)"

Age 37? A mere broth of a boy. Happy birthday, Jim!

For me, the big turning point was "Worktime!" the first album he made after the Chicago woodshed period. I wrote about it thusly (slightly modified at the every end liner notes for a 1972 LP reissue of the album): 1972] Most jazz fans, myself included, tend to view the process of jazz creation in a dramatic, even romantic light. If the artistic product is turbulent, passionate, noble, etc., we feel that the circumstances surrounding its creation must have been similar in tone. As one has more contact with musicians, though, one discovers that it is rarely that simple--musical events that to the listener seem immensely dramatic may have been created in a casual, “let’s get the job done” manner. I mention this as a mild corrective, for if ever there was a recording that deserved the term “dramatic,” Worktime is it. The situation was this: Sonny Rollins, who by 1954 had established himself as the best young tenorman in jazz, moved to Chicago for most of 1955 and “woodshedded” (that apt jazz term for artistic self-examination). He emerged to join the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet, and when he recorded Worktime on December 2, 1955, it was his first appearance on record since October 1954, when recorded as a sideman with Thelonious Monk. “Worktime” was a dramatic and startling event, then and now, because it revealed that during his sabbatical Rollins had made a quantum jump in every area of musical procedure. He was no longer “the best young tenorman” but a major innovator whose achievements would have implications for the future course of jazz that have not yet been exhausted, either by himself or by all those he has influenced. Most obviously, there was an increase in rhythmic assurance and sonoric variety on Rollins’s part. But these and other seemingly technical gains were all in the service of a shift in sensibility, a unique attitude toward his material that had only been hinted at in his previous work. I imagine that everyone who admires Rollins’s music has commented on its humorous quality, though there seems to be agreement that “humorous,” by itself, is not an adequate description. David Himmelstein has added the information that it is “the humor of inwit, of self-consciousness or, as Sonny once aptly put it, the consciousness of a generation nourished on ‘Lux--you know, the Radio Theatre,’ ” and Max Harrison has given us the terms “sardonic” and “civilized irony.” But the best guide I have found to the sensibility that emerges on Worktime is a remarkable article by Terry Martin titled “Coleman Hawkins and Jazz Romanticism” that appeared in he October 1963 issue of Jazz Monthly. In commenting on Hawkins’s version of “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” (which can be heard on the album Soul ) Martin says that “the whole is a finely shaped drama. Dramatic structure may in fact point to the core of Hawkins’s art. He handles his materials with the ease and cunning of a great dramatist, and as with great drama the meaning may not correspond exactly with what the characters are made to say. It is the personae and the relations generated between them that contain the essence of the achievement.” Much of this also applies to Rollins, though his kind of drama differs in form and content from Hawkins’s. A comparison between “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” and “There Are Such Things” from Worktime may show what the differences are. As Martin points out, one of Hawkins’s methods is to make an initial statement that is romantic in character and then juxtapose it with “highly emotive rhythmic figures” that eventually lead back to the original mood. It is as though he were saying, “Yes, romance does exist, but I want to show you the tough reality that lies underneath.” Structurally, Hawkins’s drama is double in effect but single in method--i.e., allowing for foreshadowing devices, he presents one personae at a time--while with Rollins the method as well as the final effect is double ( at the least). No statement is allowed to rest unqualified by him for more than a few measures, and often the very tone quality and accentuation with which a phrase is presented is felt as an ironic commentary upon it. The implications of such an approach are numerous. For one, even though Rollins can retain and heighten the pattern of linear motivic evolution that was hailed enthusiastically by Gunther Schuller as “thematic improvising,” the effect of constant renewal produced by his simultaneous or near-simultaneous expression of multiple points of view is, I believe, the more radical and lasting development, for it enables the soloist to achieve an emotional complexity that before was largely the province of such orchestral masters as Duke Ellington, whose every band member is potentially a musical/dramatic character. Also, it opens the door to a new view of the jazz past, for the improviser can now range beyond the apparent boundaries of style and make use of any musical material that his taste for drama can assimilate. Rollins’s frequent use of such unlikely vehicles as “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Sonny Boy,” “In a Chapel in the Moonlight,” “Wagon Wheels,” and “If You Were the Only Girl in the World” can be seen in this light--for while one wouldn’t swear that none of these pieces (and there are many more like them) appeals to Rollins on essentially musical grounds, it’s a safe bet that he is drawn to them because he likes to evoke, toy with, and comment upon their inherent strains of corniness, prettiness, and sentimentality . And by bringing orchestral/dramatic resources into the range of the individual soloist, Rollins may have given to jazz just the tool it needs to survive the apparent exhaustion of the emotional resources open to the improviser whose relationship to his material is one to one, which is what I think can be heard in the later work of John Coltrane. The finest tracks on Worktime, for me, are “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Raincheck,” and “There Are Such Things.” Notice, in particular, the utterly unexpected insertion of the verse of “Show Business” (where Rollins is accompanied only by Morrow’s strong bass line) right after the theme statement. What results is quintessentially Rollins-esque, a compulsively swinging, serio-comic tour de force that at once embraces and bemusedly holds at arms’ length the flag-waving fact of Ethel Merman’s existence.

Picked up this seemingly obscure latter-day Lanphere (1928-2003) album: http://jazztimes.com/articles/9672-jazz-worship-2-free-indeed-don-lanphere at a library sale today, and so far I'm very impressed. He sounds even better than he did on the Hep albums he made after his initial return to action -- deep-toned, rhythmically and harmonically fluent, and quite individual. The program, has a "spiritual" flavor at times, with some gentle wordless choral backgrounds on several tracks -- it would seem that Lanphere was "born again" -- but so far nothing has gotten in the way of the excellence of his playing. He's backed by very good Seattle-area players (that's was Lanphere's home town and where he settled), and on one of the tracks there's a lovely slow-motion trombone solo from latter-day Seattle-ite Julian Priester.

A gem, for sure. And what a nice selection of pieces. Only slight drawback IIRC is that John Heard's bass is picked up in a rather boomy manner.

Just bought three Strazzeri albums I didn't have via Amazon sellers. Hope that leaves copies for other interested parties.

Here's a taped interview with Frank: http://contentdm6.hamilton.edu/cdm/ref/collection/jazz/id/1303 Also, I recall reading that he was Elvis Presley's favorite pianist in Elvis' Las Vegas days, which led to some nice pay days. Anecdotes about Frank and Chet Baker and Frank and Elvis: http://www.chetbaker.net/vol3no4.htm

And a great year, too.

Everything I've heard from him I've liked a lot. Among other things, he had a great ear for good pieces (by Mobley and others -- "Funk in a Deep Freeze," Rollins' "No Moe," Benny Carter's "Summer Serenade," J. J. Johnson's "Kelo" -- that were seldom if ever played in trio settings. Also, when he played anything, he played that piece, improvising on the melody, not just the changes.

FWIW, I'll bet that part 2 never emerges -- given the amount of material involved, Stanley's approach in part 1, and the time it took him to write part 1.

"Never make the first out of an inning at third base." -- Joe Lonnett, former coach of the Chicago White Sox (when Chuck Tanner was the manager)