Larry Kart

Link to "Cats of Any Color" page with the Wynton quote: http://books.google.com/books?id=IIxc_9CKtPMC&pg=PA195&lpg=PA195&dq=Wynton+marsalis+anti-semitic&source=bl&ots=hDcGH93tuX&sig=BUzh4O2-o80P-aEBZlDSurTKjIU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YneOUpCwHMrqyQHXrIDwAQ&ved=0CFUQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Wynton%20marsalis%20anti-semitic&f=false On the same page there's one from Joe Zawinul in a similar vein.

Finished Robert Boswell's "Tumbledown." Terrific novel. Boswell takes some risky narrative chances toward the end and brings it all off beautifully (e.g. creates two divergent paths of the plot -- one in which a particular character commits suicide, another in which he does not -- and sustains them in rapid alternation almost until the very end). What a generous book, too. A lot of these people (many of them "clients" in a private mental hospital) are in significant, even dire, straits in life, but he isn't out to unduly punish them or us or to provide dubious uplift either. In particular, one semi-subsidiary character who comes across for a good while as a fairly annoying transcendental doofus eventually and quite believably comes to behave with a good deal of soulful good sense.

To assess the difference between those two coupled Argo dates, compare Stitt's playing on the two otherwise identical blues -- "Propapagoon" from the first and "I'll Tell You Later" from the second. "Propapagoon" is inspired, "I'll Tell You Later" is a fairly damp squib. (Let me modify that, having just relistened -- it's certainly got its moments, but is nowhere near as coherent.) This is "Propapagoon," despite what the YouTube clip says -- rather harshly transferred (fake stereo?) but still: This is "I'll Tell You Later": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deltpG3LOnI

Great news

And a very swinging solo it is, too: Rich was age 64 at the time, had five years left to go.

I understood that thread is about work of famous poets while this one was originally meant for work of the people who are member here? Well, that is why I've posted my musing here anyway. Hope that that was okay. OK by me.

And of course near the end of his life he added to his repertoire The Theme from Mash also known as "Suicide is Painless". Always wondered about that. You know a psychologist/psychiatrist would have had a field day with it. I find his penchant for "Emily" to be far more disturbing. Never saw the film it comes from and just checked the lyrics for the song itself. Can you give more detail on why for us young'uns? Because it too is by the Mandel and because IMO it's kind of a whiney/wimpy piece of music, as annoying in its own way as "The Shadow of Your Smile" -- though many talented jazz musicians obviously have felt otherwise. OTOH, the film itself is darn good IIRC, though I admit to having a soft spot for Julie Andrews -- as an actress, a singer, and as a person. Did an interview with her once -- a lovely experience. P.S. In general, I'm a Mandel fan. His Alban Berg-influenced score for "Point Blank" is something else. I'd like to file an official protest with the Organissimo Society for the Preservation of Pretty Tunes! Sure, everyone's entitled to their opinion on music, but when it comes to the aforementioned JM songs, the above opinions constitute a kind of blasphemy that must be dealt with by only the harshest punishments the OSFTPOPT has reserved for such affronts to its very core of belief. Certainly, the lyrics to said songs make one want to with their corn, but one listen to Kenny Burrell playing "TSOYS" on his "Night Song" LP, is enough to prove that sometimes you gotta say, 'screw the lyrics'. It's not just the lyrics of those songs that grate on me -- in "Emily" it's the almost whiney limpness IMO of the music that goes with the repeated title phrase. But obviously it is a song that has appealed to many talented improvisers.

Some of my favorite Stitt is this one: http://www.amazon.com/Burnin-Sonny-Stitt/dp/B001Q1ROPG/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1384788050&sr=1-2&keywords=sonny+stitt+argo In its LP form, there were no liner notes, just the same photo on front and back, and thus no personnel. Some have said that the rhythm section is Barry Harris, drummer Frank Gant, and bassist Wiliam Austin, who recorded a trio album for Argo at around this time (Harris' first, perhaps), but in fact the rhythm section is the Ramsey Lewis Trio; they're surprisingly effective too, though Lewis' solos are what one might expect. The give away is the quite distinctive bass work of El Dee Young.

Bears won in OT, showed considerable guts and a fair degree of skill (Alshon Jeffrey!) in doing so. That 43-yd. pass pass to Martellus Bennett in OT, which set up the winning FG was sweet on his part and McCown's, too. Re-awakened thoughts that maybe we won't and shouldn't re-sign Cutler -- because we're going to need so much money to rebuild the injured and aged defense and because if MCown, old lifetime backup though he is, can move the team this well, maybe Marc Trestman's offense would work well enough with any decent QB, not a guy whos' going to cost us $40-$50 million to re-sign.

Huge old tree in our backyard went down with a thunderous crack at about 4:45 p.m., tore holes in the roof of our neighbor to the north, is still resting there. It also took down some other trees in our yard, including a lovely Japanese lilac that we'd planted this summer.Too dark to assess all the damage.

Into necrophilia? I kid! No -- she'd have to be able to talk to me in that ungodly vibrant voice.

Thanks for posting that, uli. A fine tribute. Posted a comment there.

I'd do her if she'd have me.

Well, not that Emily.

And of course near the end of his life he added to his repertoire The Theme from Mash also known as "Suicide is Painless". Always wondered about that. You know a psychologist/psychiatrist would have had a field day with it. I find his penchant for "Emily" to be far more disturbing. Never saw the film it comes from and just checked the lyrics for the song itself. Can you give more detail on why for us young'uns? Because it too is by the Mandel and because IMO it's kind of a whiney/wimpy piece of music, as annoying in its own way as "The Shadow of Your Smile" -- though many talented jazz musicians obviously have felt otherwise. OTOH, the film itself is darn good IIRC, though I admit to having a soft spot for Julie Andrews -- as an actress, a singer, and as a person. Did an interview with her once -- a lovely experience. P.S. In general, I'm a Mandel fan. His Alban Berg-influenced score for "Point Blank" is something else. Okay, so not anything to do with the suicide thing....which is what I thought you meant...and couldn't figure it out. More a commentary on the song itself. I did kind of mean the suicide thing. "Emily" makes me want to slit my wrists.

And of course near the end of his life he added to his repertoire The Theme from Mash also known as "Suicide is Painless". Always wondered about that. You know a psychologist/psychiatrist would have had a field day with it. I find his penchant for "Emily" to be far more disturbing. Never saw the film it comes from and just checked the lyrics for the song itself. Can you give more detail on why for us young'uns? Because it too is by the Mandel and because IMO it's kind of a whiney/wimpy piece of music, as annoying in its own way as "The Shadow of Your Smile" -- though many talented jazz musicians obviously have felt otherwise. OTOH, the film itself is darn good IIRC, though I admit to having a soft spot for Julie Andrews -- as an actress, a singer, and as a person. Did an interview with her once -- a lovely experience. P.S. In general, I'm a Mandel fan. His Alban Berg-influenced score for "Point Blank" is something else.

And of course near the end of his life he added to his repertoire The Theme from Mash also known as "Suicide is Painless". Always wondered about that. You know a psychologist/psychiatrist would have had a field day with it. I find his penchant for "Emily" to be far more disturbing.

I like these two: The Seasons -- Harnoncourt http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/may/28/haydn-jahreszeiten-kuhmeier The Creation -- Markevitch http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=171797

"...put paid to"? Even if you're referring only to what Coltrane was doing, "Interstellar Space," for one, suggests otherwise.

So far Robert Boswell's novel "Tumbledown" is excellent, though quite dense in its at times almost slow-motion "noticing" (though it's not self-conscious in style). My only problem is the psychiatric treatment center setting and that many of the characters are significantly eccentric or worse "clients" in the orbit of the book's troubled-himself central figure, the 33-year-old therapist who is in line to be the facility's new director. My problem is that these "clients" and their problems seem, thanks to Boswell's skill and empathy, so damn real to me (yet also, as it no doubt should be, significantly "other") that I find consistent contact with them to be disturbing. Of course, it pretty much needs to be that way. I was alerted to the book by this review: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/books/review/tumbledown-by-robert-boswell.html

Did Evans name any pianists who use the "inch method"? Thinking of all the pianists I've heard who arguably play in ways that Evans might regard as "free," I can't think of a one who seems to me to play that way, at least in terms of how their music sounds. Certainly not anyone whom I thought was any good, and even those whom I don't particularly care for don't seem to me to use that "method." Also, what if you recall did Cecil say in response to what Evans said? I'm ashamed to say that I've never heard of this dustup.

I think I see what you mean. What Evans says there and then plays at 14:20 -- and also what he plays just before the relatively back-to-basics example that precedes the 14:20 stuff; the first passage being what some hip modern pianist would play on "How About You," while the latter, he says, is a dangerously un-rooted "approximation" of that approach that probably will lead one into confusion -- reminds of this speculative passage I once wrote (it's in my book) about this aspect of Evans' thinking: 'Quite articulate about his music, in a 1964 interview Evans said this: “The only way I can work is to have some kind of restraint involved, the challenge of a certain craft or form and then to find the freedom in that…. I think a lot of guys…want to circumvent that kind of labor….” Then there is this Evans statement: “I believe that all music is romantic, but if it gets schmaltzy, romanticism is disturbing. On the other hand, romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty.” 'Plausible words, perhaps, but the value that Evans seemingly places on restraint in itself leads one to ask, What is being restrained and why? Evans’s “challenge of [working within] a certain craft or form” is not merely an account of his own necessary practice; it lends to that practice an aura of moral virtue (“I think a lot of guys …want to circumvent that kind of labor….”). In other words, for Evans certain sorts of musical labor are not only valid but they also validate. And should an aesthetically valid outcome be reached in a seemingly non-laborious manner, that can be disturbing. Thus in 1964 , after acknowledging that the brilliant, lucid, and “completely unpremeditated” two-piano improvisation that he and Paul Bley played on George Russell’s 1960 album Jazz In The Space Age “was fun to do,” Evans says: “[but to] do something that hadn’t been rehearsed successfully, just like that, almost shows the lack of challenge involved in that kind of freedom.”'

Best of luck to you and your wife. She's obviously got someone strong in her corner.

I, too, use Spotify to see whether I want to buy a particular recording. In fact, that's about the only way I use it. For me, it's particularly valuable in the classical music realm, where typically there are lots of different recordings of the piece I find myself interested in at the moment. With jazz, it's more a matter of a fairly quick dip into something. If it works for me, I pretty much know that right off or think that I do; I have been fooled at times. For instance, in the wake of Frank Wess's death, I recently bought a 2-CD compilation of mid-1950s Joe Newman material -- originally on Vanguard, Storyville, and Jazztone -- that includes Wess throughout. I listened to several tracks on Spotify, all from the Vanguard date, and found them to be better in every way than the pleasant but rather formulaic Newman small group stuff that he recorded around then as a leader or sideman for RCA or VIK. (Indeed, on the Vanguard date, Newman sounds like twice the player I remembered him as being.) Unfortunately, as fine as the Vanguard date is musically (and beautifully recorded, as all those Vanguard dates were), the Storyville material, while OK musically, sounds like it was recorded in the proverbial linen closet. Haven't got to the Jazztone date yet. My fault for not sampling things more thoroughly, not Spotify's, though I'd still buy the album knowing what I know now.

Am really enjoying the DVD. It's fun to see as well as to hear, especially to see Jim's relationship to the keyboard. He's so fluid and relaxed.