Larry Kart

Alerted to it by a former colleague at the Trib, I'd say that the first two paragraphs of this story about the Notre Dame-Pittsburgh game may be the goofiest writing I've ever seen in a major newspaper: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-1110-notre-dame-pitt-football-20131110,0,3869958.story And keep reading. There are more gems further down.

He played some of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.

Actually, Strayhorn wrote that, too.

Walter van de Leur's excellent IMO "Something To Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" (Oxford University Press), among other things, assembles in great detail the facts (based in large part on Van De Luer's study of the manuscript evidence) of who wrote what between Ellington and Strayhorn, the latter having written a good deal more of the band's material than previously has been acknowledged or understood. Van De Leur explains that it's not at all difficult to tell the difference between an Ellington composition or arrangement and a Strayhorn composition or arrangement, both on the basis of musical orthography (the manuscripts again) and the considerable differences in compositional style/techniques. That a good deal of Strayhorn-composed works were taken by many to be by Ellington no doubt stemmed in large part from the fact that the distinctive sound of the band was so pervasive a factor and was so much an Ellington creation. Also, apart from Ellington's variable willingness to give Strayhorn credit on a consistent basis for all that he did, Ellington's publicists and record companies very often failed to acknowledge how much Strayhorn wrote for the band as a matter of policy more or less. This is not IMO to devalue Ellington, who as has been pointed out wrote so much superb music before Strayhorn came on the scene. Rather, it is a matter of setting the record straight as to who did what; and Van De Leur does that. Further, though I admire Strayhorn's music, I have no doubt that Ellington was the greater composer.

Four stars, I think. It's not all up to the level of the title track and "Suicide City" IIRC.

Hmm -- that album came out on LP on GNP within a year or so after the event IIRC. I certainly bought it in the 1950s. And if the tapes came from Max, how could they be a "boot" unless they were stolen from Max? OTOH, it's fairly clear on some tracks that the sound was picked up both from stage mikes and from the house p.a. system -- there's a post-echo from the latter source.

Don't think there are any other "live" Brown-Rollins albums. There is, however, an excellent "live" album by the Brown-Roach-Harold Land Quintet, with some tracks by the earlier version of the group with Teddy Edwards. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000001OTF/ref=dm_rogue_cd

Or else it suggests a kind of savvy about how the media works, and that when you say X, you get "good coverage". These "controversies" about who likes what and why is a consensual game played by press and, more and more frequently, musicians alike, with the only goal being to gain profile which will then, hopefully, result in more product being moved, be it rock, paper, or schizzers. Matthew Shipp has his press rap down to a science, and it appears that Glasper's is developing likewise, get a theme or two, variate it as needed, and always throw in a little stray fresh info for freshness. Anybody think that Marc Meyers is gonna put a Robert Glasper piece in the WSJ where the focus is on what kind of clothes he prefers, what movies he's been checking out, anything but the "upstart rebel hip-(h)(b)opster bucking the jazz establishment" angle? What would that look like, the world in which that even becomes an option? Some day, but not to day. Cogs, that's all this is, cogs. The cogs of business. WSJ needs a cog (although why is still beyond me), Mark Myers needs a cog, Robert Glasper needs a cog, so together they all got their cogs. Win-win, especially if some suckers read it and think it matters, that cogs do more than coggify. FWI I still dig "Searchin" a BIG bunch of lots, although Boyz II Men was after my prime®(est) time. No biggie. Yes, to almost all of the above in terms of your insight as to how the media-meeting-artist, cogs-fitting-into-cogs machine actually works. OTOH, as a former journalist in those realms (and perhaps Mark S. can back me up here), I can't tell you how potentially corrupting such transactions are to the self-respect (even to the actual human identities) of all parties involved. I'm reminded of Viennese journalist Karl Kraus's remark (which in the German original, so I've been told, is based on a play on words that is untranslatable into English): "The problem with the Viennese people is that they don't understand German, but I can't tell them that in journalese." P.S. I see from the post above that Mark already has weighed in. I agree about trying to "dance with my own cogness," but eventually that began to seem close to a losing proposition, especially because the journalistic world I entered in the mid 1970s changed quite radically over the next 25 years -- or so I felt.

Haven't received mine yet. Should I have?

My thoughts, from an e-mail I sent to a friend: "Leaving aside [Loren's] claims of racism, which I'm happy to do, I'm not happy with what seems to me to be TT's fairly consistent obtuseness. For one thing, and this runs throughout, there's TT's more or less aghast, hand-wringing stance at Duke's sexual behavior. No, neither your nor I would have behaved as Duke did, or so I assume, but beyond a certain point what's the point of all this? And in the world or worlds of which Duke was a part, how bizarre, if at all, was his behavior? More important, though, there is the theme of "Duke was not at all a well-versed (that is, trained in the techniques and principles of classical composition) composer," thus his would-be long-form pieces largely fail to cohere, etc. Let's stipulate as to the latter, up to a point and with some exceptions. But why does TT think that such training would have, in Duke's case, led him (I emphasize him) to create coherent long-form pieces of real merit? BTW, in that vein TT keeps throwing "Rhapsody in Blue" and "An American in Paris" in Duke's face and in our faces too. If those are TT's standard of long-form American works that really cohere formally and are of real merit, I'm at a loss. I mean, they're fun, they're tuneful, they're forever popular, but come on. Further, and this is my main complaint, after all the major and semi-niggling negatives about Duke's life, lifestyle, and music that TT musters, he himself must face something like "Ko Ko" (and of course the list of such Ellington works is a lengthy one) and not only describe and account for the nature and quality of those works but also relate them to the nature and quality of Duke's musical career as a whole. This last issue, I think, if "issue" is the way to put it, again has something to do with TT's apparent belief that a classically trained Duke was what was called for, either that or his lack of classical training was a clear-cut deficit. But if, as I think we can safely say, the Duke of "Ko Ko" or you name it knew some very important things about how to make music that no one who would have/could have given him classical training (certainly early on and probably at any time) probably knew and/or was willing to sufficiently/insightfully credit, what then? In any case, it seems to me that whenever TT gets to stuff like "Ko Ko," he kind of shuts down, just doesn't manage, doesn't even really try to, relate these achievements to everything else. And that, to my mind, is the one place one has to go satisfactorally and insightfully if one is going to deal with a figure like Ellington. Not the only place one needs to go, yes, but.... That is why, with all of Andre Hodeir's at times annoying baggage (annoying at times at least to my mind), his writing about Ellington's masterpieces remains so important. There's more to be said, including some niggling complaints of my own -- e.g. "[sam] Woodyard's playing was forthright in a way that meshed well with the recent arrival of rock and roll" (what?!), and of the work of the Ellington, Woode, Woodyard team at Newport on "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," "No other rhythm section, not even Count Basie's crack team of musical arsonists, had ever played with such unquenchable fire." Leaving aside the fact that Basie's "crack rhythm team" were not "musical arsonists" -- to set things on fire metaphorically was neither their style nor their goal -- but enough.... Later on, responding to a FB post in which Schoenberg called Teachout "either intellectually dishonest or racially insane -- I suspect it's the latter," I said: 'I too found Teachout's general approach and conclusions in "Duke" to be unfortunate to say the least, though I don't need to go to "intellectually dishonest" or "racially insane" to get there. I would just say that TT is a rather smug and prissy professional middlebrow who is not as intelligent as he needs to be.'

I have some and will weigh in later on. Here, however, are some Facebook posts from Loren Schoenberg: 1) "VERY TROUBLED as I begin Terry Teachout's seemingly tremendously ignorant recent book on Ellington. 2) "For starters, the pejorative attitude he brings to bear from page one. Any positive comment is preceded and sometimes followed by negatives. He clearly doesn't understand the role of IRONY in African-American culture in general, and in Ellingtonia specifically, which is suffused with it. The comments about Duke not being educated enough to write a score without hearing the guys play it during the compositional process is just pure merde, nothing more. The comparisons with classical music are also way off the mark. "But above all, it's the patronizing tone. He is the true heir in his race insanity to Collier and Sudhalter, though unlike the latter, and like the former, he is a dunderhead when it comes to real musical analysis. That's just for starters." 3) "NO mention of Woodrow Wilson's administration and it's effect on the teenaged Ellington and family. NO qualification of the plaudits he directs towards the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. And the ever-present stench of stewing race insanity. It must be said that there is also much in the way of original research, but, as in the case with Sudhalter's Lost Chords, it is suffused with a Riefenstahlian (did I write that?) myopia. "And to be clear, I only link Teachout to Riefenstahl (and Griffith) in his nascent and/or disingenuous racism, not in aesthetic terms." 4) "IMNSH, everyone should write, everyone should read, and everyone should write about what they read! There are important things in Teachout's book, new scholarship, but those nuggets are all marinated in a ton of racial excrement."

FWIW, excerpt from that Down Beat review that mentions Higgins' playing on "Suicide City": [1969] When Lee Morgan’s first records appeared, he was hailed as a logical successor to Clifford Brown. There were points of similarity--a full, brass-proud tone, and a great rhythmic ease--but Morgan soon demonstrated that his musical personality was quite different from Brown’s glowing good spirits. Few musicians project a personality through their instruments as directly as Morgan does (Roy Eldridge is one, and perhaps that’s a clue to Morgan’s virtues). I have never met Lee Morgan, but I would be surprised if he were not a witty, sarcastic, playful man. To describe the way Morgan projects this personality, I thought of mentioning separately his tonal flexibility, unpredictable choice of notes, and slyly relaxed time feeling, but, listening again, I realized that Morgan makes an inseparable emotional unity out of these devices. Since Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” became a hit, it seems as if every one of his albums, and many other Blue Note sessions as well, have a track which attempts to duplicate its mood--a repeated rhythmic pattern with a triplet feel, over which the horns play at length in an attempt to find a good, downhome groove. Lord knows the results can be depressing if the groove isn’t found, but the title track of “Caramba” is certainly a success. Although the rhythmic stew has some Latin American spice this time, Morgan and Maupin make it all blues eventually. Morgan’s playing can be rather episodic, but I wouldn’t trade any number of well-constructed solos for one of the dancing figures he plays here as Maupin riffs behind him. Maupin, who seems to be exploring Coltrane’s material with Rollins’s methods, also solos strongly on this track, and there are several passages where a Rollins-like cadence is brought off in grand style. Maupin has a hard but rich tone, and I think he would increase the emotional range of his music if he could let it become as flexible and expressive as Morgan’s. Cedar Walton’s solo is at first austere in its adherence to the Latin pattern. As the horns join him he moves into some delightfully relaxed and genuinely soulful blues piano. The other excellent track, “Suicide City,” reminds me that Morgan and Wayne Shorter were once close associates. The tune has that Shorter aura in which harmony tends to become sonic color rather than musical rhetoric. The rhythmic pattern is complex (at one point Billy Higgins sounds like he’s playing backwards), and Morgan takes full advantage of it. Very few trumpeters (Dizzy Gillespie, perhaps) could flow through this tingling rhythmic maze with as much ease. (Listen to the way Morgan uses split tones to expand the possibilities of note placement.) Etc.....

Check out Higgins on "Suicide City" from Lee Morgan's "Caramba." As I think I wrote when reviewing it for Down Beat way back when, at times on that track it sounds like Higgins is playing BACKWARDS.

The second recording of the piece can be found on Spotify.

Some Jacob Wick with guitarist Shane Perlowin: More from Wick and Perlowin:

He was following his taste and also had an axe to grind.

This sounds like something I would love. Where can I find a copy? Is Christiane Legrand on vocals? Is it anything like the "Jazz Cantata" on "Jazz et Jazz?" Apparently there are two recordings -- one with Monique Adelbert (1966), one with Patrice Caratini (2006)-- but for some reason I can't post a link to the earlier one with Adelbert. http://www.allmusic.com/album/anna-livia-plurabelle-mw0001589577

For all its cleverness, the work that may have been Hodeir's magnum opus, his jazz cantata on James Joyce, "Anna Livia Plurabelle," is holed through its engine room by its Mimi Perrin-styled vocals. For a work of, so it would seem, much ambition and beard-pulling "seriousness," such chi-chi warbling, while certainly French, was also IMO not that far in sensibility from Michel Legrand. To borrow from LeRoi Jones actually quite unfair putdown of John Carisi's "Angkor Wat," "It's cool progressive, you dig?"

Funny -- I was just recommending to someone Dodds's great solo on "Perdido St. Blues" with Kid Ory and His New Orleans Wanderers. Smart as he was in many ways, Hodeir was arguably -- dealing both with early jazz and and almost everything post mid-period Coltrane -- a prisoner of his own sort of "progressivism," both as a critic and (it should never be forgotten) as the creator of his own rather petit-point style of modern jazz, which he obviously hoped would become the wave of the future and the salvation of us all. His attitudes as both critic and musician were quite sophisticated up to a point, but IMO they led him as a critic to throw the baby out with the bathwater when dealing with (again) pre-Armstrong and post mid-period Coltrane material, and in the crankiest, snottiest/most arrogant manner he could muster. BTW and FWIW, in the mid-1960s I asked Lucian Berio what he thought of Hodeir's then recent book about modern classical music "Since Debussy." Berio literally spat in disgust.

In this general bag, leave us not forget Jacob Wick.

That's a complaint I hear about her writing -- that it works vertically but not horizontally, that is the chords are all voiced individually without concern for melodic voice leading within the inner parts. So, unlike say with Ellington, where every part is its own rewarding and sometimes independent melody, her inner parts lack melodic content; they just fill out the chord. This can be slippery analysis, depending on how much counterpoint you get going within the inner parts or how you use individual voices within the context of a harmonized sections. Thad's inner parts are more melodically oriented in some cases but in other cases they also just filling out the harmony. I understand the criticism but ultimately it doesn't bother me really because the other formal elements are so distinctive and there's a strong narrative flow in the charts -- "Quadrille Anyone," "Long Yellow Road," "Since Perry/Yet Another Tear," Transcience," "Strive for Jive," "Minamata," "Elegy." For me it's a unique, stimulating voice, a personalized take on the tradition with her Japanese heritage coming into play on certain works. My opinion, obviously. So, did Wess ever write full big band arrangements for other ensembles? Actually, we're pretty much saying the opposite here, no? -- you, that her music works vertically but not horizontally; me, that it works horizontally (kind of) but not vertically. If this can be resolved (and I may in fact just be dead wrong in what I thought I heard, both in listening to the band and in what I heard from my musician friend -- and I can't find right now the only Toshiko album I have and thus can't check), it's that I believe that she thinks horizontally up to a point but, as you say, "without concern for melodic voice leading within the inner parts." To me, this then can result in passages where the vertical relationships when much or all of the ensemble is involved don't really "speak," aren't particularly meaningful or even coherent. Don't know whether Wess wrote much for big bands post Basie, but he certainly wrote for medium-sized ensembles (e.g. a nonet), and what I've heard of that music was handsome.

Mark -- I re-read that review last night after I sent the post and discovered that it said the band played only one Wess piece and that that piece was arranged by Toshiko, not Wess. Whatever, my memory was that Wess's piece sounded very different from her own compositions (his a somewhat Strayhorn-esque and/or Dameron-like carpet of shifting colors rather than, as with Toshiko, something that sounded like it had been conceived for a two-horn frontline and then expanded). Later on I mentioned how I felt about Toshiko's writing by and large to a friend who is a talented veteran composer-arranger-bandleader-instrumentalist, and he agreed with me in detail (IIRC he said, citing examples, that her sense of how things "sound" vertically is often close to mechanical-random and that her sidemen often found the results frustrating). Finally, a day or two after that review ran I got a post-card from Bill Russo (hadn't met him at the time and somehow never would) saying "right on" or words to that effect. In any case, arguably self-serving stuff aside, all this came to mind because that was my first encounter with Wess' post-Basie writing, and it was a revelation.

Excellent arranger, too. I recall hearing Toshiko's band play several of his pieces at a Chicago club in the 1980s. They were gorgeously and subtly laid out for the ensemble -- quite a contrast in that respect, or so I felt, with the leader's writing.

I agree, but FWIW the common definition of "copywriter" is someone who writes the words that are part of an advertisement. Yes, at newspapers, magazines, etc., one refers to what one writes as "copy" (thus the old cry, "copy boy!" to summon the young employee who would pick up your "hot" copy on deadline and take it to the copy desk to be edited), but the person who writes those stories is just a writer or a reporter. Likewise, if you were looking in the help-wanted section under "copywriters," those would be jobs in the advertising field, not journalism.