Larry Kart

Not an exhibition, but I've been looking at a book about the Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley, Interesting, among other reasons, because some of Sisley's later works, which are commonly felt to show signs of failing inspiration, strike me as more intense and inventive than much of what he painted in his supposed prime (the mid-1870s). On the other hand, because Sisley's typical manner was rather withdrawn, even bland, to being with, I may just be responding to the advent of some welcome (because it suits my tastes) latter-day relative gnarliness.

As I may have said here before, I've had two semi-direct encounters with Crouch, both perhaps revealing. The second one: I'm at the Chicago Tribune in the mid or late 1980s, writing about jazz. The phone rings, and it's Stanley; he's at the Ragdale Foundation in north suburban Lake Forest, an artist's colony a la Yadoo, working on a book. He starts to chat about jazz (we've never talked before), and he obviously knows something about my background because almost out of nowhere he launches into a steamroller attack on Lester Bowie, making a point that I think he already had made or would make in print -- that he heard Bowie play "Well You Needn't" and Bowie used the much less-complex bridge that Miles came up with for the tune way back when rather than the bridge that Monk actually wrote, and that this was proof that Bowie was incompetent, a fraud, etc. I immediately sensed (or so I thought) was Crouch was up to -- it was not so much that he wanted agreement from me on this but that if he could spew out this attack on Bowie with me on the line and I didn't stop him, he could think, maybe even say, that I had agreed with him. So I interrupted to say that I thought that Lester Bowie was a remarkable musician etc., that Miles had come up with that simplified bridge, just as he had simplified the bridge to Benny Carter's "When Lights Are Low" because in both cases those simplifications were better suited to what Miles wanted to play when improvising on those pieces, etc. Hearing that, Stanley, without a further word, hung up the phone.

Of the books about Parker that I know, this sober one seems quite sound to me (and often insightful, especially about the music itself) as far it goes: http://www.amazon.com/Chasin-The-Bird-Legacy-Charlie/dp/0195304640/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top Some fellow on Amazon put it down in comparison to Ross Russell's "Bird Lives!," which is certainly colorful but full of outright fabulations.

Yes, I see that now. Still bloody obtuse in its apparent equation of vitality and topical reference -- a hallmark of calypso lyrics IIRC.

OK -- if you guys like that sentence, please paraphrase it for me. I mean, what does it mean? I took a whack at that above in post #67; is that close to what you get from it or do you get something else? If so, what? BTW, what I don't like about "razors for spurs," among other things, is that spurs are or can be damn sharp -- that's the point of them, so to speak, to spur along the horse by inflicting pain and threatening further pain. So Crouch is IMO just pumping up the volume here in a "writerly" manner, pouring hot sauce on top of hot sauce. I'm reminded of that young sportscaster's immortal phrase "'Boom!' goes the dynamite."

I love the way early on in the solo he almost seems to be carving the notes out from some semi-resistant medium.

Not what the original poster asked for, but this magnificent Armstrong recording ought to be heard: The final chorus often brings tears to my eyes.

I wouldn't say "harsh" as much as really dense or drastically/smugly circumscribed. Interesting that the calypso remark is Paul Oliver's, not Larkin's. As a more or less principled British leftist, what Oliver (at times and despite his many virtues as a writer on the blues) wanted the blues to be was a protest music. This led him down some primrose paths.

Then, in a somewhat similar vein, there's Adam Rogers:

He can be a little sweet/pretty at times, but I have a soft spot for Jonathan Kreisberg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b5B0boJ3XY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcGTkYCmoWE

Meow... OTOH, I'm a big Joe Puma fan. His duo album with Chuck Wayne, "Interactions," may be his best recorded work IMO. http://www.amazon.com/Interactions-Chuck-Wayne/dp/B006I01KFA/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1378337187&sr=1-1&keywords=chuck+wayne+joe+puma Excellent Puma solo on "Body and Soul" there. This Puma album is also a gem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDltZrlo9CM More from that one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVV3OO4afvE

Get in the way of 'what'? ...'who'?... - You? Read Crouch's liner notes for all those Wynton Marsalis albums and you'll know what his agendas get in the way of, though I might have put it differently, feeling that there's not much more there than the agendas themselves, and thus little or nothing for them to get in the way of. As for Crouch's prose, here's an excerpt from the new book: "Parker was basically a melancholy and suspicious man, a genius in search of a solution to a blues that wore razors for spurs.” I kind of see what he's getting at there, but "a solution to a blues that wore razors for spurs” is the kind of b.s. "poetry" that leaves me grasping for my secret decoder ring. Well, you may see what he's getting at here, but it's a mystery to me. gregmo What he's getting at, I think -- and I'll have to get a bit flowery myself here -- is that Parker sought a solution in music to a broader "blues" condition/state of life that was at once intensely galling and that, in its pain, stimulated in him a correspondingly intense musical expression of that state. Whatever, if I were Crouch's editor I sure would have suggested that he swap "a blues that wore razors for spurs" for "a blues that wore razor-sharp spurs." Also, unless surrounding context does this, I would have suggested that he not use "blues" in such a way that the term's literal musical meaning and its broader metaphorical meanings (as in the title of LeRoi Jones' "Blues People") could be confused. Something tells me that it would read better if you rewrote it, Larry!! gregmo Borrowing a line that a friend of mine uses in a near all-purpose manner, "Maybe so."

http://www.amazon.com/Jim-I-Live-At-Quasimodo/dp/B0092ICUHW/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1378327228&sr=1-2&keywords=zoller+raney There's also this great Zoller/Raney duet on YouTube:

I'd recommend two guitarists who came to notice with Gil Melle in the 1950s, Lou Mecca and Joe Cinderella: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mecca http://www.gould68.freeserve.co.uk/Review/review.htm http://www.guitarsite.com/newsletters/021118/3.shtml http://www.classicjazzguitar.com/artists/artists_page.jsp?artist=40 http://www.classicjazzguitar.com/artists/artists_page.jsp?artist=49 http://jazztimes.com/articles/60591-guitarist-joe-cinderella-dies-at-85

Get in the way of 'what'? ...'who'?... - You? Read Crouch's liner notes for all those Wynton Marsalis albums and you'll know what his agendas get in the way of, though I might have put it differently, feeling that there's not much more there than the agendas themselves, and thus little or nothing for them to get in the way of. As for Crouch's prose, here's an excerpt from the new book: "Parker was basically a melancholy and suspicious man, a genius in search of a solution to a blues that wore razors for spurs.” I kind of see what he's getting at there, but "a solution to a blues that wore razors for spurs” is the kind of b.s. "poetry" that leaves me grasping for my secret decoder ring. Well, you may see what he's getting at here, but it's a mystery to me. gregmo What he's getting at, I think -- and I'll have to get a bit flowery myself here -- is that Parker sought a solution in music to a broader "blues" condition/state of life that was at once intensely galling and that, in its pain, stimulated in him a correspondingly intense musical expression of that state. Whatever, if I were Crouch's editor I sure would have suggested that he swap "a blues that wore razors for spurs" for "a blues that wore razor-sharp spurs." Also, unless surrounding context does this, I would have suggested that he not use "blues" in such a way that the term's literal musical meaning and its broader metaphorical meanings (as in the title of LeRoi Jones' "Blues People") could be confused.

Get in the way of 'what'? ...'who'?... - You? Read Crouch's liner notes for all those Wynton Marsalis albums and you'll know what his agendas get in the way of, though I might have put it differently, feeling that there's not much more there than the agendas themselves, and thus little or nothing for them to get in the way of. As for Crouch's prose, here's an excerpt from the new book: "Parker was basically a melancholy and suspicious man, a genius in search of a solution to a blues that wore razors for spurs.” I kind of see what he's getting at there, but "a solution to a blues that wore razors for spurs” is the kind of b.s. "poetry" that leaves me grasping for my secret decoder ring.

Many Ella admirers feel that her finest recordings of standards were her pre-songbooks Gershwin recordings with pianist Ellis Larkins: http://www.amazon.com/Pure-Ella-Original-Decca-Recordings/dp/B000003N3Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8oYz55KSlA

Wasn't the Left Bank Jazz Society at a place (if it was only at one place) with a horribly out of tune piano?

Yes yes it is is

Don't know the Pass-Ella CDs but heard the two of them in concert twice late in her career and was struck by the dramatic power of her singing.

I agree about Ella's vintage "pop" performances being more satisfying by and large than her "jazz"" jazz ones of that time. In that vein -- and I wish I could recall this more accurately -- I once was listening to one of her recordings of the first sort from a fairly abstract (can't think of better term) point of view, perhaps as though she were Benny Carter or even Don Byas stating and lightly embellishing a melody, and suddenly it was as though I saw and heard the whole picture, that Ella poured so much into (as in way inside) the interstices of the song, especially in terms of tone and timbre, that if one heard what she was doing and expressing there, one heard something very special. Haven't found that point of focus with Ella that often since then, but I sure did hear it. I would add, as the mentions of Carter and Byas suggest, that this aspect of her struck me as a '30s and early '40s thing, which was after all the era that Ella came up in.

The setting that I heard her in in later years that seemed to bring out previously uncommon depth was just her and Joe Pass.

Yes, but later in her career, based on live performances I heard, her understanding of the dramatic content of the songs she sang deepened considerably.

My favorite (or "favourite"), which I actually encountered in London, is "face flannel" for washcloth.

Hmm -- forget all about that Jazztet set. Glad it was a good one (but then they pretty much all were) and that I got to say so.