Larry Kart

Who was it who whacked and injured Sean Payton on the sideline last year? A Saint or an opposing player? Hmmm. Mixed verdict apparently: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/16/sean-payton-injury-sideline-collision_n_1014461.html

Nope -- it's that missing mic from RVG's studio.

"The Yiddisher [sometimes "Yiddishe"] Charleston":

What chart? Or are you joking? I think you are.... And nearly had me.... Yes, a joking reference to the Quincy Jones thread of a while back.

I once knew the guy who was Ezra Pound's shrink when Pound arrived at St. Elizabeth's. They got on fairly well together, all things considered, even though that then-young psychiatrist was Jewish, but there was the day Pound performed for him, complete with grotesque hopping-about gestures, his version of "The Yiddish Charleston." Probably have them all.

On the Sharon/World Trade Center canard, Baraka is on the same page with another poet, David Duke.

That chart was actually written by Billy Byers.

And if/when there is a line to be drawn, whose ultimate prerogative is it as to where/when/why it gets drawn? It's not about drawing lines or ultimate prerogatives but about acknowledging how art and artists tend to function when they do. In particular, I'd say that while all sorts of political, racial, personal and what have you information obviously can enter the world of art, it typically (if the artist is any good) tends to get transmuted there by, to borrow the title of George Lewis' book, "A Power Stronger Than Itself." IIRC, the younger Jarman was something of a coffee-house Jones disciple. The cadences of Jarman's verse (e.g "Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City") speak of Jones' influence, which was of course very influential.

Quoting ( believe accurately) from the late novelist-poet Gilbert Sorrentino: "People always think that artists have complicated personal motives for doing what they do, when in fact they have complicated artistic motives." Substitute "political" or "racial" or whatever for "personal," as you wish. It was 1969. Things were edgy. Joseph Jarman? Has the rhythm of some of his pronouncements, plus the little shrug at the end is rather Jarman-like.

P.S. At one point several years ago, at Pullman's request, I read his entire manuscript in its then-current form (for a modest fee) and made a number of editorial suggestions. Whether those were adopted by him, I don't know. In any case, the manuscript I read was excellent IMO.

That wasn't the only reason. The other(s) being? Pullman is a very testy person who got very angry in the face of some arguably less-than-ideal behavior. Also, I don't believe that he grasped and/or accepted that the editorial machinery at an academic press necessarily grinds more slowly and in what one might regard as a more niggling manner than it does at most commercial publishers. Disclaimer: I steered him to that academic press, and his editor there is a longtime friend of mine. Nonetheless, I think my view of what happened is reasonably objective.

It was 1969. Things were edgy. Stanley Crouch?

I'm far from a Jones/Baraka scholar, but my memory is that the best of what he said 50 years ago -- his poetry of that vintage, his fiction, his frequently excellent record reviews and other essays for Kulchur magazine and the Jazz Review, etc. (I'll never forget, for one, his insightful praise of Ellington's "All American" album) -- made a lot more sense than just about anything he's written since. P.S. If I were a Jones/Baraka scholar, I might have had to kill myself ... or at least conceal my plot to engineer 9/11.

That wasn't the only reason.

The refusal of the university press he had a contract with to accept those coinages was among the chief reasons he left them and decided to publish to book himself. Pullman would say (indeed, IIRC, has said) that his desire to change common usage (or at least make it clear where he himself stands politically on this topic) was essential to the whole project. He does, after all, again IIRC, see prevailing racial assumptions-attitudes, etc. impinging directly and perniciously on Powell's life throughout, and no doubt feels that it would be morally wrong for him to step back from the present-day consequences-implications of that view, as though that socio-political "story" effectively ended with Powell's death. Rather, he wants to make those connections to the present unavoidable.

Relieved to know it's not George Lewis.

Yeah, I don't blame you for leaving. He sounds moronic. See, I would have just asked him what he meant by that, that I didn't understand what he meant, please elaborate because I want to understand. Either he was gamin', in which case you've called him on it, or else he really did have an angle that he could elaborate on, in which case you do gain insight. The angle might still be bullshit, but we all got bullshit, ya' know? Either way, I just don't leave it hanging like that. I don't like leaving stuff like that alone, not unless I'm running late for something else, or something like that, or if it's my wife looking to set a trap. FWIW, I could see "irony" as being one manifestation of "tricksterism" You could go there. Or you could just be looking to psyche a mf out. But you never know for sure until you push it. He probably would have replied -- a la Louis Armstrong (or was it Fats Waller?) -- "If you have to ask, you'll never know."

I recall being in NYC in the early '60s and visiting a large class at (probably) the New School that a friend of mine was attending. Jones was the teacher-lecturer, the ostensible subject was the New American Poetry, but Jones that day (and no doubt many others) was into his White Americans are the root of all evil thesis, focusing this time on the rape of the American Indians by Anglo colonists, frontiersman, settlers, etc. Just because his bulldozing smugness kind of bugged me, I raised my hand and, when called on, rather snottily said something like, "Maybe the Indians were bad people, too." Jones' double take was something to see.

"It's a trombone thing!" Most definitely. In that bag these days, I'm fond of Luis Bonilla of the Vanguard Orchestra, who has made several very good recordings as a leader. About who originated that sound, I don't know, but that recent thread about Kai Winding (or a link off of it) claimed that he originated the Kenton trombone sound, with further refinements (if "refinements" is the word) by Bob Fitzpatrick and a few others. Who knows, maybe they've played trombones blatantly in Sweden for centuries? A la Alp Horns? Of Bonilla's three albums, I prefer "I Talking Now!" and "Terminal Clarity." The most recent, "Twilight," struck me as a little bland.

Herwig at his best is quite something, a virtuoso with virtuoso ideas, though for my taste he has taste issues at times, can be blatant (almost) a la Milt Bernhart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yJq4311qIU Eddie plays the shit of A-flat rhythm changes here on clarinet in the midst of one of Thad's greatest charts. It's just a single chorus but he says a ton in a short space. Really tells a story. Actually, everyone sounds FANTASTIC here right down the line. Jesus Christ -- to have heard this band live in its heyday ... wow. Agreed, Mark, but that was then. Encounters with recent Daniels CDs on clarinet almost rotted my teeth.

Good Bucky Pizzarelli quote: "The next Eddie Daniels." Too bad John Pizzarelli isn't the next Bucky.

This thread makes my head hurt. Being there at the time is a crime we'll one day be forced to pay for ... if we haven't already.

I'm not sure if they are binaural or just have two settings - directional and surround. But the "noisy environment" setting works really well most of the time. If I understand correctly what my hearing aids do, each one has a differently programmed mini-computer in it (differently programmed to compensate for that ear's pattern of hearing loss -- in my case the patterns of loss were quite different), and then that information is blended by them into one coherent, seemingly natural sonic "image." Thus, if you put only one aid in, or the battery in one aid fails, you get nothing -- they work in tandem or not at all.

Dan -- I think we have the same or similar hearing aids with the same three settings. The "noisy places" setting helps with that problem by, as you say, narrowing the cone of sonic information to the front, but if there's a good deal of foreground vs. background information within that narrower cone (which is often the case in a restaurant or bar), it can't do anything about that. If I'm talking to someone in such places, I often have to ask them to repeat things while I lean forward. BTW, pricey as those hearing aids are, if you're in a position tax-wise to itemized medical deductions, you can deduct the cost. Also, I always use the "music" setting when listening to music. My sense is that it pretty much fits the way I used to hear things when I was younger. But then even I would think that a good many patterns of hearing loss are individual. Fascinating part of it is that when you have high frequency loss, the part of the brain that processes this information tries to compensate for what it's not getting by boosting lower frequencies, which makes things much worse. Then, once you get good hearing aids, that part of the brain reprograms itself over time to accept the more accurate information and stop boosting the lower frequencies, as it had been doing. Who knew that one's brain was an independent contractor? Finally, my hearing loss was not because of any event or pattern of sonic abuse but simply the result of aging.