Larry Kart

:tup

You want a paean to Jobs? Try this on for size: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/douthat-up-from-ugliness.html?_r=1&ref=opinion As they say, what the heck is he smoking?

Two stanzas from "A Treatise on Religion" by Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628): VIII Then seek we must, that course is natural For owned souls, to find their owner out; Our free remorses, when our natures fall, When we do well, our hearts made free from doubt, Prove service due to one Omnipotence, And Nature, of Religion to have sense. IX Questions again which in our hearts arise (Sin loving knowledge, not humility) Though they be curious, Godless, and unwise, Yet prove our nature feels a Diety: For if these strifes rose out of other grounds, Man were to God, as deafness is to sounds. When that cat sat down at the keyboard, he could play!

Not impossible, but as William of Ockham once said, "Isn't there a simpler explanation that fits all the facts?"

Listened again to "Have No Fear" yesterday. IIRC I was in the studio, sitting on the floor with my back to a wall, when it (or some of it) was recorded. Amazing music. As Terry Martin has pointed out elsewhere, listen carefully to Von's second solos -- he literally retains in his memory just about everything he played in his first solo on a given piece and then looks at this material again, spontaneously reshapes it, reflects upon it, sums it all up. Now that I think of it, Roscoe Mitchell does/can do something like that, too. What are the odds? Alexander Hawkins on the "Have No Fear" rhythm section. I think everyone was on a mission from God that day.

But Moms is a black woman -- a very funny one, too,

Yes. It's obviously not Harris, and pretty clearly the R. Lewis Trio. In particular, Eldee Young's bass solos are quite distinctive. I'm far from a Lewis fan, but they're locked in behind Stitt.

Now if you'd said that Stitt on tenor is no Wardell Gray or on alto is no Art Pepper -- yes on both counts. But less doesn't necessarily mean "futility" or "rot."

For those with Spotify, check out Stitt's "Propapagoon" from the 1958 Argo album "Sonny Stitt," backed by (have mercy) the Ramsey Lewis Trio. If you like that, the whole album is there.

Moms -- I was there, too. Wish you could have heard Stitt at a Chicago gig at the Jazz Showcase in the late 1970s with Mal Waldron comping behind him and Stitt paying close attention.

Moms -- why must you come on so often like a two-bit iconoclast? Everyone knows that Stitt takes a lot of sorting out, but to deny that there are gems to be found? I suggest "Sonny Stitt" on Chess-MCA (originally Argo 629, rec. 1958) and "Tune Up!" on 32 Jazz, and the date with Dizzy and John Lewis for Clef that produced "Mean To Me" and "Blues for Bird."

Wrong and dishonest, yes, but it seems like an additional (and perhaps fundamental) problem here might be that the host/co-producer was simply lazy to the point of stupidity. I would guess that he didn't even know that Hammond is not a universally revered figure but an equivocal one. In particular, he could hardly have read Otis Ferguson's famous portrait of Hammond, which was written more than 70 years ago!

Just arrived. Listened to the first three tracks of the Roscoe -- elegant cover design BTW, Carla -- and I was transported as if by a time machine back to 1965 and to how astonishing the sureness, force, and clarity of Roscoe's playing was at age 24 or 25. Listen to the way he edges into his solo on "Outer Space" -- as Terry Martin says in the notes, he "builds meticulously" (my emphasis); this doesn't sound like a young man's music.

Good point! I don't know if his style has been a big influence on a lot of players. It's not too easy to emulate :-) He is, however, a very important jazz tenor sax player! so says me = imho Yes, he's a big influence in certain circles.

My favorite tenor saxophone taxonomy: DAVE PELL Nino Tempo arthur rollini ziggy vines You have to guess who this is. You've got me. Who? (Anyway, nice to see Ziggy there, although for what obscure reason I don't know ... but he could play!) Q Sorry -- just an attempt on my part to construct an impossibly incongrous imaginary player. Maybe I should have stuck with my first thought: FRANK TRUMBAUER Big Jay McNeely

Probably related to that rash you get from Cannonball.

I hope they don't have to learn that interminable overrated solo from Newport. I recall that David Murray once orchestrated it. Be still my foolish heart.

I was assuming that, even though I didn't say it.

And Stovall with Red Allen, J.C. Higginbotham, and drummer Alvin Burroughs in a soundie!

Another excellent but semi-forgotten earthy "jump" altoist of the time was Don Stovall. Check out on Spotify his "Check Up" with Red Allen from (I think) 1947. And some Stovall on YouTube (with some nice Byas and top-drawer Lips Page on "Lafayette"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv1Dthm22Vw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O90qaOLXjZw

"Unlucky Woman" is on Spotify, along with a lot more vintage Pete Brown. And Humes sings her butt off on "Unlucky Woman," too.

As for early Bechet versus early Armstrong, here they are in 1924: Just speculating, but I would say that Bechet's arguably greater rhythmic fluidity at this point in their lives (Bechet age 27, Armstrong age 24) is mostly the result of Bechet's greater mastery of his instrument(s) -- he rides the soprano and the clarinet like a champion bronc buster -- while Armstrong's sense of where he wanted to get to as a soloist to was already a bit more long-lined/horizontal-dramatic that Bechet's. Another way to put it would be that Bechet's horns almost seem like literal extensions of his physical being and breath, while Armstrong is still playing the cornet, the way one might drive a car.

Chuck. are you pulling our appendages? My copy: Duke Ellington - The Private Collection 1924 \ Duke Ellington - The Private Collection - Vol 1\CD 1\13 The tenor plays eight bars of melody in the low register and sounds like he's a doubler fighting a borrowed leaky horn. Hope I'm not out of line. I have the same question. But assuming that Chuck isn't pulling our chain, I have two more questions: 1) Steve Lasker's liner notes to "Early Ellington" say that "The second reedman [on the "Immigration Blues" date] ... has never been positively identified by discographers". 2) If you are genuinely enamored of those eight bars on "Immigration Blues," why assume that what one hears there is unique to Robinson or whomever? A lot of jazz had been played on the saxophone by Dec. 29, 1926, and while my knowledge of recorded jazz of that era is certainly not comprehensive, I wouldn't be surprised if Robinson (or whoever) had stylistic predecessors.

I know that he himself was a Lester Young disciple, but I would say Stan Getz. Perhaps.

Q.E.D. in-DEED! Earl Anderza, too: And Jimmy Woods: