Larry Kart

CD reissue, but this was the cover of the original LP: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&rlz=&q=sonny+rollins+plus+four+lp&gs_upl=1461l6574l0l10428l23l23l0l8l8l0l197l2072l3.12l15l0&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=8040273439003800100&sa=X&ei=5MWITqrmD-eFsgKI892zDw&ved=0CEgQ8gIwBA I bought it at E.J. Korvette's.

Happened across the article by Kyle Gann article on the web and was going to post a link, then discovered 7/4 had already posted it (not surprised and thanks!). It is an excellent article.and worth bringing to the forefront again. I like this little snippet: One of the most important stories in 20th-century music is the famous one in which Cage asked the young Feldman how one of his pieces was written. Feldman weakly replied that he didn't know how it was written, and Cage jumped up and down squealing like a monkey and shouting, "Isn't that wonderful! It's so beautiful, and he doesn't know how he did it." That story alone is enough to mark the private onset of a new historical era. Also: One of my favorite stories Feldman liked to tell was of Marcel Duchamp visiting an art class in San Francisco, where he saw a young man wildly painting away. Duchamp went over and asked, "What are you doing?" The young man said, "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing!" And Duchamp patted him on the back and said, "Keep up the good work." In music, it was Feldman, more than anyone else, who gave us permission not to know what the fuck we were doing. Read the rest of the article at the link. Finished Feldman's GIVE MY REGARDS TO EIGHT STREET. Filled with insights, humor and personality. Brooklyn meets high art. Brooklyn wins. BTW, I went to NYU and spent many an hour trooping up and down Eight Street. Feldman knew what he was doing, even if at some points he discovered what he was doing.

My review of Arthur Rollini's "My Thirty Years With the Big Bands," a likely to be passed over gem: ARTHUR ROLLINI [1987] Arthur Rollini’s name does not loom large in the history of jazz, even though he was the younger brother of a major artist (bass saxophonist and mallet percussionist Adrian Rollini) and a member of Benny Goodman’s saxophone section from the inception of Goodman’s band until 1939. But perhaps because of his cog-in-the-wheel status, Rollini has written a very moving autobiography , Thirty Years With the Big Bands --a book that captures the feel of the Swing Era from a sideman’s point of view with an attractive blend of stoicism and wit. Rollini’s tale also is suffused with a casual, peculiarly American grace, as though, like one of Sherwood Anderson’s narrators, the seeming innocence with which he addresses us were essential to his message. Rollini records that any early childhood memory was of “the brass and crystal Ansonia clock on our mantel, which never ceased functioning as long as it was wound every eighth day. It was always wound on time, and its little mercury pendulum kept beating back and forth and intrigued me. I would view it for hours.” Nothing more than nostalgia, one thinks, until, several pages and decade or so further on, Rollini’s father dies and “the only sound in the living room was the little clock on the mantel, which ticked away and gonged softly on the hour and half hour, its little pendulum still beating back and forth in perfect rhythm.” Following in his older brother’s footsteps, Rollini was a professional musician at age seventeen--traveling to London to work with Fred Elizade’s orchestra at the Savoy Hotel, where the Prince of Wales often sat in on drums. (“He was, let us put it this way, not too good,” Rollini says.) Jazz fans will be most interested in Rollini’s account of his time with Benny Goodman, which confirms the widely held belief that Goodman was a difficult man to get along with. “Inconsiderate Benny, the best jazz clarinetist in the world!”--Rollini uses that tag, and variations thereof, time after time, even when a harsher adjective than “inconsiderate” might apply. Rollini and Dick Clark were Goodman’s initial tenor saxophonists, and “even at this stage,” Rollini says, “Benny would look at Dick’s bald head with disdain. He wanted a youthful looking band. ‘Fickle Benny,’ I thought, ‘the best jazz clarinetist in the world!’ Dick was a good player.” Quietly authoritative, Rollini’s tales of the sideman’s happy-sad life have a cumulative power. And two of them, when placed side by side, virtually define the big-band musician’s paradoxical role. In the first, Rollini is playing a dance with Goodman when he meets an old high school friend, one Johnny Baker, who requests that the band play “Always,” on the recording of which Rollini had a solo. At the dance, Rollini deliberately plays “something entirely different from what was on our recording, and after it was over Johnny Baker said to me, ‘What did you change it for?’” Then, in the mid-1940s, when Rollini was an NBC Radio staff musician, he stops in a Manhattan bar after work and notices that “two young men were playing the jukebox and had selected Will Bradley’s ‘Request for a Rhumba,’ which we had recorded in 1941. Finally I stepped off the bar stool and asked, “Boys, why are you playing that record over and over?” One replied, “We like the tenor sax solo.” I felt elated, but did not tell them that it was I who played it.” Arthur Rollini died in 1993.

Does "Gravy" have the intro Miles uses? (The Leo Parker sort of does.) "Gravy" does not have the Miles intro, which "El Sino" certainly hints at. Not at the beginning, but Gravy actually has it as outro! (El Sino and Walkin' use it both as intro and outro) I couldn't find a video of Gravy, but it exists on Spotify for those who have that. I have Spotify but don't find Ammons' "Gravy" there.

Here's Gitler's take: http://www.plosin.com/milesahead/prlp/prlp7076.html

Does "Gravy" have the intro Miles uses? (The Leo Parker sort of does.) "Gravy" does not have the Miles intro, which "El Sino" certainly hints at. Not at the beginning, but Gravy actually has it as outro! (El Sino and Walkin' use it both as intro and outro) I couldn't find a video of Gravy, but it exists on Spotify for those who have that. Thanks -- that's what I get for not listening all the way through.

If we want to go back to the days of Nat Hentoff, "fructifying." Nat had a well-worn card file, I believe, but much that was in it was his alone; no one else would go there. Lots of adverbs IIRC.

AMG lists it as being by Ray Brown but they're probably confusing it with Gravy Waltz. On a later record (with Sonny Stitt) Ammons or his record company call it "Walkin'". Does "Gravy" have the intro Miles uses? (The Leo Parker sort of does.) "Gravy" does not have the Miles intro, which "El Sino" certainly hints at. Otherwise, "Gravy" is virtually identical to "Walkin'" while "El Sino" is not as close. Further, both Junior Mance and Ira Gilter have said that the line is Mundy's -- Mance, the pianist on the "Gravy" date, adding that Mundy wrote it in Mance's apartment. Finally, our old friend Richard Carpenter was managing "(or "managing") Mundy at the time and perhaps felt free to lay his hands on some of Mundy's work into return for services of one sort or another.

Here's a goodish piece about Ross: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-138397374.html The first of his four novels I'd try is "Only Shorter," but they're all different (though clearly by the same writer) and all remarkable. I found "Shapes Mistaken" hard to get a grip on the first time; the second time I was knocked out by it. "Years Out" is a young man's book, if Ross was ever not all grown up. The final novel "Zwilling's Dream" is heartbreakingly tender and wise, especially taking into account that it was written by a man who probably knew he hadn't long to live.

I've read "Sheeper," and Ross was one of the two or three best friends I ever had -- a great novelist IMO, a cross between Schubert and Chekhov, perhaps. Ross Feld's Plum Poems is well worth checking out too. Yes, indeed, though Ross like to say in later years that he was "a recovering poet."

I've read "Sheeper," and Ross was one of the two or three best friends I ever had -- a great novelist IMO, a cross between Schubert and Chekhov, perhaps.

My favorite tenor saxophone taxonomy: DAVE PELL Nino Tempo arthur rollini ziggy vines You have to guess who this is. That is not a flow chart. Pleae provide a flow chart. Same approach as Gitler's on the notes to "Sonny Rollins Plus Four," which IIRC was the first album I bought with money I'd earned. Pretty good choice. Our blond-wood console record player was in the living room, and I'd play "Pent Up House" every night (sometimes placing the needle back to listen again to Clifford's solo) while my father tried to read the evening paper. Finally he said, "Don't you have ANY other records?"

My favorite tenor saxophone taxonomy: DAVE PELL Nino Tempo arthur rollini ziggy vines You have to guess who this is.

Why the hell are you dragging J.B. Figi into your cat fight? He was a hell of a writer and did much more than write liner notes.

Yes, that's Gitler's diagram. About older players like Gordon and Eager being influenced by Rollins, that's certainly arguable, especially if you were around at the time to hear that going on (as Ira was). As for older players (or if not literally older players already veterans on the scene and seemingly fully formed) in general being influenced by players who are younger, Coltrane's widespread influence on such figures would be an obvious example (see Harold Land, Frank Foster, the list could go on and on), as would the pervasive influence of Bill Evans (on Hampton Hawes, for one).

Another Byas-influenced player would be Plas Johnson.

I believe it's because of demands from the estate of Richard Carpenter, the "composer" of the tune. Couldn't they just retitle it Sid's Ahead, or something? We may have talked about this before, but "Walkin'" was first recorded in 1950 by Gene Ammons under the title "Gravy" and (minimal though the line may be) is a Jimmy Mundy composition.

If Keepnews wasn't there, his favorite recording engineer of the time, Ray Fowler, was.

Haven't heard it for a good while, but my memory is that the Riverside four-trumpet date was a classic example of a less than it should have been/could have been Orrin Keepnews production. Edit: I see now that the date was Cannonball's idea but don't know whether Keepnews was in the studio. Listening to a track on the Internet, I hear what I recall hearing before -- rather airless too close-up sound (on Budd and bassist Joe Benjamin in particular) and less than ideal drum work from Herbie Lovelle.

No great thanks to Adams and Strouse, but Ellington's "All-American" is a superb album. Gonsalves on "I've Just Seen Her," of course, but virtually every track is a gem. Also, FWIW, eight of the ten tracks are Strayhorn charts according to Walter van de Leur's "Something To Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn."

Never knew this existed. Need to get cracking.

Budd is in fine form on the first concert (he's not on the second) from the Jazz Icons Quincy Jones DVD, especially on "Tickle Toe" and "Big Red." He also solos on "Birth of Band" and "Lester Leaps In." Great to see the passion with which he digs into his section work, too. Also, some nice shots of Quentin Jackson reacting with pleasure to the work of drummer Joe Harris and other members of the ensemble. That was quite a band.

As a science-minded friend pointed out: "I can't believe it's not an error. I can see the possibility of something traveling faster than light, but not just a tiny bit faster."

Just posted a demurral about Driggs' methods on Doug Ramsey's blog. Better hunker down now.

Importing this message from Jonathan Horwich because I'm having a problem merging threads these days: "Dear All, For your collective information, I shipped the CD reissue of Julius Hemphill Dogon A.D. to the distributor today. Official release date is 18 Oct 2011, but I imagine around 7 Oct or earlier, copies will be available. Thought you'd all like to know. Jonathan"