Larry Kart

Perhaps it's a fine line, but for me on "Airegin" Hendricks sounds like he's imitating/reassembling licks from instrumentalists he's heard while Lambert is telling his own primarily (or significantly) vocal and musically coherent story. Like most vocalese (which this is not, strictly speaking), Hendricks here and elsewhere reminds me of this famous anecdote: Boswell: I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. Johnson: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." I didn't feel that way about Lambert here, though.

P.S. On second listen, Lee plays a lovely solo on "I Fall In Love Too Easily," though I wish it were longer. Also, listening again to Mehldau's comping, sotto voce as it usually is, he does have a to me annoying habit of delivering slightly modified versions of Lee's phrases right after Lee has played them. Quick-witted of Mehldau to be able to do that, but what's the musical point? I don't hear Lee responding to these maneuvers.

Lee is brilliant on the first track "Lover Man" but after that not so much. About Mehldau, I agree with Chuck. Although his comping is not as annoying as it might be (at least he keeps things relatively sotto voce), his solo lines here are for the most past dour little dribbles -- like a soundtrack to a documentary film on urinary incontinence -- while the more virtuosic passages also are oddly dour, as though he were saying, "I have rapid fingers but not a lot of ideas -- I apologize." That Mehldau gets the majority of the solo space may be because of Lee's age, but for me it eventually makes the album hard to listen to. The more or less flaccid "prose" rhythms of Haden and (especially) Motian are not a help (not that "prose" rhythms need be flaccid, but I think they are here).

I remember Jane Getz from P. Sanders' ESP album. She sounded very nice there -- a genuine lyricist, somewhat akin to Don Friedman. I met Zoller through Dan Morgenstern, my then boss at Down Beat, in 1969 or so. Seemed like a terrific guy; no need to say he was a fine player.

Thanks, Marty. I need to pay better attention, as I keep reminding myself (and then forgetting about).

Hipp obit: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.obituaries/browse_thread/thread/e2ffcd26d265ede3/c43d228980efe278?q=jutta+hipp

Feather introduces a Hipp performance at the Hickory House in 1956: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N73mSOprRxk She could play.

For those who can read German, I believe that Hipp discusses her relationship with Feather here: http://www.vonschuttenbach.com/articles/Jutta_Hipp_Jazz_Podium_July_2006_new.pdf

P.S. Leonard was known for hitting on female musicians he touted and fancied. German pianist Jutta Hipp was one such, much to her regret.

Rhae played an android (#263) from the planet Mudd on the original Star Trek series: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Alice_263.jpg

Ah, yes, the Andrece twins, Alyce and Rhae. Much of the following is almost uniquely insane. Try "Waltz Without Words" and proceed at your own risk: http://www.amazon.com/Up-Into-Silence-Sound-Feeling/dp/B000YNEEHI Both Alyce and Rhae (b. 1936 in Thornton, Il.) are gone now, as is Feather, so I am free to imagine Leonard boinking the twins amid a cacophony of soprano noises.

Percy Heath was one of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was trained as a fighter pilot but didn't see combat. Artie Shaw gave post-traumatic stress disorder to other people. Singer David Allyn had a very rough time of it in the army in North Africa. Reaching further afield, Lenny Bruce served on the light cruiser USS Brooklyn during the landing at Salerno in 1943 (lots of German air raids). And Jonathan Winters was aboard the carrier USS Franklin, which lost 724 killed in a Japanese air attack in 1945. If Bill Triglia was aboard a carrier that was sunk by a kamikaze, that would have been the light carrier St. Lo, which I'm pretty sure was the only U.S. carrier to sink as a result of a kamikaze attack, in the battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, with the loss of 113 men. The troop ship that my dad (a signal officer) would have been on the bridge of but for a twist of fate, the Henrico, was hit by a kamikaze off of Okinawa in 1945 with much loss of life among bridge personnel.

Too bad Bill Mathieu didn't write for a band like that. Lying in wait for months, the cloaked assassin finally strikes.

"Roving Schalmei bands made up of unemployed war veterans in the 1920s accompanied their socialist songs with instruments of different sizes and registers. Erich Honecker’s father is known to have played in a Schalmei band when Erich (born 1912) was a small child." Explains a lot.

Larry: Have you been moonlighting over at Dusty Groove? Nope. Bought "Wide Range" when it first came out, got it again in the Mosaic set. Another Richards album I really like, one where the humor is especially striking, is "Something Else" (Bethlehem). An obvious point of comparison is Pete Rugolo, and I'll take Richards over Rugolo by miles. IMO Rugolo can be insufferably cute and coy, his bombast is truly bombastico, and he also seems to me to often lack a basic interest/involvement in the music as music rather than as gesture. One may not have a taste for Richards, but he pays real attention to the details of what he's doing.

Those Schildkraut solos are fairly well mind-boggling. As for Richards, what I especially like is, for want of a better term, his surreal, gusto-filled, Falstaffian humor, which for me usually tempers, modifies, even undercuts the apparent bombast. Those insane piccolo lines! And the way Billy Slapin (usually) plays them! Also, the particular sorts of ensemble virtuosity Richards' writing demands from players typically seems to inspire them to play their asses off across the board. Dig Ray Copeland and Jimmy Cleveland's solo work on this album. Back to the bombast factor, some of his more "sweeping" orchestral statements are genuinely sweeping IMO, e.g. either "Nipigon" or "The Ballad of Tappan Zee" from "Wide Range" (maybe both).

I'm plebian -- Edy's Peanut Butter Cup. When Edy's is on sale for 2/$5, I go a little crazy and almost fill the freezer.

As the friend who sent it to me said, "Looks like it's teeming with unseen life."

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110815.html

Hans, I'm sure you're right about Pristine Audio. But I'm listening to both performances on YouTube (so there's that), plus all I'm saying is that this set of pieces that Rose worked on sounds much better to me than the first clip I linked to. In any case, I've got lot of Valenti's Scarlatti on the original Westminster LPs. Maybe Rose would like to borrow them.

No one remembers Fernando Valenti? And in much better sound: http://www.pristineclassical.com/LargeWorks/Keyboard/PAKM010.php

Pres

"The Jazz Baroness" http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/the-jazz-baroness/index.html

Excellent

The Lunceford. Fascinating music (some of the early stuff new to me) and great sound so far.