Larry Kart

FWIW, further thought and experience has turned me away from Uchida. Sorry if I misled anyone.

Based on his work with the ICP Orchestra and the one album under his own name that I have, "What a Wonderful World" (a 2001 Louis Armstrong tribute, with bassist Dieter Manderscheid, on JazzHausMusik that partakes of the ICP spirit and that of Lester Bowie), Heberer is a fine trumpeter.

Much as I enjoyed the Threadgill interview, this passage from Part One threw me: "Now, the entire experience of the slave was one of assimilation. Assimilation of anything! It didn’t matter: Chinese, French, Spanish, whatever it was. It was the acquisition of all information in systems and knowledge and communication. And that was without discrimination. It was just grab hold of something and learn how to do it in some kind of way and put your thing through it. Look at Scott Joplin. He wasn’t really emulating anything from Europe. At all! As a matter of fact, when he wrote Treemonisha, it was simultaneous with the advent of Schoenberg’s sprechstimme, and sprechstimme was present in Treemonisha. "And Joplin had no contact with Europe in any kind of way. This guy’s totally isolated and he’s just making music from an aesthetic. " (My emphases) If "[A]assimilation of anything!" was the name of the game (and there I certainly agree) -- "Chinese, French, Spanish, whatever it was. It was the acquisition of all information in systems and knowledge and communication. And that was without discrimination. It was just grab hold of something and learn how to do it in some kind of way and put your thing through it." -- then why would Joplin have been "totally isolated" and have had "no contact with Europe in any kind of way"? Dismiss the notion of "emulatiing" if you wish, but if you have "assimilation of anything," why would European music not be part of that "anything"? It certainly was there to be assimilated.

Keep us posted on on whether the total turns out to be enough. If needed, I could give more.

Not the biggest McRae fan, preferring her earlier recordings and feeling that she often got rather mannered in her vintage years (although those mannerisms of timbre, attack, and dramatization, did seem built in), I hesitated over this, the then 70-year-old McRae's final album, from Oct. 1990 (she retired the following May and died in 1994). Singing tunes associated with her recently deceased friend Vaughan, there are no signs here of the asthma and emphysema that would lead to McRae's retirement, other than (probably) a choice of lower keys on some songs (though McRae's voice always was down there). She sounds plenty strong, and as for inventiveness/emotional commitment, backed by the Shirley Horn Trio (which no doubt, and as one might expect, makes a big difference), McRae is stunningly spontaneous -- even on (or perhaps especially on) such chestnuts as "Misty" and "Send in the Clowns." The 2003 Bluebird reissue adds four bonus tracks. The way that McRae, an accomplished professional pianist herself, and Horn interact is something else.

Vlado Perlemuter http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Piano-Sonatas-Wolfgang-Amadeus/dp/B000S6DPI0

Check will be mailed tomorrow.

Well, it has been a major art form in most cultures for millennia, and it also has a strong musical component -- sonic structures at work in time. For example, this by Emily Dickinson (the second stanza makes me think of Bix, for obvious reasons): I would not paint -- a picture -- I'd rather be the One Its bright impossibility To dwell -- delicious -- on -- And wonder how the fingers feel Whose rare -- celestial -- stir -- Evokes so sweet a Torment -- Such sumptuous -- Despair -- I would not talk, like Cornets -- I'd rather be the One Raised softly to the Ceilings -- And out, and easy on -- Through Villages of Ether -- Myself endued Balloon By but a lip of Metal -- The pier to my Pontoon -- Nor would I be a Poet -- It's finer -- own the Ear -- Enamored -- impotent -- content -- The License to revere, A privilege so awful What would the Dower be, Had I the Art to stun myself With Bolts of Melody!

How could Hammond fail to mention Eddie Durham as one of the "important jazzers playing electric guitar before Charlie joined Goodman?" http://www.durhamjazz.com/legacyguitar.htm

Allen -- When you introduce a topic like this, what do you expect? Sympathy, empathy, amusement, I guess, but some sniping comes as a surprise to you? BTW, I hardly think that 7/4's remarks here qualify as "unfettered nastiness." Rather, IMO, given your long history of mutual combat, they strike me as quite fettered -- so steeped in irony as to be near affectionate. But all you can think of is to call the cops and/or ask why they haven't arrived yet.

I agree, but on that level I'd just as well go for "Good Vibes", Terry Gibbs' autobiography. Really VIBE-rant, eh... vibrant. I need to track that down.

Long gone but still obtainable used and at its frequent best superb is "Modern Jazz: The Essential Records," written by the best of the vintage Jazz Monthly crew (Max Harrison, Jack Cooke, Michael James, et al.): http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/13353917/used/Modern%20Jazz%3A%20The%20Essential%20Records Certainly specialized, but Walter van de Leur's "Something To Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" is a model of scrupulous, insightful-empathetic scholarship. Likewise, Larry Gushee's "Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band." Few works of history of any sort bring back "lost time" better than this. Gitler's "Swing To Bop" for sure. John Litweiler's "The Freedom Principle." Not a central text, I guess, but Charlie Barnet's autobiography "Those Swinging Years" is something else. As for fiction, Rafi Zaboor's "The Bear Comes Home."

Cy Touff -- Pacific Jazz, Argo, Delmark

First, the Vocalion big band version was the one that had such a big impact on fans and other players (including Miles). It was at once lovely and famous, like his 12 bars on Glenn Miller's "A String of Pearls." Second, FWIW, here is the late Dick Sudhalter in his book "Lost Chords": "The peak [of the band's first record date] ... comes last, on 'Embraceable You.' Compared to this, the Commodore performance of a year before seems a warm up. The Hackett charms are in full early bloom: balanced phrasing, the melodic essence glowing through the embellishments, and unerring ability, as Ruby Braff observed, to select the most poignant intervals and chordal voices -- all delivered with a heartwarming tone. From his first lilting phrase, an oblique allusion to the Harry Warren-Al Dubin 'Shadow Waltz,' he comes close to recomposing Gershwin's melody."

The April 13, 1939 recording with Hackett's big band.

I actually read a great deal of Trollope in my early 20s, perhaps a bit too young to fully appreciate it, but I did start to get into the pacing about halfway into Can You Forgive Her? I suspect someday I will read through the Palliser novels again, though I am fairly unlikely to read Powell's Dance to the Music of Time for a second time. I'd really like to read The Way We Live Now, but I have stashed it away in storage, but maybe in a year or two... Curiously, I never read any of the Chronicles of Barsetshire books, so that is something else I have to look forward to. Am mostly done with Karinthy's Metropole, which successfully conveys the overwhelming, pressing nature of this overcrowded metropolis the narrator has landed in. It actually is making me a bit claustrophobic. A couple years ago, after Larry mentioned how he liked the Palliser novels, I read The Eustace Diamonds and liked it a lot. Read 3 more with diminishing appreciation - by The Prime Minister it looked like Trollope actually admired his protagonist and had no more sense of irony. Time to return to Dickens and Fred. Engels. Well, the Plantagenet of "The Prime Minister," while not without a fair number of good qualities, is (it might be said) is a man who is profoundly bewildered by much of life (by his wife Glencora, of course, and also by his own deeply diffident, rather stiff-necked nature, his political-social role, and his fate), and Trollope IMO captures those very ironic strains perfectly. Or do you want Plantagenet to be kicked about a good deal more than he is, just because his title is -- ironic enough, no? -- Duke of Omnium. I think I know what you mean, though -- I too was was attracted by the at times startling darkness of "The Eustace Diamonds" -- but Trollope is a realist, not a prosecuting attorney. Am reading and enjoying J.G. Farrell's at times very funny but also very ominous "The Singapore Grip."

Sunday night at the Hungry Brain I saw The Engines (Dave Rempis, Jeb Bishop, Nate McBride, Tim Daisy) with guest John Tchicai (on tenor) -- everyone in fine form, playing pieces by both Tchicai and The Engines. Room was full.

Interim report on birthday CDs (all used, all by and large new to me). Two gems so far: "Johnny Hodges with Billy Strayhorn and the Orchestra" (Verve) -- great playing and writing, impossible to not listen to this straight through, fills up the soul, and so much fascinating musical detail, e.g. that "Azure"(!), that "Jeeps Blues"(!). Is this the only RVG recording of the Ellington Band? (That's who's here, with Jimmy Jones on piano, playing handsomely.) Annotator Loren Schoenberg says that the band isn't well-served by the "balance and separation" of RVG's sound; I see what he means but disagree, have no problem putting the pieces (so to speak) back together and am grateful for all I do hear here that I might not have heard as vividly otherwise. Schlippenbach Trio, "Winterreise" (Emanem) -- Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker, Paul Lovens, live in Cologne in 2004 and 2005. AvS is very sensitive to/supportive of EP, and as "free" as things are here, this is utterly jazz-like music IMO. First of two pieces is 46 minutes and kept me in its grip all the way. And: 1915: Marlowe Morris 1916: Dud Bascomb 1919: Liberace 1956: Hanna Richardson (very good singer and spouse of bassist Phil Flanigan)

Thanks all. Celebrated by buying some CDs. Will report if any of them prove to be unexpectedly much better than I'd thought they'd be.

Happy to be here.

The feeling I get is that he's proudly summoning all this modernity to life.

commercially: If so, that seems a shame, given the quality of the music and the recording job, too. In any case, Waldron and Hill on "Evidence" is quite something.

IIRC, Warne said that was the best solo he'd ever played on those changes, which is saying something ... considering.

Further, bassist Fred Atwood was part of a working rhythm section with Lou Levy and Jake Hanna (that of Supersax), and their familiarity with each other (in addition to their skills) is what led to one of the glories of the album -- those improvised rhythm section choruses, in which Atwood was a full participant. If you don't care for Atwood as a soloist, go ahead, but those rhythm section choruses are exceptional.

There's no accounting for idiots, but I would think that Nate Dorward's authoritative All Music review would show up this ---hole for what he is.