Larry Kart

In fact, Bach already had been charged with dereliction of duty by the city council: "Not only was the Cantor [bach] doing nothing; he was not even willing to explain himself; he was not giving singing lessons, and there were other complaints as well; changes would be necessary, for matters would come to a head sooner or later, and he would have to accept other arrangements" -- e.g. a reduction in salary and a decision to appoint someone to serve as Bach's substitute at Bach's expense. What Bach was doing in the detailed ten-page memorandum was accusing "the city council in turn with inadequate attention to his needs." Geck continues: "Bach can hardly have expected that his memorandum would result in meaningful changes; there is no indication that it was even discussed in the council. It seems more likely that he intended the memorandum to serve as an unadorned record of his difficult working conditions."

I'm reminded of a passage from a recent really good book about Bach, Martin Geck's "Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Art," in which in 1730 Bach fires off a blunt, angry memorandum of protest ("Short but Most Necessary Draft for a Well-Appointed Church Music") to his bosses in Leipzig, claiming that he doesn't have sufficient resources of personnel (i.e. number and quality of performers) to do what he feel he needs to do musically, and that his bosses' demand that he spend more time teaching novices are unfair and burdensome. Geck writes: "...Bach's arrival in Leipzig marks a shift in the view of musical art that has been coming for some time but is brought to a head by his understanding of the art, according to which a composer no longer builds on prearranged understandings but operates within the complicated dialectical relation between socially agreed-upon standards and artistic autonomy. "A pragmatist in the post of St. Thomas cantor [bach's position] would reason as follows: I have the school's pupils, the council musicians, and a few students at my disposal; I will adapt my music to these resources. Bach's reasoning goes this way: I have the school's pupils, the council musicians, and a few students at my disposal, and the St. Matthew Passion in my head; therefore I need better conditions.... "Senior Mayor Steger must have shaken his head as he read Bach's memorandum, wondering whether the real issue was a well-appointed church music or one artist's ambition. Bach actually wants both; he is a church musician and an artist through and through; he loves the old music and is eager for the new. We would not understand his argument if we did not have his works; they create in the realm of the ideal the synthesis that he does not achieve in his everyday circumstances." [My emphasis]

Now that's a Conrad I still have to get ... It's not an easy book to get into (at least it wasn't for me), but wow. I've read it twice in the last ten years and could read it again. Conrad may have been the wisest man ever to write an English language novel. "The Secret Agent" and "Under Western Eyes" are at the same level as "Nostromo." "Lord Jim" maybe not quite, but it breaks my heart.

Certainly not the whole story, but another perspective (an excerpt from my book that I've posted before): "...At one time, so the argument goes, jazz musicians were content to think of themselves as entertainers, not self-conscious artists. If the practitioner of modern jazz wants to please himself and his peers first and the audience second, if at all, he must endure the consequences of this unrealistic, willful act. "The problem with that argument, though, as British saxophonist Bruce Turner says in his whimsically titled autobiography Hot Air, Cool Music, “is that scarcely any jazz musicians are able to recognize this picture of themselves. There are some jazzmen who are great entertainers. Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Lionel Hampton come immediately to mind. But they are the exception, not the rule. For the most part those of us who play jazz for a living do not know any way of entertaining an audience other than by making the best music we are capable of....'"

Norman Lewis' "A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam": http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Apparent-Travels-Cambodia-Vietnam/dp/090787133X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301691860&sr=1-1 Actually, anything by Lewis, who was said to be the greatest travel writer of the 20th Century.

Perhaps not quite what you have in mind, but I enjoyed this one a lot when I was eleven or so. Great illustrations, too: http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-One-Balloons-William-Pene-Bois/dp/0140320970 On the heavier side, a strong candidate for the greatest English-language novel, Conrad's "Nostromo."

I remember watching "A Drum Is A Woman" on the U.S. Steel Hour at age 14 in May 1957 -- the feeling of intense anticipation, then acute embarrassment. Madame Zajj? The IIRC (to use an old S.J. Perelman phrase) "fire in a whorehouse" choreography? Perhaps I wasn't equipped to get it.

That's Truck Parham. And a lovely record.

Clips of Francis with Walrath (and other stuff by Francis can be found in YouTube):

I love this record. Reviewed it for the Chicago Tribune when it came out (knowing of Francis from "New Ideas"), and IIRC talked to him a bit on the phone at the time. I vaguely recall some YouTube clips of Francis from maybe ten years further on, playing a concert with a group that included Jack Walrath.

That's right, Allan.

One more word about moderation, sir, and you are a pile of ash.

Wait...wouldn't that make it less likely to hit homers? Or is bat size the only issue? Nah ... it's how you swing the thing.

What a lovely couple they must have been.

Done. Thank you.

Beautifully put.

This is not a religion where every right and wrong has to be/should be carved in rock or spelled out on the wall in letters of flame. Also, I don't think I said to you that "only one thread per topic is permitted." Rather, as Dan Gould says above, this is simply a matter of common courtesy/common sense, based on how people actually use this place. One thread per topic (especially a topic like the one that set you off when the new thread was closed -- this with a link to the already going thread) seems like good sense to me. And if you do open an old thread on a topic like that one, how onerous is it to go to the most recent posts? One click? Further, when new posts are made on an old thread, they of course crop up on "View New Content," so anyone knows that activity is taking place there and can pay a visit/post as they will, and then EVERYONE who cares about (in this case the Bristol sessions reissue) WILL KNOW ABOUT IT. What a bizarre concept. Finally, when you've got two threads going on the same or very similar topics, it's very likely that some posters won't figure this out and will either post redundantly on the thread of the two that they are aware of or post interesting things on this thread that those who are aware only of the other thread won't see. I've seen both things happen a lot; it's happened to me. Why should such potential confusion not be avoided when it's so simple to do so? P.S. I assume that the reason this isn't a flaming "rule," aside from it being matter of simple housekeeping, is that one can imagine cases where two significantly different threads on what might in some sense be thought of as the same topic had a good reason to instead be going on as different threads. Again, a bizarre concept.

Oh, yeah -- I remember that one!

Compare to this earlier duet version with her and Jobim: Two people shouldn't be allowed to share this much pleasure in public, although for me there is a melancholic undertone to this performance.

Just got this email from a friend, who lives in Larchmont, N.Y. Has anyone here had a similar experience? Some time ago I ordered "Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer" from Netflix. It arrived cracked. So I returned it and requested another--which also arrived cracked. So I returned it and requested another--which also arrived cracked. I have now ordered and received DVDs of this movie SIX times and all SIX have arrived cracked. Isn't that bizarre. I have reported each one to Netflix, the last three by telephone--the last time the customer representative said she would order the DVD from a depot in Maine rather than the depot in Hartford which had sent the others. But it arrived cracked anyway. I find the whole thing so odd.

A little thing, but the title of that movie was "First Family" (1980), not "The First Family."

That skit is solid gold.

Something I posted a few years ago (slightly modified): I interviewed Newhart once, over lunch at I think the Bel Air Country Club in connection with the movie "The First Family," in which he played a befuddled, Jimmy Carter-like president, with Madeline Kahn as his wife and Gilda Radner as his daughter. The movie was not so hot, but Newhart's account of it over lunch (I hadn't seen it yet) was hilarious. What a nice guy. One thing I particularly liked about him -- and this comes through in much of his work -- is that in a seemingly quite ego-less way he can be actively amused by something that he himself has said or done. It's as though he has an ongoing sense of the multi-faceted absurdities of life, and that he is inside the fence. Another bit about that lunch-interview. We were accompanied by a veteran publicist with a very leathery tan (probably he was connected with the film company). Serving as a potential minder of some sort, as the lunch went on he seemed almost appalled that Newhart and I were having such a good time. It's as though he expected me to ask Newhart a flurry of questions rather than just talk back and forth, and if I didn't do that, no work was being done. But as long as the tape recorder was on, I knew that Newhart was doing most of the work for me -- I just had to go back to Chicago and write it up.

Jaws' relationship to the beat was so explosive and precise. It's like his horn had the world's greatest bongo and/or conga drummer hidden inside it.

It was recorded in 1958 on Jive For Five, a Bill Holman and Mel Lewis session on Andex. Rowles was on piano for the recording, and the track's title was listed as "502 Blues Theme." Hmm -- and I have that album, too. Thanks for the heads up.