Larry Kart

Here's the first chapter of a non-Harpur and Iles from James, "Middleman," though it shares much of the flavor. Haven't read this one myself; need to look for it: http://www.thedonotpress.com/extracts/middlemanex.html

How could I have forgotten Englishman Bill James' (pseudonym of James Tucker) Harpur and Iles novels? "Colin Harpur is a Detective Chief Inspector and Desmond Iles is the Assistant Chief Constable in an unnamed coastal city in southwestern England. Harpur and Iles are complemented by an evolving cast of other recurring characters on both sides of the law. The books are characterized by a grim humor and a bleak view of the relationship between the public, the police force and the criminal element." Grim humor doesn't begin to tell the story; also, the mordant, hostile banter between Harpur and Iles (who is in some moods close to insane) is at once baroque and drily hilarious, as are the forms of at once crude and would-be classy speech that are given to the often quite nasty local gangsters who figure so prominently in the books. A brilliant series for quite a while, though IMO it ran out of gas after "Lovely Mover," IIRC. Not sure why, but James' always high degree of stylization, especially of dialogue, suddenly stopped working for me -- perhaps there began to be too much of it in relation to events. BTW, Iles doesn't enter the picture until "Halo Parade," though the first two are excellent in their own right and lead right into Iles' eventual arrival. * You'd Better Believe It, 1991 * The Lolita Man, 1991 (1986) * Halo Parade, 1991 (1987) * Protection (also available as Harpur & Iles), 1992 (1988) * Come Clean, 1993 * Take, 1994 * Club, 1995 * Astride a Grave, 1996 * Gospel, 1997 * Roses, Roses, 1998 * In Good Hands, 2000 * The Detective is Dead, 2001 (1995) * Top Banana, 1996 * Panicking Ralph, 2001 * Lovely Mover, 1999 * Eton Crop, 1999 * Kill Me, 2000 * Pay Days, 2001 * Naked at the Window, 2002 * The Girl with the Long Back, 2004 (2003) * Easy Streets, 2005 (2004) * Wolves of Memory, 2006 * Girls, 2007 (2006) * Pix, (2007) * In the Absence of Iles, (2008)

Has anyone mentioned Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko novels? I was particularly gripped by "Red Square," "Havana Bay," and "Wolves Eat Dogs." Also, they are mysteries, in addition to everything else they are. I do tend to lump together tough or hard-boiled crime fiction in which there's a significant element of suspense (hard to see how there couldn't be) and tough or hard-boiled mysteries, but they're not the same thing. Also (sorry if I've mentioned it before) in the crime fiction bag, semi-psychopath division, Derek Marlowe's "The Vengeance Man," which is adjacent to Jim Thompson territory.

Sounds intriguing. As I've mentioned before, for a good while a Kenton biopic (or a movie about a Kenton-like figure) might have been a natural for Clint Eastwood, with Clint himself playing the lead role. Clint was a big Kenton fan in his college days (according to his friend at the time and later on, Mort Sahl, who also was/is a hardcore Kentonian), and I'm sure Clint would have had a sure grasp of Kenton's temperament.

Why not just stop there? I'm certainly not saying that it's impossible for that to have occured, but let me know. Pretty sure there were a lot of Burns-branded CDs sold in the aftermath - proof positive that some people were motivated to seek out the music they heard. I'd say its more likely that hardly anyone remembers anything that specific from the movie and if they were neophytes before there's a good chance they moved on to other sources of information about the music and its makers. I think the only "young people" motivated to watch Jazz already had a predisposition toward the music. Or do you think that PBS reaches a lot of young people with its typical programming? Jazz was aimed more or less at baby boomers who knew that Miles Davis was a cool cat and already owned a jazz CD or two, as a cultural affect. As for Dinah, so Burns should be criticized for over-using certain clips. If that really prevented a young person from "getting" Louis Armstrong, then I think that's more or less their loss, and their fault. Or maybe you think that if kids today can only write for twitter, facebook or easy text-reading, then all lessons should be delivered in 140 characters or less. I'd argue that any documentary with a discernible point of view has propagandist-elements. Hello there Michael Moore. Yes, "there were a lot of Burns-branded CDs sold in the aftermath" --- proof positive that a lot of people were motivated to buy those Burns-branded CDs; the series (on public television) serving as a nice marketing tool for Burns and the label that put them out. As for the impact of the series (and the Burns CD compilations) on the jazz recording business as a whole, I'll let others testify if they can and wish to, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were negligible or even negative. You misunderstand my "Dinah" example. I'm saying that the insistent repetition of this clip understandably threatened to destroy its major artistic value. It even came close, in the context of the series, to doing so for me -- and I could hardly be more of an Armstrong admirer. I also don't see how this has anything to do with "twitter, facebook or easy text-reading." In fact, the use of that clip was numbing/mindless. About drawing young people (or maybe any neophyte) to jazz, now, then, or ever, I see two potentially over-lapping paths here: 1) sheer musical interest; 2) some sense that this thing is "hip," relevant to your own social group and your own evolving sense of self-definition/identity. As for 1), the music, more less of itself, can and will strike those who are so inclined at any time and anywhere, provided there is actual exposure. I'm still bemused by how at age 13 in 1955, a friend and I, maybe a month into jazz and familiar only with a slim grab bag of mostly then-current sounds, were utterly galvanized by our first accidental encounter with the music of the 1940-42 Ellington band. This, we immediately knew, was solid gold; I think the inherent sheer quality of the music "taught" us this lesson pretty much instantaneously. By contrast, a month or two later a jazz-fan school teacher told me to check out Charlie Parker, specfically a Roost LP reissue of Dial material, and I just didn't get it. The music sounded so harsh, brittle, and strange; also, those Roost pressings were so nasty that they made the music, as "sound" per se, sound archaic -- what the hell did I know? (I soon got the message about Bird and Diz from the Norvo "Congo Blues" date.) Another key step -- bigger in one sense than with Bird, though also easier for me to take -- was to Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers. A bigger step because the time feel was a good deal different from what I'd heard; easier though because the novel formal-dramatic pleasures of the music again, as with Ellington, essentially "explained" themselves. And with that, plus the advent/impact of Sonny Rollins, there probably wasn't going to be a darn thing of value in the past, present, or future of the music that I wouldn't have a good chance to grasp -- this, of course, in part because I'd now come to feel that the course of this music (past, present, and future) couldn't be separated from who I was. Sorry for the personal stuff, but I think general principles, pleasure principles, are at work here. It's not like a seventh-grade civics class.

Why not just stop there? I'm certainly not saying that it's impossible for that to have occured, but let me know. And if that did happen very much, how could these people have screened out the "assorted falsehoods, half-truths and Crouch-isms," which were fairly well pervasive? BTW, I do have at least one anecdotal response to the Burns series from a musically inclined young person I know. IIRC, the footage of Armstrong playing and singing "Dinah" with a European ensemble was played a great many times -- the idea being that it was iconic/symbolic. For many of the likes of us (and objectively, too), yes -- but my young friend eventually found the repetition of this clip so off-putting that his initial positive response to it was sadly transformed into something like repulsion. You could say, 'Well, so much for him, he's a dope,' but I think he was essentially reacting to having something genuine shoved down his throat so insistently that it began to seem false -- or at least the insistent shoving did. In fact, I too began to groan every time that "Dinah" clip cropped up. What I'm saying -- and this I think echoes one of the points Chris made above -- is that much of the series had the feel of propaganda (which in many respects was the case). And if there's one thing that a lot of young people (a group that include most of those "neophytes" one was hoping to win over, right?) are inclined to be put off by when they detect it, it's being propagandized -- let alone on a "This is good for you" basis (with in this case an arguable "This is good for us" subtext).

I think Chris and Jack have answered the question. On the other hand, Chris' I think crucial call for an "honest" approach (I agree entirely with his "this was a dishonest, deliberately distorted series that played with the facts -- not always by omission") would call for much further talk if one were to convince those who don't already know what he means -- much more of that than I think any of us are willing to engage in at this late date, with the horse not only out of the barn but with the barn also burned down and condo apartments erected in its place. Surely, though, there are on-line archives of one sort or another where all the chapter-and-verse discussion on the Burns documentary that took place at the time and soon afterwards is still accessible? Some of it may even be here? Also I believe that Chris is right in saying "A true, competent documentarian could have told the story of jazz in less time and for less money."

I agree in one sense -- Rugolo was often impish in ways that Kenton himself never was -- but he could be pretentious enough, or if you prefer just blatant ("Salute" on "Brass in Hi-Fi" struck me that way IIRC). Also, on some tracks the writing, in rhythmic terms, is ponderous like a pachyderm.

Not an answer to your question, perhaps, but I recently bought this: http://www2.broinc.com/search.php?row=0&brocode=&stocknum=&text=rugolo&filter=all&cd=1&submit=Search which combines "Music for Hi-Fi Bugs" and "Brass in Hi-Fi." Nicely remastered as far I can tell, though I haven't heard the LPs. A note from remastering engineer Michael Dutton says: "These recordings are from the very early days of stereo, and some of the balances are slightly different to the mono recording feeds. The only track available in its original mono format was 'Oscar and Pete's Blues': the mono master was vastly superior to its stereo counterpart, hence its appearance here." Given that info, the "Music for Hi-Fi Bugs" material, while quite listenable, is not as together sonically as the "Brass in Hi-Fi" material: the stereo spread on the former is too wide and ping-pong-ish, and there are a few "washy" moments, probably because (as Dutton explains) of phase problems "because ribbon microphones in the 'figure of eight' method were used in the original recording sessions." (Others who know more that I do can translate.) As for the music, for my tastes Rugolo was getting too giggly cute and/or ponderous by this point, even by his own prior standards. There are moments when poor Shelly Manne sounds like he's trying to move a sixteen-wheel truck all by himself. OTOH, the orchestral execution is pretty striking from that arguably limited point of view. The collective trumpet section is Buddy Childers, Don Paladino, Maynard Ferguson, Pete Candoli, Ray Linn, and Don Fagerquist, trombones are Frank Rosolino, Milt Bernhart, Herbie Harper, and George Roberts. My favorite track first time through (and there may never be another time) was "Everything Happens to Me" from "Brass in Hi-Fi," a fairly conservative feature for Linn, who plays handsomely on it in a neo-Armstrong manner. Some nice solo bits elsewhere but also a lot of Rugolo semi-nonsense.

The comment thread on that blog I linked to on this thread raises some significant questions/doubts about the reliability of the information in the original blog post. Sorry if I've contributed to the world's pool of misinformation; that was not my intent.

This explains (or, if your prefer, claims) in some detail that the nuclear reactor situation is not that big a big deal: http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/

Maybe if you put Chubby Jackson, Bob Haggart, Gabby Hayes, and Two-Ton Baker in a Cusinart? In fact, thinking of Jackson, Gabby Hayes, and Baker, they were all -- at one time or another and in one way or another -- fixtures on daytime television in the 1950s, when the young Warren probably was a TV viewer. Perhaps that's the clue? I certainly can imagine that on Jackson's show, in between cartoons and clowning, he might have picked up the bass and played "Big Noise." It is a fun number.

I do not understand this. If Tony Bennett, or anyone else, is making choices on the fly that are surprising harmonically, melodically and/or rhythmically, how can I, Larry Kart, Burr, or anyone else say which of these choices would be a "musician's" choices or not? There are as many musician's choices in those situations as there are musicians. On Burr's and my sense of the many kinds of choices that musicians have made over the years? Also, I'm not trying to lay down any law here, just speculating about a question that I didn't even raise here. My main point (again speculative, as in "I think") was: 'I think [bennett's] sometimes intense improvisational zeal stems from habits/techniques of vocalization, from the ways he's learned to handle his voice. It's like his voice is almost a "thing," and sometimes for a while it goes off where it wants to go. And Tony knows that it feels good and is useful overall for him to keep that "thingy" aspect of voice on a loose leash, to let it "lunge" if you will.'

About Tony being improvisational in performance, I think he is a lot (in fact, I know he is, having discuseed this once with one of his former backup musicians, bassist Jon Burr. The difference (and this is very hard to define) is that the musical aspect of this improvisational involvement on Tony's part, while it can intense and often quite inventive, is intermittent and also springs from and retruns to his involvement with the verbal-dramatic story of the song and his emotional involvement with that. As I said above, with him it's not one thing (as it is with Billie, or Peggy or Mildred Bailey, or Sarah et al.) but more or less two things/two worlds, and what he does is kind of swoop into one from the other. Better yet (and to perhaps modify what I've said above), I think his sometimes intense improvastional zeal stems from habits/techniques of vocalization. from the ways he's learned to handle his voice. It's like his voice is almost a "thing," and sometimes for a while it goes off where it wants to go. And Tony knows that it feels good and is useful overall for him to keep that "thingy" aspect of voice on a loose leash, to let it "lunge" if you will. Again, Burr emphasized how surprising from an accompanist's point of view, some of Tony's in-the-moment choices were -- harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically -- not "wrong" or impossible to make work, and often very stimulating to respond to, but not choices that a musician thinking in musical terms would make. A "vocalizer" thing, again, is my best guess -- a very Italian tendency, perhaps.

I'm no expert here, but apropos Jim's introduction of "fatter" and "taller" -- if fatness refers only to what percentage of your body consists of fat, no, you wouldn't get any fatter if you got shorter, but you'd look fatter, i.e. there'd be more of you spreading sideways. We're human beings, not machines; if compression makes things sound louder to us, then for us they are louder (though not to a device that measures volume). If you've got compression plus an increase in volume, the results will register as louder on a device that measures volume and will sound even louder than before to us.

Calling Allen Lowe.

What I like about Half-Price books (at least at the store near me) are all the LPs and sets (especially classical stuff) for 50 cents each. Great chance to try things you might have missed or didn't even know about. E.g. a Chalabala disc of Dvorak tone poems ("The Water Sprite," et al.) with the Czech Philharmonic, a great disc of the Bach Motets cond. by Karl Forster, an excellent Eileen Farrell song secital, some old Decca disc, songs and arias, by that bird in a cage Rita Streich, a Russian Orchestral Music collection on DG by Markevitch, Karajan's latter-day "Magic Flute," which much to my surprise I like a lot, etc.

Good work!

I think Jim's got it. Also, the drummer sounds to me like Shadow Wilson, which would fit. The pianist then should be/might be Sir Charles Thompson, but I don't get a Sir Charles vibe as strongly as I do a Shadow Wilson one -- touch sounds a wee bit heavy for Sir Charles, but that might be because the pianist was miked that way.

I climb into one whenever I get the chance. My preference is Capeharts: http://www.myvintagetv.com/updatepages1/capehart/capehart.htm

Of the ones you've mentioned, Peggy Lee is unequivocally a jazz singer to me.

Now, THAT's about as good a descriptor as I've seen... As JSngry said the other day, "That's what I get paid for."

I got to know Bennett fairly well at one point and thought he was a great, soulful guy and a terrific performer -- far more so in person than on record, though my taste for his recorded work grew considerably once I'd experienced the remarkable immediacy he could bring to a song on the stage. For all that immediacy, though, I wouldn't say that Bennett was a jazz singer because his rhythmic sense isn't a jazz one. Not that he's at odds with jazz accompaniment, far from it -- e.g. his version of "Lover" with Ruby Braff is superb -- but Tony for me is just in a different albeit usually compatible zone, again especially rhythmically. Not exactly the same thing, perhaps, but I think of Jeri Southern versus say Lee Wiley -- the former not a jazz singer IMO (though quite at home in jazz settings), the latter a quintessential one. Could it be that that Southern, like Bennett, places the verbal-emotional "story" of the song in the foreground and then alters/personalizes the musical material from that perspective, while for Wiley (or Billie Holiday et al.) the story and the musical material are always one living, in-the-moment thing?

"Jazz Gunn" on Atlantic and "Perk Up" on Concord (probably recorded for Atlantic, it stayed in the can until 1978). Hauled them out because I wanted to hear some Strozier, but what a good group this was overall. Candoli was in particularly fine form at that time; Wofford I've always dug; and Shelly was swinging hard -- no West Coast preciousness here. Also, the Mancini originals on "Jazz Gunn" (written for the Blake Edwards film "Gunn," except for a new down-tempo version of the TV show theme) are much more subtle and hip than the music for the old show was. "Perk Up" includes what probably was the first recording of Jimmy Rowles's "Drinkin' and Drivin'" (a.k.a. as "502 Blues" -- 502 being the California penal code number for a drunk driving arrest -- and recorded under that name by Wayne Shorter).

It's the issue after the Roberta G. Blindfold Test one, Marsalis family on the cover. I have no inside info; it was just on display with the other current magazines at our local library.