Larry Kart

Moth, flame.

We'll take care of the warnings.

But if you live a life as an artist so that it's a "for [your] legend to develop by other means" affair, and it's not all about what happened to your daughter and your wife, maybe that's the path you chose to take. Or perhaps you find your eventual reputation as an "insiders" favorite to be more satisfying and comfortable than being out there that much. None of the barriers of era, pastness, racism, lack of technological means of reproduction, etc. that apply in the cases of the "old legendary actors who barnstormed before the days of film, the great Negro League baseball players, the great old minstrel-age entertainers whose work has essentially been lost" seem to me to apply to Schildkraut, other than that what he does survive to some degree on third-party testimony. As for him being a victim of external and/or internalized Crow Jim attitudes -- Konitz? Art Pepper?

Well, Allen, I've been impressed by what Schildkraut I've heard, but isn't the man himself, and I mean as an artist now, somewhat responsible for the fact there's so little of it (if indeed I'm right in thinking that he himself had hangups about getting it/letting it out there, rather than being a mere victim of the world's indifference)? And doesn't Lee deserves credit for giving us as large a body of work as he has, and without doing much if any compromising along the way? What I'm saying is that artists are responsible for their temperaments. The ability to create more or less calls upon one to possess the drive to create within the circumstances that life affords one. If you hide your gifts, you did it.

If it is The Crusaders, that was a pretty hip airline and/or ad agency. But then Chuck and I both knew a lovely, very knowledgeable and devoted jazz lover named Richard Rand, sadly deceased, who worked at Leo Burnett on the Dewar's account and was responsible for getting Henry Threadgill in one of those Dewar's Profiles ads. IIRC, Threadgill was asked in an interview what he was paid for doing the ad and said something like, No money but lots of scotch.

Right -- it's Wilton Felder whose sound I was thinking of. And Wayne Henderson and Joe Sample certainly fit. But the flute player?

Paul was my best friend growing up. I'd play guitar and he'd play Paul Sr.'s organ or the trombone, and later on, the double bass. Speaking of Hal Crook, I really like the date he co-led with Joe Diorio for Ram Records, called Narayani Del Nero's harmonic grasp/imagination is something else. And I like his "bass-y" sound.

Bassist Paul Del Nero shines on that album, too: http://www.berklee.edu/faculty/detail/paul-del-nero

My antipathy for latter-day Phil Woods has denied me the chance to encounter much Crook before, but a few days ago I picked up a 1995 CD "Directions," led by Boston-based guitarist-composer Giovanni Moltani, a Berklee faculty guy, with Crook as the sole horn player, and I am very impressed. Agile as heck on the horn, Crook thinks just as swiftly, and his use on several tracks of something called a "Harmonizer," which divides, a la the old "Multivider perhaps, though the results sound different) Crook's single line into multiple lines (and which sounds from that description like it might be something from Hell), is instead fascinating.

Not Kreskin, but when you've been listening to shit for 56 years, part of your brain becomes a sonic filing cabinet. The same I'm sure is true for you. Just guesses above, though I would be astonished if those weren't West Coast guys.

Definitely West Coasters, albeit with an East Coast vibe. Going just by sound, I would say either Victor Feldman or Mike Wofford on piano, Harold Land or Plas Johnson on tenor (or someone kind of in between those two -- dammit, I KNOW that guy's sound), maybe Buddy Collette on flute. Trombonist is tricky. If it's a valve trombonist (and I think it might be), sounds something like Bob Enevoldson. If it's not a valve trombonist, I'm stumped -- too many possibilities. Doesn't quite sound like Rosolino to me but could be him. Frank might be a good guess because he, Land, and Feldman made a nice record together, as Free For All can testify.

No doubt Kenton preferred them to Schildkraut, but what could "guys like Mariano and Konitz" mean? IMO, it would be hard to imagine two more different players of the same instrument from that era -- Mariano with his somewhat acrid, expressively awkward at times take on Bird (almost a white Ernie Henry, again at times), while Konitz was utterly, fluidly, sometimes ecstatically himself, albeit with roots in Lester Young.

Anton Hatwich ensemble at The Hungry Brain. Don't know who's in the band and have never seen Anton function as a leader, but I have high hopes. He's a fine bass player and a helluva smart guy. Would like to stay to hear bass clarinetist Jeff Kimmel's group as well, but I'm probably going with someone who has to be at work at 8 a.m. Monday.

Love that it was Juan. What a cool, funky ballplayer he is.

Mr. Kart, as a listener, says that almost certainly there was that influence on Salsa trombonists, but for Mr. Kart's taste the "Kenton Trombone Style" is typically so pernicious that it could be used by the CIA to make him reveal every secret he knows. BTW, I believe that the godfather of the KTS was Kai Winding; its most insidious practitioners probably were Milt Bernhart and (perhaps) Bob Fitzpatrick. Not that these and many more KTS players weren't highly skilled, but so was that Nazi sadist with the dental drills.

Addition noted with gratitude. Jamil Nasser was a giant, ask and I don't know that you shall receive BUT... Somewhere there is a long interview with Jamil talking about his friend and collaborator Oscar Dennard that everyone should hear-- dialogue and music-- seven or eight times at least. Dig The Memphis Mafia I liked him plenty when he was George Joyner, but the way he had his amp hooked up on most of the things I've heard after he changed his name to Jamil Nasser kind of drove me crazy -- almost all snarl and twang, not much string and note. BTW, speaking of Joyner in what to me was his hey-day, how about the late George Tucker?

I can't even remotely perceive the influence of Jamal on this record. But that's just me. I was going on memory and should listen again, but anyway it's a lovely record.

Also, while the influence of the classic Jamal trio's group architecture (ah -- the open spaces!) was undeniable, I think that a lot of the music he undeniably influenced turned out to be more interesting than the source was. One album in particular sticks in my mind -- Bobby Timmons' lovely "The Soul Man" (with Shorter, R. Carter, and J. Cobb) from 1965-6.

In what I think of as the territory in which Jamal was working (as outlined by Jim and others above), I find the recordings of Red Garland's favorite working trio (with Doug Watkins and Specs Wright) to be a good deal more interesting. I particularly recommend Garland's hallucinatory version of "Mr. Wonderful." But then I'm sure that Martin Williams wouldn't have liked that one either.

Maybe they're both "gestures" AND structural devices, and Martin was well aware of that but found that their significance as "gestures" outweighed their significance as structural devices. Hey, Shearing's Quintet was about "group architecture" too. I know -- but labeling in itself doesn't get us that far.

Touche. Well, no. I mean, aren't most of us on this Board effectively critics? At least, as Larry defines the term? Don't we talk about the music, discuss what we think is pretty good and pretty bad, what's been well done, badly done? gregmo That was my point; almost all of us here do it pretty naturally. Or in the immortal words of Mel Brooks' rock star Fabiola, "We're all singing, I just have the mouth."

If all critics would share this view, there wouldn't be a problem - at least for me. You're not naive, Larry, IMHO, but very much aware of the implications and limitations of the role - and that's what makes your writings so much more acceptable to me than some doubtful or plainly subjective "evaluations" like the one that prompted this thread. BTW, if by 'doubtful or plainly subjective "evaluations" like the one that prompted this thread' you mean Martin Williams' vintage comments on Jamal, I found them enlightening/thought-provoking at the time and still do; even though my own feelings about Jamal are a bit different, they evolved in part because Martin said what he did. That is, what he claimed were manipulative, applause-begging gestures in Jamal's music certainly exist; if Martin is wrong about why they're there and how they work, what is really going on there? (Something fairly unique and notable certainly is.) Also, I know all about those tales of a bad review costing someone a job, but the sooner we stop thinking about jazz musicians as a box of potentially bruised peaches, the better off we'll all be. As John Cage didn't say but should have, there's too much self-pity in the world.

Maybe I'm naive about the implicit or explicit politics of the role, but I've always thought of criticism as nothing more or less than thinking and talking about jazz, or any other art -- the very same thing my friends and i did as a matter of course ("What did you think, Morry?" Oh, yeah? -- Well here's what I thought"), and that long before I had a glimmer of doing this kind of thing in a public journalistic forum. I know the sorts of bad incidents and bad experiences that make many of of us shy away from the idea of criticism in general and jazz criticism in particular, but to me it's always seemed a vary natural and useful side of individual human nature and the human social condition. Further, those people who say, and sometimes literally mean, that the only proper response to a work of art is to remain stunned and mute in its presence ... well, I guess you could say they leave me speechless. Finally, as for the supposed ghastly inadequacy of words as a medium to respond to music (as in that old "like dancing about architecture" line), it depends (to quote the late Lester Bowie) on what you know.

Go here and scroll down (or up) to "Francis Davis reviews..." and the following comments: http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/2010/10/forumesque-2.html#comments Sorry if you wanted more talk about Jamal himself, but this was inspired by one or more aspects of Davis' piece.

Some back and forth on this VV piece on Ethan Iverson's website: http://dothemath.typepad.com/ including remarks from yours truly.