Larry Kart

Happy Birthday

Interesting long interview with the estimable composer of "Yard Dog Mazurka," Gerald Wilson, in which it's mentioned that this tune and another Wilson-Lunceford original "Hi Spook" inspired the young Horace Silver: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=2018

Lodi Carr from some time (I would guess) close to the present:

Not I hope to get too creepy about this, but those particular Kenton ballad charts give me a "Vertigo" (the movie came out the same year the album did) or even a David Lynch feeling. It's like you've got this guy who's kind of crazy in that only one sort of romantic female image (or romantic musical "image") turns him on; the power in this being that we're all somewhat that way -- it's part of what romance is, that who she is/how she looks speaks to us. But in this guy's case that strolls well over the border into the potentially perverse; he needs that particular landscape (if you will) and only that landscape to kick his romantic imagination into gear and will if pressed re-arrange reality a good deal in order to assemble his particular erotic/romantic diorama. The creepy part here in part is, What the heck is the relationship between the landscape (i.e. what the woman and her appurtenances -- hair color and style, body type, color and style of clothing, sound of voice, etc.) and the actual woman? Do such scenarios, when pushed far enough, even leave room for an actual woman? And should one inadvertently disrupt or refuse to go along with the fantasy -- watch out. As a very shrewd fellow one wrote, "Lust is the eroticized form of hatred." By now we're getting close I think to the sort of surreal looniness that Mr. Lynch tried to depict in "Blue Velvet," Twin Peaks," etc. But neither that looniness, nor what happens in "Vertigo" (and, it seems to me, in "The Ballad Style of Stan Kenton") would get under anyone's skin if it didn't link up with something that's already present and significant in some human beings. As it happens, I can't stand "Mad Men," but that show's title is apt.

That one really bugs me....Kenton's charts on this one are all the same in format, color, voicing, you name it. I really don't think the guy ways any great shakes at anything himself, although he was interested in those who he thought were or could be. Which to me makes him a "figure" a lot more than it does a "musician". If intent and sponsorship is all that is needed to be a "great" or whatever, then Bill Cosby is a jazz great too. But you're right about the tempo thing, the band did have a way of going waaaaaaay slow on ballads. The classic example is "Here's That Rainy Day", which I heard played live a lot slower than the Redlands version, which was already pretty slow. For sure -- "Kenton's charts on this one are all the same in format, color, voicing, you name it." Maybe I'm getting high on Rice Krispies, but that's a big part of what I was talking about, what I hear on this particular album as an expressive obsessiveness (though to others it might sound like "Hey -- as an arranger he can only do this one damn formulaic thing"). Coupled with the other stuff I heard there (or thought I was hearing) and tried to describe, it caught my attention. For one thing, I thought I could tell why the onetime swatch of the public that was moved by the Kenton ballad approach was moved by it, and what that transaction said about all parties. (I do claim BTW that they were moved by it; if they were not, if this sound and these performances were just incidental or less on the musical-social landscape of the time, then what I'm going on about doesn't matter because it didn't exist.) I'll grant you that Kenton's foreground piano maunderings are just that.

Maybe my inner c. 1948 white guy is coming out (a la the thread I started about Shearing), but I recently picked up an LP copy of "The Ballad Style of Stan Kenton" (from 1958, all Kenton charts), and while I'm familiar with the jazzier Kenton, the Latin Kenton, the "progressive" Kenton, the pretentious Kenton, and the standards arranged by Russo et al., this stuff was new and kind of intriguing in ways I find hard to quantify. First, while the widely-spaced, "choral" writing for the sax section was very much a "sound" thing, it was rather subtle and different sound -- supposedly, so say the liner notes, with its roots in Kenton's "Opus in Pastels," but I know that piece, and these voicings sound much less juicy than "Opus and Pastels," both in the way they're scored and the way they're played (the sax section on this album does include Lennie Niehaus, Bill Perkins, and Richie Kamuca) reminiscent perhaps of Ralph Burns' "Early Autumn" (a version of which appears on this album) or even, come to think of it, Glenn Miller but with a flavor of their own. Second, in a way that's again hard to quantify but almost hallucinatory in effect, the sections of the band seem to phrase in a somewhat more languid manner than the already stately tempo of each piece itself. It's as though there are two different but congruent/co-ordinated time feels at work, outer and inner, and the inner one is a bit slower, though they both flow. Finally, there's the climactic tight "choral" writing for the trumpet section, which makes room for a fair amount of internal dissonance and upper-register playing (as well as discreet solos by, I think, Don Fagerquist), though it's all so tight and choral and languid/flowing that the emotional effect is rather paradoxical -- at once climactic, a la a shout chorus, and almost fiercely constrained, like you're overhearing a woman scream from inside a locked hotel room. Was that a real scream? And what do you do? Is this music as calm and complacent as the "The Ballad Style" title would suggest? Maybe that was the idea, but to me it sounds kind of tormented and, in that respect and others, not at all un-hip.

Vido never said. From what I understand, it was extracted by June Christy and Eddie Safranski, and is now housed in the Phil Schaap collection. But unfortunately not in Phil Schaap.

Good one.

Vido never said.

But what about the time a scorpion crawled up Vido Musso's ass?

Christopher Gaddy Charles Clark Philip Wilson

Whitney enforced his copyright?

I was dubious until I heard the one that I heard. On the other hand, one seemed like just enough.

Well, yes -- but the basic idea is to recast pieces of some familiarity and merit in a different mode, and see if it works. The only one I know is his "Que Vive Coltrane," and it works there. On the other hand, Don Byron's "The Klezmer Side of Don Redman" was not a good idea.

That explanation makes sense. And Miles copped "Solar" from him, too. Unlucky Chuck.

I know all about Queasy Listening music. My original post was meant to convey that for me at this time listening to this particular Shearing album didn't give me much, if any, of that Queasy Listening feeling. While there was undoubtedly a "sound," and the presence of a "sound" of that sort is what this sort of music tends to be about, a good deal of other mostly subtle, individual, and fairly interesting stuff was going on too. About Chuck Wayne's gripe against Shearing: If it had to do primarily with limited solo space, I'd say: "Hey, that's the gig," "Yes, George takes most of the solos, but even he doesn't solo that much; it's a basically a group-sound thing, and if it were opened up that much, it probably wouldn't be that popular and also might not even be that effective musically," and (this seems a possibly apt comparison) "Who in his right mind would have complained about lack of solo space in the Claude Thornhill Orchestra?" I have no idea what Wayne's complaint about Shearing ruining Denzil Best could be about and would like to know.

Probably it's available in some archive, but I don't know where -- perhaps at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers. I can, however, show you my Charlie Parker autopsy photos. I also have a Bix Beiderbecke stool sample.

Love it that David Murray registered "highest on the clapometer."

"bearned"? Do you mean "bearded"? In any case, the reference is to his final two performances, in Chicago on a WTTW TV show on April 19, 1969, and at the North Park Hotel the following afternoon, this after he had collapsed at the airport upon his arrival on April 18, suffering from severe malnutrition, and had briefly been hospitalized. He died on May 19.

OK, but I thought that in saying "Any impressions about life formed by intentionally avoiding disturbance are not to be trusted" you were not just talking about this clip but stating what you felt to be a general principle, e.g. "Any impressions about life... etc." (my emphasis).

Intentionally avoiding disturbance is one thing, whether to reveal anything and everything to anyone and everyone is another. Circumstances, circumstances.

I was right there for that, too -- one of the most disturbing things I ever witnessed, though my second-hand guilt (if that's the way to put it) was somewhat expiated by an experience I had when I was deputized to pick up Hawkins the next day at his Chicago hotel, get him to the airport, and put him safely on his flight back to New York. See page 387 of John Chilton's Hawkins bio for details, though the words Chilton quotes me as saying about what happened at the airport are not what I actually said to him -- he "Englished up" my diction a bit for some reason.

Word. I await the autopsy photos of Charlie Parker.

I thought that, too. "The Shearing Spell" has a Ray Bryant Latin piece on it, "Cuban Carnival" (it's different from "Cubano Chant"), and Shearing is really "in there." Glad that Allen mentioned Nat Cole; Cole certainly was big contributor to the Shearing melting pot.

... at least in circles like these? I ask because my encounters with Shearing over the years have been few and glancing: I have a two-LP set of his vintage MGM material, caught him live once in the early '80s (leading a trio) and interviewed him (a very nice guy, I thought -- he was tickled when I mentioned that some of his voicings when he played solo reminded me of late Brahms), picked up one of his Telarc live small-group sets and enjoyed it, was aware of his reputation in some quarters as being a musical magpie in the '40s, especially in regard to Bud Powell (who famously hit Shearing over the head at Birdland one night, then went into agonies of remorse over hitting a blind man), etc. Given all that (or that little), I'd never really heard any of the many Capitol recordings from Shearing's hey-day, such as it was, until today, when I picked up a used LP "The Shearing Spell" (1955) for 50 cents. Well, I'm impressed; it's genteel on the surface for sure, but it's also quite subtle and not really bland. The band is Al McKibbon (bs.), Johnny Rae (vibes), Toots Thielmanns (gtr./harmonica), Bill Clark (dms., Armando Peraza (congas/bongos), and Willie Bobo (timbales). First off, McKibbon is superb and often placed quite prominently in the ensemble, rather like Israel Crosby with Jamal (could there have been some Shearing-to-Jamal influence?) Second, one of Shearing's chief tricks has become by this time so effective (at least for me) that it hardly seems like a trick at all -- stating a standard like "Autumn in New York" in long meter but with a subtly implied double-time feel that typically never breaks into actual double time but just hovers there internally; not to be absurd about this, but it reminds me of the rotational/elliptical feel of the brush work of early Elvin Jones. Third, on the Latin numbers Peraza and Bobo really get to do their thing, and Shearing is right in there with them rhythmically. Finally, however worked out Shearing's solos might be, they are quite subtle at best and free from cliches with the exception of the locked-hands things, and even those passages are far from rote. Also, did Shearing write/dictate the group's charts or did he farm them out once the style had been set? Either way, within the given group sound, there's a good deal more meaningful musical variety from track to track on this LP that I would have thought before I actually listened to it. Anyone else have Shearing thoughts?