Larry Kart

Just to be clear, hasn't the chief (if not the only) "issue" here become which of two longtime posters can say the most would-be wounding things about the other. Can anything about the baseball steroid issue possibly be settled, or even advanced a bit, by this? New would-be evidence, new would-be arguments, new developments out there in courtrooms, etc. -- yes to any or all of those, but what we have here is mostly escalating personal attacks. Can't we agree that there's no point to that, because no one can possibly prevail on those grounds?

Gentlemen -- This thread seems to me to have degenerated into pure name-calling. I'm going to suggest to my fellow moderators that we shut it down unless.... And maybe not even "unless."

Christine Jorgensen

All (I think) from the 12" LP era, which ought to be the dividing line: Kenny Dorham -- Afro Cuban The Magnificent Thad Jones Sonny Red -- Out of the Blue Donald Byrd -- Byrd in Flight Jackie McLean -- Jackie's Bag Johnny Coles -- Little Johnny C Tony Williams -- Life Time Freddie Hubbard -- Blue Spirits

Tracy is still around -- I think he posted here a few times, and he posts fairly often, and often quite acerbically, on the Jazz West Coast list -- but if I know the man and it was his joke, probably it will be his joke forever. If so, I can see his point.

BTW, given how Chicago-centric a label Argo was by and large, I'd still put my money on the personnel being Chicago studio and jazz guys rather than Doc Severinsen et al. I've never seen the album, but I assume that there's not a producer's credit on it that isn't a joke name. In any case, I'm guessing that the whole jape was conceived by and executed under the guidance of someone at that level. One wouldn't think that a guy as little known otherwise as Jordan Ramin apparently is could be responsible. And why would a guy apparently so obscure (especially jazz-wise) think that a jape like this was worth the trouble to assemble? It was, after all, a pretty "inside" bit of goofing-around. Don't know if Jack Tracy, former DB editor and (by 1963) Chicago-based A&R man at Mercury (where he was responsible for Woody Herman's Phillips recordings), was connected to Argo before that (other than as a writer of liner notes, which I know he did), but the project suggests to me that Tracy's sensibility (or that of someone like him) was behind it.

He also seems to have played some minor administrative role in the Todd menage at the time of "Around the World in 80 Days": http://www.in70mm.com/newsletter/2005/70/glenda/index.htm

A link to more of Murtaugh from his son Danny: http://dannymurtaugh.com/bluescurrent/

I preferred the Elgarts to Anthony, too -- Anthony's tone was schmaltzy, and then there was the ubiquitous "Bunny Hop" (though that record, when it was played at parties, did give one an excuse to touch a girl during that rather grim stage of human and social development when one felt an excuse was necessary). In any case, I mentioned the anecdote not as a form of judgment but as an instance of musician humor. BTW, one of Elgart's sidemen, tenor saxophonist John Murtaugh, was an interesting player. His best (and maybe only extended) shot, alongside baritone saxophonist Marty Flax, is on Bobby Scott's 1956 ABC-Paramount album "The Compositions of Bobby Scott," reissued under that title on Fresh Sound, coupled with Scott's two 10" Bethlehem dates. Murtaugh was his own man, but his rather dry timbre and "talky" accentuation are reminiscent of what Jack Montrose was doing on the West Coast at that time. Likewise reminiscent of Montrose (who recorded many nice things with his friend Bob Gordon) is the tenor-baritone front line on Scott's date, though I would guess that the resemblance is coincidental.

Haven't hear a whole lot of Winstone, but I really like her 2006 two-CD set of standards, with Stan Tracey and Bobby Wellins: "Amoroso ... Only More So."

Nice to hear that. I listened to a fair amount of Elgart back then; it was a popular band among what might be called the sock-hop audience and wasn't associated, in terms of its leaders' names, with a prior era, which no doubt was important in appealing to that audience. Likewise with Ray Anthony. Do you know this anecdote? When drummer Karl Kiffe was playing with the Les and Larry Elgart Band, the brothers were trying to get him to adapt to the band's style. At one point, Larry told him, "When the band starts to swing, I want you to play more on the ride cymbal." Kiffe replied, "When the band starts to swing, will you please raise your hand?"

Am in the middle of Anthony Trollope's "The Duke's Children." I've read a lot of Trollope in recent years and have yet to be disappointed. Can't imagine I would have cared for him before I got to about this age. Also just read the most recent of Lee Childs' Jack Reacher novels, "61 Hours."

Also, Frank Teschemacher and Frank Chace.

Will it create problems with our already established links to Organissimo and similar sites from the site administration side of things, by (say) changing our IP addresses? If the above sounds like a dumb question, this not an area where I know much.

Also, John Carter and Alain Marquet.

Johnny Dodds Pee Wee Russell Artie Shaw Lester Young Sidney Bechet Buddy DeFranco About DeFranco being cold-mechancial, I used to feel that way in my yoot but long ago turned around. An anecdote: Last year, I think it was, DeFranco performed at the Chicago Jazz Fest. One of the pieces he played was "Memories of You." Afterwards, Muhal Richard Abrams IIRC said to someone that it was the most beautiful version of that song he'd ever heard.

At one point -- maybe, in the third or fourth grade -- I was crazy about "The Happy Wanderer," the "valderi, valdera" song. I'd sing it to myself every morning as I walked to school. Good grief. Also, another similar piece of glee-club dreck that had to do with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Actually, now I think of it, a record I bought (maybe the first one I bought) that helped save me from madness around that time was Sammy Davis Jr.'s "Something's Gotta Give." Didn't know the concept yet, but I liked it because it swung.

What if it wasn't? I really don't understand the question. Because, in my experience at least (and I would guess in Chuck's as well), music as rich as Ellington's can teach you something right quick about the richnesses of music in general. For instance, thinking of those '40-'42 Ellington pieces I heard early on, the possible unity of fascinating "music" music detail and sweeping drama, as in the plunging, wailing dissonances of "Ko-Ko" or the "overheard" muted trumpet figures and the rest of the dancing panorama of "Harlem Airshaft." Of course, there are countless other routes, but Duke's way, if that's the way you happened to travel early on, was quite something. Well sure, but it wasn't the first music you ever herd, nor was it for Chuck. So just what is the question really asking? Is it taking a poll or is it asking us all to speculate? Franky, I don't think that the question - as -asked - knows what it means anymore than I do. I wasn't taking it absolutely literally -- heck, the first music I remember hearing was "Funiculi, Funicula" (the nagging theme song of the radio soap opera "Lorenzo Jones") and "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Sante Fe" back in 1945 or '46. But I did hear a swatch of great Ellington very early on in my jazz experience (within a month or two) and it had the effect on me that I said it did -- not only thrilled and moved me but also taught me a whole lot of things (I mentioned a few) that I might not have learned so swiftly. Again, I think it was the unity of "music" music power and dramatic depth/breadth in Ellington that did that. I had at least two previous encounters with jazz greatness -- Bird and Diz on "Congo Blues" and a superb Pee Wee Russell slow-blues solo, but IIRC they struck me (perhaps because I as yet had so little context for any of this) as lightning bolts from who knows where. Ellington seemed to give me an entire living-teeming world -- Shakespearean that way, if you will.

See stanza two: 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!

What if it wasn't? I really don't understand the question. Because, in my experience at least (and I would guess in Chuck's as well), music as rich as Ellington's can teach you something right quick about the richnesses of music in general. For instance, thinking of those '40-'42 Ellington pieces I heard early on, the possible unity of fascinating "music" music detail and sweeping drama, as in the plunging, wailing dissonances of "Ko-Ko" or the "overheard" muted trumpet figures and the rest of the dancing panorama of "Harlem Airshaft." Of course, there are countless other routes, but Duke's way, if that's the way you happened to travel early on, was quite something.

Something like that happened to me and the friend who introduced me to jazz toward the tail end of seventh grade. We glommed onto a few random things that were around at the time (1955) -- Columbia's "I Like Jazz," a similar but more off-the-wall EmArcy sampler, a Jazztone sampler that had some great Pee Wee Russell and Bird-Dizzy-Red Norvo in "Congo Blues," a Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band EP (I liked it mostly because the liner notes said something like "This is the only real jazz band in America," so I thought I had that covered), a Benny Goodman fundraiser concert for Fletcher Henderson, under the aegis of DJ Martin Block, one or two of Norman Granz's Jam Session dates, a Capitol Woody Herman album, some contemporary Basie band 45s, and then one of us picked up the recent 10-inch reissue of Ellington'40-'42 band material: "Concerto for Cootie," "Ko-Ko," "Jack the Bear," etc. Probably credit should go almost entirely to the music, which in effect taught us how to listen, but right away it was obvious to both of us that this was the most thrilling, absorbing music we'd heard. Never changed my mind about that.

On p. 152 of William Gottlieb's "The Golden Age of Jazz" there's a photo of this group: Bill Harris - tbn Flip Phillips - tenor sax Billy Bauer - guitar Lennie Tristano - piano Chubby Jackson - bass Denzil Best - drums in a club, presumably from the gig in question.

Agreed, but wasn't her relation to the beat often rather approximate -- essentially that of the declamatory cabaret singer she was in the mid-1950s? It's not that she didn't "swing"(though I don't recall she really did; her interests seemed to lie elsewhere) but rather IMO that her approach was more or less dramatic, not musical. I'm not a Lincoln scholar by any means, but I've heard more than few performances where she and the musicians seem to be inhabiting two different (and to my taste, incompatible) worlds.

I have this one, and the liner notes, FWTW, say that it's Tristano on all but one track, where it's Argonne Thornton. Don't know that it's Thornton, but on that track it's certainly not Tristano. OTOH, I'm pretty sure that it is Tristano on the other tracks, albeit a Tristano who is not very comfortable with the styles of Harris and Phillips and perhaps in response seems to be trying to draw as much of contrast as possible between their hot driving muscularity and his (if you will) "out" inclinations. In other words, it's often "flashy" Lennie and a bit nervous. Also, if this is Tristano, it is still pretty early in the game for him. BTW, this date is listed in the discography in Eunmi Shim's Tristano bio.

Among those mentioned, I've seen Dolphy, Cannonball, Konitz, Hodges, Carter, Ornette, McLean, Pepper, Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Threadgill, McPherson, Phil Woods, Stitt, Jimmy Lyons, Strozier, Desmond, Procope, Hemphill, Spaulding, Bunky Green, Oliver Lake, Lou Donaldson, Sonny Criss, Frank Morgan. Bird I was too young for by about a year or so as it turned out, but I did get to hear Pres, a precious memory.