Larry Kart

There's another one, wiith a woman by herself blissfully reclining the driver's seat while the car is stopped. That is Kenney singing the same song though.

My wife when right out of college worked for a while for a NYC ad agency where there was a group of people who did nothing but listen to music all day long. Then they'd give her lists of songs and she'd go to a record store and buy albums that had those songs on them.

"It Could happen To You." Some thoughts about this. How did some ad agency person hit upon this recording to fit the mood of this ad? Kenney, after all, killed herself back in 1960 and remains fairly obscure except in cabaret maven circles. Was this ad person just an off-the-wall Kenney fan? Or did he/she start searching for versions of this song -- Kenney's is on You Tube -- and decide that it was just right? BTW, when my wife first saw this commercial, she asked who is this singing? I said, more or less out of nowhere, I think it's Beverly Kenney or maybe Joannie Sommers. Second, isn't this on some level a pandemic-era commercial. The woman in the ad, with the car seat reclined as for a nice long snooze, has safely isolated herself in her luxury vehicle. Also, what what about the title of the song? And now will someone explain to me the fairly outre choice of characters in that ubiquitous commercial for the AIDS drug, Biktarvi? (sp?) I'm thinking in particular of that fairly immense woman who is embracing/dancing with a much shorter semi-bald thinner man with a needle nose? And then they're in a bathtub washing a large white dog. The two guys at the end of the ad who are kissing on a roof top, that I get, but the Jack Sprat and his girlfriend couple? What's the demographic there? I mean someone at the ad agency must have put a lot of thought into this.

Pim: Thanks to you, I have been doing as much reading as I possibly can about all or some of this in a rather brief time, and a key element seems to be that of so-called "breakthrough cases" -- that is, cases among people who have been fully vaccinated. Such people, the medical consensus so far seems to be, will be less susceptible to serious symptoms, but they will be capable of transmitting the virus to others. Thus, perhaps and in part, the situation you have described taking place in the Netherlands. This is particularly so in today's era of Omicron.In this regard I particularly recommend Eleanor Cummins' story in the Monday 12/20 issue if the New York Times, "Most Covid Infections May Soon Be Breakthroughs." I'll try to post a link to that story below. BTW, that development may answer a question I've been asking myself: "Why are so many professional athletes coming down with Covid when one assumes that most of them are fully vaccinated?" Fully vaccinated though they may be, they are playing and practicing and associating in locker rooms in close contact with each other, and those of them who are so-called breakthrough cases can transmit the virus to others who are vaccinated, even though most of these athletes who are vaccinated may go on to have less than severe symptoms. A minor matter in the overall situation we're facing but a perhaps revealing part of the puzzle. Cummins Covid story: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/19/opinion/omicron-breakthroughs.html?smid=url-share

I know that the Netherlands and the USA are different places in terms of population density etc., but why then are those states and regions in the US where vaccination rates are the lowest have the highest rates of contamination by large margins, while those states and regions where vaccination rates are high have much lower rates of contamination? Also as far as your claim that in the Netherlands vaccinated people behaving "freely" in museums etc. have then thoughtlessly contaminated unvaccinated people, how does a person, unvaccinated or not, know by whom (and how) they have been contaminated?

Pim writes: "The real danger and problem that caused our rising numbers of contaminations were vaccinated people visiting the restaurants, museums and parties with the false idea that they would be safe. They didn't have to hold distance to each other: they were free to do whatever they liked to do. That is exactly the problem with the vaccinated people only police: they are still able to spread the virus and contaminate people and therefore bring others in a dangerous situation." What evidence is there that, as you say, vaccinated people, thinking that they and those around them were now safe, caused your rising numbers of contaminations -- that, in other words, it is vaccinated people on the whole, rather than unvaccinated people, who have been spreading the virus?

Yep

I was delighted by how fresh and urgent it remains. Cannonball and Nat (don't go to sleep on him) are both in scorching form, the tunes are varied and heady, even if the title track has become over familiar, and in its remixed form the whole album leaps out of the speakers. I like it more now than I ever did before.

Haven't heard it yet. Have preordered it and am looking forward to it with much anticipation. Scott said that the wire recorder sound on the eariiest material isn't the greatest but later on the sound is fine.

Have you tried getting in touch with Mosaic? I believe that they still have a good many booklets on many sets. Talking to Scott the other day about another matter, he told me that they still had booklets for the Atlantic Tristano-Konitx-Marsh set that I wrote the notes for.

You do understand that unvaccinated people are a significant threat to the health of the rest of the population. The virus doesn't care about your privacy, liberty, etc. it just wants to proliferate. So if the government exists in part to protect the well-being of the population, it shouldn't take the one act, make vaccinations and mask wearing mandatory, that is at present the best and only step toward that goal? What "middle" is there here, especially when the loss or injury of getting vaccinated is nada by and large.

A gem. What a band that was, with Budd Johnson as the straw boss IIRC.

So sorry.

"Pres and Sweets" (Verve). Heard this rec. Nov.15, 1955 album when it came out and thought that Pres was literally and distressingly quite weak -- indeed he was quite weak when I heard him at a JATP concert in Chicago in early October 1955 (which came out on LP in the early '80s as "Blues in Chicago"); and he would be hospitalized later in November for alcoholism and other physical and mental ailments, only to return triumphantly early the following year to make "Jazz Giants '56" and "Pres and Teddy." While there are a number of moments on "Pres and Sweets"when his control of the horn falters, yet there are others when his state of near incapacity leads him to carve out strikingly oblique musical solutions. On balance, I find much of what Pres plays here quite moving and, if you will, courageous.

Don't recall reading Sparke's book, though I did glance at it. I posted this back in 2019: Glancing through Michael Sparke's "Stan Kenton, This Is an Orchestra!" (U. of North Texas Press), I noticed FWIW that the a Hollywood Bowl Concert concert (6/12/48), with the Kenton orchestra as the sole attraction, drew 15,000 and grossed $26,000 -- roughly $280,000 in today's dollars. Further, if those sums suggest that tickets for that concert were less than $2 each, tickets for a Hollywood Bowl concert in 2019, depending on the act, can range from $20 to $160 each. Thus the dollar equivalent in 2019 to the Kenton take in 1948 might need to be adjust upwards significantly.

His playing on the title track, as well as that of Chambers and Clark, never fails to please me.

Book arrived yesterday, and I've almost. finished reading it. It's excellent -- full of information, insightful, and very soulful.

Ordered it.

"Jitterbug Waltz"

Thanks TTK. Very helpful.

Back in 1979 I spent a delightful evening in a Rush St. Chicago restaurant, The Singapore (great spare ribs), with Harris and Eddie Jefferson (sadly this was a short while before Jefferson would be murdered in Detroit). We were waiting for Dan Morgenstern and Ira Gitler to join us, but they'd been delayed by a gas main explosion), so to pass the time Barry and Eddie kept regaling me with one great story after another. Don'r recall any of them at this distance in time, though. When Dan and Ira arrived, the fun continued.

I would say that the main difference is that Barry's touch was a good deal more dulcet, if you will, than was Bud's. That extended as well to the relative vigor and angularity of their accenting.

Enlightening post: "The songs they write for the shows of the last 40 years simply lack that type of melodic/harmonic flow/forward motion that I feel are necessary for a jazz adaptation" -- exactly. Not that suitibility for jazz interpretation is in itself a plus or a minus -- As Jim has said, those songs arguably were doing or trying to do other things and were found to be entertaining by audiences -- but your characterization of the "songs they write for the shows of the last 40 years " does seem to me to be accurate.

Could be. What types of progressions and melodies do you have in mind?

The indefatigable Allen Lowe has been dealing with sinus cancer for some time now with great determination and courage and much success and he promises to be back on two feet very soon as a player, author, and compiler of unique and invaluable anthologies of recordings. His 2020 album with Matthew Shipp's group East Axis "Cool With That" (ESP Disk) is excellent. Two recent posts from Allen: (sept 14) hi everybody, sorry I missed this earlier. Much appreciated. It's been a nightmare of a year, and for about the first half I had to struggle just to retain my sanity and figure out if it was worth going on (thanks to my wife I stayed in some control). Basically, I didn't sleep from January - July except in short bites of 15, 30, 45 minutes, and the nightly struggle almost pushed me over the edge. Things started getting better in July and I can now make 2 or 3 hours of sleep at a time. I had a very rare case of sinus cancer, and the surgery to remove the tumor plus the chemo and radiation just beat the hell out of me. Basically I am now suffering from radiation poisoning, my face is a mess, but we found a plastic surgeon in Boston who is supposed to operate the end of this month and do facial reconstruction. I still have trouble breathing, but it is much better. After this surgery I should be more functional, with 2-3 more surgeries in the next 2-3 years. But I am playing and composing again. And I have had about 5 scans which show the cancer is gone. Been thrown a bit to find out that Ken Peplowski, the nicest guy on earth, has multiple myeloma, and that my bass player, Kevin Ray, had a massive heart attack last month; not to mention that one of my closest friends has Parkinson's. Still, we go on. Hopefully I will be recording again by next Spring; ESP has a 2 CD set of mine coming out in November that I am very proud of. So things look semi-hopeful. Love to everyone. Oct 9 ( thanks all, out of surgery 10 days. in some pain but the graft is holding though as i pointed out elsewhere i look like an aardvark. From what the doctors told me this thing would have killed me in another year or two, left unfixed. There will be one or more reconstructive operations in the next year (I suffer from major radiation poisoning; the treatment killed the cancer but caused other problems). but as long as I am here let me mention that I have a double cd coming out in November on ESP called Ascension Into the Maelstrom. Mention my disease and get 10 percent off. (To this last, Mike Weil said: "Nothing will ever kill your sense of humor, Allen.)