Larry Kart

NO MORE POLITICAL STUFF HERE, GUYS, OR THIS WHOLE THREAD GETS ----CANNED INTO THE POLITICAL FORUM, WHICH WOULD BE UNFAIR TO ITS MAIN POINTS, OR THOSE POSTS GET DELETED. JUST STOP.

No doubt. I'm just talking strictly in terms of tone... I can't imagine playing with that exact tone in a Goodman or Dorsey band of the vintage that he did (1940s-ealy 1950s, right?)...which is why I'd like to hear his story, how/when/why/etc he got from Point 1940s Section Player Tone to the tone he wielded so effortlessly there. It does strike me as a quite personal thing, actually, and I bet it's one of those "tales" of which there are probably thousands, each subtly but surely unique, but only a few end up really getting heard. Actually, when Peanuts Hucko played tenor with the Glenn Miller AAF band (a great band as you probably will agree), he sounded not unlike Richman. Pure-toned clarinet players tend to translate into cool, smooth-toned tenor players. And Glenn Miller didn't hire anyone who didn't fit into his ensemble-sound concept. Also, as has come up here before, I think, the French horn player in the AAF was Junior Collins (his exposed solo passages on AAF broadcasts are gorgeous), later of the Birth of the Cool band. It may have been Collins who brought "Moondreams" to the Birth of the Cool band. It was written by Miller's former pianist Chummy McGregor and played by the Miller AAF band on wartime radio broadcasts but was not IIRC commercially released until years after the Birth of the Cool recording. On the other hand, Gil Evans could have heard the band play it in person or on the radio; also, again IIRC, he and McGregor crossed paths in the '30s and might have stayed in touch.

Dave Pell is a very good thought-link. But I'll bet that Richman was "cool" well before there was "cool" -- maybe out of Bud Freeman (the Dorsey connection) or Eddie Miller more than Pres.

Check out Holly's "True Love Ways": Gotta be the same guy, though he's a little sweeter and more gargly there, as befits the piece.

Richman can be heard to good advantage on the Peanuts Hucko half of the Hucko-Rex Stewart 1957 Jazztone album "Dedicated Jazz." Stewart's guys do Ellington small group re-creations, Hucko's re-create the sound of the Benny Goodman Sextet, with Richman (here as "Richmond") playing the Georgie Auld role and Billy Butterfield standing in for Cootie Williams. Some very swinging, creative work by both bands, albeit within tight, neat frameworks. I've also heard him hear and there on Tommy Dorsey recordings, but nothing in particular comes to mind.

VERY good guess -- I'm sure you're right. Thank you, because this was going to drive me nuts. It clearly was someone who had "Long Island Sound" Getz in his back pocket, which suggests not a circa 1963 "blowing" guy, even by studio standards, but a guy who had his own at-the-time (actually, in Richman's case, prior) affinities to that sound and had never had any desire to modify them. Other things of Richman I've heard had just the kind of cool, agile mobility of this solo -- also there's a distinctive little "crinkle" to his tone, as though he'd played a fair amount of clarinet. Another guy who sounded a good deal like this was Duncan Lamont, but he was/is an Englishman (ex-Ted Heath).

Yes, but wait until your feet arrive late for a gig.

As a friend of mine, a drummer, used to say about a bass player he worked with -- "Bob is crazy ... no, Bob is a bass player, and all bass players are crazy...." And then we went on from there, along lines that are easy to predict.

I'm with Jim on this - not having seen the new one. After Pulp Fiction he seems to be trying to keep up with the kids. Yes, but the death of Bridget Fonda in "Jackie Brown" is one of the great moments in movie history -- or maybe I mean the history of male-female relations.

Think Steve Buscemi.

Thanks. The haiku took a bit of fiddling. The paragraph came from out of nowhere.

Well, it begins with "uck." Which reminds me of a joke. Two Hassidic Jews in the shetl go to Pincus the tailor and say that they need new suits but are not happy with the last pair Pincus made for them. "They weren't black," they say, "but a kind of dark grey. We want black." "OK," Pincus says. "I also make the habits for the nuns, and I'll make your suits out of the same material." Two weeks later, the Hassids pick up their suits and go out for a stroll when they see two nuns. One of the Hassids goes up to one of the nuns, places the sleeve of his suit again the sleeve of her habit, says something under his breath, and walks away. "What did he say?" the other nun asks. "It sounded like Latin," the first nun says. "Pincus fuctus."

Raney places "down' against "up." Arrows dream of perpetual flight.

Jimmy Raney is maybe one of my ten favorite jazz musicians, regardless of instrument, and I agree with what you say about him, up to a point. That unforced security of voice he had was a beautiful, bottomlessly deep thing. But I'm not sure that Raney really flows that well into your "ultimately 'usefulness', and maybe advancing ther common language and goals, is a test." In his own relatively quiet way, Raney IMO was about a fairly radical form of risk -- the risk of sustaining a living line through time, with "living" (as I believe he understood and felt that) being the kicker. That is, a living line for Raney was one that not only flowed but also flowed amidst, and responded to, acknowledged pressures -- the pressures of time as realized in/outlined by the given harmonic framework. But this also worked the other way around at the same time; the given harmonic framework was often being pressed AGAINST by Raney, not accepted as a given, and the ways he pressed against -- so subtle, so novel, so personal -- were deeply original, albeit not flamboyantly so. Another aspect of this perhaps -- Raney's lovely sense of swing was not IMO typically generated by, or in terms of, accenting but by his harmonic choices, the way his lines tugged against the harmonic framework's gravitational field, the way he would place "up" against "down" and vice versa to create a linear byplay of striving and hoped-for release. It was like Bach. The "test" for Raney was the life of the line amid stress or stresses -- a stress that his lines, if you will, brought to life. If pressed, I'd even go so far to say that his art was tragic in its acceptance, its necessary understanding that while the flight of time's arrow dreams of the horizontal infinite, it and we will eventually curve downwards to earth.

I think this may fill the bill, Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley's "Autumn Leaves" from the album "Somethin' Else": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvL-i0VE7Co It's a great recording that's as mellow as hell.

Dress for success.

True stories above, but on the part of the Chicago scene that I'm plugged into, for the last decade or so the musicians (or some of them -- the right ones, informally selected by the community) have been the "presenters" too and have been taking care of business in all respects like you wouldn't believe. For sure, many talented musicians wouldn't want to, and/or couldn't take on that role, but it has been and is being done.

Give me an example or two of a "front" and a "back" in art, because the words in themselves don't link up to anything there with which I'm familiar. FRONT: BACK: OK, that one I kinda get. I recall the night on the U. of Chicago campus in (probably) 1967 when I was about to go in to hear a Roscoe Mitchell concert at Ida Noyes Hall and Big Joe Williams was in the lobby area, seated on a flight of steps and playing his ass off. The relationship between the rhythmic and formal freedoms (of if you prefer, "freedoms)" of Big Joe and those of Roscoe, Lester Bowie, et al. that I was about to hear was quite evident. On the other hand, about ten years further on down the road, Roscoe would be playing some fabulous stuff where that front/backrelationship would not obtain that much. You could say "once, therefore forever" I suppose.

Give me an example or two of a "front" and a "back" in art, because the words in themselves don't link up to anything there with which I'm familiar. Now, if by "front" and "back" you mean something like yin and yang, I'm with you up to a point but still believe that at times, over time, what might justly be tagged as yin or yang would never have been so regarded in previous eras, nor will they be so regarded a further good piece down the road. If that is so, the belief in a eternal byplay between front and back or yin and yang becomes something close to an illusion. It just ain't necessary conceptually IMO; the shit that matters happens and will happen regardless.

Art very often is not a matter of "opposites." To think that it is IMO implies a belief in an almost mathematical-like rigidity of discourse, plus a belief that historical processes are based on underlying and more or less "eternal" principles.

Some Steve Lampert here: http://www.bridgerecords.com/catpage.php?call=9235

Schoenberg's music from 1907-13 was as far from being mathematically contrived as could be -- if anything, one could argue that at times it was bit too much an "outpouring from the soul." About S's later twelve-tone works, and there are different periods there too, even the "strictest" of those pieces comes across in a good performance as driven by inner necessity (which was the case), not as a product of calculation. Then, in his final period, there was his String Trio for one -- which was inspired by a near-death experience of S's and sounds as though it had been. I told you I haven't studied his music closely. I can't say anymore until I do. OK, but you have been saying a lot of dismissive stiff about it that is, apart from matters of taste, factually not accurate. Why not hold off on that kind of thing until you do become more familiar with his music? Or if you don't want to do that, just make your points while leaving S. and his music out of it.

Schoenberg's music from 1907-13 was as far from being mathematically contrived as could be -- if anything, one could argue that at times it was bit too much an "outpouring from the soul." About S's later twelve-tone works, and there are different periods there too, even the "strictest" of those pieces comes across in a good performance as driven by inner necessity (which was the case), not as a product of calculation. Then, in his final period, there was his String Trio for one -- which was inspired by a near-death experience of S's and sounds as though it had been.

The grounded part, yes, but otherwise I disagree: A good deal of Schoenberg, especially circa 1907-13, was and probably will forever be scary-strange (Erwartung, the final movement of String Quartet No. 2, much of Pierrot Lunaire and Five Orchestra Pieces, Book of the Hanging Gardens, Herzgewachse, Four Songs with Orchestra Op. 22, Die Gluckliche Hand). And the scariness and the strangeness are built right into the music; in the words of the late Carl Dahlhaus, these works still retain, a century of so later, an air of "for the first time." Uncle Arnold at that time often was in an out-on-the-edge state of mind. Likewise, any number of Charlie Parker recordings are never going to sound "normal." I also disagree that the upheaval those 1907-10 Schoenberg works induced was essentially an academic affair. It took place back then and there and for a good time afterwards; the academic stuff you're referring to ("high-minded discussions among men with secure teaching gigs") took place much later -- almost entirely after WWII -- and primarily in the U.S. Finally, about your "I wish someone would pick up on this idea of how the things I mentioned originally seem to get conflated/confused. Or maybe it doesn't matter to people............" The problem is, as I think I almost said before, that your initial statement of the idea was so benign in tone that no one could find anything there to disagree with. I repeat, nothing comes out of nothing. Creativity is arranging what's there in new ways. The 'new ways' is what like-minded people respond to, but if the language---the conveyance---isn't at least familiar precious few people will get on board, b/c it has nothing to do with their lives or their art. All I'm saying is that in some cases, and Schoenberg IMO definitely would be one, the something that comes out (and comes out, in the view of many, out of deep inner emotional necessity) is related to what's already there, in language terms, along the lines of extreme novelty and/or upheaval. This certainly plays on "what's already there" (you couldn't have a sense of upheaval, except perhaps in terms of sheer noise, if one didn't feel that prior habits and norms were being [so to speak] "upheaved"), but probably it doesn't play on "what's already there" in ways that you would regard as legitimate. About the "like-minded people respond to" it part, are we going to take a poll? Some did respond to this music with great passion, including (for two) Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Pretty notable company, no? And they did not respond to it because they belonged to of a clan of beard-pulling academics; this music excited them to the soles of their feet. It did so and still does so to me, and I am not alone. Again, are these things to be settled by polls or concert attendence or record sales? What is there about the existence of what may be rightly (in some senses) called a "minority" music that is so wrong? BTW, do you know trumpeter-composer Steve Lampert's work, which could be said to yoke Schoenberg and electric Miles?

The grounded part, yes, but otherwise I disagree: A good deal of Schoenberg, especially circa 1907-13, was and probably will forever be scary-strange (Erwartung, the final movement of String Quartet No. 2, much of Pierrot Lunaire and Five Orchestra Pieces, Book of the Hanging Gardens, Herzgewachse, Four Songs with Orchestra Op. 22, Die Gluckliche Hand). And the scariness and the strangeness are built right into the music; in the words of the late Carl Dahlhaus, these works still retain, a century of so later, an air of "for the first time." Uncle Arnold at that time often was in an out-on-the-edge state of mind. Likewise, any number of Charlie Parker recordings are never going to sound "normal." I also disagree that the upheaval those 1907-10 Schoenberg works induced was essentially an academic affair. It took place back then and there and for a good time afterwards; the academic stuff you're referring to ("high-minded discussions among men with secure teaching gigs") took place much later -- almost entirely after WWII -- and primarily in the U.S. Finally, about your "I wish someone would pick up on this idea of how the things I mentioned originally seem to get conflated/confused. Or maybe it doesn't matter to people............" The problem is, as I think I almost said before, that your initial statement of the idea was so benign in tone that no one could find anything there to disagree with.