Larry Kart

Allen makes some very good points above IMO. Not all genuine "originalities" are the same kind of beast; sometimes a considerable sense of upheaval and/or "leaps" (both in terms of expression and language) is in the cards. For instance, this account by pianist Edward Steuermann, of Schoenberg's Five Pieces, Op. 23 -- Steuermann having given the first performances of all the Schoenberg's piano works: "In the first piece ... the initial melody (in the upper voice) reappears after an accompaniment-like staccato phrase in a completely changed shape. The sequence of the tones is the same, but they appear in different octaves (changing this way the design of the phrase) and in a different rhythm. As the tones remain the same, the identity remains the same. This way a new principle of variation has been established: no matter how distant the spheres the expression reaches, the core of the music is unchanged. A new principle of variation: the deep desire of every new art!"

If so, the concept of drag definitely needs to be rethought.

Speaking of Julie London, I just happened to watch the DVD of Frank Tashlin's "The Girl Can't Help It," with Tom Ewell, Jayne Mansfield, Edmond O'Brien, and London as Ewell's lost love (she sings "Cry Me a River"). Terrific movie; it features, of course, a lot of rock (mostly) acts of 1956 vintage, including The Platters, The Treniers, Gene Vincent, Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran, Little Richard, and Abbey Lincoln (?!)

Here it is! http://www.carrothers.com/comedyjukebox.htm

Don't know where to find it right now, but somewhere on the 'Net I once hear a wonderful snippet of tape from a London recording session -- maybe not the "Cry Me a River" date, but one with the same guitar and bass backing -- where she profanely, earthily expresses her unhappiness with the chosen tempo and other specific musical details, including her own intonation and/or uncertainty about what key would best suit this song for her. Clearly she was one hell of a terrific woman, and she sure did know her music.

Actually, barring copious use of laxatives, defecating on stage is very difficult to do. The presence of other people tends to tighten the sphincter. I speak from personal experience, of course.

I'm sorry, Joel, but while there's nothing I could argue with in what you said, it's also so broadly based that I can't imagine anyone disagreeing with, say, your "of course originality is good, but with certain qualifiers, i.e.: if it's based on what came before (since I know of nothing that comes out of nothing) and has some meaning to someone other than oneself." Who doesn't fit that criteria that anyone of us here would want to pay attention to?

If we all got jazzed first thing in the morning, the world would be a better place.

Of course. But that welcoming vibe is a function of his belief in/involvement in his music. People get that and dig it.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra (and countless other interesting and very popular outfits down through time -- for the young Sonny Rollins it was Louis Jordan) have no doubt served as "gateways," but what they did was not conceived or executed by them in "gateway" terms and/or in order to perform some "gateway" function. Think that way and you've got Wynton trying to be Leonard Bernstein at one end of the spectrum and Lord knows what at the other. To put it another way, if the people making the music aren't doing what they really want to do, why should they expect that anyone else would really want to experience it? IIRC, the Mahavishnu Orchestra played balls out con amore -- as did (for that matter) Roscoe Mitchell.

So,,,you're saying that you want people to leave home, spend money, and just sit there and watch you work? Gee, when you put it that way, it's a miracle anybody goes out! But that's what I go out to do about three times a week and am almost always richly rewarded. About the dancing, you might say that I'm dancing in my head. I certainly don't sit there solving formulas, drawing diagrams, and wondering about sententious remarks I might make. To borrow an old phrase, It's the most fun I can have with my clothes on.

Doesn't prove anything either way, but on p. 288 of John Chilton's Hawkins bio, there is this 1957 quote from Green (after he'd listened to Hawkins' album of ballads with string orchestra backing, "The Gilded Hawk"): "If the improviser can improve on what the composer wrote instead of destroying it, more power to his embouchure."

I agree that Gil's writing is not "dated," though I suppose it is dateable. As for playing these charts with another trumpet soloist, it all depends on who that is. For instance, Leo Smith just kills IMO on those versions of electric Miles-era pieces. Someone I can imagine playing beautifully and individually on the music Gil wrote for Miles would by John McNeil. Also, our sometime board member Trumpet Guy (Phil Grenadier). Hey, Dave Douglas might be nice too. It should be someone with some poetry in his or her soul but who is essentially his own man (or woman -- Ingrid Jensen? my pal Jaime Branch?) and who isn't a Miles emulator (that's why I wouldn't think that Blanchard or Wallace Roney would be that satisfying -- you and they probably would be thinking in terms of how close they are to the model).

Just asking for information -- no "reason" to get testy about it. And, please, I'm not one of those professional "jazz savers" that rightly get your back up. Yo man, I'm so not "testy" about this! I cashed my reality check long enough ago to know that it's gonna be what it's gonna be, nothing more. Been thinking about changing my name from Sangrey to Sanguine, in fact. fwiw/the fact that this "testy" post came after a post of yours, and in the middle of a dialogue between us should not be construed as a comment to/at you or your post(s). Maybe I've gotten enough of a Digital Mentality now that I post a "general" comment in the middle of a series of "specific" ones and not even notice it, much like how at work now I can email, IM, and interact w/task-specific software all at once (it did take some readjustment time, though, like...years...). Anyway, that's the deal, really. sorry if i failed to properly "directionalize". OK, I get it. No problem. Also, I've been talking and thinking in a contentious bag on this thread, and sometimes one "projects."

Just asking for information -- no "reason" to get testy about it. And, please, I'm not one of those professional "jazz savers" that rightly get your back up.

Agree totally with Fasstrack about the dumb, exploitive nastiness of Gavin's Baker bio and the virtues of Jeroen De Valk's. Gavin's real subject, as the book eventually makes clear, should have been filmmaker-photographer Bruce Weber ("Let's Get Lost" and those sexually equivocal ad photos of naked young men and Labrador retrievers romping around in swimming pools). It's Weber that Gavin really knows and cares about, though Gavin cares about Weber so much because he pretty much hates him.

I dunno, Larry -- that's just a clock (and a boring one, according to Harry Lyme). Surely the Chairman of the Board would expect his own spelling... Geez -- to be "cuckoo" means to be "nutty." Consult a dictionary.

Looks and sounds like a heck of a lot of fun, and maybe a good deal more than that, but it happened over there and not here for what reasons do you think? That is, is it a function of their virtues and circumstances, or of our scenes' failure to be in a certain way? And is it over there a response to recorded music that already exists, or is it interacting with music that is being made by musicians over there right now?

If I called bullshit on JackChick25/Carole, then I must equally call it here. No energy for detail right now, but let me ask you this - why would anybody take the word of a "jazz musician" as to what people are or aren't dancing to? That's kinda like asking a vegan who's making the best steaks in town. Point taken. But I still agree with my friend that whoever is or is not dancing to what music these days, that "certainly isn't the fault of jazz" -- if only because, as I think Jim would agree, it isn't in the power of "jazz" these days to remedy that "fault" in any significant manner.

Everyone is accepting the statistics in that NEA study: http://www.jazz.com/jazz-blog/2009/7/7/ugl...e-jazz-audience as sound when IMO they are extremely dubious. In particular, I find it very hard to believe that 17.5% of adults 18-24 attended a jazz event in 1982 (this being the base-line figure that the study gives us). Do you know how many Americans were in that age group in Nov. 1982? No less than 29,917,000: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/v...916/p25-916.pdf So that means that some 5,235,475 people in that 18-24 age group (17.5% of 29,917,000) attended a jazz event in 1982? (Remember, that's only 18-24 year olds, which means that 5,235,475 people would have to be a good deal less than the total jazz audience in 1982-- and also that's people who went to actual "events," not people who just bought records or only listened to jazz on the radio). Well, no matter loosely one defines jazz, I think that's an absurdly large figure, especially when you recall what 1982 was like on the jazz scene. And if that base-line figure is absurd, why trust the other figures? Remember, we're talking about trends that are not merely anecdotal but supposedly have a rock-ribbed statistical basis. BTW, while I'm at it, a digression: As you can see, there's only one category in the NEA study where median age and attendance shows almost no drop off from 1982 to 2002 -- art museums. OK, let's accept that as fact for the moment. Why would that be so? What are the art museums doing right that everyone else is doing plumb wrong? Are art museums, for instance, doing OK because they're reaching out to young audiences in hipper, more attractive, or energtic and effective ways than everyone else is? Well, I'm sure they're trying, we've all seen evidence of that, but enough to account for that supposed big difference? Nonsense. It's that the loose-limbed forms of entertainment/amusement/enlightenment that art museums offer to young couples is ... well, art museums are relatively cheap casual-date places with pleasant trimmings and full of stuff you can talk about if care to. You can do things if you're in charge of a museum that will drive people away, like filling the galleries with hot-steaming offal and charging $100 to get in, but otherwise you're going to be OK; a good museum is like an indoor park, and what's good about it in 1982 isn't going to be, or need to be, that much different in 2002, 'cause Renoir and Rembrandt and Velazquez and Vermeer tend not to go out of style. No great lessons there, and in particular no endorsement of the need to engage in great gobs of "outreach" to youth or whomever as a form of solution/salvation.

No -- "cuckoo."

Good morning! http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...st&p=942341 The golden oldies always bear repeating.

Also (with apologies to Chuck), Duct tape, WD-40 and a hammer.

And drugs, sex, and fried chicken.