Larry Kart

Big Beat Steve -- But you said that "stabs in the back administered by those who felt themselves to be the true and only 'keepers of the flame' of jazz" did in the neo-Swing movement." Show me one piece of evidence that that is what happened. It was fun or kind of fun, it did some good in spreading the good word (in the ways that you described), and then it kind of went away. Nobody chased it away AFAIK; enough of the people who enjoyed it eventually moved on to other things or were no longer of an age where they had the time and the inclination to go dancing that much. And the next semi-generation of dancers wanted to dance to their thing. Or let me turn that around -- can you think of any comparable movement and/or fad in any form of entertainment of that era that has remained as popular as it once was and that has done so because there were no self-appointed keepers of the flame expressing doubts about it?

Ah, yes, the Squirrel-Nut Rabbis. You really think that those Neo-Swing bands were on the verge of successfully "turning back the clock" in some long-term manner but failed to do so because of "stabs in the back administered by those who felt themselves to be the true and only "keepers of the flame" of jazz? It was, as you say, a more or less amiable fad, and when it had its day with one segment of the young dancing crowd, that was that. The objections of curmedgeons like myself was to those who proclaimed this stuff to be the music's artistic salvation, and I can't believe that one single dancer, booker, or club owner was deterred by what we had to say, assuming they were even aware of it. Those acts got gigs when they drew and didn't when things cooled down. Shades of Andrew Dice Clay.

A response to Teachout's piece from a friend of my age who once was a very good amatuer drummer (he played in a band with bassist Cameron Brown in college): I quickly read that Teachout article and it seems way off to me, starting with its statistics. The audience for everything is shrinking -- that's what audiences are doing in the 21st century as available options multiply and attention spans wither. I don't believe that, in 2002, 10% of adult Americans attended at least one jazz performance -- I just don't believe it. My guess is, the figure would be closer to 1% or 2%. And what was the percentage back in 1961 or '62 -- 5%? Teachout's thing about jazz evolving from a genuinely popular song-based idiom into challenging concert music is the same point that Ken Burns "Jazz" tried to make, and it didn't seem relevant to me; nobody's dancing to anything but rock 'n roll, which certainly isn't the fault of jazz.

Terry Teachout is an intelligent guy, but the last paragraph of this piece makes me want to scream: "By the same token, jazz musicians who want to keep their own equally beautiful music alive and well have got to start thinking hard about how to pitch it to young listeners—not next month, not next week, but right now." It's not a matter of "how to pitch it" -- to "young listeners" or to listeners of any damn age. It's a matter of how to make some music that will inherently/more or less naturally be meaningful -- and by that I mean meaningful in that it fully, unapologetically engages the mind and heart, not "This is good for you" meaningful, or "This is better than something that we think is crap but won't say so 'cause we're doing some pitching here," or "Please like our stuff because it's a national cultural treasure," or "Try this Kool-Aid Lite version of our stuff that isn't wholly unlike some stuff that we already think you like," or "Dig this -- it's a swinging little musical story about Barack Obama, and you already voted for him, right?" etc. I mean, when jazz did have audiences that sustained the music economically, socially, spiritually, etc,, how did that work? Look into the mirrors of our own life experiences, and we all know the answers. Did "pitching" play a key role in what grabbed our attention and earned our loyalty? I don't think so, not much and certainly not pitching of the "This is good for you" sort. (The only sort of pitching that did work up to a point, though it also had its problems, was the "This is hip" sort.) Availability/exposure -- yes, that is a problem. If you don't ever get to hear the music much, there ain't much hope. But if the music has that "thing" and is in circles/places where it can be heard in a comfortable/accessible manner (I know "comfortable" is a simple word for a potentially complex set of circumstances), then people will find it out. The current Chicago scene is a sterling example; it works, within economics limits to be sure, but it does work: good novel music is being made that has been found by audiences that find it engaging, and is found by them because they find it engaging. Further, in my experience most of the kind of pitching that Terry T. and others (especially most of the arts organization/foundation people) inevitably have in mind is virtually antithetical to the sound circular process that I briefly described above ever the hell taking place. Yes, those arts organization/foundation folks have money, and properly applied dough is never unwelcome, not at all. But what most of those people want to do is march at the head of some cultural parade while they also get credit for there being a parade in the first place. What they won't do, except in very rare instances, is take a look at what already is working and that might work better and more easily with discreet applications of dough, and just provide the dough to the right creative people who also know how to make things happen practically and then just get the hell of out the way. But they can't do that; it leaves them feeling useless, or not "useful" in the ways that they want to/need to feel. To put it in another but perhaps usefully crude manner, you can't be coerced, nudged, shamed, chucked under the chin, etc. into really wanting to f--- someone. And if you do f--- him or her under those circumstances, you're probably not going to want to f--- him or her again. Oh, wait -- that brings to mind the one real answer that Terry T's cry of woe implies (at least to me): Rather than come up with more chin-chucking, beard-pulling cultural schemes and the like, let's just pay people to go hear jazz, pay them all the money that the arts organization/foundations would have poured into projects that had no real artistic reason to get off the ground or that just would have fallen between the cracks as it gets passed along. Bingo -- the jazz audience problem is over!

A friend of my folks (the son of the eminent rabbi in their old neighborhood in Chicago -- my mother used to push this guy around in his baby carriage) is married to a woman whose first husband was Ron Popiel. She was a so-called hand model in her (so to speak) salad days, and the rest of her was pretty nice too, albeit in a rather lacquered style. Not to stray too far afield, but Ron's father Sam (in the same business) was the big deal Popiel when I was young. IIRC Sam and his son had a big falling out and went their separate ways, with son eventually eclipsing father in the national memory bank.

Good to see that someone other than myself has switched to suspenders.

Donald Clarke's "Wishing On the Moon" is, as Chuck said, one of the great jazz bios. It definitely helps that the author is a terrific human being. And damn smart too.

But it has stopped on this thread. If you're thinking that JSngry's long response about "soft jazz" and its real history was a form of bullying, you're way off base IMO. For me, it was among the most informative recent contributions to Organissimo.

Jim A. can disagree, but "say what you mean, mean what you say" should cover it, with this perhaps tricky footnote -- try to bear in mind who one is talking to. That is, the problem on this thread arose IMO because the odd specific circumstance of a newbie getting yelled at, with profanity right off the bat, could well leave the newbie with the impression that that is the tone of this whole place; and that we don't want to do, right? In effect, the first poster forgot that in this circumstance he might be regarded as speaking for all of us. Likewise (or not likewise exactly, but close enough for jazz), one pretty much knows who here can be provoked and in what ways and on what grounds. That doesn't mean don't ever provoke, because sometimes what people say arguably earns/deserves that, but it does mean at the least that disingenuousness about having said something that provokes someone ought to be out. And Lord knows we've seen lots of that, none of it IMO doing anything for anyone but eat up time and space and make it clear that some very smart people can act un-smart. Of course, one can at times provoke someone without intending to do so, but once the horns clash and the saliva starts dribbling, who can then claim not to get what's happened/happening? And why then not back off, unless one feels genuinely that what you said/meant was misunderstood and needs to be clarified? How many arguments that reach the level of butting-heads-in-the-arena ever go anywhere else? Or am I being a pompous twit about all this? Go ahead -- provoke me.

There were some 16 2/3 LPs on Prestige IIRC.

Jim -- Among many other things, you know how to take your time.

More well-covered than Cab's ass (see Chuck's post above).

How so? Anita sings it like this (all caps emphasizing how she accents, which is tricky in the first two lines but on the money, I think): There's not ONE boy for me - I must HAVE two or three, I need Four. First, the man who's the type to like slippers and pipe at the door. Then, IF at all possible I'd like the kind WHO's not very bossable But knows his mind. If you ADD to these few one that KNOWS how to woo dogpatch style Then this man of my world will be spangled and pearled with his smile AND though it's incredible I've found it's true That my four-in-one boy is nobody else but you. Lightweight perhaps, but I much prefer this to (in my no doubt minority opinion) Hendrick's usual over-wordy farrago.

Storage space and amount of sonic information that can be put on one, but what else that I'm not thinking of? I still believe that the properly recorded analog LP (or 78 for that matter? but my experience there is limited) with the proper playback equipment can sound as good as a properly recorded digital CD with etc. Some would say sounds better than, but I've never done the necessary scrupulous A/B comparisons, usually preferring to listen to music.

My brand of choice is Cherry Kijafa. Just before I hear nothing, I hear everything.

It's one of the albums I use to monitor the system when I feel like doing that for one reason or another. It's good enough so that things should sound like the band is right there in the room.

And I've seen people on the expressway, mostly women but also some men, combing their hair with both hands -- one hand combing, the other smoothing/patting things down. Also, of course, I've heard tell from one of the parties involved (quite reliably IMO) of a guy getting oral sex while driving at highway speeds. Let's pass a law on that one.

The stereo version of "There Will Never Be Another You" from Louis Smith's "Smithville" (Blue Note) -- what Sonny Clark, Paul Chambers, and Art Taylor get into during Clark's piano solo. And I'm not the world's greatest Paul Chambers fan; here (to me) he sounds more like Doug Watkins, an incredible "tippin' light" feeling.

Texting and other fruits of technology make the impulse to do several things at once behind the wheel that much more dangerous, but it must have been 25 years aqo while on the expressway on the way to work that I saw a guy in the next lane -- traffic moving in the 35 to 55 m.p.h. range, with fits of stop and go -- reading a fully-opened, non-tabloid newspaper that was propped up against the steering wheel. Holy Gutenberg! It was the Wall St. Journal, I think, because I could see only type, no photos. I got away from that guy as fast as I could.

Don't have it yet to compare, but I'd be curious to hear Adam Rogers' version of "Let's Cool One" from his most recent trio CD, "Sight." Rogers' version of Bird's "Cheryl" on his album "Time and the Infinite" (Criss Cross) was something else IMO.

I've liked Broom in other settings, but based on the samples I've heard from this one, once the heads are played, you wouldn't really know what piece Broom is playing on, which is not what one wants (or rather what I want) when Monk's music is on the table. What I hear from Broom is mostly a lot of discreet slippery grease and fancy-pants chordal manuevering (that last trait often invading the heads as well).

Passed on the information to Davis, who also said thanks and added that he wanted to know because All About Jazz is doing a feature on him (i.e, Davis), in which he said that Swing Lee was one of his early influences. Davis knew him only by that name, though, and wanted to properly identify him if possible.

Thanks. It was Charles Davis who wanted to know.

or anything further about him? A fellow Chicago saxophonist of that time had asked me to inquire.

Was there a point in your life when you thought wineries cared for you? :lol: Ripple did. So did Morgan Davis.