Larry Kart

Music at my local McDonald's tonight included a stomping version of "Carolina Shout," but then is there any other kind? Next came Pat Metheny, which was OK but did sound a bit weird after James P.

If you're into more avant-gardish things (and that scene is strong here now) this is the site to visit, though not everything listed here is in that bag: http://now-is.org/ If you're interested, I'll add some notes and recommendations where I can when it gets close to the time you'll be here; the schedule begins to fill up about a week and half ahead of the present moment.

Lovely clip. You can't beat someone who writes a swinging melody, then makes up new ones on top of it.

It's "Back To the Roots" (GNP) from 1969. Full personnel (one heck of a band): Georgie Auld - Tenor sax Monty Budwig - Bass Red Callender - Bass Stix Hooper - Drums Barney Kessel - Guitar Blue Mitchell - Trumpet Red Norvo - Vibraphone Jimmy Rowles - Piano Al Viola - Guitar Clips here: http://www.emusic.com/album/Kay-Starr-Back...d/10595358.html

Oh my God. BTW, I've got a late-ish Kay Starr album with a small group that includes Red Norvo and Jimmy Rowles that is one of the great jazz vocal recordings IMO. Starr could really improvise -- some of her choices are so in-the-moment they're scary -- and her sense of swing was unreal, if you don't mind the country-ish overlap (and you shouldn't).

Dude, watch it again - she pulls him down. What I found kinda creepy was the little post-it notes washing down the gutter with things like LOVE & LUST handwritten on them. The rest of it was pretty much cheesy imo, not so much creepy as just plain Ed Wood-ish bad. I do like that record, though. Never heard it before. Very much a period thing, but very nicely so. Actually, I just looked again and was about to correct my last post. And that it's she who hauls him down seems much creepier than the other way around. Don't want to go too far in constructing scenarios, but it's as though it's her job to do this, and that he ain't that willing ... or even able. And those post-it notes washing down the gutter -- definitely. Also, in the opening shot of Raney, she has a kind of Angie Dickinson vibe, no?

You didn't find that Mr. Rogers-like guy creepy as he awkwardly hauls Raney down on the lawn? And the way the kissing is staged, even without the fact that Raney's vocal continues through the lip-lock? And the dancers and their outfits? BTW, isn't "Dreamsville" (the piece itself) rather Strayhorn-esque?

The above by way of Doug Ramsey's blog. And as an act of redemption, Raney singing "Dreamsville" with unearthly poise: Alto sax soloist is Ronny Lang.

Went to a good-sized nearby Borders today with the 40% off coupon, plus the 30% off CDs and DVDs sale in effect. Found only one classical CD I wanted to buy, no jazz, no DVDs, and that was pushing it. May well be a nice disc (Handel Violin Sonatas with Andrew Manze and Richard Egarr), haven't listened yet, but I wouldn't have thought of buying it at full price. A wasteland. One other thing -- I did want to take a look at the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music box, though I thought it might be too pricey for me even with the coupon, but the clerk, though armed with many keys, was unable to open the case where the box sets were kept, after several minutes of trying with each key. He said he'd opened it before.

I posted a few things about the Kessler Twins on that thread on Doug's site. They're a trip.

Is there any left?

Sensible policy, fine with me. I just got my wires crossed somewhere, and as the only serving moderator, now that MG is on hiatus, my wires need to be uncrossed at all times.

Though the thrust of the original post here was essentially benign IMO, discussions of and requests for unauthorized releases of copyrighted material are not allowed on Organissimo. I'm posting this now in order not to be rude or mysterious but will delete this thread later on today.

I agree about that BBC Tippett-conducted disc, and the Piano Concerto is my favorite work of his. I have the old Colin Davis-John Ogdon recording on LP, plus the relatively recent Stephen Osborne-Martyn Brabbins Hyperion 2-CD set with the Concerto and the Piano Sonatas. I prefer the Ogdon-Davis for its air of intoxication and (so it seems to me) pastoral eroticism -- it occurred to me once that the marvelous piano-celeste dialogue passages were the sonic equivalent for Tippett of the sort of sexual romps he favored -- but the Osborne-Brabbins is very good too. Probably my preference for the Ogdon-Davis is mostly imprinting.

And/or "two white guys who really couldn't stand other."

I couldn't get it to play loud enough on my Mac enough to pick up much, especially what Fred was saying. Too bad, because what I could make out sounded fascinating.

After quoting from Chilton, Brian Priestley's notes for "The Jazz Scene" reissue add: "Even nonmusicians, however, have often compared it to 'Body and Soul,' for the simple reason that the implied chordal background of 'Picasso' is a chorus and half of the 1931 song 'Prisoner of Love' (itself very similar to 'Body and Soul' but with a different key for the channel)."

That's your opinion, and you are certainly entitled. Scan, if you would, the citations I, and others, made here of brilliant parodies of our society and especially the cold war by Mad----under Willaim Gaines' stewardship---in the 60s. If you still disagree-----then we will both agree to do that. Perhaps I am wrong here, but I think part of this---and the criticism of Mad post-60s by myself, post 50s by yourself, and comments made here by more than one---may well be the age-old defensiveness of one's generation over the following one. Human nature....... Anyway, why take Mad so damn seriously? Let's frickin' lighten up. I mean: WHAT, ME WORRY? I'm familiar with the later-day MAD up to a point. Nicely done as they were in many respects, the Mort Drucker, and Drucker-like, parodies of movies and TV shows exemplify the difference IMO. The impulse behind the Elder, Wood and Jack Davis stuff, with Kurtzman in each case as key behind-the-scenes collaborator, was ... well I don't know if "anarchic" even goes far enough. It was a matter of size and potentially wholesale substitution of assumptions; the given material -- Superman, Archie, Flash Gordon, Sherlock Holmes, The Lone Ranger, Blackhawks, Terry and The Pirates, Mandrake the Magician, et al. -- was merely the ground-base for extravagantly surreal riffing whose goal was not so much to parody the given universe but to flee it/replace it/blow it up. Yes, the vintage MAD at best was insanely funny, but to be insanely funny in those ways at that time also seemed kind of serious to us kids on the receiving end. For one thing, it was just about the only thing of that sort that the culture was coming up with at that time on any level, let alone one that was available to and largely aimed at 10-year-olds. I mean, Lenny Bruce wouldn't be up and running for at least another FIVE years.

Prime MAD time essentially ended with the departure of Harvey Kurtzman in April 1956, though there were talented people who remained for a while and some talented people to come.

I was buying/reading MAD when it made the transition from comic book to magazine. It was like discovering you were a vampire, and that fresh blood was available at your local newsstand for 10 cents a pop. I have the four-volume hardbound 1986 Russ Cochran color reprint of MAD issues 1-23. A friend -- and that's some friend! -- gave me the set for Xmas back then. He also got a set for himself.

Mine are in Japanese.....what did you say? "Art Farmer, for my taste, never played as well as he did during this period, perhaps because the hard bop style was at war with his deadening sense of neatness. Possessing a musical mind of dandiacal suavity coupled with the soul of a librarian, Farmer usually sounded too nice to be true. But this rhythm section puts an edge on his style".... etc. "Adams' problem has always been how to give his lines some sense of overall design; and too often the weight of his huge tone hurtles him forward faster than he can think...." etc. From a distance of almost 30 years, I can still see what I was talking about in both cases, but that's much too snotty.

File sharing not permitted!

Worth it for the liner notes in which yours truly (circa 1980) says snotty things about Pepper Adams and Art Farmer that he wishes he could take back.

Tiny Kahn was a fine and distinctive arranger, but why disparage Mulligan's work? At its best, his writing for big band was superb (e.g. his chart on "All The Things You Are," featuring Don Joseph). Also, FWIW, in Ira Gitler's "Swing To Bop," p. 287, Mulligan says this of the band of New York freelancers who recorded the "Elliot Lawrence Plays Gerry Mulligan" album: "...the New York guys [here Mulligan is speaking in general] were so rigid..... They couldn't play my charts worth a damn.... One of the proofs of it is that when Elliot finally recorded some of the charts that I wrote, long after I wrote them and long after the band was really terrific. But he got a bunch of the New York guys together, and, of course, this is partially unfair, because they did not have adequate rehearsal time, and Elliot never invited me to come rehearse the band. Those guys could have played the things, but left to their own devices, it just didn't really come out well." Lord knows that Mulligan could be a prima donna, and I like the Lawrence-Mulligan album myself, but he has a point -- the interpretations probably are a fair bit more generically "swingy" than Mulligan intended. Again, hear that "All The Things You Are." That's the kind of phrasing (in terms of rhythm and shifts in texture) that he had in mind, as flowing as Gil Evans' but with a flavor of its own.

I like a lot of Bill Evans up through the Vanguard recordings, and then I don't mostly -- for a load of reasons I wrote about at some length in Ye Olde Book.