Larry Kart

Your experience with the Basie autobio points to one of the problems I have with Chambers' book so far. Many facts or assertions in a book by/about a figure as widely known as Basie are easily checked, and you, already being knowledgable about Basie, found many errors. But if Basie had been as obscure a figure as Twardzik, where would you have been? And how many of those errors would then have become part of the body of "common knowledge" about Basie, cited again and gain from that source? Again, what bothers me about Chambers is that he seems to me to have a taste for recklessly making sweeping assertions (I put it that way because not all sweeping assertions are reckless, and because Chamber's taste for making them strikes me as a personal quirk, a need to periodically "pump up the volume"). If I'm right about this, much in this book that may well be dubious is going to enter the body of "common knowledge" about Twardzik in an unchecked and largely uncheckable manner. Seems to me that might be as bad a thing as someone playing the wrong first change on the bridge of "Sophisticated Lady."

So-so so far. Chambers' main flaws are that sometimes he doesn't know when he doesn't know something (e.g. a reference to a piece's "harmonics" when he means its harmonies) and that he likes to make sweeping assertions (seemingly for their own sake) that are wrong and odd (e.g. Pacific Jazz's failure for 40 years to release the adventurous 1957 chamber music date that Bob Zieff scored for Chet Baker "effectively kept Baker on a musical diet of ballads for the rest of his days"). If you're writing a book about Twardzik, you should know your Chet Baker, and no one who does could say such a thing -- at least not if he were paying attention to what he was saying instead of unnecessarily pumping up the volume. Similarly, perhaps, Chambers asserts on p.6 that when Twardzik recorded "Bess You Is My Woman Now" in 1954 "it was completely unknown as a jazz vehicle." How well known "Bess" was as a jazz vehicle when Twardzik recorded it in Oct. 1954 is something I'll try to check, but, jeebus, on p. 128 Chambers refers to Charlie Mariano's 1953 recording of "Bess," and on p. 132 adds that "Twardzik [who plays on the Mariano recording] would later record this ballad with his trio, as we have already noted...." OK.

On p. 113 Chambers quotes composer and Twardzik friend Bob Zieff as follows: "'I wasn't a bone-fried bopster, and Dick had outgrown it,' Bob Zieff told me." Well, who hasn't been bone-fried at some point?

This one is from 2003: http://www.amazon.com/When-Eve-Was-Naked-S...3288&sr=1-7 and another is to be published later this year, though I can't tell whether that will be new material or a collection of older things.

One of the guys (Philip Parks) who comments on the album here: http://www.amazon.com/Claire-Austin-Sings-...nDateDescending says that Austin is his grandmother.

I certainly agree about Dan, but about Toshiko, I agree with this recent remark (from Doug Ramsey's blog Rifftides) by Bill Kirchner (and the Rayburn Wright remark inside it), which Bill made while responding to comments about a post he'd made there about the best big-band writing since (I think) 1960: "I wish I could be more enthusiastic about Toshiko Akiyoshi's writing, but with occasional exceptions (I included 'Sumie' in the now-out-of-print Smithsonian Big Band Renaissance boxed set), I cannot. The late Rayburn Wright, one of the greatest composing-arranging teachers, once described her writing to me as follows: 'It makes sense horizontally but not vertically.' Her bands were consistently excellent, though." I had the same feeling when I heard the band live in the mid-1980s and they played a Frank Wess chart between two of Toshiko's; the contrast couldn't have been greater along just the lines Wright described (though I arrived at that conclusion on my own). I wrote about that rather grating and to my mind revealing contrast in a review that appeared the next day; a few days later I got a postcard from Bill Russo, whom I'd never met, that read something like "God bless you for saying that." Take any of all of this for what you think it's worth, of course.

Criss was born to play this tune -- along with several other things that were or could be thought of as blues-ballads.

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 listened. A bit thick-fingered at times, as one might except from a man approaching 80 who plays in his spare time, but there are some nice touches -- reminds me a bit of Hod O'Brien.

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

If anyone has access to such journals (some people here probably will in this digital age) track down this article by sociologist Howard S. Becker, "The Professional Dance Musician and His Audience,” American Journal of Sociology, LVII (September, 1951) pp. 136–44. By "dance musician" Becker means jazz musician. Becker himself was a professional jazz pianist in Chicago in the 1940s (he studied with Tristano and still plays), and this is the shrewdest account of jazz's still relevant "insider versus outsider" issues (which we've touched upon above) that I've ever seen, by many miles. (Becker is one of the world's great sociologists and a very down-to-earth, drily humorous writer; no academic jargon for him.) The material in this article was compressed and reworked as Chapter Five in Becker's celebrated book "Outsiders," but I prefer it in its original longer, shaggier form. Some will find a visit to Becker's website worthwhile: http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/ There are several articles about jazz posted there (though not the one I mentioned), and a lot of other interesting stuff. Becker also wrote the only book about how to write something that was ever of practical use to me (and this at a time when I was really blocked and had an important piece to deliver by a rapidly approaching deadline). The title is "Writing for Social Scientists: How To Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, Or Article," but it's not just for social scientists. If what you're trying to write is non-fiction of any sort (or maybe even fiction or poetry), then Becker will help. The title of Chapter Three of this book is one of the keys, "One Right Way." To quote: "[Writers] make [their] job much harder than it need be when they think there is Only One Right Way to do it, that each paper they write has a preordained structure they must find. They simplify their work ... when they recognize that there are many effective ways to say something and their job is only to choose one and execute so that readers will know what they are doing." There's a whole bunch of stuff wrapped up there, and Becker neatly unpacks all that needs to be unpacked so that you yourself can get on with what you need to do. He's a practical Zen master.

Another big factor, I believe, in the backlash (or front-lash) against the avant garde way back when, from many musicians especially, is what I once called "the norms of craft professionalism." There's a whiff of that in Art Farmer's "You've got to know where 'home' is" remark (or words to that effect) about Ornette's playing on his own pieces. If one is talking about having a sense of "home" as the difference between knowing where you really are musically, knowing chaos from coherence, sure -- provided you've got big ears and an open mind and are willing to recognize that there may be senses of "home" that at first may be new to you. But to the degree that jazz is or can be a competitive clubhouse or locker room, craft knowledge (i.e craft knowledge that we the insiders already are aware of and agree upon) can also serve as a semi-social, semi-musical screening process and/or a form of one-upsmanship, a way of separating the "hip" pros from the unqualified amateurs. On that front, what Ornette was doing was seen in some quarters as a dire threat to the professionalism that, to some pros, is what makes a pro a pro -- a chucking aside of all codes and standards and thus of one of the professional jazz community's key modes of self-validation/belonging/sense of specialness. I recall a Phil Woods interview where he said that if you don't know ... I think it was something like the correct first change on the bridge of "Sophisticated Lady," you had no right to call yourself a jazz musician. (I should add that for many professional musicians of that time, a sense of validated insider specialness was among their key social/emotional rewards for living lives that could be damn difficult. You know -- "At least I'm hip, I'm not playing like Tex Beneke." I think an additional, semi-separate objection from some musicians and writers to the Coltrane of "Chasin' the Trane" and beyond (because one couldn't object to Trane, at least not rationally, in quite the same terms one could to Ornette) was that the the nature of Trane's performances -- their length and expressionistic fervor and, in the minds of some, their implicit aura of Afro-American anger -- was going to destroy the notion of jazz as entertainment, break the bond between the music and its longtime predominant audience (white and black) and thus threaten the livelihoods of almost everyone on the scene.

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."