Larry Kart

Sometimes.

Jim - your comments on Mulligan reminded me of a recent e-mail I got from a friend - hope he doesn't mind me quoting him: I think describing Mulligan as "limited" is perfectly fair. Sometimes that "limited" thing absolutely hits the spot for me, sometimes it doesn't. From having transcribed some of his quartet arrangements, I have to say that it's one of those cases where, as Mark Twain said about Wagner, "His music is better than it sounds." Every time I do one of those transcriptions, I gain more respect for Mulligan as an arranger, but even so, it's a sound you either like or you don't, and most people don't do their listening with a pad of manuscript paper in front of them. (Believe me, I don't recommend it!) I think that Mulligan became much more relaxed as a player in the last decade or so of his life (and thus less schematic -- at times I even thought that in his '50s heyday he was a bit corny/two-beatish in rhythmic terms), but for me it's his composing and arranging that were his major contributions. His chart on "All the Things You Are" for one, featuring Don Joseph, is sublime, and many Mulligan compositions have a notable lilt and charm.

"Earth was being attacked by apparently unstoppable swarms of insects (locust-like, but they also had the ability to directly harm human beings with stingers and such)..." It's the insects that "had the ability to directly harm human beings with [as in "by means of"] stingers and such"...

Sounds like Larry is onto Plan A. Quick scramble and implement Plan B. (By the way, anyone read Chester Himes' Plan B? Wild apocalpytic stuff.) I did have one of those dreams when I was considerably younger. I dreamed my cat had died. It was incredibly vivid and it took quite a while to wake up and recover. Actually, now that I think of it, my ultimate "do something" response in the dream was to say "Well, I'll guess I'll go to work" (in the dream I still worked at a newspaper) -- which kind of made sense but also didn't; made sense because newspapers still try function under conditions of disaster, but it didn't make sense because how did I think I was going to get to the newspaper office under these conditions? Also, saying this was very poignant, because it seemed so likely that these would be last words I'd say to my wife and son -- on the other hand, we all were sure there was no help, so why not? It was, we felt, almost arbitrary -- like the difference between waiting to be killed and being killed while charging the enemy.

Had one of those last night and wish I hadn't. Earth was being attacked by apparently unstoppable swarms of insects (locust-like, but they also had the ability to directly harm human beings with stingers and such) that may or may not have been controlled by intelligent aliens. In response, our government had rounded up lots of their own people -- including myself, my son, and my late wife (who was alive in the dream) -- and was holding us in very crowded conditions, not enough room to lie down, etc. -- and soon it dawned us that probably we were all going to be killed by our own government, either in an attempt to appease the attacking swarms or to relieve the government of the burden of our presence, or just out of sheer fear and craziness, and that this was going to take place by having the floor under our feet drop away, dumping us into some medium that would kill us. And all the while, new swarms of hostile destructive insects loomed on the horizon. Through all of this, given what seemed the likely outcome, my wife and my son and I were in effect saying our good-byes, while I wondered whether there was anything I could do, other than just wait for the inevitable. It all felt very real, especially because I kept waking up and then going back into the dream when I fell asleep again. Help.

Don't know how often he played there, but we could have been in the same audience -- sharing, in effect.

Oh my God, yes -- "needs [that are] shared/mutual [and] fluid." I think I will go away for a while. To the Indiana Home For The Dangerously Self-Absorbed -- I'm told that their cure rate is quite high.

Oh my God, yes -- "needs [that are] shared/mutual [and] fluid." I think I will go away for a while.

I'm not talking about "products" but acts of personal expression. That latter can be products in the sense that one is sometimes rewarded financially for producing them, but.... And, it's not about filling "a need on somebody else's human needs shopping list," it's about honest conversation; among friends, the needs are more or less shared/mutual -- fluid, yes, and not always in the foreground but ... I almost can't believe that we're having this Martian conversation.

If you enjoy that, get the Hal Singer Prestige date for more fine Shavers. I heard Singer one night in the '70s, I think, at the West End Cafe. He was in great form.

Well, yes, but I still say that if a friend of yours came up to you with his hair dyed green and a nail stuck through his tongue, your first reaction would not be to judge those choices on aesthetic grounds and maybe cut him some slack because he's your friend but to wonder what the heck was going on here (unless that's how your friend looks normally). Play Wynton's "Cherokee" and tell me that it's Booker Little or Lee Morgan, and I'm thinking, "What happened [to them]?" I'd feel the same if you picked, say, a really good Bobby Hackett solo and told me that the player was Little or Morgan -- "What happened?" Your friends are your friends in part because you know who they are. That's my point, exactly. That friends get more leeway than non-friends, simply because we know them. So if this wynton thing comes over as is, as by Wynton, we think "ugh" w/o qualification, and without qualification, because Wynton has not been the musical (or otherwise) friend to most of us here. Whereas if we get it as if by somebody who is our friend, we're much more likely to think "WTF happened?", cut slack, allow for shit happening (as shit does) and then come to an "ugh" that is decidedly more tempered than the one we do for Wynton straight up. Well, it's not my point -- which is that it's not because we know them per se that we'd surprised and dismayed if Little or Morgan played this "Cherokee" solo but because we know who they are when they play the damn trumpet. To put it another way, I have a friend who is an all-round great guy, but the initial and lasting basis of our friendship was that I loved his writing (mostly, but not exclusively, about jazz), which clearly is an essential expression of who he is as a human being. If he suddenly began to write like, say, Ben Ratliff, I would give him a pass to the extent of trying to find out what had gone wrong, but the nature of our friendship would if anything deepen, not lessen, my sense that something had gone wrong here. In other words, no leeway, only concern. Giving him "leeway" would amount to treating him as though he were something less than the person I'd known him to be, and that wouldn't be good for either of us, or anyone else.

Well, yes, but I still say that if a friend of yours came up to you with his hair dyed green and a nail stuck through his tongue, your first reaction would not be to judge those choices on aesthetic grounds and maybe cut him some slack because he's your friend but to wonder what the heck was going on here (unless that's how your friend looks normally). Play Wynton's "Cherokee" and tell me that it's Booker Little or Lee Morgan, and I'm thinking, "What happened [to them]?" I'd feel the same if you picked, say, a really good Bobby Hackett solo and told me that the player was Little or Morgan -- "What happened?" Your friends are your friends in part because you know who they are.

No doubt it depends on how honestly the person on the receiving end listens to music, but as several of us have said on this thread, the simple, honest answer (and we do tend to be honest about our musical tastes; otherwise, why bother to spend time at a place like this?) is: "Yes, it would receive the same criticism." Do you not believe us? Also, your question omits the fairly obvious factor that would render your implicit false labeling test an impossible-to-mount abstraction. If one were told that any number of trumpet players one admires were playing this solo, the first and probably the only question that would arise would be: "Why the heck does so-and-so sound like this? He never did before."

Just picked up a copy of "I Had The Craziest Dream," which I believe is OOP. Interesting to me but definitely a taste that many here may nnever acquire. What Jim said about those charts is certainly audible -- lots of patting your head while rubbing your stomach stuff going on inside. The sometime air of external blandness was to some degree .. external. And of course there was Don Fagerquist, a lovely player, and on some of this album, the late Bob Gordon. Part of all this is that these charts were crafted for three-minute-or-so performances; a lot of activity per unit of time. The sound is different, but think of John Kirby perhaps. In fact, Pell in his later days did do a Kirby tribute album, though I'm note sure if that dates from the time when he was cranking out tribute albums almost indiscriminately.

There are laws against that kind of thing.

No, I didn't notice that it was Wynton doing the intro, but back in 1981-2, he either had no particular reaction or a very guarded one when I played that Shavers track for him -- again, probably, because he thought the blindfold test aspect of it meant that I was trying to trick him in some way. I just thought he might dig the music and recognize a somewhat kindred soul in Shavers, and I didn't want to put Shavers' name out there before I played the track in case that might shape Wynton's response. In any case, the days of Wynton's impishness have been pretty much gone since the mid-1980s IMO; royal role models don't behave/can't afford to behave that way. To answer your original question: If I heard that music coming out of Lester Bowie's horn, I'd be astonished and dismayed and wonder what was the matter. Back in 1982 Wynton may not have even been 21. There are a lot of precocious 21-year-old players who are completely unfamiliar with Shavers and Wynton may have been no exception. On top of this I think it's not unlikely that Wynton at the time was doing the vast majority of his trumpet listening to: Miles, Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, and Dizzy - the pre-bebop thing didn't come until later. So I'm not too surprised that he was weirded out by the Shavers thing. He wasn't weirded out by the music as far as I could tell, not at all, but was put on edge by the social situation as he saw it, as I tried to explain above. That is, I think he thought that by playing something and not telling him who it was first, I was trying to trick him in some way -- getting him to say that he liked someone he "shouldn't" like or vice versa or just trying to stump him. That wasn't my intent (see above), but I can see where he might have been wary/guarded. I should add that this turn of events came as a bit of surprise because up to that point the encounter/interview had been very relaxed on both sides.

Maybe in Riley's mind the cameras are running all the time, especially the one that feeds back to Wynton.

And what's with all that mugging by the drummer? Sure, some guys' faces respond to what other guys are playing, but this looked kinda corny to me.

What's not to like about Charlie Barnet's great-grandaughter?

Ruby Braff?? Wynton sounds more like Rafael Mendez before his morning prune juice has had time to take effect.

No, I didn't notice that it was Wynton doing the intro, but back in 1981-2, he either had no particular reaction or a very guarded one when I played that Shavers track for him -- again, probably, because he thought the blindfold test aspect of it meant that I was trying to trick him in some way. I just thought he might dig the music and recognize a somewhat kindred soul in Shavers, and I didn't want to put Shavers' name out there before I played the track in case that might shape Wynton's response. In any case, the days of Wynton's impishness have been pretty much gone since the mid-1980s IMO; royal role models don't behave/can't afford to behave that way. To answer your original question: If I heard that music coming out of Lester Bowie's horn, I'd be astonished and dismayed and wonder what was the matter.

From the very first, I've thought that Wynton's secret musical soulmate was Charlie Shavers -- that is, that the kind of musician that Wynton was at heart (and at best) before he tied himself up in knots of pseudo-nobility was akin to Shavers' impish/playful temperament. In fact, I once played a Shavers' solo for the young Wynton (the title track from Shavers' great album with Coleman Hawkins, "Hawk Eyes") to see what he would make of it, but Wynton was understandably skittish, as though I were trying to trick him in some manner, and had little to say. In any case, Shavers IMO could play rings around the (to my taste, quite static) Wynton of that "Cherokee" clip, as this clip of Shavers, in good form with Buck Clayton, may demonstrate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9j5y84t0X4 More startling Shavers' solos are to be found (e.g. "Hawk Eyes"), but not on video ASFAIK.

Some info on Lou Mecca (1927-2003): http://www.guitarsite.com/newsletters/021118/3.shtml http://classicjazzguitar.com/artists/artis...e.jsp?artist=40 http://classicjazzguitar.com/albums/artist...m.jsp?album=640 Be sure to check out the last link, which has a decent-sized clip from his solo on "Bernie's Tune" from his Blue Note album.

Melle had great taste in guitarists -- Tal Farlow, Cinderella, and Louis Mecca, the latter two little known other than for their work with Melle. In fact, Melle needed such guitarists; his writing for them in his piano-less groups being quite novel and demanding, though perhaps Cinderella and Mecca brought some of their own ideas into play there.

Just the words, apparently. When was the first jazz recording of Willow? The earliest I've heard is by Boots and His Buddys from 1937. Did Art Tatum do it before then? That must be Greta Keller, not "Grace Keller": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoVmvL9LxYQ http://www.amazon.com/Remember-Me-Other-In...s/dp/B000EBGFQ8 http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Greta-Keller