Larry Kart

Oh, that's a good one!

It's important IMO to keep stuff like that straight. It's not always the end of things, but some dumb things get said and thought that are based on mis-information at that level.

Similar in spots, notably the bridge, but not a direct contrafact by any means. "Inspired by" is about as close as I'd go. Thanks for the correction. I was "inspired by" that similarity.

Sinatra's on "Only the Lonely." Maybe the best thing he ever did, though clearly there's a lot of competition. The way he colors and links together the song's vowel sounds is uncannily poetic -- in effect, he uncovers a deeper song beneath the one Ronnell wrote, and the one she wrote was already pretty deep. Also, though I'd have to listen again to be sure, I think Sinatra's only means there are timbre coupled to insight; I have no memory of him changing the rhythmic value of a single note. For some reason, when I hear that track, I think of Lester Young listening to it -- not that I know he did, but... And now that I think it, my favorite Pres solo from his time with Basie is on "Taxi War Dance," and that tune is on "Willow Weep for Me" changes, which is nutty because Pres famously launches that solo with a quote from "Ol' Man River."

The pianist on "Everything I've Got" was Ehud Asherie, from his recent trio album "Swing Set" (Pentatone). The transition from Ayler to that rather genial track was jarring, though I'd liked the Asherie outside of that context.

I don't think that's the one, because "Luminescence Live" is a quartet recording and this one is a duo. Didn't see a title at the time, but I have a copy at home, still packed way though, I think, so it may take me a while to check. It was issued in an edition of 100 or so copies and has a beautiful handmade cover.

I see you were listening.

Nope -- just Chuck wondering why I picked a Walt Weiskopf record. There was one limp transition, after an Ayler recording, but what can follow Ayler? Otherwise, it was fun, at least in the studio.

BTW, that Zoot Sims' alto solo I extolled on John Benson Brooks' "Folk Jazz USA" was on "Turtledove," not "Saro Jane." His "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" on that album is also very nice.

Yes , keyboard duties in that band were handled by Ray Santisi . Thanks. Very curious to hear this Pomeroy session... Don't have the album anymore (one of those that mysteriously evaporated at some point in my life) but recall liking it a good deal. On the other hand, I have no memory of any Byard tenor solos on it (all the tenor solos IIRC were played by ringer Zoot Sims), though there is a fine Byard chart on his piece "Aluminum Baby" (based on you know what). Also no longer have (for the same mysterious reason) its successor, "Band in Boston," on United Artists, which was also very good, though I do have the CD reissue of the Irene Kral-Pomeroy album "The Band and I."

Warne Marsh's "All Music" and Von Freeman's "Have No Fear." Thanks to Chuck, I was present for parts of both of them, though he'll never forgive me for talking to someone down the hall while Warne was recording a take.

I much prefer his Richard Stark novels, about a professional thief -- very tough and efficiently brutal when necessary, but only then; he's a pro -- named Parker. In chronological order they are: 1. The Hunter (Also published as "Point Blank" -- it's the source of the film of that name) 2. The Man with the Getaway Face 3. The Outfit 4. The Mourner 5. The Score 6. The Jugger 7. The Seventh 8. The Handle 9. The Rare Coin Score 10. The Green Eagle Score 11. The Black Ice Score 12. The Sour Lemon Score 13. Deadly Edge 14. Slayground 15. Plunder Squad 16. Butcher's Moon 17. Comeback 18. Backflash 19. Flashfire 20. Firebreak 21. Breakout 22. Nobody Runs Forever 23. Ask the Parrot 24. Dirty Money The first two or three (or is it four?) essentially set up the Parker character but also are very good. After that, it's almost solid gold. Also, Westlake took a long break (20 years?) between "Butcher's Moon" and "Comeback" and then moved on with great panache. Of the early Parkers, I was especially impressed by "The Seventh," "The Sour Lemon Score," and the trio of "Slayground," "Plunder Squad," and "Butcher's Moon." Of the later Parkers, "Ask the Parrot" is an incredible tour de force IMO.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/books/02...tml?_r=1&hp Rather paltry obit, with at least one unnecessary error -- or so I believe. The writer goes out of her way to say: "Despite the diversity of names [under which Westlake wrote], one shared feature was that almost all his books were set in New York City, where he was born." I'm most familiar with, and especially admire the books Westlake wrote as Richard Stark, and while some of them have scenes set in NYC, most of them take place elsewhere.

Haven't read it for years, but I recall thinking that Blish's "A Case of Conscience" was very good. I'm reading Balzac's "Beatrix" -- my second Balzac in a row, after "The Gondreville Mystery." My first two Balzacs also. Was drawn to these lesser known books because I had reason to feel confident about the translations, believing that with Balzac this was especially crucial. I think I was right on both counts. Balzac is amazing/overwhelming -- semi-insane too, but that's part of the deal; he's unlike any other novelist I know. Here's the IMO very compelling opening of "Beatrix" (1957, Elek Press) trans. by Rosamund and Simon Harcourt-Smith, which I think shows the nature of that British publisher's house style with Balzac translations (they did about six or so, by various hands) -- among other things, retain the knobby, gritty stuff at all costs; ironed-out Balzac is pointless: "Even to this day you find towns in France, and particularly in Brittany, standing completely aloof from the stream of social progress which is a peculiar characteristic of the nineteenth century. Lacking swift and regular communications with Paris, barely linked by abominable roads with the seat of the sub-prefecture of with the principal town of the district from which they draw their life-blood, these town observe the progress of our civilization as if it were a peep-show, gaping at it without necessarily applauding, and because it apparently inspires in them fright or derision, they cling to the ancient customs which are part of their being." It's almost a novel in itself.

I remember being knocked out by a band that Freddie led in 1969 at Ahmad Jamal's Club Tejar on S. Michigan Ave. -- James Spaulding, Kenny Barron, Junie Booth, and (I think) Louis Hayes. That was some rhythm section. Don't believe this particular quintet was recorded.

Thanks. And McKusick had a way with the alto. Excellent clarinetist, too.

What you wrote, and what I have some problem with, is the second sentence of this: "I've heard a lot of his records as a leader and sideman and they're really not much in the scheme of things. Unless you're white and have a thing for neglected Negro jazz musicians." What that says pretty clearly is that the only reason those who think that Gryce is more than "not much in the scheme of things" could have for thinking so is that they are "white and have a thing for neglected Negro jazz musicians." The phrase "unless you're white" doesn't seem to leave much wiggle room. My feelings about Gryce, which are that he's a talented composer and a fair-to-middling soloist, don't have anything to do with his sounding like a "Negro." In fact, if you'd played a Gryce recording for me way back when, before I knew who he was, I might have guessed that he was a blood brother of Hal McKusick (who IMO is a more interesting player, in a somewhat similar, rather delicate-agile vein). On the other hand, I don't think you're a racist for saying what you did -- just someone who's out to provoke.

I've been reading it since the late 70s - the biggest change I've noticed in recent years is that the writers are as likely to have become interested in classical music as a result of listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer as from the what they heard in the music room at Eton or at Mummy's soirees. When I first started reading it there was an assumption that you already knew certain things - it had a rather gentlemen's clubby atmosphere. Today its writers seems very aware that the person reading the magazine might be right at the start of an interest in music, with a very limited background. Some can still be snooty at times but thankfully most seem more concerned to share an enthusiasm for music rather than show off how hard it is to impress them. Its changes reflect the social changes of the last half-century in Britain where interest in classical music has broadened beyond the social and intellectual elites who once saw it as their exclusive domain. ********** I seem to recall the jazz reviews were there in the late 70s, disappeared in the 80s, came back again for a short time (can't recall when), then vanished for good. Yes, the current/recent Gramophone reflects those changes, but I would read what happened differently -- through the lens of the publishers' and editors' (and eventually of course the writers') anxiety to think of some attitude to strike that would woo (or at least not alienate) this new, less elite audience for classical music. The problem, though, is that to the degree that audience exists, I don't think it really needs or wants the Gramophone in any conceivable incarnation. What I would call the pandering and dumbing down that is characteristic of the magazine in recent times (yet another story about some artist whose chief virtues are that he/she is young and cute or voluptuous or handsome and, one hopes, British and, say, plays Radiohead pieces arranged for mallet percussion and orchestra) only further alienates what's left of the old audience without winning over a new one. A further aspect of that problem -- when one read, say, Alan Blyth on opera or song or Robert Layton on Scandinavian symphonists one felt that within reason that they actually believed what they said, that their enthusiasms and disparagements were genuine and based in their responses to the music at hand. Today, I find few Gramophone reviewers and virtually no writers of feature articles who give me that feeling. Instead, their eyes seem to be on their, or their bosses', sense of who we might be and what we might want to hear. It's just another version of what began to happen to newpapers (in America at least) back in the 1980s. Faced with downward readership trends, the bosses decided that readers were being put off by the papers' implicit or explicit air of authority and decided to give it away in public, in effect -- as though this act would in itself be regarded as winning. Our editor famously said: "We want our readers to think of the Tribune as their friend" -- by which he meant, "Tell us what you already like, and we'll give you that." Problem is, even if we were right about what the readers already liked (Lord, the days of focus groups), why the heck assume that they wanted that from us? I mean, even if the evidence about what they already liked was accurate, a moment's thought would suggest that this probably meant that they already were getting a good deal of that from somewhere else. Meanwhile, of course, a paper that had shorn itself of authority in public was only accelerating its eventual worthlessness.

I got on after a glitch or too. Keep trying. Should be fun and useful, too. I have fond memories of the Grandma Gramophone of the old days, before things went haywire -- rampant boosterism (always present to some extent in pockets, but this was madness) being followed by a desparately whorish abdication of all judgment across the board. IIRC, this happened in stages beginning in the mid- to late-1980s. Now it's virtually worthless IMO. Hey, Max Harrison wrote about romantic piano music for them off and on for some years, though I don't see a way to search by authors of reviews.

Well, perhaps you could advise me about a better set of Cab Calloway, Larry. MG I like the orchestra, but Cab himself gives me the creeps, so I'm not the best person for advice. The Mosaic Chu Berry box?

This Mozart Symphony box with Ernest Bour, which I've seen recently at Half-Price Books, is a gem: http://www.amazon.de/The-Essential-Symphon...2786&sr=1-7 or in English but without sound samples: http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Symphonies-No...3106&sr=1-2 Got mine a couple of years ago. Don't know about any of their jazz stuff. Would be reluctant there on moral grounds in any case.

Bassist Eddie DeHaas and pianist Bubi Chen -- both from Indonesia.

Sun Ra

Leaving aside the whole Stalinization thing and probably the notion of deception as well, a great deal of what's cropped up over the years (certainly from WWII on) in Europe and various other non-American scenes fits this description in several respects. First, on the Swedish scene, say, there's been the natural, meaningful infusion of various elements -- folkish, temperamental -- that are part of the national/regional character. Lars Gullin would be one of many examples. Second -- and this is particularly tricky and often fascinating -- when you've got undeniably talented musicians who are attuned to what's going on in the U.S.A. but lack total deep familiarity with that music's context, especially the U.S. scene's elusive sense of what's hip, choices will be made that are very interesting and subtly different than the choices that were being made and would ever be made back in the U.S. A favorite example, because the music's stylistic boundaries are not at all openly unconventional, is the early 1960s work of Sweden's excellent Harry Arnold Orchestra. Some of the writing, by pianist Jan Johannsen and others, might be a personnel offshoot/translation of George Russell's thinking, and who in the U.S. was writing arrangements for big bands in 1962 that showed an interest in George Russell, let alone taking it to personal places? Also, there are two arrangements of Ornette pieces, and both the band and the soloists, especially Arne Domnerus, are way ahead of any of their U.S. counterparts in their understanding of and sympathy toward what Ornette was doing. In part that probably had to do with a certain distance from U.S. scene's then prevailing stylistic/social warfare. Can one imagine, say, Phil Woods playing an Ornette piece with understanding and sympathy in 1962? And then there's the whole crazy Dutch scene, and Germany, and France, etc. Another favorite example is that Tadd Dameron's music had a much greater impact on musicians in Great Britain in the 1950s, hear Jimmy Deuchar's album "Pub Crawling," than it did in the U.S., and that those musicians, many of them Scots like Deuchar, took it to a place of their own.

And plays his ass off!