Larry Kart

Well, considering that there have been many psycho-acoustic studies that demonstrated that human acoustic memory is only about 10 seconds, you would be a supreme human specimen to hold an acoustic memory for as long as 120 to 200 amp conversion would take. If you're listening to same very-familiar-to-you recordings on either side of the conversion? No problem with me either way the science goes -- the upgrade was for other reasons. I am, however, now having my own personal power plant constructed in the backyard.

To change the tune just a bit, what about the possible effects on your system of having your household power upgraded from 120 amps to 200 amps? I had that done recently -- to make possible a potential kitchen remodeling among other things (a good many of today's appliances need more than 120 amps) -- and I thought I could hear quite a difference. Of course, that was as close to a without-controls, wishful-thinking "test" as could be, but what about the science of the effects or non-effects of such an upgrade? Sense or nonsense?

That's good news. About when was that, if you remember? Right when it came out, as far as I can recall. That's what I thought. I'm just glad that there was a stack of copies somewhere. One reason I was happy that I had that (I think) marvelously atmospheric snapshot of Ira Sullivan, Johnny Griffin, and bassist Nevin Wilson to give them to use on the cover is that I thought it made for as good a cover as could be for a jazz book, and that if I worked in a book store, I might put the book on display for that reason alone. As one musician (saxophonist Tim Armacost) said of the cover after I'd sent him a copy of the book: "Nice shades."

On those Fantasy LPs, Strand played the Baldwin organ FWIW. I assume that the Baldwin and the Hammond B-3 are two very different animals.

Never heard his records -- there were two, I think, for Fantasy where I assume he got to do things his way (or if I did hear them, I don't recall them) -- but the Chicago-based Strand certainly had a good reputation. Actually, I do vaguely and unreliably recall that Strand might have been a bit like Joe Mooney -- very sophisticated harmonically, with a light touch and a setup on the instrument that was easy on the vibrato.

But what about Irene Young's "Rhythmic Movements"? On radio?

Ah! Thanks for reminding me Larry. I knew I'd come across those sort of quaintly indirect titles that Bill Heid loves before, but couldn't think of where. MG Fascinating pieces, too.

A fine album, but isn't the stereo spread/separation (at least on the OJC CD) kind of extreme? The only album I can think of that's as weird that way is the Frank Rosolino-led date with Harold Land on Speciality. Without going back and checking, wasn't a very wide spread with lots of separation/isoslation between instruments Riverside's way for a while (c.f. Blue Mitchell's "The Cup Bearers")?

Dick Twardzik's "A Crutch for the Crab" and "Albuquerque Social Swim."

That's good news. About when was that, if you remember?

There's also the tune that Mandel wrote for Al Cohn, "El Cajon."

Manny Albam's "Claude Reigns", featuring Claude Williamson with the Charlie Barnet Orchestra in 1949, would be another example of a play on words virtually lost in time. Not as long as "Casablanca" and "Notorious" are shown. Also, never heard it myself and I can't find it on the Internet, but a friend once mentioned a Fugs tune titled (I think) "Squawk Man Meets The Lunatic Vagina."

Johnny Mandel's "Keester Parade" and "London Derriere." Also his "Groover Wailin'" -- though the play on words is virtually lost in time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Whalen

Or Allen Eager.

But, Allen, I love the Village Vanguard Evans trio. It's what I think happened (or became more visible) later on that led to my dire speculations.

Actually, the book itself is mostly short paragraphs; that's the rhythm of newspaper writing. I guess for me, though, there's something about posting that leads to one continuous, uncensored gush, at least when I get excited. I'll try to watch that. Until I do, though, stand back. And sorry about that image.

Many thanks to Tushar. I check his calendar regularly and wouldn't know what I'd do without it. In a city where the scene is as yeasty as Chicago's is, what he's doing is essential to the overall health and liveliness of things.

So "moderators" don't tell us they edited their posts! I thought that when you did that, the fact that you'd done it was noted by the system automatically. In fact, I know that's happened every other time I've edited a post. Maybe it didn't happen this time because I didn't change any words, just hit the "return" key several times. Interesting.

So THAT'S why the book didn't sell. I'll fix this in a minute.

Not yet, probably not ever -- I'm still in the hole versus the publisher's modest advance, at least according to their figures. But I never expected to or cared about making any money from the book; I just wanted to assemble what's in there in the right way, add some good new stuff where it fitted, have the book look and feel nice, and have it fall into the hands of a fair number of the not very large group of people who would find it interesting. I think I'm ahead of the game on all counts. Certainly on the last one, word of mouth on this board has made a big difference; even though every review the book got was positive, several were more than that, and one was to die for, few of those reviews ran in places where favorable reviews "sell." Also, and this does bug me, the publisher's catalog placed its announcement of the book way in the back (which signaled to their sales staff that it was an unimportant title in the publisher's eyes), and thus I'm sure that the sales staff then made little effort to place it in bookstores. I certainly never saw it in any of the three Borders stores near me. Also, several friends ordered it from the their local Barnes & Noble store and were told after a wait of a month or two that copies could not be found. This I think has to do with an odd fact of the book business: brick-and-mortar stores don't get their books from publishers, they get them from intermediate, regional distribution firms, who actually maintain the warehouses in which books are stored and from which they flow to the stores as needed. If the publisher, expecting not to sell many copies of a particular book, sends or is asked to send not that many copies of the book to the regional distribution firms, when those copies have gone out to the stores, the distribution firms can get more copies only by ordering them from the publisher, which the distribution firms are loath to do because it's a small, specialized task, nor, I believe, is the publisher itself all that crazy about sending out to, say, Des Moines five or ten copies of a book that it never cared about in the first place. As Clausewitz wrote, a key but often forgotten element in warfare is "friction." And this attitude and these effects run up and down the publishing/book store food chain and sideways too. For example, when a friend visited a well-known, well-regarded, non-chain bookstore in Manhattan, found that they didn't have a copy of the book and tried to order it, the bored young clerk refused to accept his order, explaining that this would be too much trouble. So I'm pretty sure that almost everybody who bought the book already know about me, already wanted to buy it, and then ordered it online. Don't know how many books on this and similar subjects are sold because they caught someone's eye on a bookstore shelf, or better in a bookstore display, but I'd be surprised if more than five copies were sold that way. Again, that bugs me for at least two reasons: Why go to all the trouble of publishing a book if you're going to make so little effort to sell it, and how many people out there who might have enjoyed the book never found out that it existed? About the first reason, I should add that the wonderful veteran editor (himself a former newspaper music critic [classical] and author of several excellent books) who asked me to write the book in the first place left the publishing firm in mid-stream, so it might have been an orphaned book in-house for that reason alone. The young woman who took his place on the project certainly made it clear that she thought that I and the book were s--t on her shoe. A Sarah Silverman type, now that I think of it, but with no sense of humor. On the other hand, the production people I dealt with were ideally caring and skillful. And I am, despite these complaints, still ahead of the game.

Actually, my OK little house is on a lot that has a lot of nice old-growth trees, as does the entire block. You can tell the difference just one block west, where there were few trees when the houses there were built some 30 or so years ago. The ones that were planted then are a nice size now, but their location looks planned; "our" trees were there before the houses on our block were built, a whole different feel. The back 25 percent of my backyard is pretty close to a forest.

But did you check out the cover of Katya's album? Or maybe you did.

The band's performance sounds pretty "in there" rhythmically to me.

Video of two Hungarian fiddlers playing "Four Brothers" with a tasty, relaxed big band: The above via Doug Ramsey's "Rifftides." The female fiddler is Katica Illenyi.

Joe Henderson in person was much more toward the soft end of the spectrum than Warne Marsh was, at least in my experience. Or perhaps it's that Warne, in terms of dynamics, seemed as though he could do whatever he wanted and needed to do, while JH, when I heard him in a club, seemed kind of "restricted" volume-wise, as though some of his ideas would be "happier" if they could be played more loudly. Didn't he eventually have emphysema or emphysema-like symptoms? Also, a player whose dynamic range in person was startling, who could make his sound bounce beneficently off the back wall of just about any room or auditorium, was Stan Getz.