Larry Kart

A variant: Custer: "Those drums, those incessant drums -- they're driving me mad!" Indian scout: "Trouble come only when drums stop." Custer: "Good Lord -- what happens then?" Scout: "Bass solo."

Borrowed and slightly modified from another site: Two East Coast-based musicians are traveling to their next gig in Chicago in separate cars. First musician gets to the club and is told that his buddy has died tragically on a bridge in Indiana. First musician says: "There is no bridge in 'Indiana.'"

It would take a Rhino Box to hold the present-day Aretha.

Help -- let me out of here! I'm innocent, I tell you, innocent...

There we are, three musical families. And Scott Robinson is f------ nuts, in a good way.

It sure is. Never heard anything of his that didn't intrigue me, though I wish there were more of it. On the other hand, a la Webern, the smallish size of his output is a sign of an at best sublimely fastidious mind at work.

It turns out that the Berger book is accessible. Here is the passage, from an April 24, 1953 review of a New York Philharmonic concert: "Mr. Rochberg, who is in his early 30s, was the 1952 winner of the Gershwin Memorial Contest, which is open to young American composers. One of the substantial rewards for winners of this contest is performance of the prize work by the Philharmonic, and it was thus that we came to hear 'Night Music.' It turned out to be a meager ten minutes of m usic by a young composer who knows how to reproduce the tenuous orchestral colors of Impressionism with a fair degree of expertness. "According to the program notes provided by the composer 'Night Music' was from a symphony that had one movement too many, and the name was given to the piece after it was extracted from the symphony. We are told that 'night' is to be interpreted in a broad way as 'a symbol of whatever is dark, unknown, awesome, mysterious or demonic.' Both this program and the grotesque opening solo for contra-bassoon immediately put me in mind of the modern dance events on Fifty-second St. Valiantly as the player tried to redeem this solo in the deep dark pitch regions that seem almost below the margin of hearing, the result was a highly unprepossessing opening. It sorely c4ried out for some strakm eexpresionsitc, tortured stage counterpart. "There followed a promising section that verged, in a mild way, on a valid episodic, spasmodic contemporary chromaticism. But in less than two minutes this gave way to a far too easy solution for the piece as a whole, namely, a prolonged sonority consisting largely of muted harmonies on the strings, against which the cello play a long improvisatory solo after the fashion of Bloch's 'Schelomo.' Laszlo Varga's cello tone was very pretty, but the music was empty and banal. "'Night Music' dates from four years ago. The composer tells us that it preceded his 'first efforts in the technique of twelve-tone composition,' and we may assume from this intelligence that he means to say he has gone on to higher things since. The Gershwin committee must have had very slim pickings, indeed, to come up with this work as the prize-winner." Sure, there may be some envy at work here on Berger's part, but "empty and banal" would-be soulful lyricism against a backdrop of the table-pounding grandiose ("'night" as "a symbol of whatever is dark, unknown, awesome, mysterious or demonic" -- love that "whatever") is exactly how most Rochberg hits me.

Larry -- I'd be interested to know more about your experience with the Rochberg quartets. While I like the few of his early chamber works that I've encountered ("Serenata d'estate"), I'm sitting on the fence with respect to much of his other work. Not essential, and not easy to track down, but I have a mid-50s Columbia recording that pairs Lukas Foss' String Quartet No.1 with William Bergsma's String Quartet No. 3. Both interesting examples of how American composers at mid-century were trying to work around the overwhelming influence exerted by serialism. Glorious mono to boot. Probably I should hold off on answering for a while, because my somewhat inchoate sense of dissatisfaction with Rochberg's music of any period (not just when he turned neo-Romantic, or whatever you want to call it) was perfectly crystallized by a review by composer-critic Arthur Berger of a prize-winning Rochberg work of the late '40s or early '50s, which is collected in a Berger book, "Reflections of a Composer," but most of my books are inaccessible to me right now. (Berger BTW is a fine composer.) It had something to do with Rochberg's music making all these sweepingly dramatic, flexed-muscle gestures, but there was so little musical substance, or even real moment-to-moment musical activity, underneath all the leaping and grunting. Whatever, Berger really nailed it, and I think it was in a review that he had to write back at the paper (the New York Herald Tribune) right after the concert.

Zemlinsky and Krenek. Rochberg. And I used to own them all, or all that were recorded. What a feeling of enlightment/liberation when I realized they needed to be dumped.

These two Andrew Imbrie (3&5) quartets (Sessions-like tough but quite individual) have never worn out their welcome with me: http://www.amazon.com/Andrew-Imbrie-String...5057&sr=1-1

Don't forget Janacek and Szymanowki. Only two each, but...

Rawsthorne 1-3 on Naxos with the Maggini. There's also a Flesch Quartet disc of the Rawsthorne quartets disc that includes an early quartet from 1935. The Maggini performances are better, but I keep both discs.

Sounds like it should have been Groucho, but it's commonly attributed to Red Skelton. It's Harry Cohn BTW, subject of a famous line from Herman Mankiewicz (screenwriter of "Citizen Kane"): What Columbia Pictures released depended on Harry Cohn's determination of what Columbia Pictures should release. "When I'm alone in a projection room," said Cohn, "I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad. If my fanny squirms, it's bad. If my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good. It's as simple as that." To which Herman Mankiewicz retorted, "Imagine, the whole world wired to Harry Cohn's ass!"

And don't forget Vic and Uncle Fletcher's good friend Rishigan Fishigan from Sishigan, Michigan.

They might have changed the name, but those are still the colors. Orlo Spatz is excellent. My wife recalled from her parents' generation or thereabouts Clyde Baysore and Delbert Finniger. On "Vic and Sade," members of Vic's lodge included Hunky J. Sponger, Y.Y. Flirch, J.J.J.J. Stunbolt, Harry Fie, I. Edson Box, Homer U. McDancy, H.K. Fleeber, Robert and Slobert Hink, and O.X. Bellyman. And Vic and Sade themselves were Victor and Sadie Gook.

Though Ruby no doubt was fond of SH's playing, did he think he was better than Sam Margolis? Also, frequency of appearances together on record is not necessarily proof of what you seem to think it proves. Witness, Al Cohn and Osie Johnson, Milt Jackson and John Lewis, or Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

And they didn't see that coming? Well-played.

Your Dad was a Warrior?

Depending whether or not you regard the piano as a percussion instrument, the multi-talented Feldman's skills were confined to one family of instruments, two tops.

OK -- interesting. But, as you've said to me several times on other threads, I think you're over-thinking things here. In particular, given the nature of American society, in most places and at most times, if one possesses a reasonable taste for physical fun and a good deal of hand-eye co-ordination, you're going to successfully participate as an adolescent in some form of athletics and also enjoy and be good at social dancing.

My late father-in-law and mother-in-law -- born in the mid-1920s in small towns in Kansas -- were dedicated jitterbugs when young, or so I was told. Once, when they were in their late 50s or early 60s, I was over at their house when someone put on an old Glenn Miller record, something like "Little Brown Jug," and they danced to it. They weren't Savoy Ballroom flashy, but their time and sense of swing were fantastic -- total interaction with the music. And I'm quite sure that Don Lentz (that was my father-in-law's name) was never regarded with suspicion by anyone along those lines by any "regular" white male; he being one of them quintessentially, in the good sense. There was an almost genetic tradition in that family of being good on your feet. Don was a meet-winning high jumper in high school; and Jack Dobson, my wife's uncle on her mother's side, though he had a fireplug-like physique, was a remarkably skilled and graceful roller skater, could skate backwards as fast and as fluidly as he could forwards, and that was damn fast.

Pitty he never knew how while he was still alive. You're a cruel man -- or rooster.

While listening to "The Bill Holman Band Live" (Jazzed Media), rec. 2005, I learned from Holman's tune announcements that it's not "Enn-e-vold-sen," as I'd always thought, but "Een-e-vold-sen." Fine album; Enevoldsen gets two solo spots. BTW, Enevoldsen may have been among the most varied multi-instrumentalists in jazz. In addition to valve-trombone, he recorded professionally on tenor saxophone and bass (three musical families: brass, reeds, and strings) and also played trombone and baritone horn (don't know if played them on record). (BE also was a composer-arranger.) Ira Sullivan, of course, played trumpet, a host of saxophones, probably flute, and drums (maybe more), and that's at least three musical families, assuming you think of the drums as a musical instrument. Anyone else who's notable and is a three-families (or more) man? I'm certainly wowed by Tubby Hayes's skill on tenor, flute, and vibes (he played bari too, and probably some soprano) but that's just two families.

Anglo-Irish composer Elizabeth Maconchy: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/fyfeholt/macnaghten.htm who wrote 13 string quartets -- all very good (in what was initially a kind of personal offshoot of Bartok and then became all her) all recorded, all those recordings now probably oop. (I have them -- I think thanks to Berkshire at one time.)

I agree with you about the quality of Ruby's work but don't think of him as a swing player, just as Ruby. While he was certainly taken up by the Mainstream-coining jazz journalists in the '50s and made a lot of recordings through their agency and advocacy, I believe that if none of that had existed, Ruby might well have never have played a note otherwise than the way he did. Further, Ruby did some astonishing things -- e.g. with space, dynamics, and use of the lower register -- that had little or no precedent in previous jazz of any era, though Ruby would no doubt say that it all goes back to Louis Armstrong (and be right about that up to a point ... but only up to a point).