Larry Kart

Been very impressed by Taborn on disc and in person (especially a gig in NYC in maybe 2003 with Mark Helias, Mark Shim, Eric McPherson, and Herb Robertson -- Helias the leader) but found his own "Junk Magic" http://www.amazon.com/Junk-Magic-Craig-Taborn/dp/B0001LYFQS to be mostly a snooze. My son explained that the gist of "Junk Magic" was oblique takeoffs on the mannerisms of various Detroit-based hip-hop artists, and that you needed to get the references to get the music. Thanks a lot.

Yes, indeed. He began smoking (three packs a day) in early adolescence.

According to Doug Ramsey's Paul Desmond bio, for a time Desmond and Lorillard were an item.

Links to images of John Chamberlain sculptures/constructions: http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_resu...mp;sort_order=1 http://collections.dallasmuseumofart.org/c...currentrecord=1 http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/a...rk_md_29_1.html http://hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/record....e=&Record=3 http://moca-la.org/museum/pc_artwork_detai...=0&y=0&

Link to Wheeler's "What Now": http://www.amazon.com/What-Now-Kenny-Wheeler/dp/B00080Z6IS

I don't have any specific examples because I don't have any recordings of his at present in the collection (or sideman recordings either)--mostly just basing comments on seeing him live, & hearing the odd thing (either borrowing CDs from the library, or things I bought & later sold off, like one of the discs with Dave Douglas). To me in ordinary jazz situations it's like he's always jumping out of the musical context--or making me jump out of the musical context--& not in a good way (a la Dolphy): I find myself thinking "is this guy just pushing buttons?" "does this really suit the mood of the piece?" and so on. His tendency to slip easily into and out of histrionics (distortion, freak notes &c) in particular bothers me--it's like it's purely ornamental. I'm sure this isn't always the case--I tend to have similar reservations about other players of roughly the same generation (e.g. Tony Malaby) where there's a gestural palette that I find impossible to hear without mentally putting everything in quote-marks--but every so often they seem to be in the right context & then things work for me. As with Potter & the group with Taborn. Nate's experiences with Potter jibe with my own -- and I've also had the same reaction to Malaby. "Gestural pallette" is a good way to put it, as is the comparison to Dolphy. The latter (among many other things) took certain musical gestures that were associated with/stood for extreme states of emotion and made them structural, though the fact that those structures were made from those elements remained of some significance (perhaps a la the sculptures that John Chamberlain made out of battered car fenders etc., where the original source of the reshaped materials could be recognized, but the final sculptured "thing" was the main deal and more or less free from any social/emotional narrative). Another way to put it is that I (and I assume Nate) have a problem with players who seem to be saying, "Hey, I'm getting hot now." Also, I do have a few things with Potter as a sideman that I like -- in particular, a 2004 date under Kenny Wheeler's leadership, with John Taylor and Dave Holland ("What Now?") where everyone is in top form. And normally I'm not a big Wheeler fan.

What's meant with "his work"? The content, the software, both? I can't imagine that anyone can have a copyright on this information: [artist] [personnel] [instruments] [date of recording] [location] [tracks] [issued as] [bla] [bla] His copyright notice/warning clearly implies that he does think he has a copyright on that same information. So he steals what others have compiled and then threatens anyone who uses his own compilation of non-copyrightable information. I assume that Lord's copyright notice/warning is essentially an attempt to scare off anyone who might be tempted to steal from him what he already has stolen. I wouldn't think that he'd actually trouble himself to try to take legal action against anyone who copied and disseminated his work (at least on a small scale) -- the goal of the warning is to discourage people from trying to do unto him as he has done. (Think of Lord as a rustler as who is trying to get away with rounding up and then putting his own brand on most everyone else's cattle.)

No, they did not do "exactly the same thing." They (typically) borrowed to some degree (discography does not require that one perpetually re-invent the wheel) but (1) they tended to acknowledge their sources 2) they also did original discographical research, and 3) they tried to incorporate corrections when their errors and omissions were pointed out to them. Lord doesn't "borrow"; he copies wholesale from previously published discographies, usually without acknowledgment (though acknowledgment of wholesale copying of Lord's sort and scale wouldn't make it ethical), does no original research, and does not correct errors. A snapshot of Lord at work from Edward Berger's previously mentioned review of Lord 3.3: "A typical example [of Lord's appropriation without attribution] is the note following his entry for an unissued Coltrane performance of August 1, 1965....: 'The "Untitled" has been mistaken for "A Love Supreme" and "Chasin' the Trane" but it rather has a similarity with "Vigil" although it moves along different patterns.' How did Lord know this? Did he listen to this item? And if he did, would he have recognized the underlying structure of the piece? It turns out he paraphrased (and none too accurately) a note from David Wild's 'The Recordings of John Coltrane: '[the untitled piece] has been identified as "A Love Supreme" and "Chasin' the Trane"; it is, however, an unidentified modal composition quite similar to "Vigil."' This is a particularly egregious case, since Wild's work is not even included in Lord's 'bibliography.'"

Morton.

As I understand it, Lord basically has not and does not "consult" anybody. He merely appropriates (as in "copies") and then collates other people's already published discographical work and is too lazy (or too "efficient") to do any research on his own. After all, time is money, and he's won the game he's playing.

Just to put these facts and point of view on the record, here's something I posted on another board several months ago. In particular, note the distinction made -- in Edward Berger's review [in the "Annual Review of the Institute of Jazz Studies 12"] of Lord quoted from below -- between Lord's methods and those of ethical discographers: > Bob VanLangen <bobvl@...> wrote: > > Today's Wall Street Journal has a most interesting article on the > discographer Tom Lord, written by John McDonough who is, for my > money, the best reviewer DownBeat has at present. It is a half page > overview of Lord's work. Starting with the 1917 recordings by the > Original Dixieland Jass Band it covers the 582 recordings of Misty, > 1675 of Body and Soul, 1184 of 'Round Midnight... and so it goes. > As I have noted before, this is not the first time the WSJ devotes > a full half page (what an oxymoron!) to jazz and the Great American > Songbook... good for them! Let's hope Rupert Murdoch's hitmen keeps > their avaricious paws off this space. Haven't read McDonough's piece yet, but it should be said that Lord is at the least an ethically challenged figure, if not an outright plagarist, and that his work is grossly unreliable. I quote from Edward Berger's review in the "Annual Review of Jazz Studies 12" of Lord's "The Jazz Discography Version 3.3": "Unfortunately, the content is not always as reliable as the software. Anyone who has paged through 'The Jazz Discography' will quickly discover its anomalies, idiosyncrasies, and out-and-out errors. Duplicate entries are a frequent problem... Other common errors include transposed issue numbers, incorrect record company names... inconsistent forms of label names, incorrect release information" etc. "Overall, one gets the impression that Lord is more a collator than a researcher. He has collected massive amounts of information from a variety of sources, often without applying critical judgment or even common sense. "Lord's copyright notice includes the standard wording: 'The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted, in any form by any means... without prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.' Had Lord himself heeded this warning, 'The Jazz Discography' would not exist. Discography, particularly comprehensive discography, is by its nature a cumulative endeavor, with new works building upon the base of knowledge established by earlier researchers, a well as by informal networks of current contributors. But the massive amount of material lifted by Lord verbatim form other works has crossed a line.... [O]ne may not [according to the U.S. Copyright Law] copyright 'works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship.... Applying those guidelines to the world of discography, one need not credit any particular source for the recording date of Armstrong's 'West End Blues,' since it is available in countless works. But Lord has appropriated without attribution vast amounts of original information, particularly from the more detailed bio-discographies.... "By Lord's own admission to Barry Kernfeld [co-author with Howard Rye of the essay "Comprehensive Discographies of Jazz, Blues, and Gospel"] 60 to 65 percent of 'The Jazz Discography' was taken from [Walter] Bruyninckx (who himself took freely from [Jorgen] Jepsen), not to mention the copious copying from more specialized discographies.... "Kernfeld and Rye concluded their comprehensive assessment of jazz discography by advising music librarians against purchasing Lord's work on ethical grounds.... Counterculture gadfly Abbie Hoffman may have provided the answer to this moral dilemma when he wrote 'Steal This Book.' Perhaps the ultimate justice would be to borrow [Lord's] CD-ROM and copy it. But that, of course, would be illegal." I should add that, in CD-ROM versions of his work subsequent to the version Berger reviewed, Lord has corrected few of the vast number of factual errors that have been pointed in reviews of "The Jazz Discography" written by those knowledgable in the field.

Jolly said that his inspiration was singer-accordion player Joe Mooney, who was a popular figure in the 1940s. Gunther Schuller raves about Mooney's subtle, in some ways musically quite advanced combo (clarinet, accordion, bass and drums) in "The Swing Era," and there are (or were) two collections on the Hep label of Mooney's '40s work. Mooney's music certainly has its charm, but for me a little goes a long way -- it's a bit on the cocktail-lounge hip side. Also, Enevoldsen doubled on a lot of instruments, tenor sax and bass as well as valve trombone and accordian (though the last I've never heard from him). I wouldn't be surprised if he made a few sides on musical saw.

Correction -- the name is Mat Mathews, not Matthews.

There's some Jolly accordion on the Fresh Sound compilation "Pete Jolly -- Quartet, Quintet, and Sextet." I recall his accordion work as being pleasant and swinging, but based on admittedly limited experience (for one, I've never heard Tommy Gumina) my favorite jazz accordionist is Holland's Mat Matthews, who made at least two albums for Dawn in the 1950s. The one with Art Farmer, Gigi Gryce, Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Clarke et al. is really nice and includes a heroic Pettiford cello solo on his own piece "Now See How You Are."

Konitz from 1957 or so with a string quartet (excellent Bartok-flavored arrangement by Bill Russo): http://www.amazon.com/Lee-Konitz-Meets-Jim...e/dp/B0000046ZG

A raft of interesting Bregman stories from his website: http://www.buddybregman.com/stories.html Some of what he says there confirms that he hardly knew what he was doing as an arranger early on, but it seems pretty likely that that he learned.

I'll check to make sure the "Fable of Mabel" one is the same piece, but if so (which seems more than likely), it also more than likely that "Slam!" is a typo or record producer's ignorance/mishearing.

That's it. And I've got both of them. It was "The Swinging Sounds" version that was in the back of my mind, but it refused to migrate from back to front.

I remember reading one of a series of long autobiographical posts by trombonist Milt Bernhart on the Jazz West Coast list several years ago (BTW, I can't call up that list any more, anyone know why?) in which Bernhart was quite caustic about the rote blandness of Bregman's writing. Bernhart also made it clear that this was not just his opinion; rather, there was consternation throughout the band at what they were expected to play. (I think this was on Bergman's first date with Ella Fitzgerald.) The feeling was that the Jules Styne connection got Bregman his gigs, though what leverage Styne had on Granz I don't know.

BTW, I'm not trying to come on like an Ivory Tower elitist here. I know from experience what it's like to write something honest and would-be clever that is read the next morning by, potentially, 800,000 people, and that sometimes -- by accident (usually of given subject matter) as much as design -- is noticed by a fair number of those potential readers, who then make it quite clear that what you wrote got them het up one way or another. That can be both fun and fairly weird and is at odd times arguably even valuable, but there's no way to talk about jazz since maybe the heyday of Leonard Feather that's even remotely comparable -- and if you're going to talk about it honestly, then your potential audience is even smaller. But it's still fun and (in the eyes of some) necessary to do, and, if you and others value it, valuable.

Not to bore y'all, as EDC might put it, but I don't think of my book is being that lost. It got about seven or eight reviews, maybe more, every one was favorable, and several who wrote about it got exactly what I was trying to say. Also, it got into the hands of a fair number of people here, and their responses were everything I could have wished for. OTOH, I think EDC is talking more about the machinery of exposure/reception, and there he has a point. Dealing with Ratliff and Ross's books seems to be obligatory on the part of many major publications, in part (perhaps mostly) because Ratliff and Ross themselves write for major publications (the best review I got -- most favorable and most insightful -- was from a new name to me at the time, Stephen Schwartz, who wrote it for a classical website whose name I don't recall). But, then, if my book was as nice as I hoped it might be, I still think I came out ahead in the exposure/reception game, because if Ratliff and Ross's books are as empty as some of us think they are, it doesn't matter if they're reviewed all over the place and sell a fair number of copies -- except in terms of money (and I'll bet it won't be that much money for those two authors or their publishers; you'll probably see both books on remainder tables by next year) and the noise level inside the echo chamber in which Ratliff and Ross already exist. But if I've made, say, Jim Sangrey or EDC or -- fill in the blank -- think a thought that they otherwise might not have thought and that they then find interesting/stimulating, what more do I want? It should all be carved in cuneiform on stone tablets and buried in the sacred tomb of Ra?

Indeed, Mr. Ross is in the "tantalizing hints" business.

Unless you forgot to add a smiley face or the like, are you're saying that Walt Whitman wrote science fiction?

LaFaro said in an interview in "The Jazz Review" in 1959 or 1960 that "I don't ... like any of my records except maybe the first one that I did with Pat Moran on Audio Fidelity." Recorded in Dec. 1957, "This Is Pat Moran" (with pianist Moran and drummer Johnny Whited) is now out again, coupled with vocalist Beverly Kelly's Audio Fidelity album with Moran's trio. LaFaro is in quite hellacious form, gets a lot of solo space on the eight trio tracks, and is vividly recorded, too. Pat (full first name no doubt Patricia) Moran was from Cincinnati (as was Kelly). The links below lay out their backgrounds and what they've been up to in recent years. The classically trained Moran's formative influence is said to be Oscar Peterson, but she sounds more like Kenny Drew to me -- albeit rather too cocktail lounge-bluesy, if you know what I mean. On the other hand, Moran has good time, and she and LaFaro and are locked-in rhythmically. Kelly is one of those singers of that era who were poised on the jazz-cabaret edge; the conception is hip (or "hip"), the execution a bit studied. Moran was not conventionally attractive, but for some reason the Ray Avery photo of her on the back of the CD case fascinates me. Perhaps it's because she looks so casually real -- her expression, at once "flat" and alert, looks like she's waiting to come in after the drummer finishes a four- or eight-bar break. http://cdbaby.com/cd/patti http://cdbaby.com/cd/kellyfelber

Tunes whose titles are taken from specific novels or tales is what I had in mind. Thus, the Ornette and McBride recordings wouldn't count, or the Corea pieces or lots of Sun Ra things either.