Larry Kart

In particular, does anyone know who wrote/recorded the piece "Slan" (almost certainly named after the A.E. Van Vogt novel)? Also, Shorty Rogers "Martians Come Back" doesn't count.

How lovely that Wynton would turn up bonded to a Pritzker offspring. The gumbo thickens.

The several times I heard her in clubs, that was my impression. Gave me a headache.

My (and Chuck Nessa's) friend Terry Martin wrote never surpassed (IMO) essays about Art Pepper, Coleman Hawkins, Ornette Coleman, and others (plus topnotch reviews) for Jazz Monthly in the early 1960s.

That one is a gem, as I may have eaid earlier in this thread. Max at his best, plus brilliant contributions from Cooke and James, and very good work from Atkins and Morgan. Unfortunately, my copy walked away from me several years ago, damnit.

About this part: "Of course, jazz, which emerged from post-Reconstruction black America, wasn’t like any other art. Its primary promise — which attracted Larkin, among millions of others — was to entertain a paying audience..." A passage from my book: "Obviously there had been a shift in values--in the music and in the society, too. And among those who prefer the orderliness and optimism of older jazz styles to the hectic beauties of bebop, one often hears the complaint that none of this need to have occurred. At one time, so the argument goes, jazz musicians were content to think of themselves as entertainers, not self-conscious artists. If the practitioner of modern jazz wants to please himself and his peers first and the audience second, if at all, he must endure the consequences of this unrealistic, willful act. "The problem with that argument, though, as British saxophonist Bruce Turner says in his whimsically titled autobiography Hot Air, Cool Music, “is that scarcely any jazz musicians are able to recognize this picture of themselves. There are some jazzmen who are great entertainers. Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Lionel Hampton come immediately to mind. But they are the exception, not the rule. For the most part those of us who play jazz for a living do not know any way of entertaining an audience other than by making the best music we are capable of…. The ‘jazz is entertainment’ theory is only about money, when you boil it down. Jazz finds itself sponsored by the entertainment industry, and in return the latter feels entitled to demand its pound of flesh. Fair enough, but why in heaven's name confuse the issue? The distinction between what is done for love and what is done for quick cash is an obvious one.” Also, while Larkin was a dickhead about a fair number of things, he never felt that jazz was attractive because its "primary purpose ... was to entertain a paying audience." Yes, he was drawn to the relative unpretentiousness of early jazz versus things that he felt to be self-consciously "artistic," but obviously there was a whole lot of wildly popular, unpretentious, and money-making art that Larkin didn't care for at all. A dickhead, at times, but not an idiot.

Selections from the above on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...p;search=Search

To hear/see Peacock at a youthful, brilliant (though arguably somewhat egomanical) peak, check out this 1962 Jazz Casual broadcast with Shorty Rogers: http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Scene-USA-Shell...y/dp/B00005LDCO

This Bunky Green album on Vanguard, "Places We've Never Been" (with R. Brecker as a sideman) is topnotch for everyone: http://www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/album/al...?ALBUMID=965074 Hell of a rhythm section: Albert Daily, Eddie Gomez (on his best behavior IIRC), and Freddie Waits.

In that interview, Charles's chronology is way off at one point. Benny Goodman's infamous (among bandmembers) tour of Russia took place in 1961, not just before Charles joined Chubby Jackson back in 1949.

Tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin's father was/is a California-based vibes player. Drummer Ben Perowsky recorded an album, "Bop On Pop," with his tenor saxophonist father, Frank Perowsky ( a fine player). On the other hand, pianist Bruce Barth is not related to drummer Benny Barth (of The Mastersounds).

Bethany Pickens

Half woman, half Theremin. On the other hand, Benny Carter was a big fan and hired her to sing with his big band. But then, now that I think about it, and though Carter is one of my favorites, there were times when his vibrato and Olay's were somewhat similiar.

Here's Olay with Ellington from a 1959 Timex Jazz Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOynOuc84KM It is an unusual voice -- that prominent, plush vibrato, for one thing. Also, she certainly looks the way she sounds.

It's not a matter of me or you. It's about the actual and potential life of "it." For example: Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requris. nescio, sed fieri sentio ed excrucior. I hate and I love. You ask me why. I don't know, but I feel that agony. -- Catullus If you will come I shall put out new pillows for you to rest on -- Sappho I was so happy Believe me, I prayed that that night might be doubled for us -- Sappho Here in these mountains, our farewell over, sun sinking away, I close my brushwood gate. Next spring, grasses will grow green again. And you, my old friend -- will you be back too? -- Wang Wei All these things came to us from fairly ancient times, in the case of Sappho and Catullus by mere threads and shards of accident. As Sappho said in another poem: You may forget but Let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us

Yup II. And of course it will make a difference, Jim -- how could it not? Stuff that's been shaped into art of some sort tends to give off signals, however erratically, for millenia, unless it's been pulverized into non-existence. Heck, I've been getting a big kick in recent months out of the novels of Anthony Trollope, and until I got to the age I am now, I thought or assumed (probably some of both) that Trollope's novels were as dull and stuffy as 19th Century fiction could possibly be. Now I'm picking up the signals that say otherwise, but they were always there, independent of my previous inability to detect them.

... and what did it sound like that was coming out of the Leslie? It sounded like perfectly normal, single-note stuff. It was the visual part -- the mock (I hope) slurping and the actual twirling and wiggling of the tongue -- that was the show. Sorry if I've ruined your breakfast.

I once saw Don Patterson use his tongue on the B-3 keyboard, "humorously" simulating cunnilingus. Showmanship.

Lazaro -- You probably mean this, from the "book": "Marsalis remains a skilled instrumentalist, but he has never been a strikingly individual soloist. As for his orchestral works, their relative poverty of invention becomes clear when they are placed alongside the likes of George Russell’s Chromatic Universe and Living Time, Oliver Nelson’s Afro-American Sketches, Bill Holman’s Further Adventures, Muhal Richard Abrams’s The Hearinga Suite, Bob Brookmeyer’s Celebration, John Carter’s Roots and Folklore, and, of course, the more successful orchestral works of Ellington himself."

I think that it includes shipping It does not.

I love the way the bird lays out toward the end.

http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=xGJaz64lrJ4

A post of mine from 12/06: A Frenchman, born in 1903, who settled in the U.S. in 1926 and died in 1998, Ericourt was a fabled Debussy interpreter who recorded the complete piano works for the Kapp label in the 1960-62. I'd heard of these recordings but never heard them, then noticed that they were at Berkshire on Ivory Classics: Debussy, The Complete Solo Piano Music. (Daniel Ericourt) Add to cart | Price: $ 19.96 | 4 in set. | Country: AMERICA | D/A code: Analogue | Code: 73006 | BRO Code: 123558 | Label: IVORY CLASSICS So far, they are a revelation. Ericourt tends to be on the dry and clear side, so be forwarned if you like your Debussy cloudy and dreamy, but having said that I'd claim that Ericourt's approach is not a matter of taste (as in, how do you like your Debussy?) but of insight. Seldom have I had the feeling to this degree (conductor Jascha Horenstein would be another case) that music that I thought I knew well was being understood so truly at the level of compositional intent, after which it's more or less a matter of chops, and Ericourt has them. In one sense, this is particularly evident at the level of drama/storytelling, and Debussy has that level -- witness his request to Marguerite Long, when she was working on Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the rain) with the composer: "More sun please! It is about children dancing around in the Luxembourg Gardens. The rain stopped. Now there is beautiful sunshine." For example, in Ericourt's reading of Dansueses de Delphe (Dancers of Delphi), from Preludes Book I, the dancers are simply (in fact, not so simply, in terms of execution) right there -- the sense of limbs being extended, feet planted, turns executed, etc. is palpable -- while in Youri Egerov's lovely, hazy, then imperious reading, it's all about graded shadings and textures at the keyboard; the approach is painterly, little or no sense of dance. Similarly, in the first of the Etudes, Pour les 'cinq doights (d'Apres Monsiuer Czerny), a key question is what is the composer's attitude toward the Czerny exercises that are being sent up here. Yes, they're being "sent up," but what happens dramatically in the piece, what are the impulses and reactions and their effects? Not that one needs to be literal, but Ericourt's plot goes something like this -- one's mind and fingers are irritated by the familiar, drudging dogmatic exercises; this translates explosively into rebellious anger, which then energizes/hurls the mind and fingers into triumphant/delirous fantasy. Again, I apologize for the literalness of this; but in Ericourt's hands, the realization of this story in sound clearly IS the germ of the piece (or so I'm convinced), especially when one hears readings, no matter how digitally adept, in which the interpreter's (actually, of course, the composer's) attitude toward the Czerny material is left unformed dramatically or never even comes up. The only drawback to this set is that it's dubbed from LPs -- the original tapes are not and probably never will be available -- but the bits of surface noise I hear are no problem for me.

First thought is that there are "macro" surprises, like those that Dan mentioned -- "Klook or Max Roach transforming the sound/contribution of drums, Parker or Gillespie, Ornette, when he first got attention" -- and there are lots and lots of those, though perhaps fewer in recent years, and then there are "micro" surprises, where musicians whose styles are more or less familiar to us manage infuse their work with a sense of choice/intensity/discovery in the moment. A few examples that come to mind are Konitz, who does this pretty much always (and whose very existence musically arguably was one those "macro" surprises); then, going back a fair bit, Johnny Dodds at his best (e.g. his solo and ensemble work on "Perdido St. Blues" from 1926, with Kid Ory and George Mitchell); and Tom Harrell on a new album of his, "Light On," that I listened to for the first time tonight. All three of those examples (and thousands upon thousands of others) have a version of that "in the moment" quality mentioned above, and heaven knows that there are thousands upon thousands of jazz performances that don't have that quality, most of which I don't find interesting. What is interesting about the three that popped into my head -- Konitz (actually a performance I listened to tonight, "Hi Beck" from, purely by coincidence, the album "The Sound of Surprise"), Dodds, and Harrell -- is that their "nownesses" are a bit different. Konitz, as always, is just ("just"?) making up melodies on the spot, while Harrell, who arguably is doing or trying to do much the same thing in his way, often strikes me as being close to in a quandry as to how his lines will proceed, though I then find this air of what might be called crystallized doubt to be appealing -- because it is usually crystallized; so often, so it seems to me, on the edge of being hung up, Harrell does typically get there, by a hair's breadth. By contrast -- and this is subjective -- Konitz's risk-taking doesn't leave with me much or any sense of doubt; rather, it feels like an adventure we're sharing in a mood of mutual confidence, even though specific pathways will prove to be mutually unexpected. But Dodds now -- that's another kind of thing. First, the figures he's working with in his "Perdido St." solo are even then pretty standard ones. But damn they don't sound that way -- in part because Dodd's sound in itself is such an intense, in the moment thing. Later on, revivalists would try to impersonate that harrowingly shrill, diamond-hard and dense mass of overtones, but its actuality seems to say, in addition to whatever else it says (and Dodds's solo certainly says some lovely things rhythmically), that "I, Johnny Dodds, made this thing (and/or this way of making things), and no one can ever erase the 'presentness' and the personalness of that invention." Thus, perhaps, the sound of surprise that can exist in the work of such figures as Johnny Hodges or Milt Jackson, who might seem not to be surprise-makers at first but were so, I think, in their invention/discovery of specific musical means that were made inseperable from their personalities.

If this place disappears tomorrow, don't be surprised. I'm getting fed up. I'm eager to change your mood, if possible. In any case, a check will be heading your way in a week or so (stupidly ran out of checks last Thursday without having ordered new ones -- they say they're on the way).