Larry Kart

She's definitely got nice assets: http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Love-Roberta-Ga...i/dp/B000FBHCP0

"That's it" as in "That's the answer."

That's it.

Picked up a couple of Cindy Blackman albums for a song yesterday, which made me think of another female drummer of about the same age and style, but for the life of me I'm blanking on the name. Any ideas? Or am I hurtling headlong into the realm where Alzheimer's Rd. crosses Delusion Ave.?

In order to explain what I feel about Gioia's book, I'd have to re-read it again, and I don't have the time right now. So that's a subject I'll have to drop. Submit your memory cards for partial erasure, please -- I'm about to erase mine. Ah, that's feels good.

If you thought that's what I was saying there, then either I failed to communicate or you failed to understand -- or both. This is what I wrote: "For instance, to take an extreme but not unrepresentative case, back in the day Horace Silver famously referred to West Coast jazz as "faggot jazz," as though the delicacy of much West Coast jazz was merely and essentially effete and thus both aesthetically and morally offensive (and/or, if you will, threatening) and further that, in Silver's view, a vitally masculine and black music was being corrupted and stolen by commercially successful white opportunists. If such rhetoric (taken one way or the other or any old way you choose) prevents you from detecting the value, such as it is, of the music of Silver and that of, say, Shorty Rogers or Jimmy Giufffre, then I think you need to go back, rewind, and begin again -- because no theories, no views, that fail to give the music itself a fair shake are worth a bowl of spit." My point was that if a musician as undeniably gifted as Horace Silver (and one who was not inherently contentious or snarky, which Horace is not -- this I assumed was fairly common knowledge) could make a statement such as this, that was fairly striking evidence in itself of how broadly and deeply Silver's segment of the jazz world felt that " the delicacy of much West Coast jazz was merely and essentially effete and thus both aesthetically and morally offensive (and/or, if you will, threatening) and further that ... a vitally masculine and black music was being corrupted and stolen by commercially successful white opportunists." OK so far? What I then say is not that Silver is right or wrong about what I think his statement amounts to but that no matter how you take what he says, the value of WCJ " such as it is remains -- "remains" both in the sense that it exists such as it is (regardless of my opinion of it or anyone else's) and (paradoxically perhaps, in the light of what I've just said) also remains to be determined by each of us. "Such as it is" here doesn't mean that the "aesthetic worth" of WCJ is necessarily high or low or what all -- it means what I just said. And in no way did I mean that Silver's remark was merely a function of his feeling threatened by WCJ. It wasn't his kind of thing, musically or emotionally. That he chose to dismiss it in the terms that he did certainly put, and was meant to put, the supposed lack of masculinity of WCJ front and center -- and this, again, from someone who is known to be pleasant, fair-minded human being.

This has long been a sticky quote for me because as much as I understand it and agree with it, I also find the presupposition that "the emotional world of pop music" was/is a fixed/limited quantity to be...problematic. It's seems to be saying that the emotional world of Nelson Riddle = that of Gordon Jenkins, that of Nat Cole = that of Johnnie Ray, or that of late-Columbia Sinatra = that of mid-period Capitol Sinatra. That simply is not true, unless one is incapable of discerning differences past a certain point of one's own preset parameters, and although I do not know JL personally (or at all for that matter), I seriously doubt that he is that much of an unfunctioning piece of offal. Yes, he qualifies it with "more hip, more grown-up", but the underlying assupmtion is that the emotional world of pop music is ultimately fenced in, like a ranch. Ok, I know that's true from one perspective, but from another, the conundrum of so much pop music is it's built in ability to be a tabula rasa to any and all who hear it. The same song/record can stir deep & powerful feelings in one person and be a mere annoyance to another. Which reaction defines the "reality" of that song/record? They both do, and although that is true of any/all subjective experiences, the assumption that it is less true of pop music (or that it is only true to a fixed point) sounds like one made by somebody who for wahtevr reason prefers to not listen to a lot of pop music for anything other than, at best, pleasant diversion. Which is certainly ok, but it goes to the point of one person's opinion being just that, and proceed accordingly, ok? Now, as that pertains to WCJ, yeah, ok, as a rule, the stuff is definitely "lighter" in both sound and (my perceived) intent, but to say that "these Califorians were not aware of the conflict of values that was the source of bop." might be taking things a little too far. It is quite possible that some of them, especially Mulligan, who was East Coat all the way and did some respectable hanging there before coming west, did understand at least some of this at more than a superficial level, but just did not find it a personally relevant source of musical inspiration/creation. This then enters into the realm of "informed choice" (the degree of informedness will no doubt vary on a case-by-case basis) rather than true ignorance (willful or otherwise), unless you want to come at it like the only way to truly "understand" something is to accept it 100%, and my, what a tangled web of slippery slopes that soon becomes, true as it nevertheless is. That then goes to the point of what you get out of anything is going to be directly proportional to how ready/willing/able (and/or with all) yoou are to accept an encounter with it on its own terms. And most of us, myself included, have found places out there that just do not connect, and whose "fault" is that, if anybody's? I doubt that there is fault, and I doubt that the existance of these places even after an examined "stripping away" of potentially distracting personal "prejudices" is a problem. For me personally, a lot of WCJ is irritatingly pleasant. But I'm not going to go off and say that the people who made it are less "deep" than those who make music that I respond more favorably to, nor am I going to not allow for the possibility that there are ears/souls/minds who can here the same stuff that bugs me and be nobly elevated by it to do the same nobly elevated stuff that I feel when I get inspired by things that get to me, nobly elevated things like being a good/better/best person in thought, word, and deed, and if that no doubt means radically different things to radically different people, well, what's the alternative, really? I certainly accept the notion of a universal consciousness, but that is not to say that said consciousness is homogenized or otherwise uniform in nature. It is merely to say that universiality exists in spite of itself, and that "same" and "identical" can be two totally different things. First, what JL pretty clearly means (if I can speak for him) is the mainstream (or recently mainstream) pop music of that time that was in the process of becoming a bit "classicized" if you will and of course could be subjected to that classicizing process, a la Sinatra's Capitol LPs with Riddle and Mel Torme's with Marty Paich. That is, songs from the "Standards" era and performances of those songs in which both the musical and lyrical content of those songs is at once accepted wholesale and either deepened (a la Sinatra) or "carbonated" with bubbles of jazzy sophistication (a la Torme). Your "fenced in, like a ranch" is a good way to describe what was going on there; I would say, though, that that fencing-in process was, at least at that point, fairly natural and arguably fruitful; much less so, we might both say, a bit later on. We're not talking, then, about Lefty Frizzell et al. on the one hand, or "Shrimp Boats Are Coming" or Doggie in the Window" on the other, or R&B, or for that matter, Sarah Vaughan or Dinah Washington, who transformed all or most that they touched in a "conflict of values" manner, whether they meant to or not. BTW, you say that for you "a lot of WCJ is irritatingly pleasant." I think I know what you're referring to by that, and it seems to me that you're pretty much confirming there the gist of what JL is saying. That is, what in the pleasantness of WCJ do you/could you find irritating other than some sense that that pleasantness is in part and in some ways evasive or too partial or too cute in reference to some other music and the sense of reality that it embodies and communicates?

I'm saying that there's no way you can get a good fix on the question HG says he wants to examine unless you have or can get a good fix on a whole lot of other things about the nature of this society and its history that Litweiler understands and that Gioia, musician though he be (have you ever listened to a Ted Gioia record? -- I have, God!), has little or no clue about. To repeat and amplify, HG's subject is about as peculiarly fraught as an aesthetic-historical subject could be. Also, again to repeat, unless you've established in your own mind (having taken into account your own "context" as best you can) the aesthetic worth of West Coast jazz, examining the racial tensions that the "definitions" of West Coast or East Coast jazz caused in the music world would be about as pointless as discussing the McCarthy era without having arrived at an opinion as to whether McCarthy's accusations were or were not sound. Finally, to say that it was "the definitions" of West Coast or East Coast jazz that caused racial tensions in the musical world is at once backasswards and sideways. The musics were different to some significant degree, by and large; and those differences were noted and remarked upon at the time by musicians, fans, and journalists from both musical and social perspectives. Yes, at a certain point, perhaps an early one, the familiar journalistic "sheep versus goats" routine played a good-sized role in all this; but the differences were real and came first -- and/or the journalistic "sheep versus goats" routine was for the most part a function of those actual differences. The "definitions" (however imprecise they may gave been) were not free-standing entities cooked up by behind-the-scenes jazz Machiavellis.

Gioia is OK on facts up to a point, not so hot at all IMO on views, but then, again IMO, almost nothing published is that I'm aware of. If you do check out Gioia, bear that Litweiler quote in mind and see if they sound like they're talking about the same music. If not, I'd go with Litweiler and realize that Gioia is wearing blinkers and/or just lacks background and imagination. "Central Avenue Sounds" is essential for testimony, but that's not all or enough.

HG, I'm assuming that you already are familiar with a good deal of so-called West Coast jazz and know in your gut how you feel about it, aesthetically and otherwise (i.e. do you find it attractive, affected-precious, necessary, a mere symptom of other extra-musical stuff, etc.). I don't mention so-called East Coast jazz in this respect, because virtually everyone here is more or less drenched in that style of jazz of that period, while West Coast jazz was (and still tends to be) a somewhat more marginal or isolated taste. In any case, I bring this up because if you aren't already very familiar with West Coast jazz and know how you feel about it, getting those things straight seems to me like the first thing you need to do. In particular, you need to do that because when you encounter either direct testimony or views that implicity dismiss West Coast jazz for mingled social and aesthetic reasons, you need to weigh that against your own assessment of its musical and emotional nature, weight, and value, and, to the degree that is possible, your own awareness of how much that assessment of yours is or is not conditioned by your own lived "context." For instance, to take an extreme but not unrepresentative case, back in the day Horace Silver famously referred to West Coast jazz as "faggot jazz," as though the delicacy of much West Coast jazz was merely and essentially effete and thus both aesthetically and morally offensive (and/or, if you will, threatening) and further that, in Silver's view, a vitally masculine and black music was being corrupted and stolen by commercially successful white opportunists. If such rhetoric (taken one way or the other or any old way you choose) prevents you from detecting the value, such as it is, of the music of Silver and that of, say, Shorty Rogers or Jimmy Giufffre, then I think you need to go back, rewind, and begin again -- because no theories, no views, that fail to give the music itself a fair shake are worth a bowl of spit. It's tricky, for sure, but it can be done and has to be done.

I would say that, yes, "this really went down," with the caveat that I don't trust anyone's published views of what really did go down (that is, any published views that I'm aware of -- and by "views" I don't mean testimony, which obviously is one key component to be weighed/sorted out here, but attempts to put together sorted-out testimony, economic/social/poltical factors and, of course, the evidence of the music itself). The only views that I trust, these cropping up mostly in conversation over the years, are Terry Martin's, Chuck Nessa's, John Litweiler's and my own. A good starting place is something that Litweiler did publish in his "The Freedom Principle": "A more literally detached emotionality [than that of the Tristano circle] arrived with the West Coast jazz inspired both by Tristano and Miles Davis's 1949 Birth of the Cool nonet, a muted scaled-down big band. The relaxed, subdued atmosphere of West Coast jazz had a healthy acceptance of stylistic diversity and innovation, but it also accepted the emotional world of pop music at face value; even original themes are treated like more hip, more grown-up kinds of pop music. In bop's freest flights it could not escape reality, but these Califorians were not aware of the conflict of values that was the source of bop." To this I would add, that the literal and figurative influence of the Stan Kenton band was crucial here. Literal in that so many West Coast figures had passed through the Kenton band; figurative in that their time there fed both their "progressive" impulses (which Kenton encouraged) and their taste for subdued subtleties (a reaction in part to the Kenton band's tendency to be brassy-blatant and rhythmically heavy-footed).

Agree with EDC's first response. Would add that if you proceed, it's a topic that needs to be handled with the utmost care and scrupulousness, if only because the answer on the face of it is such an obvious "yes" that the need to properly sort out (and as they say these days "contextualize") the nature of that "yes" may well beyond the powers of any or most living human beings. In particular, the phrase "racial tension." Were racial tensions causal here or were they in large part the result of stylistic/economic/social divergences between (some) West and East Coast that did more or less line up along racial lines but did not, at least initially, do so because of "racial tensions" but because of different attitudes and opportunities? I know that, in this context in particular, "attitudes" and "opportunities" are not neutral terms, but, again IMO, one needs to proceed with great care and scrupulousness here. Otherwise, you might end up like those guys who say that the be all and end all of the '60s jazz avant garde was racial protest, to which is added the further flat claim that white listeners who said that they liked that music were really motivated by racial guilt. If you think that's nuts, that's the position of prominent Brit critic Stuart Nicholson.

Porter is working (as a writer and an editor, with Chris DeVito, David Wild, Yasuhiro Fujioka, and Wolf Schmaler) ) on what promises to be a vast new tome, "The John Coltrane Reference Work" (Routledge). It's scheduled for 2007.

I'm pretty familiar with Ratliff's Times stuff, but usually I stop reading a particular piece or review after a short while -- once the fact that it exists has been established, schadenfreude would the main reason to continue, and that's not a healthy emotion, or so I tell myself. If the Times or the NY jazz community won't off Ratliff, who am I to make a fuss? Actually -- and Chris may know chapter and verse on this -- the advent of Nate Chinen might amount to a discreet verdict on Ratliff, though I suspect that it mostly reflects Ratliff's desire to retreat some from the front lines and assume elder statesman (!!) status. There's ample precedent for this among Times critics over the years. In the words of Bugs Bunny, "What a maroon."

In terms of paths of influence, there are two fairly clear ones on Grant Stewart's map -- the previously mentioned Rollins one (which usually bothers me for the same reasons it bothers Jim and no doubt many others) and a Mobley-esque one. The latter comes and goes (as does the more insistent/obvious Rollins path), but IMO it leads Stewart to his best and most individual efforts. I have a friend who is probably the sternest/shrewdest of jazz I know (or perhaps he and Chuck are tied there), and he has more or less become addicted to Stewart, while remaining aware of the problem (or "problem") of those overt Sonny-isms. His excuse, if that's the way to put it, is a pretty sound one -- that Stewart is a swinging melodist, not at all a licks player (as so many neo-hard boppers are), and even if there are those borrowed touches in Stewart, genuine swinging melodists are rare things. A footnote: Can't recall which Stewart disc gave me this feeling, but at one point he reminded a good bit (though this almost certainly can't be a matter of direct influence) of Ira Sullivan's fine tenor playing on Red Rodney's 1957 album "Red Rodney 1957" (Signal), later reissued as "The Red Arrow," the album with Philly Joe on one side and Elvin on the other.

Just got Ben Ratliff's "Coltrane: The Story of a Sound" from the library and began skipping around. May not be able to finish, though, 'cause my b.s. detector is almost broken already. Did you know, for example, that Johnny Hartman "had a deep, rich tenor voice..." (Try baritone.) Or that '[o]ne of the general listener's major misperceptions of jazz is that when improvisers work at their best, they pluck ideas out of the sky, channeling heaven." (Ratliff's next sentence is, helpfully: "No.") Or that bebop "came to be associated with ... chord harmonies inspired by Stravinsky, Debussy and Bartok." (Ah yes, chord harmonies -- my favorite kind.) Will attempt to move on in the hope of saving lives.

Just out from the U. of Michigan Press is Andy Hamilton's "Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art." Mostly conversations with Lee, with interesting contributions as well from the likes of Gunther Schuller, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Ornette, and (a disclaimer) yours truly, it's a terrific book, thanks mostly to Lee being who he is (remarkably open and uncensored, full of insights into his own music and music in general) and to the skill and determination of Hamilton, who worked hard over some time to make it happen.

Corrected, thanks. Larry, what are your thoughts on Alexandria? Haven't heard her work in decades and truthfully don't recall it at all.

That's Cy Touff.

"How Much Is That Doggie In The Window"? Not one that Cole sang, but you get the idea. It's a song where, as in that case, the "cute" storytelling situation (which also calls for the adult vocalist to imitate a child) overrides all other considerations -- either that or it's a song where the idea that someone is singing about the situation at all is the whole cute point, a la "Daddy Just Pooped Big Time In His Pants." Sorry, I made that one up. I'm thinking, though, that EDC has a bottle of frim-frim sauce on his mind.

This Shelly Manne album http://www.amazon.com/Steps-Desert-Modern-...775&sr=1-37 originally titled "My Son, The Jazz Drummer" (love it that they chose to retitle the album in a rather half-assed PC manner) has a cooking version of "Have Nagila" (sp?) featuring Teddy Edwards. There's another good version on the Carmell Jones Mosaic box, featuring Edwards' regional and stylistic counterpart Harold Land. Whatever, it's a song often played at some weddings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smOWov09Wbo

Not Harold but Michael, American football player accused of mistreating and killing dogs as part of a dog fighting operation. Google him and you'll see what it's all about.

What, that's not nuts? Sure it's nuts, but it's probably a pretty special kind of nuttiness, no?

That was the point -- or one of them.