Larry Kart

MY VPI has been very useful for many years. When you need it, it makes a difference.

Roscoe Mitchell's "Sound," if you don't have it. It's one of the Great Recordings of the 20th Century.

I've had a hiccup or two lately. I place an order and it doesn't get processed; I'm just bounced back to my cart. IIRC I just kept going around the maypole for a while, and finally it went through. Never happened before.

If she needs a date in Detroit, I can be there.

Hart was married to the late playwright and author Moss Hart ("My Fair Lady," "Act One," etc.): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moss_Hart I once made the mistake of telling someone that she was married to the late lyricist Lorenz Hart; it was explained to me that that was not so and that it would have been a very unlikely marriage in any case. Seems from Moss Hart's bio that theirs was an unlikely marriage too.

Late to the party, but I just picked up a copy of "Routes" the other day. Either I'm just now ripe for this or it makes a big difference to take in the full opulence of the recording or both, but I'm almost literally intoxicated and also at times am finding myself without warning moved/touched/what have you by the union of her voice, her writing, and her "messages." It's a better planet for her being on it.

IIRC the Muse period, as leader and sideman, was Cook's time of maximum ripeness. Fine music.

Mr. Guthartz -- Braxton is Braxton, su generis IMO in almost every way imaginable. KV says "in his own words" that his penchant for dedications began in the way that he says it did. Well, I guess that settles it then. Threads here go as they will, in a communal, self-regulating manner, with rare interventions by Jim Alfredson, the owner. You don't get to decide that a post is aberrant because it's talking about KV for a while rather than about Ornette; we all decide those things by our responses or lack of same -- and some of the most interesting and fruitful discussions here have stemmed from people taking hard left or right turns. Also, what's with that "s/he" stuff? And speaking of casting aspersions on people's motives -- a lot of people here post using names other than their own and don't chose to reveal what they're doing in life "other than posting messages on this forum." This you find novel and dubious? Seems to me you have the instincts of a cultural commissar.

BTW, I forget to say that my post last night was dedicated to Walter Benjamin and Sor Juana de la Cruz.

Well, if he went that way, I'm sure there'd be folks saying "KV is just stealing ideas from X, Y & Z, and presenting them as his own without giving anyone any credit." The record is out. I have confidence in your ability to listen to the music and figure out the influences for yourself, or not. Who is demanding you care about anything other than the music? If you don't like the music, fine -- stop at "beyond asinine". But to assault his integrity by saying he's "attempting to bask in other's glories" is totally unfair and uncalled for. We all know how omniscient you are, Don C., but I guarantee there are lots of folks who will come across Powerhouse Sound who never heard of Perry, Dodd, et al, do a little digging, and be hipped on to some hip shit as a result. So while it obviously annoys you for some reason, in reality it's all good. ps - please tell us (1) the names of the musicians from whom Ken may borrow, (2) the concepts and traditions you would permit Ken to draw upon, and (3) how much Ken is allowed to talk about (1) and (2). anyway, this is Ornette's thread... It just occurred to me who KV reminds me of, up to a point -- Charlie Barnet. That is, they are/were reportedly very nice to better than very nice guys who put the extra-musical monetary assets that were available or were made available to them (lots of family dough in Barnet's case, lots of foundation dough in KV's) to arguably very good use, but in purely musical terms, neither was IMO a very talented soloist, and/or both were pretty much in the position of having to gorilla stuff out of their horns in the face of less than sufficient musical knowledge -- i.e. less than sufficient in terms of what they were actually trying to do on their horns, not in terms of music as a whole. Barnet worshipped Coleman Hawkins, but while Barnet certainly swung and had a biggish hot tone, Hawkins' harmonic sophistication was beyond him; in fact, Barnet's relative crudity in that realm, combined with his broad-brush rhythmic zest, arguably led him to become a founding father of what became known as "chicken tenor." (Would it be too much to say that avant-garde "chicken tenor" is one of KV's chief modes?) Now Barnet was an excellent bandleader -- in part because he was such a generous, warm-hearted, fun-loving guy; in part because he had fine taste in sidemen and arrangers -- and I believe that KV shares some of those traits, though I myself have seldom found any KV recording or live performance I've heard to be as satisfying as any number of performances and recordings I've heard by some or all of KV's associates, minus KV. Another point of comparison: Barnet was a wholly lovestruck admirer of Ellington's music -- a fair number of his band's recordings were in the Ellington style and of Ellington material, to the point where some observers felt that one might just as well listen to Ellington instead, though I don't think anyone could or should have questioned the sincerity of Barnet's Ellington worship, just the aesthetic wisdom of displaying it too literally (and in fact the Barnet band's most notable recordings have a definite flavor of their own). As for KV's admiration of other musicians and the sincerity thereof, I can't speak directly to the latter point, but I can think of no other musician who has dedicated so many albums and compositions to other figures -- and not only that, to figures who all (or virtually all) seem to have a cachet of a certain sort, i.e. they're arguably not only very good to great (by avant-gardish standards or tastes) but also are more or less ignored or neglected, such that one suspects (or, I should say, that I suspect) that part of what's going on with all these dedications is a desire (conscious or not) to transmit value by association from the one being dedicated to the one who is bestowing the dedication. (This FWIW is a very familiar pattern in the world of contemporary poetry -- the striver poet, if you will, is far more likely to tack on dedications to his or her poems, and these poems are almost always dedicated to figures who are more well-known or well-regarded in the world of modern verse that the dedicating poet; further, aside from the fact of the dedication to, say, Robert Creeley, one either detects little in the poem itself that is related to the work of the poet to whom the poem has been dedicated or little in the poem that is not related to the other poet's work in a fairly obvious manner.) Now perhaps I'm wrong here; perhaps I'm not but it's all rather harmless or beside the point. But that's how it seems to me. In any case, while I have a fairly long record of enthusiasm for the kind of music that KV supposedly produces, I long ago reached the point where his presence on a recording or on a bandstand was, from a purely aesthetic angle, a reason to say "see you later."

A side aspect of this: The Pulitzer music award requires that a recording be submitted (and this is true of at least one other such major music award, too -- the Pulitzer is a prize for a specific work, not a career award (supposedly), and a score is not enough, probably because in recent years, not every member of the music juries is a score reader. In any case, as this article explains: http://www.newmusicbox.org/page.nmbx?id=50tp01 it's difficult to impossible, for contractual/union reasons, for a composer whose work is premiered by an American symphony orchestra to get even a so-called "archival" recording of his or her piece.

About the sound quality -- not everything is perfectly in balance, but the presence on Pres and Sarah and Roy Haynes is very good. In fact, I can think of few studio recordings of the time that capture Pres's sound more vividly. In part that's because Town Hall was a good space acoustically. For example, check out the sound on the Parker-Gillespie 1945 Uptown Town Hall concert. Another thing that's fun -- both Pres and Sarah are very well received, but she just kills the crowd ... and not I think because they've decided upfront that she's a rising star. It's one of those lovely moments where a major artist in flower is legitimately filling the souls of the people to over-flowing. Sarah uses Pres's rhythm section, but Sammy Beskin takes Sadik Hakim's place on piano -- and thank the Lord for that, I say. Hakim can be fun in a weird way, but the way he comps every tune seems to have the same changes.

Pres and the young Sassy share a Town Hall concert on Nov. 8, 1947 -- both in great form and vividly recorded for the most part. I'm not sure that there's any more vigorous and fresh post-war Pres -- and by vigorous I mean not just energetic but really inventive; there's some moves here that will be new to you -- at least they were to me (and they're both beautiful and very hip too). Roy Haynes is the drummer; he's sizzling. And Vaughan -- this may be the best representation of her early self there is on record. Mostly doing ballads, she reshapes them as though she were Tadd Dameron, and when Pres joins her on "I Cried For You," playing his ass off, she responds with a passage that sounds like a cuckoo clock that could tell time in the Fourth Dimension. Best of all, though, is what may be the most remarkable Pres reading of "These Foolish Things" there is -- and that's saying something. I gasped at times at what he does here. Also, you get to hear a relaxed, happy Pres announce tunes and Sarah interact verbally with her rhythm section -- her speaking voice so high and girlish (though her views are quite firm) that it hardly seems to belong to the same person who's singing. http://www.amazon.com/One-Night-Stand-Town...8830&sr=1-1

Thanks, Herr Wagner, that was handy of you.

I have "Tokyo Live," and in the liner notes Tony says: "On these discs you'll hear half the material that we recorded in Tokyo" (my emphasis).

As J Larsen says: "A chord in which the notes are not played simultaneously but rather they are played successively." But then that doesn't explain what Medjuck heard.

Blue Velvet from the same session is magical as well. Absolutely. Those tunes fit Red's harmonic approach so well -- super-sweetness turning into ambiguous dissonance -- that it's almost as though he wrote them.

The one Red Garland performance to get at all costs IMO is his nine-minute slow-motion version of "Mr. Wonderful," here: http://www.amazon.com/Rediscovered-Masters...565&sr=1-12 It's an absolutely insane piece of "trance music." Also the trio here -- Doug Watkins and Specs Wright -- was Red's working band, and this was the only record they made together.

For me it was a bit of a shock to be re-introduced to the sheer, brutal lowness of this world, on the part of all or virtually all the characters, but I suppose I'll get used to it again -- I always have before. Also, say what you will, I felt a sudden sick moment of hope that somewhere toward the end of it all Meadow gets maimed or killed. Perhaps that's evidence that the show corrupts its watchers as much as it does its characters.

I know what you mean, but at least some of time I think that for Shavers that frequently surrealistic mix of styles was the point -- that at the heart of his music there was an impish, "let's melt some watches" streak.

The book kind of runs out of gas after a while IMO, but the part about Gordon's upbringing and her days with Alfred Lion is invaluable. About her politics, I'd be more inclined to agree with some of the positions she took than Dan Gould is, but even so, she does seems to be more than a bit of an air-head in that realm, e.g. snuggling up to top-level Soviet officials in 1965 in the name of "peace."

A nice, humorously boppish Shavers solo with Dorsey on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUbh4REDnC0 What chops!

Just picked it up from the library and am enjoying the heck out of it so far. Great photos. I particularly like the one taken in the Lions apartment circa 1947-8 that shows them listening to takes from a Blue Note recording session in order to pick out the best in the company of Ike Quebec and Mr. and Mrs. Ram Ramirez. The pictures on the walls and Alfred's recliner chair! Also, Lorraine was a pretty hot lady IMO or as far as I can tell. Finally, her account of becoming a jazz fan in her teens is exemplary, as they say, of a lot of us I'm sure. It's like the music somehow chose or recognized her as much as it was the other way around.

The exchanges with Hawkins on the title track of "Hawk Eyes" are one of my favorite moments in recorded jazz. The sheer aggressiveness, the wit, the joy! I had a chance to play a tape of that track, Blindfold Test style, for the young Wynton Marsalis in the course of an interview in the early '80s. Wasn't trying to trick him in any way, just get his reaction to a trumpeter who in his combined impish zeal and slickness seemed to me to be related to what Wynton at his best was up to then. As I recall, Wynton's response was very guarded, as though he thought I was trying to trick him in some way, so so much for that...

I've run into them IIRC in New York, the London Tube, and the Paris Metro.