Larry Kart

Check out Dan's "Lester Leaps In" piece, p. 491. There's some deep writing and deep feeling there.

That Miff Mole solo is something else.

Ouch.

Clem -- You confused me 'cause you said p. 236, and that Balliett remark is on p. 237.

Clem -- If you mean Dan's disparagement of the avant-garde in 1964, when the piece was written, I say no big deal and/or what else do you expect from him at that time. On the other hand, I find Evan's remarks on that page about "freedom" re: his duet with Paul Bley on George Russell's "Jazz in the Spaceways" album to be .. not arrogant but very revealing, and not in a good way. Here's something I wrote about that passage from Dan's interview with Evans in my book: Quite articulate about his music, in a 1964 interview Evans said this: “The only way I can work is to have some kind of restraint involved, the challenge of a certain craft or form and then to find the freedom in that…. I think a lot of guys…want to circumvent that kind of labor….” Then there is this Evans statement: “I believe that all music is romantic, but if it gets schmaltzy, romanticism is disturbing. On the other hand, romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty.” Plausible words, perhaps, but the value that Evans seemingly places on restraint in itself leads one to ask, What is being restrained and why? Evans’s “challenge of [working within] a certain craft or form” is not merely an account of his own necessary practice; it lends to that practice an aura of moral virtue (“I think a lot of guys …want to circumvent that kind of labor….”). In other words, for Evans certain sorts of musical labor are not only valid but they also validate. And should an aesthetically valid outcome be reached in a seemingly non-laborious manner, that can be disturbing. Thus in 1964 , after acknowledging that the brilliant, lucid, and “completely unpremeditated” two-piano improvisation that he and Paul Bley played on George Russell’s 1960 album Jazz In The Space Age “was fun to do,” Evans says: “[but to] do something that hadn’t been rehearsed successfully, just like that, almost shows the lack of challenge involved in that kind of freedom.” That last sentence from Evans seems really weird to me, for reasons that I try to explain in the paragraph above that one.

It's true.

Rosco -- This doesn't definitively answer your question about "Nardis" but may flesh out the context a bit: In Peter Pettinger's Bill Evans bio "How My Heart Sings," Pettinger writes (p. 58) of the Riverside album "Portrait of Cannonball, "...the session was important for the first performance of 'Nardis,' specially written for Adderley and this session by Miles Davis."

The answer to the original question is Richard Carpenter, of course.

I'm late to this party, but doesn't this come down to, Who will be making the decisions at Mosaic from now on or down the road, and what will those decisions be? If the advent of Mosaic Contemporary means that the Mosaic we know can spruce up its bottom line and thus be better able financially to keep putting out the kind of sets it has, fine with me. As Jim said, the presence of an Earl Klugh compilation doesn't bother the Chu Berry purchaser in me. But what if Matt Pierson, or the force or forces behind Pierson (if such there be), wrest control from Cuscuna and Scott Wenzel, and we get fewer, or no, Chu Berry-type sets anymore -- if only because Mosaic no longer would be run by people with the knowledge and the imagination to know what can and needs to be done in those realms. Then we got a problem. I guess I want to know what the inside story is here, if indeed there is one.

Info from Stats Inc. (a Chicago-based but non-partisan outfit that does statistical analysis for a lot of sports franchises) that suggests a Bears' victory may be in the cards: http://actasports.com/sows.php

All this stuff about how much higher Manning's QB rating is than Grossman's -- neither man is playing against the other; Manning is facing the Bear's defense, Grossman the Colts' defense. I'm not saying that Rex and friends will prevail against the latter more often than Peyton and pals will against the former, but it's far from impossible. In the same vein, and perhaps at least as important -- these teams haven't faced each other but once in recent years, and that was when Urlacher was injured and the makeup of the Bears' line on both sides of the ball was rather different. What happens when those those offensive and defensive lines butt heads is something you can't know beforehand, especially when there's so little track record. And the outcome of those contests will likely determine who wins.

I'll never forget the time Nigella deep-fried a Mars bar on her show. She's Jewish, too -- a nice parley there with Lauren Bacall -- and has had a rather colorful life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigella_Lawson

Good point about Hayes -- what he did there, in effect IMO, introduced a certain level of conceptual independence (or, if you will, abstraction) into the drummer's role. I remember at the time thinking somewhat inchoate thoughts along those lines about Hayes' glassily even (yet also rather behind the beat, no?) cymbal work with Horace Silver when he joined Horace and, an especially extreme example, on the Coltrane-Wilbur Harden album "Mainstream '58." Whatever, it sure struck us as interesting-weird at the time. (My best friend back then was, and still is, a very good drummer.) I'd add that the glassy evenness and the behind-the-beat aspect were a big part of what contributed to the feeling of abstraction (or, if you will, controlled disassociation of parts), in that behind-the-beat playing implies or is associated with relaxation, while Hayes' glassy evenness placed a high level of (I think) tension on top of that. In any case, it seems to me that Tony grasped what was at stake here conceptually and where it could be taken far more so than Hayes did and/or wanted to do. In fact, though I'm no Hayes scholar, I believe that he's pretty much dialed down that aspect of his playing over the course of his career.

Here's a link to the second Horenstein Mahler First: http://www.amazon.com/Mahler-Symphony-No-1...TF8&s=music

Here's a link to as thorough and sound a survey as one could wish for: http://www.musicweb-international.com/Mahler/Mahler1.htm If the second Horsenstein is still available, I vote for that one.

I can't imagine wanting to see nekkid pix of Carmen McRae of any era, unless you're into the M side of S/M.

The former is what I thought. Nice stuff.

Based on what I've heard of Alan Dawson -- mostly the stuff he made with Booker Ervin, Jaki Byard, and Richard Davis -- I'd say that he was Tony's main inspiration; I don't hear much of anyone else in him. On the other hand, the earliest Tony on record seems to me quite daring and different -- beyond anything that Dawson, to my knowledge, ever attempted or even would have wanted to attempt. A different sense of the drummer's role is involved; I believe that Tony, when he was able to, thought of himself as (and played as though he were) a co-composer. This was over and above (or at least ran alongside) all of his dazzling tricks. About Max, I believe that what was special about his drumming kind of came to an end with Clifford's death. After his playing on the "Live at the Beehive" set, I'm not aware of anything on record from him -- as a drummer per se, not as a band leader -- that approaches that peak. For one thing, the sound of his kit (ride cymbal especially) become a bit dour -- almost self-consciously so at times, as though he were in mourning.

Larry -- I'm not judging it as an interpretation, I'm judging it as music. Right. But you said in a previous post: "I think their interpretation is really nice." Not every musical performance is an interpretation of a piece of music. A world where reasonable distinctions are made and preserved is a world where people have a better chance to understand each other.

Hope I'm not playing language games with you (that's not my intent), but you can judge a performance as an "interpretation" only if you know the original, i.e. what is being interpreted.

Yes. Bud, one of the world's great narcissists (there are many tales about Bud's intense fondness for mirrors, one amusing episode of which I witnessed) suffered at one point in the late 1940s of a loss of confidence in his playing (perhaps feeling that he wasn't modern enough) that was so total he couldn't produce a note. He studied with Lennie for three months -- "we just reviewed what I had known as a kid, scales and intervals" -- and his confidence returned.

Also, don't miss Bud opposite Coleman Hawkins on the 1957 Cootie Williams Jazztone album "The Big Challenge." Everyone there -- Cootie, Rex Stewart, J.C. Higginbotham, Lawrence Brown -- was up for that one, but the Freeman-Hawkins thing was serious.

Bud was so locked-in rhythmically. Yes, he was not unwilling to repeat a phrase and use swatches of pre-fabricated material, but all in the service of driving swing. Check out the Mosaic single "Chicago/Austin High School Jazz in Hi-Fi" for some top-drawer Bud, as well as fine Teagarden, George Wettling, Jimmy McPartland, Billy Butterfield, probably the best Peanuts Hucko ever, etc. Pee Wee Russell, on the first two of the three dates collected here, sounds a bit less than his best solo-wise, but on date one (where there's no trombone) he's marvelous in the ensembles -- go figure. Another fine Bud album from the LP era that seems not to be available right now is Something Sweet, Something Tender, with guitarists George Barnes and, I think, Carl Kress. Sudhalter's "Lost Chords" extols Bud's 1937 radio broadcast solo with Tommy Dorsey on "You're a Builder-Upper" (on a Sunbeam LP). He's right about that one.

Wait till you hear them play "Send In The Clowns." It's like watching someone try to wash a pile of dog poop. I'm not sure if this phrase equates to the oft used, 'trying to polish a turd', but, yes....if the song is a bit cheesy this band's attempts at giving it credibility have to be admired. Or you think not? I think not, because the hook progression in the song is so annoying/nagging that any "tasteful" attempt to play "Send In The Clowns" must attempt to significantly modify that phrase or skate away from it altogether, but when you do that, either there's nothing left or you're not even playing the song. I have a copy of "Goodbye" (don't ask why), and, as I recall, the interpretation there is close to both of those alternatives, but that damn phrase finally turns out to be unavoidable. I'd say that the only way to handle it is the way Albert Ayler might have.

This is a new idea of Eicher's? Haven't most, or a good many, ECM records been mixed this way from the beginning? On the other hand, maybe there was a point when it began to get even weirder than it was initially. I recall the first time I listened to Kenny Wheeler's "Angel Song" -- rec. almost exactly ten years ago, in Feb. 1996 -- and wondering whether the players were hanging from guy wires in the studio.