Larry Kart

I'm a bit bemused that only one person, Chalupa, has responded so far to the two posts below, which were on "New Releases," so I'm putting them up here in the hope that someone thinks this is as interesting as I do. Of course, I could be wrong on both counts or either one -- that Ornette is quoting from "If I Loved You" here, and that if he is, this is interesting. But what the hell: 1) Anyone else notice that Ornette's solo on "Turnaround" begins with a quote from "If I Loved You" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" (as opposed, I guess, to somebody else's "Carousel")? It's the opening phrase of the Rodgers' melody, the one that goes with the words "If I loved you/Time and again I would try to say..." I stopped listening to post this, but so far I'd say that Ornette sounds almost overcome by joy (with a twinge of melancholy). His sound is caught nicely, too. And the horn seems to be doing his bidding as much as or even more than ever -- a lovely air of ease and fludity at age 76. 2) Speaking of that Ornette quote from "If I Loved You" at the beginning of his "Turnaround" solo, I just checked out how Hammerstein's lyric continues: "If I loved you, Time and again I would try to say All I'd want you to know. If I loved you, Words wouldn't come in an easy way Round in circles I'd go!" "Round in circles I'd go" on "Turnaround" -- pretty neat if that's part of what stirred the allusion into being in Ornette's mind. Also IIRC (I don't have a version of "If I Loved You" at hand, so I can't be sure), what's happening musically in the phrase "Round in circles I go" bears a fairly intense, at once circular and somewhat off-center, resemblance to what's happening musically in "All I'd want you to know."

Wish I could be there, and that just might be possible. My wife and I have hoping we could get to NYC this fall. I'm a big fan of Sadownick (though based on less experience of his playing, and only on recordings, than I would like) and can imagine how well you, he, and the rest of the band would interact.

News to me too, but Alun Morgan is a very credible fellow in my experience -- been around a long time (was writing for Jazz Monthly before Brown's death), knows the scene from the inside, and has no axes to grind, or least none that I've ever seen.

There's a brilliant and shrewdly titled 20-page essay on Thompson -- "When Backward Comes Out Ahead: Lucky Thompson's Phrasing and Improvisation" -- by Tad Shull (himself a talented tenor saxophonist) in the "Annual Review of Jazz Studies 12, 2002 (Scarecrow Press).

I did an interview with her once, in about 1988. She seemed to me to be a class act as a person, absolutely -- and a relatively "unarmored" one too, for a celebrity -- perhaps a bit too unarmored for her own good in the worlds in which she moved. Talking to her was a pleasure, though.

Speaking of that Ornette quote from "If I Loved You" at the beginning of his "Turnaround" solo, I just checked out how Hammerstein's lyric continues: "If I loved you, Time and again I would try to say All I'd want you to know. If I loved you, Words wouldn't come in an easy way Round in circles I'd go!" "Round in circles I'd go" on "Turnaround" -- pretty neat if that's part of what stirred the allusion into being in Ornette's mind. Also IIRC (I don't have a version of "If I Loved You" at hand, so I can't be sure), what's happening musically in the phrase "Round in circles I go" bears a fairly intense, at once circular and somewhat off-center, resemblance to what's happening musically in "All I'd want you to know."

Anyone else notice that Ornette's solo on "Turnaround" begins with a quote from "If I Loved You" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" (as opposed, I guess, to somebody else's "Carousel")? It's the opening phrase of the Rodgers' melody, the one that goes with the words "If I loved you/Time and again I would try to say..." I stopped listening to post this, but so far I'd say that Ornette sounds almost overcome by joy (with a twinge of melancholy). His sound is caught nicely, too. And the horn seems to be doing his bidding as much as or even more than ever -- a lovely air of ease and fludity at age 76.

Bechet Select, Hodges small groups, Johnny Smith. My ship came in. Music is excellent (so what else is new?), but I was bit disappointed in the bland, relatively insight-free Hodges and Smith booklets, especially when compared to Bob Wilber's fine notes for the Bechet (or for that matter, Stanley Dance's fine biographical essay from the first Hodges Mosaic, which is reprinted in this one).

Sinatra IIRC.

Louis Armstrong's "Lazy River" Aretha Franklin's "Skylark" Sylvia Syms' "Skylark" Sheila Jordan's "Baltimore Oriole" Sarah Vaughan's "The Nearness of You" Jo Stafford's "Ivy" Benny Goodman's "Ballad in Blue" Claude Hopkins' "Lazybones" (vocal by Fred Norman)

I find myself asking the first question more than I probably should -- which is in effect a tribute to what (or part of what) Clementine is up to. No answers, only guesses, but then that's a big part of the "what." Whatever -- why he writes that way can't I think be separated from the "who is he?" question, which again is in effect a tribute to etc.

Clem -- That was Catullus, not Ovid, though I'm sure Ovid did his share of both.

Jim -- I think your paragraphs three and four above nail it exactly.

He hit Greg Tate.

You Must Be's point, I believe, is that Ornette simply (or perhaps not so simply, given what he could do) "couldn't play like Bird, Sonny, et al." in the specific sense that he couldn't play on/within the harmonic framework/chorus structure of standard sequences. Of course, that's not all that people like Bird, Sonny, et al. did, but they did have that option, and You Must Be thinks that Ornette didn't and doesn't. Martin Williams, for one, said otherwise -- or at least that's one logical way to take Martin's account of having heard Ornette play just like Bird one night, in a response to challenge of some sort, as I recall. But I'd say that I'd agree with You Must Be here, adding that this came about not because Ornette lacked the capacity in any sense to do this but because of a combo of (a) his eccentric initial misunderstandings of certain music basics -- see Litweiler's bio for details on this (b) what and how he began to hear when he began to put what probably now should be called those "musunderstandings" to use and © the fact that Ornette seems by temperament to be at once an innate systematizer and a "lone cat."

Late -- See Chuck Nessa's last post on this thread for the answer: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...mp;#entry557882

Likewise. I vaguely recall being at the apartment of one member of trio, almost certainly Hal Russell's, when the finished album was first available to be listened to. Hal, his wife, Russell Thorne, and Thorne's then girlfriend Shelley Litt (a remarkable jazz singer-pianist) -- she the dedicate of TRhorne's "Knell (For Shel)" -- were the others present, again IIRC. I'm sure Joe Daley wasn't there. I also remember that the mood there that day was not a particularly happy one -- which mostly had to do with feelings about the record and about Daley on the part of Russell and Thorne (I remember mockery of Daley's stagey fake-real tune announcements), but there were a lot of other not very happy things going on as well. A tough crowd.

Yes, Chris, that's the one, but I've lost my copy. On the other hand, I've stolen from it so many times over the years, and/or just incorporated the parts I've agreed with, that I've probably got most of the book stored away in my memory.

Michael -- Do mean the Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet album or News for Lulu or More News for Lulu (the latter two with George Lewis and Bill Frisell)? Or all three. Seems to me that the first album fits your description, the second does not, and the third is a good deal better than the second.

Could be both.

Sorry -- I meant "... when Ornette said that Trane was 'lost to sequences''... etc.

I think that when Ornette said that Trane "lost to sequences," he meant that Trane was too absorbed in them, or too enamored of them, for his own musical good -- not at all that he was "lost" to them as in not knowing where he was in the form. To say that would be absurd.

Don't know if we're thinking of two different books because the "Jazz on Record" I know came out in 1968 -- "Jazz on Record: A Critical Guide to the First 50 Years, 1917-1967" --stuff from Max Harrison, Charles Fox, Eric Thacker, Jack Cooke (I believe), Michael James, Ronald Atkins, Paul Oliver, Alun Morgan (all Jazz Monthly people). IMO it's among the best seat of the pants jazz criticism there is. I can't find my copy any more, sad to say. Even better (because the entries are longer and focus on single recordings) if you can find a copy, is the second book from this crowd: "Modern Jazz: The Essential Records, 1945-70."

I have a Lamont Johnson on Master Scores, "242 E. 3rd," the address of Slugs, that has a nice gutty feel to it. Jimmy Greene, Howard Johnson (on tuba, and he gets a lot of solo space), Don Sickler, Lonnie Plaxico, Tim Ries (on alto flute) Marcus Baylor (drums, a good player who was new to me), and Danny Sadownick, congas. Rec. 1998.