Larry Kart

From a Perkins obit: "He landed occasional film work, including a job with Duke Ellington's band on the soundtrack of Frank Sinatra's now-overlooked 'Assault on a Queen.'"

I think I've heard the story, though I don't recall where. IIRC, Perkins did take the gig, and the main thrust of what he had to say was there were NO parts to play from, that everything was a blend of "You know what to do," based on prior communal experience of the band members, and elliptical oral guidance from Ellington as to what was going to be different this time. It was this way of working that left Perkins kind of freaked out. On the other hand, I also recall that Perkins' account of things on this date was challenged pretty authoritatively by someone who had lots of direct experience of how the Ellington band functioned in the studio in that era. Let me see if I can find out more about this.

Right -- the other half of the Meat House team.

"Pete" is Christlieb?

The best latter-day Perkins I know, very much in the groove of "Frame of Mind," is on Lennie Niehaus' "Patterns" (1989) and "Seems Like Old Times" (1997), both on Fresh Sound. Niehaus and Perkins (Jack Nimitz is added on "Seems Like Old Times") were a very well-matched pair -- when they improvise simultaneously, it sounds like Niehaus is reading Perkins' mind, which I would guess was not an easy thing to do.

By the "Manne at the Blackhawk" dates, Kamuca had really gotten it together -- not as wispy and choppy as he could be early on, and not queasy-awkward, as he is on a Fresh Sound live date with Scott LaFaro from, I think, '58, which captures him trying and pretty much failing to work Rollins and Trane into his pre-existing style. (BTW, I like the early wispy-choppy Kamuca, in part because that was the genuine state of his soul at the time). He's even better IMO on the "Manne at the Manne Hole" albums from 3/61 than he is on the "Blackhawk" series. Kamuca's latter-day Concords are excellent, and his tribute to Bird album on Concord on alto is a shock. He may get closer to Bird's rhythmic mobility/ fluidity than anyone this side of Dave Schildkraut. I wouldn't be surprised if one of Kamuca's key models, in addition to Lester Young of course, had been Allan Eager, one of the Pres disciples who was most attuned to Bird and bop.

Fasstrack -- Of course, it is or can be different for players. But while many who play feel the way you do, others who play don't. It seems to be both a function of what you do and what your temperament is. Some guys can, and really like to, spend a lot of time thinking and talking about all sorts of things that are connected to the music and then still manage to stay in the moment when the moment is upon them; others can't do that or just don't like the feeling of talking about what they and other musicians do at all, let alone listening to other people talk about that. And there are also people who don't play who are deep into the music and don't like how it feels to pore over it verbally either. To-may-to, to-mah-to.

Fasstrack -- I'm not sure I'm following you here about "probably just a fun day in the studio." I was taking the presence of Cohn, Perkins, and Kamuca on this date to talk a bit about how and why two of those three undeniably Pres-based players changed over the years, which they surely did. I mean, to take two of the most obvious examples that stare any jazz fan of our era(s) in the face, aren't you interested in how and why Coltrane or Bill Evans' music changed so much over the course of their lives? Also, I don't think of it as "picking things apart" -- I think of it as thinking and talking about stuff that I love and that fascinates me, which I couldn't stop doing if I tried. I could see, though, where someone would say, "That's too much talking about this for me -- you have picked it apart." If I felt that way myself, I'd stop -- and there have been times when I have for a while. About Perkins (and as proof that I'm not making this stuff up) here are some excerpts (slightly edited) from that Nov. 1995 Cadance interview: "[Asked about Whitney Balliett's notes for "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West," on which Balliett praises Perkins and compares his playing to the "bad tone" and "ugliness" of Sonny Rollins, Perkins says: "[M]y playing was based on a beauty of sound, Pres, and so forth, and that was a very lyrical period in my life. Ironically, in recent years, I've come much more to appreciate people like Sonny Rollins; I don't consider it ugly. I don't think I might have [then], it's just that I didn't understand it in those days, but people like Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter have become favorites of mine... When I think back on those years, my so-called peak years back in the '50s ... it was rarely that I was pleased with what I did. I was usually either just once in a whole happy but most of the time disconsolate, and that's not a good way to go through life. The sound, I guess, was my main objective, and I just worked endlessly with reeds and mouthpieces to get a sound. I must admit, although I've completely done a 180 from that approach to playing now, the sound I got was quite amazing. Even I look back on this and say, 'My goodness how did I achieve that.... [W]hen the conditions are right ... I can play that way [today]. But normally the world doesn't play that way anymore. The surroundings -- political and otherwise -- are such that, and we do respond quite a bit to what goes on. I hear too many tough tenors. I [would] feel like a fool to go up there and play like I did 30 years ago.... "I had a big opportunity. [Dick Bock of Pacific Jazz] set up a chance for New York City with Bobby Brookmeyer, and I chickened out. This was about 1956 or '57, and I think it was just fear.... The one time Dick got pretty disgusted with me was when he set up an album for me in 1958, and in essence he wanted a repeat of what I'd done before. Now at that time I'd started to veer away from that approach to playing.... I was too stupid. I should have said [to myself], 'Bill, play good music within this thing, don't try to play like Sonny Rollins.' But I sort of played a half-baked imitation of Sonny Rollins without getting into Sonny Rollins, and Dick was really disgusted.... And the album never came out.... I was starting to hear the Sonny Rollinses of this world, well actually there's only one, and trying to play like that, but I had no idea what they were doing. Now I think I have a very good idea of what they're doing.... "I admired [Richie Kamuca] a great deal, and I think he admired me; he admired my sound. Richie had the fingers, I had more of the sound. I was inept compared to Richie when it came to playing the instrument.... "Bob Cooper is a total hero of mine. Almost saint-like gentleman, totally mature. His playing just kept getting better and better, right up until the day he died.... He chose to follow a different path in his playing, he just perfected what he had, whereas I sort of went out into left field and a lot of times didn't make it."

You're right -- it is James Gavin, not Haskins.

I see the smiley face, but while it's not impossible that Perkins was doing some stuff and stopped, it's far more likely that he (and Kamuca too) had doubts about the hipness, and even the "manliness," of their softish Pres-derived approach in the light of contemporary Rollins and then, in just a bit, Coltrane. The recorded evidence suggests this for both men, and I recall that Perkins, in a Cadence interview, speaks quite directly of the doubts he had back then and how they affected his playing. IMO, after a very awkward patch, Kamuca came out of this playing better than ever before, but Perkins, with rare exceptions like the one Jim mentioned, never really got it together again (though some of his attempts to work lots of timbral and harmonic edginess into his playing were interesting).

Haven't read it, but I certainly should: Chet Baker: His Life and Music" by Jeroen De Valk http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-d...5021885-0504620 "Deep In A Dream" made me angry. Maybe it should have been a book about Bruce Weber, the fashion photographer (he of the beefcake shots of preppy young men in Calvin Klein undershorts) who made the Baker film "Let's Get Lost"; Jim Haskins, author of "Deep in a Dream," seemed to have much stronger (albeit angry) feelings about Weber than he had about Baker -- and seemed to know more about Weber than he did about Baker too. (The basis of the anger is that Weber's work is widely felt to be homoerotic, but Weber apparently has said that he's not gay -- Haskins, something of a gay activist, finds this to be hypocritical.) P.S. De Valk has said that Haskins was well aware of the veracity of De Valk's relatively unsensationalistic account of Baker's death but preferred to take the "Did he jump or was he pushed?" route in order to pump up the volume (so to speak).

Somehow I'd missed out on this one until now, perhaps because it's short measure (34 minutes or so). Recorded in 1959 with George Shearing's Quintet, it's very fresh, committed, musically adventurous, emotionally open Lee. In fact, the two tracks that didn't make it onto the original LP -- "Nobody's Heart" and ""Don't Ever Leave Me" (the latter with only Shearing as accompanist) -- sound as private emotionally as anything Lee ever recorded. Also, dig Lee's own tune, which she wrote with one Hubie Wheeler, "There'll be Another Spring" -- especially the bridge, and the way she subtly highlights the sexuality of Carl Sigman's lyric on "All Too Soon." The whole album is special.

The zone of the "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West" album and a few other things. He could tear your heart out.

I feel like a Medieval monk poring over a torn Roman papyrus, but here is what my ear tells me is the solo order for the first five tracks (I'm working from the 1997 French BMG CD): "Blixed" (Perkins, Cohn, Kamuca) "Kim's Kaper" (Cohn, Kamuca, Perkins) "Rolling Stone" (Cohn only) "Sioux Zan" (Perkins, Cohn, no Kamuca solo) "The Walrus" (Perkins [release], Kamuca, Perkins, Cohn) The best guide might be to start with "Rolling Stone," which should nail down Cohn of this vintage for you, and then move on to "The Walrus," where each player's traits emerge fairly clearly. Don't lose any sleep puzzling over Perkins' "Kim's Kaper" solo; the tempo seems too swift for him, and he sounds rather blurry and nondescript. I don't agree that Perkins is the least interesting of the three. These were three musical souls in motion -- each interesting (at least to me) at every stage of their careers for the quality and nature of the music being made at that stage but also interesting in terms of where they were going to go and how they were going to get there: a kind of autobiographies in sound thing.

No vibes on that Criss track, or elsewhere on the album, and besides Sonny Criss never could be mistaken for Jackie McLean.

There's a Criss "These Foolish Things" on Imperial, but it's vibes-less, unless Kenny Drew is playing the "vibories" (or however that's spelled). I'll listen and report. Or someone else can beat me to it (it's on the 2-CD BN reissue "Sonny Criss: The Complete Imperial Sessions"). Only other West Coast altoist I can think of offhand who might be mistaken for McLean is Joe Maini.

"Or ANYONE else"? Pretty big jump there. Buckley's commitment and savvy (within the boundaries of the music he knows and cares about) are not subjective matters really -- many people over the years have measured what he says and plays and have not found him wanting. But we should sit still for ANY schmoo's jazz show, in the name of what ... democracy? Also the reason 'BEZ is being held to "unceasing scrutiny" is because of things that the station has done -- during the Heim era and now. Don't you understand that THEY started this?

Listening to 'BEZ during the Heim years, especially to her own show (when I did), I got the feeling, from the music that was played and the way it was introduced and spoken about, that the underlying emotional commitment was to shaping and policing the success of the format (in terms of demographics and numbers) rather than to Heim's own involvement (or that of many of the other hosts) with the actual music being played. This to me had a deadening effect. Radio, even music-orientated radio, depends a good deal on one's sense of the host or speaker's savvy and involvement. To be more specific about how this links up to the "music being played" aspect of things, the boundaries of, say, Dick Buckley's taste are what they are, but doesn't (or rather didn't) one always have the feeling that virtually every track he played is one that he had, at one time, personally savored? Makes a big difference.

I meant to say "both well chosen AND just plain inspired..."

Just picked up "Remember." Very impressive so far. After the end of the "Full House," someone says (I think), "Pretty frightening, man." Yes indeed. Made me think of the Verve Jazz CEO thread: Here's a project that looks like it might be a bit cheesy -- a Montgomery tribute album -- but in fact the players are both well chosen just plain inspired, and in a way that at once pleases the intellect and will get to almost anyone who still has a pulse. And I gather that it's selling well too. One caveat: As one of the All About Jazz reviewers said, sound is more than a bit cloudy, but I could solve that to my satisfaction with tone controls (bass cut, treble boost).

Yes.

I heard Matana Roberts live in a mainstream-modern setting several times about eight years ago. She was into Osby (and/or Steve Coleman) and clearly was going to be something. Then I heard her a few times in the last several years with her Sticks and Stones trio. I have to say that this group in person sounded two or three times better than it does on disc. In fact, IMO neither Sticks and Stones album is what it should be/could be, both in terms of sound quality and inspiration/intensity. In any case, Roberts is the real deal.

Rosbaud, in good mono sound, '56 I think, with the Berlin Philharmonic: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000001GR...v=glance&n=5174 Chuck tipped me to this several years ago; he was right as usual. Also, you get the best Tapiola -- a great work.

Glad to be of service, as they say. And I'm sure Terry Martin would agree.

I've always liked the point made by the late British saxophonist Bruce Turner at the end of this passage from a piece I wrote back in the '80s: One doesn't want to describe bebop as more of a social than a musical event. But no matter how striking the music that emerged in the 1940s, and despite its roots in previous jazz styles, the emotional tone of the music had changed. The forthright quest for freedom that [Ralph] Ellison had found in the jazz of the twenties and thirties was transformed into a rebellion of romantic despair, an attempt to evade or tune out the “honking” of the world. And when that need to escape was combined with drugs, a great many players destroyed themselves. “We were pilgrims,” said pianist Hampton Hawes, “the freaks of the forties and fifties--playing bebop, going through a lot of changes and getting strung out in the process. And our rebellion was a lonely thing.” 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.”