Larry Kart

Dorham is lovely/crucial in the ensemble, esp. on the title work.

Raney fans know this as one of the guitarist's best albums of the '50s (1956 to be exact). They also know that it's always been a very dull sounding disc (mostly thanks to a nasty ABC-Paramount pressing), so much so that I for one don't play it that much because I have a hard time picking out Raney's typically un-trebly lines from the surrounding murk. Well, the recent Verve reissue takes care of that problem. Timbres are in balance at last, the original engineering (by Frank Abbey and Earle Brown) turns out to have been more than OK, and Raney's top-form playing can be heard in all its logical-linear beauty. Brookmeyer of this vintage is an acquired taste; he's more than a bit square-ish rhythmically at times (often sounding like he's trying to improvise a yet unwritten Rodgers and Hammerstein tune), and I usually don't care for his folksy "down-home" tonal shadings, but the genuine melodic flow of his lines is hard to deny, and altogether he sounds a lot better to me now than he did back then (the remastering no doubt has something to do with this). Four tasty standards, four nice originals (two by Raney, two by Brookmeyer), Hank Jones splitting piano duties with Dick Katz, Teddy Kotick (a big plus), and Osie Johnson.

Among great players, I believe that the most extreme (and revealing of what's at issue) case is Von Freeman. I know some very sophisticated listeners who have never been able to get past Von's intonation, which kind of baffles me because the ambiguities and chessmaster's sense of play he creates there is utterly inseparable from an across-the-board mastery that would seem hard to deny. To put it another way, an "in-tune" Von would not be Von any more than a Lester Young who tried to play his ideas with Coleman Hawkins' tone would be Lester Young. BTW, listen to Jodie Christian comp behind Von -- the way, on his tempered instrument, that Jodie brilliantly adjusts to and plays with Von's intonational ambiguities is a good guide to how to proceed.

Haven't looked at the book in a while, but in addition to the imbalances that Allen and others have mentioned, I recall being particularly disappointed/annoyed by the chapter "Eckstine and Herman," which seemed to me to be full of hot air, not to mention horseshit. For instance, after mentioning the supposed parallels between the two men -- born a year apart, had recently surrounded themselves with younger musicians, were both vocalists and instrumentalists, were "both comfortable with romantic ballads [[but] indelibly associated in the public eye with the blues," etc., DeVeaux says: "But the differences between the two men were as stark as black and white. One might say that the the blues chose Billy Eckstine, but Woody Herman chose the blues. Once Eckstine showed an aptitude for singing the blues, he had no choice but to continue doing so.... Herman sang and played the blues because it intrigued him." All this as a prelude to implying that the "contrast in fortunes" between the Eckstine and Herman bands was a function of "the barriers of racism." First, as DeVeaux himself goes on to say at chapter's end, Eckstine went on "to shatter those barriers on his own" -- after signing with MGM in 1949, he was "finally allowed to sing the heavily promoted 'number one' pop songs of the moment" and became a big pop star. So what happened? Did racism's barriers go away in four or five years, or was it basically that Eckstine the talented/appealing crooner with the the unique seductive voice suited the tastes of a mass audience far more than his marvelous bebop band ever did or ever could have (and more than Herman First Herd did, not to mention Herman's band of Eckstines pop heyday)? Hey, Scott -- maybe other factors than racism were were at work? Again, if Eckstine had no choice but to continue singing the blues in 1944-5 (I don't believe that's true at all BTW), what happened to change that in just a few years? Also, Eckstine was a nonce instrumentalist at best (trumpet and valve trombone), while Herman of course was prominently heard in his band on clarinet and alto sax. And Herman's association with the blues was no longer that big a big deal by the time of the First Herd. Woody's big vocal hit with the First Herd was "Laura." In any case, when DeVeaux writes in this chapter of the Herman First Herd, after quoting Eckstine on how his band could have eaten the First Herd alive ("Shit, Woody Herman, get a load of his things ... All of those things were just a little BIT of the music that we were trying to play...Woody better not have lit anywhere near where my band was. Nowhere."), DeVeaux goes on like this: "Such righteous anger only increases the temptation to cast Woody Herman as the villain of a morality play in black and white: the imitator and exploiter, parlaying a cheaply acquired veneer of bop experimentation into commercial gain, with black innovators once again left without credit or reward. But such a judgment, however emotionally satisfying, would miss the point. Woody Herman was in no way undeserving of the success that came his way.... Nor did the band somehow come by its bebop orientation dishonestly -- not with Gillespie and others openly encouraging the spread of new ideas in all directions.." Etc. To me this is a rhetorical con game. DeVeaux is staging the racial morality play himself, like the puppeteer at a Punch and Judy show -- at once pretending to deny that it's all about this big fight and then thrusting the battle front and center again. For example, in "Such righteous anger only increases the temptation to cast Woody Herman as the villain of a morality play in black and white," WHOSE "temptation to cast Woody Herman as the villain of a morality play in black and white" is increased? Not Eckstine's -- he's already had his say. So who? DeVeaux himself? Us? I give up. And notice that while DeVeaux ever so graciously says that Herman's band didn't "come by its bebop orientation dishonestly," that was because "Gillespie and others openly encouraging the spread of new ideas in all directions." To amplify just a bit, IMO while both the Eckstine Band and the Herman First Herd were great bands, the latter's excellence was not primarily second-hand, nor was its popularity in lieu of anyone else's. Using your ears may not solve everything, but it always helps.

Probably doesn't need to be said, but Roswell Rudd's booklet essay on Nichols need to be copied if you're going to sell the Mosaic.

Sorry, that should have been Daddy-O Daylie -- no hyphen before "Daylie." First name was Holmes. A marvelous rhymer and player with words, he was -- got his start as a Southside bartender. I recall that hepronounced Wynton Kelly's first name WINE-tone. Dedicatee of "One for Daddy-O," of course.

The real Daddy-O-Daylie (correct spelling) died in 2003 at age 82: http://www.suntimes.com/output/obituaries/...ws-xdayl11.html

I agree about Joe G. When the band came to Martyrs in Chicago -- after Joe warmed up and I tuned in -- I was very impressed. His time feel is special too and inseparable from his melodic/harmonic thinking. At his best he gives me the feeling that I'm hanging on every note, the way Jimmy Raney does or did (though Joe doesn't sound like Raney).

Just to make sure there's no misunderstanding -- IMO Pettiford's plucked cello solos (and of course his plucked bass solos) were superb. A favorite instance of the former was his duo performance on Dawn with accordionist Matt Matthews on Pettiford's own line, "Now See How You Are," later recorded on ABC-Paramount by Pettiford's big band.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but it was news to me -- according to Ira Gitler, Rene is not Jackie's son but his stepson.

In his review in today's NY Times of Ari Roland's new Smalls release, "Sketches From a Bassist's Album," Ratliff writes: "[Roland] also plays bowed bass at fast tempos with amazing skill, following the examples of Steve Brown, Oscar Pettiford, and Paul Chambers." Maybe I'm having a brain cramp here, but I don't recall a single recorded bowed bass solo from Pettiford, or even a bowed solo of his on cello.

"Hip Strut" from "New Soil." The first time I heard it (when it came out), it felt like his life had been at stake there and this was a record of how he had prevailed. Also two earlier tracks, "Help" and "Beau Jack" from "Jackie McLean and Co.," that have a similar "at stake" feeling, though the outcome then seemed likely to be dire.

Hope's stature and individuality ought to be no secret here, but I've been knocked out recently reacquainting myself with this -- especially his 1953 debut under his own name, a trio date with Percy Heath and Philly Joe Jones. I was struck in particular by Hope's magical recasting of "Sweet and Lovely," which bears some resemblance to Monk's version but is more lyrical though just as quirky (and to different and IMO more subtle ends). Am I wrong, or is there some Teddy Wilson peeking through Hope's conception here? Also, don't miss Hope's two fierce, hypnotic chourses at the end of "Hot Sauce" and the brilliance with which he works his through the tricky bridge in his choruses on "Abdullah" (from the album's second date, with trumpeter Freeman Lee and Frank Foster, and Blakey taking the place of Philly Joe). I can't say that I prefer the playing of the early Hope to his more oblique, spidery-in-touch later work. He's in or is entering that later phase on the album's last date, from 1957 and L.A., with Stu Williamson, Harold Land, Leroy Vinnegar, and Frank Butler, but the early Hope here is superb and not really that close to anything else AFAIK -- before, then or since. Finally, though it's pretty obvious, there's the sheer, relaxed melodic coherence of his lines (but with some rumbles of bop-shading-into-hard-bop angst underneath); while the hellhound may be on his trail, it sounds like Elmo's got all the time in the world.

That's why my mind reels.

I believe that Helen and Martin Williams were once an item. The mind reels. My Keane encounter kind of dovetails with Chuck's. I'd written the liner notes for a Chris Connor Fantasy LP at the request of Connor (I'd written several enthusiastic reviews of her recent Chicago performances), as relayed to me by the person at Fantasy who was in charge of such things, and it was with Fantasy that I'd signed a contract to write the notes for such and such a fee. Keane, who was the album's producer, hit the roof when she saw the notes because I didn't say something about every track on the album. It was her belief (IMO utterly insane) that if a track wasn't mentioned in the notes, the reader would assume that the writer meant that that track was no good. I told her that this was ridiculous, that I wrote the notes for Fantasy and for Connor, not for her, and that she was free to find someone to write a new set of notes, as long as I was paid for my work. That was the end of it.

Alone Together is a gem and made me think of its virtual companion tune, By Myself. Both are Dietz-Schwartz collaborations, the lyricist playing a very important role in both cases I believe -- e.g. "No one knows better/than I/myself I'm/by myself/ alone." I started to list some more, but after What Is This Thing Called Love, The Song Is You, My Shining Hour, Out of This World, and Old Devil Moon, things began to seem ridiculous; there was no end in view.

Brownie -- I didn't have much (or maybe any) Miller either until I ran across a used copy a while back of the 3-CD "Secret Broadcasts" set (RCA) -- stuff the Miller AAF Band recorded in the U.S. in 1944 for broadcasts to the services. This was a remarkable band within the given Miller style (though rhythmically more relaxed than the earlier Miller band), with Mel Powell on piano, nice trumpet solos from Zeke Zarchy, Bobby Nichols, and Bernie Privin, Peanuts Hucko on clarinet, the best string section any big band with strings ever had AFAIK, Junior Collins (later of the Birth of the Cool band) on French horn (what a player he was), Ray McKinley, etc. And the young Johnny Desmond was a very good singer. Also, the sound here is pretty astonishing; the broadcasts were recorded on 16-inch 33 1/3 rpm discs in good studios and have a wide dynamic range. I wouldn't say that this set is worth seeking out for everyone here, but I'll bet it will surprise some who have filed Miller away as mere nostalgia. On the other hand, it is kind of eerie to hear each broadcast begin with the AAF theme song that Chummy MacGregor (he of "Moon Dreams"), Miller, and some guy named Meyer wrote -- "I Sustain the Wings" -- and think that some of the guys who were listening to it were soon going to be climbing into B-17s.

But Blakey and Co. would engage in a fair amount of "hair-pulling."

BTW, Jim, I said I wasn't happy with saying tonal "distortions." What I meant was that Rollins liked to lean way in to certain rhythmic/timbral gestures -- summoning up an air of the blatant that went far beyond what anyone else who wasn't kidding or the like would have done at that time (as on "Wagon Wheels" from "Way Out West"). But Sonny, as we know, wasn't kidding; he was playing.

Jim -- Didn't know that Stanley said that about Lees. Interesting and pretty accurate IMO, though Lees and Balliett are also different sorts of "cats" (as Lees might put it). Balliett certainly has a higher brow (for what that's worth -- your call), while Lees loves to snuggle up to the musicians who will let him he do so (or leave him with the impression they have let him), which is not something that I can see Balliett going in for very much, if at all. On the other hand, at least one salt-of-the-earth guy, the late Don DeMichael, Lees' successor as editor of Down Beat, swore by Lees (in the good sense), so Lees can't be all bad. Marcello -- Don't mean to backtrack on or unfairly modify what I said before, but though I know it can't be proved (barring the advent of evidence I don't have), I'd still bet that Balliett didn't particularly care for bebop when it was happening. These views of Parker, Gillespie, and Monk are retrospective, which again doesn't in itself prove anything, but we do know that once he became a Grand Old Man of Jazz, Balliett's Rollins was no longer a purveyor of ugliness or "bad tone" but a GOMOJ. About Balliett and his likely emotional and social distance from bop, I'm reminded of this passage from Litweiler's "The Freedom Principle": "The purest manifestation of bop -- the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell -- was a music of extremes. There were the extreme's of bop's harmony, its mixtures of consonance and disssonance, its substitued harmonic structures. More extreme were bop's rhythms: the slippery accents among even tiny note values, the broken lines of eighth notes; the shock of sudden doubletime runs. The fast tempos, the speed of the lines, the electrocuted leaping in the high, middle, and low ranges of the instruments required a coordination of nerve, muscle, and intellect that pressed human agility and creativity toward their outer limits. Bop was an exhilarating adventure; in Gillespie's dizzying trumpet heights, in Powell's hallucinated piano excitement, a deadly fall to earth is ever possible. The vividness of Parker's alto saxophone lyricism made him bop's central figure, and his rhythmic tumult is the tumult of complex fleeting emotions. The brokenness of his phrasing, the swiftness of his passing emotions, from cruelty to tenderness, suggest a consciousness that was itself disrupted.... His desparation was shared by much of his generation." Etc. For better or for worse, I'd guess that this was not Balliett's world, nor a worldview that he would have wanted to give much room to.

What Balliett's remarks here, and much of the rest of his work (though usually more covertly), reveal to me is that he thinks of jazz as a source of certain kinds of "let's warm our toes in front of a nice fire" pleasure and comfort but not as a source of necessary, inescapable information about the state of reality as filtered through the hearts, minds and music of people who couldn't evade or escape it. I know -- I exaggerate; and there's also the fact that Balliett has been in Cecil Taylor's corner almost from the first. But Jim's shrewd point about Sonny's being "abrupt" and the likelihood that (IMO now) this feeds into what Balliett meant by "hair-pulling" -- well, if Sonny or JR were abruptly pulling your hair with their accenting, tonal distortions ("distortions," for want of a better term), etc., such toyings with/variations on the then prevailing norms of musical elegance and comfort were damn close to (and in no way separable from) the essence of the stories their music was telling. (Lord knows what Balliett thought of vintage Jackie McLean! And isn't his Pee Wee Russell a New Yorker -- i.e. the magazine Balliett wrote for -- eccentric, not a man whose music's could implicity threaten your sanity? ) Now who doesn't want to be comforted some of time, maybe even whenever possible? But if my desire to be comforted leads me to take, say, Bobby Hackett or Ben Webster primarily as purveyors of good old days/ good old feelings social and emotional comfort (as I think Balliett comes dangerously close to doing -- in this he's a precursor of the way Woody Allen has often used jazz on his soundtracks), then the reality of Hackett and Webster's music is to some degree being denied and/or screwed around with. And I don't want to be comforted if and when the nature of reality is not in fact comfortable. Don't have Balliett's collected works in front me, but I'd be curious about how often in what ways he refers to Charlie Parker or Bud Powell. In fact, I'd bet just about anything that the young Balliett had little or no sympathy for bebop. Not a crime, I know, but interesting if so.

This came up a while ago, when someone referred to Whitney Balliett's being "broad-minded" in his tastes, but I wasn't able to chapter and verse. Back in 1956 or '57, Balliett wrote the liner notes for the Pacific Jazz album "Grand Encounter -- 2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West," with John Lewis, Bill Perkins, Jim Hall, Percy Heath, and Chico Hamilton. In the course of praising the certainly praiseworthy Perkins for his gentle lyricism, Balliett went on to say this: "There is [in Perkins' playing] none of the hair-pulling, the bad tone, or the ugliness that is now a growing mode, largely in New York, among the work of the hard-bopsters like Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, and JR Monterose." Actually, I kind of like "the hair-pulling" -- in one way, it's completely out of left field; in another way, it reveals exactly where Whitney was coming from.

Well, at least on video it would work.

I was at a private party once where Don Patterson (the rest of the band was Von Freeman, Wilbur Campbell, and guitarist Sam Thomas) dipped his head down to keyboard level and played a rather minimal chorus or two with his tongue -- the clear intent being (for purposes of bawdy humor, one hopes) to simulate cunnilingus. No doubt this was a regular routine of Patterson's but probably one that was not preserved on record.

There's a very nice Flip Phillips with strings album from the 1990s on Chiaroscuro, "Try a Little Tenderness," with tasty string writing from Dick Hyman. The notes explain that Flip and Hyman got together well before the date, picked the tunes, and rehearsed and taped them as a duo; then Hyman based his string writing on what the two of them had done. The results do sound unusually of a piece for a horn with strings date.