Larry Kart

I wonder if Coltrane dug Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," where the imprisoned narrator is momentarily freed (by rats that gnaw through his bonds) from the menace of the descending "sweep of the fearful scimitar," only to find that the walls of his chamber are made of heated iron and are closing in on him: "'Death,' I said, 'any death but that of the pit!' Fool! might I not have known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? or if even that, could I withstand its pressure? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back -- but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward...." Etc.

Oops -- that's "One Down, One Up" of course. Don't mean to hijack this thread (not that what I have in mind would amount to that), but my trip this evening back to late-late Trane ("Interstellar Space," in particular) thrust a thought into my head (and very suddenly and powerfully too) that's never been there before. Namely, that one principle (maybe the key principle) at work in late Trane (and nascent in his previous work) is ... well, let me take a step back and try to say it the way it came to me. Listening to "Jupiter," I suddenly had a sense of Trane's location: both in physical space, as a man holding a tenor saxophone in close proximity to a microphone in RVG's recording studio; and in musical space, as a man who is aware that it is common in our culture for sequentially occurring sounds to be heard sequentially, and that they then are felt to make patterns through time (both musical time, according to prevailing conventions of what musical time is and how it's parcelled out, and, of necessity, clock time as well -- though musical time doesn't equal clock time, nor does clock time necessarily determine what musical time is and how it's parcelled out -- see the researches, if that's the right word for them, in this realm of Messiaen). But what I heard on "Jupiter" was that Trane was tethered to/sticking to his basic location in musical space (i.e. in relation to musical time, he was essentially oscillating "in place" -- more about that in a bit -- rather than "moving forward" in any way whatsoever). And as I then moved on through the album, I heard the same thing more or less -- the nature of this being especially striking when, at the end of "Leo," Trane give his final figures a semi-walking feel , to which R. Ali responds in a semi-Elvin manner; the contrast between these figures, which do move "forward" through musical time for a short while, and all that has come before could hardly be greater. So what then is happening language-wise if Trane is tethered to/sticking to his basic location in musical space on these pieces? Well, another step back. The reason I get such a strong "he's tethered to/sticking to" etc. feeling here is twofold, I think -- that there is both no sense of a "progression" through or against either a linear harmonic framework or a steady rhythmic pulse (natch, in both cases) and that there is a near-constant sense of ... "balance" isn't the right term, but it's as though every gesture that initially might seem to have some horizontal/linear component to it is very swiftly curtailed (as though it had run into/butted up against a wall or barrier) and is then more or less hurled back in the opposite direction, across what one feels is Trane's basic central or nodal point and often in a shape that is felt to be more or less an inversion of the shape of the original gesture, until then it runs into/butts up against the wall or barrier on the other side -- the sense of there being "sides" flanking that central node arising after the first few times one has heard gestures whiz past in one direction and then be curtailed and return with similar force in the other. In any case, after a while one has to sense the consistent presence of those walls/barriers (thinking again of Trane's actual physical stance holding the horn, they seem to be no more than half-an-arm's-length from him, or even no further apart than the width of his horn) and the forcing-upwards effect they tend to have on the figures that so fiercely "run into" them. Typically, on these pieces there's an arch pattern -- a rise in pitch and in the number of semi-pitched "vocalized" tones that peaks at the midpoint of each piece and descends on the far side -- and now that I think of it, one of the things that Trane may have had in mind here would be to so alter or compress our sense of musical time that the shape of the piece as a whole and the shape of the basic language-unit within it is virtually the same -- a series of fierce oscillations/reverberations against tight barriers that leads to a fierce forcing upwards. I know that "fierce" is a loaded word, and one that raises a question that "tethered to/sticking to" may also have have raised: What is the emotional tone of this music, and what was the stance of the man who was making it? At the moment, ferocity is a word that is hard to put out of my mind, but hearing this music the way that I've just begun to, it feels more often than not like a ferocity of an immense necessary inventiveness -- as though Trane's discovered need to "stay" in one place (if indeed one agrees, or even wants to entertain the idea, that something of this sort is going on in this music) could be sustained only by climbing/forcing himself upwards. OK, those men with the net can come and get me now.

Probably shouldn't open my mouth until I've gone back to listen to a fair amount of later, more or less metre-less Trane for purposes of comparison, but I'm struck on "One Up, One Down" especially by the same thing that Ravi Coltrane mentions in his portion of the notes: "The attention to rhythm ... is as detailed as can be found on any John Coltrane recording." That may be one reason why, as John Tapscott pointed out, the 27 minutes of "One Up" seem to go by so quickly. Also, as with the Monk/Trane Carnegie Hall recording, thse performances seem to me to come from a specific wedge of historical/musical time -- different wedges of course, and the Monk/Trane wedge as it was captured onthat particular night is one that I for one didn't know existed, in part because there's no other recorded evidence of it ASFAIK (the other Monk/Trane recordings aren't like this). Back to the Half Note Trane -- while there's certainly continuity with what came before and after with this quartet, the feel of this band at these particular moments in time is at once so intense (nothing new there) and so damn CRYSTALLIZED. I heard Coltrane play at the length he does on "One Up" on several occasions in Chicago in '63-'64 especially, and I remember this level of intensity but not the other thing -- or at least not nearly as much of it.

Nice photo, Mark -- really captures the way Golson was into things. A joyfully serious musician, and it was a joy to hear him.

Thanks for the plug, Ghost; I like that chapter myself. I’m in the middle of Malcolm Lowry’s terrifying "Under the Volcano" (reading it for the first time, I’m embarrassed to say), and while Lowry (1909-57) wasn’t one of the Beats -- too old, for one thing -- he was out there in the best sense, and "Volcano" has a definite but subtle jazz feel to it at times, both in the sometimes overtly musical, syncopated way it’s written and in the kind of people Lowry is writing about (one of the book’s principal characters casually refers to a "day like a good Joe Venuti record"). I'll vote for "The Bear Comes Home" too.

BTW, by "the sober Eddie DeHaas" I meant sober in musical temperament, which Eddie always is, not sober as opposed to drunk.

"A little dramatic" is one way to put it; "histrionic" would be another. Oh for the days when the semi-regular bassist at the Showcase was the sober Eddie DeHaas. On the other hand, if memory serves, Gray (sorry for the mis-spelling) does seem much less inclined to show off behind soloists than he used to; and on one tune, where he engaged in four-bar exchanges with Spencer (on brushes) and worked around and a bit away from a "walking" format, he sounded pretty good to me. But Lord save me from bass fiddle "Lyricism" (with a capital "L"). The slides, the winks, the twangs, the swoons!

Went to hear Golson Friday night with Nate. Benny was in very fine form; he's in at least as good shape now as he ever was, although he also sounds a bit different stylistically these days -- there's more air and shadings of timbre in the sound for one, which IMO leads to lots of wonderful, subtle things. Try to listen to him on a literal note-to-note basis; everything links up and makes sense, very few if any prefab figures, or so it seems. Also, as hip as some of his harmonic moves are, at bottom it seems to be all melody for him now. Actually, both in demeanor and musically, he reminds a bit of latter-day Benny Carter. Here's hoping Benny G. has a similary long rich run. First set was all originals: Horizon Ahead, Are You Real, a recent blues whose title I couldn't make out (Pierre something?), I Remember Clifford, Stablemates, and maybe one other I'm forgetting. He was having reed trouble on Clifford, thus didn't take a solo after the theme, but then delivered an pretty amazing cadenza-coda. Rhythm section was local (Mike Kocour, pno,; Larry Grey, bs.; Joel Spencer, drms.) and servicable once they got into the groove, though Grey's cheesy bass solos make me want to throw things at him.

Used to have it (bought it at the time because it looked and sounded "cool") but don't any longer, though I sure do have, and love, the CD reissue. I'm virtually certain that the original had notes. The piece from that album that really tickles me is "Threadneedle Street," one of the most insidiously charming little melodies that anyone ever came up with. You're tuba-playing friend is right -- Butterfield plays his valves off throughout. ("Threadneedle Street" BTW is the street in London on which the Bank of England is located, if that's what Melle had in mind. I believe that the Bank of E. was once commonly referred to as "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.")

Not it wasn't Matt Utall on baritone (his last name is "Utal" anyway) on that Bobby Scott LP. It was a guy named Marty Flax. Utal, formerly with Les Brown and in the L.A. studios for a while, maybe a long while, crops up in the ensemble on the Cy Touff-Richie Kamuca "Keester Parade" (Pacific Jazz). Flax was an NYC-based studio regular, no doubt with prior big band experience. John Murtaugh played on the very popular at the time recordings that Les Elgart made in the early to mid-'50s for Columbia. "Sophisticated Swing" was the first one, I believe. The Elgart band was a studio creation (all NYC freelancers), but enough of a demand was created that a touring version of the band was formed; it probably included few if any of the players who made the recordings. I knew a guy in high school in the late 1950s, a very good guitar player who shall be nameless, who went on the road with Elgart soon after graduation. At some point during his time with the band, they were driving through Iowa on the band bus when my high school acquaintance, who had a highly developed instinct for all things drug-related, pointed out that they were driving past a good-sized field of marijuana. The bus was stopped, harvesting was done, and when they reached the motel they were staying in that night, pillow cases were filled with green plant product, hauled down to the nearest laundromat and placed in driers for curing. Unfortunately, John Law intervened, and several band members (including my acquaintance) and I believe Elgart himself were busted. "Bobby Scott with Two Horns" (ABC-Paramount) rec. 1956.

I recall a Bobby Scott all-instrumental (and perhaps all-originals) ABC-Paramount LP from maybe 1957 -- rhythm section (with Scott not as overtly funky on piano as he later would become) plus two horns: tenor saxophonist John Murtaugh and baritone saxophonist Matt Utall. As I recall, the former was a pretty interesting player, with an unusually choppy, "talky" style of accentuation, a la Jack Montrose perhaps.

Some reactions to "Jazz Visions" can be found on pages 4 and 5 of this thread: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...pic=15577&st=45

P.S. As I mentioned to Jim and Joe at Hothouse, I preferred the sound setup at Martyrs and said something about it being a bit drier or more crisp. I've been thinking more about that, and I believe that the key factor is that care must be taken to separate Joe's sound a reasonable amount from Jim's -- tonally and spatially. At Martyrs, the guitar seemed to ride on top of the Hammond like a surfboard on the crest of wave -- a wonderful effect and one that I'm pretty sure is close to what you intend. (The underlying closeness/collaboration of thought between Jim and Joe is a given.) At Hothouse, though, it sounded to me like Joe's sound and Jim's were placed, tonally and spatially, a bit too close to each other; in particular, guitar notes tended to be half-swallowed by the Hammond (this may in part be because Hothouse is a shallower room than Martyrs, though I suspect that Martyrs, which apparently books a lot of rock bands, also had a sound man who's more used to tweaking bands in which most instruments are electronic). Just a thought.

To avoid duplication, I'll do this, unless someone else has beaten me to it. Jim, send me your street address in PM. I'll be leaving the house in about an hour or so to run some errands and could put the papers in the mail then.

Photographer was from the Chicago Tribune. Their jazz critic, Howard Reich, was there, taking notes. A review should run on Friday. I'll keep my eyes open.

Chewy chords are what Merrie Melodies are made of. Actually, I find Jim's chords to be chewier than Joe's -- Hammond B-3s have more fiber. BTW, last night was a reminder, if one was needed, of how fine Organissimo's own tunes are. Almost insidiously catchy/memorable, they also have real substance, both for the listener and the band itself (i.e. the tunes come alive each time and leave lots of room for in-the-moment invention). "Pumpkin Pie" is a particular gem. I love its soulful sweetness (no play on words intended) and the way it builds and builds.

Hope to be there but am writing some liner notes on a tight deadline. I could screw up there (or succeed but leave my head in a frazzle), but I'm hoping the Gods of musical pleasure will smile down on me.

Two posts from this spring: Still have my somewhat beat up, purchased at the time it came out LP copy. That's a lovely rhythm section, some of the best Ben Webster on record, and the overall groove is great, as though everyone were on ball-bearings (quite a contrast in that respect to a later Granz album -- was it called "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You"? -- with the same front-line and an utterly airless rhythm section with Oscar Peterson). Though Edison is certainly in good form on "Sweets," I think his best post-Basie work is on the live album from the Haig. BTW, the band on "Sweets" is the same one that backed Billie Holiday on two four-tune Clef dates (8/14/56 and 8/18/56). Just picked up the reissued "Sweets." Thanks to the handsome remastering, I was struck more than ever by the rhythm section -- in particular the way Kessel and Rowles seem to fuse into a single comping entity, a la '30s Freddie Green and Basie. Who plays what, when between Kessel and Rowles is so perfectly, subtly apportioned, to the point where some of Kessel's figures seem to vanish into Rowles' and vice versa, that you'd almost think it all had to be worked out beforehand, though of course it wasn't; and the results are tremendously stimulating to the Edison and, especially, Webster -- who was perhaps more sensitive/vulnerable to what rhythm sections were doing behind him than Sweets was. As I'd thought, the album was recorded shortly after (9/4/56) the same group had backed Billie Holiday on those two Clef dates, which no doubt accounts for the hand-in-glove atmosphere that prevails here. Kudos to Mondragon and Stoller too.

A warning P.S. to my plug for Grant Stewart. Listened today to the first two tracks of his new Criss Cross, "Grant Stewart + Four," and was dismayed by the high percentage of near-undigested Rollins-isms, including some of Sonny's most personal gestures. To some, this might not be a problem; to me, it's near unbearable. By contrast, Stewart's playing on Ryan Kisor's "Awakening", rec. 2002, is at once more Mobley-inspired and, again IMO, much more personal -- perhaps because Hank's style(s) was/were so inherently open that perhaps no one could realize all the implications.

Berigan -- JD was an "invertebrate improviser"? You mean "inveterate"?

Nudged by a friend who has fearsomely impeccable taste, I've been catching up on Grant Stewart lately -- his own quartet album "Buen Rollo" on Fresh Sound and Ryan Kisor's "This Is Ryan" on the Japanese label Video Arts, which for some strange reason has become a Ryan Kisor factory lately, cranking out no less than seven Kisor albums, counting this one. (My friend says that the other Kisor-Video Arts that includes Stewart, "Night In Tunisia," should be avoided, but that Kisor's Criss Cross with Stewart is a good one.) In any case, what makes Stewart interesting in this retro world is that he is a good deal more retro than most but somehow doesn't sound that way in terms of spirit, freshness, etc. That is, stylistically, he sounds like he's never heard a note of Coltrane or Shorter (which is quite a trick, however one does that); instead he springs from pre-"Bridge" Rollins and, above all, Mobley. At times I also hear a touch of Wardell Gray or even the circa 1957 tenor playing of Ira Sullivan -- see the Red Rodney album "The Red Arrow," originally on Signal. I know -- to be this retro in this way and also be real and really good ought to be impossible, but Stewart (unlike so many of the compadres IMO) sounds like he's zestfully making genuine choices in the moment, not shuffling through a computer program of Dexter Gordon licks or throwing around a big warm sound as though that alone ought to be enough. (Compare, in that regard, Stewart's "Something To Live For" from "Buen Rollo" and Ari Ambrose's "Something To Live For" from "Introducing Ari Ambrose" [steeple Chase].) I'm waiting for the bottom to drop out here but so far am surprised and happy.

This is what you want if you've got a lot of LPs: http://www.audioadvisor.com/store/productd...aning%20Machine I got one about 25 years, at a price less than this but still fairly hefty (maybe $300 or $250), and it's paid for itself many times over, especially if you buy used LPs. The amount of gunk it can remove is amazing, and the difference between a de-gunked used LP and one that hasn't been de-gunked can be day and night. Of course, there are limits to what this or any record-cleaning device can do to a beat-up LP, but if it's basically a matter of dirt and dust, I don't think this baby can be beat. And they're built like a rock (of course, now that I've said this, mine will break). The principle is simple: You place an LP on the turntable, apply an alcohol plus water mixture to the LP with a brush that works this stuff into the grooves as the turntable turns, place the plastic -tube arm (which has a thin groove in it and is covered with a soft cloth) across the diameter of the LP, and turn on both the turntable switch and the vacuum switch. The turntable turns, the plastic tube is sucked down by the vaccum to meet the surface of the LP, and the fluid you've worked into the surface of the LP, plus almost all the gunk that was there, is sucked up through the groove in the plastic tube in about eight seconds, and there you are.

Can’t believe I’m wading into this again, but in the name of sanity, Clem’s "fo real yo, how can a question like ‘you payed them, right?’ set the dude off? it's called a gig-- you pay yr musicians. whuh?" deserves a plaque in the Hall of Disingenuous Remarks. Setting "the dude off" was the obvious intent of Clem’s original words: "on Roz & Julius H.: uh, well... you $$$ PAYED THEM $$$ right?" Oh -- I get it. Clem is channeling Joel Chandler Harris.

Agree with Allen about David Murray, with Clem about Frisell in his cinematic country bag (though I have to respect Frisell's work on Zorn's two "News for Lulu" albums), have never heard Nels Cline, and usually don't like it when people yell at each other here, unless one of them is a flaming jerk/nitwit or the yelling is also funny. Allen I know as a man, author, and musician, and while he can be edgy, he certainly is no jerk/nitwit and really knows a lot about a lot of stuff. Clem I know only from his posts. He knows, and/or professes to know, a lot about a lot of stuff, and often I think he does or might ... and sometimes it's just interesting to hear from his corner, in part because I'm left to guess about exactly where that corner might be located. (By contrast, I almost always know exactly where Allen is coming from.) But Clem also seems to be so involved in the art of territorial spraying that at times I wonder whether he's really that ticked off or just likes to play that role on TV. Where does that leave me?

I thought he was Herman Chittison.