Larry Kart

I think the recordings Webster did for Granz are quite variable. The Tatum is solid gold, and Ben is in particuarly fine form on Harry Edison's "Sweets" (as he is backing Holiday with the same or much the same lineup -- Sweets, Jimmy Rowles, Barney Kessel, Joe Mondragon, and Alvin Stoller -- at about the same time), but the rhythm sections on "Soulville," "Gee Baby Ain't I Good To You," and "Ben Webster and Associates" seem pretty leaden to me (the first two thanks to Oscar Peterson I believe, the last probably because Jimmy Jones is in a very static mood (he could get that way), and when Ben didn't have a good time wave to float on, he could thrash and bluster some -- not that there isn't power and and meaning in that, but once I've heard peak Webster of this period (e.g. "Sweets" and the Tatum album), for me it's hard not to tell the difference and hard then to settle for less. I also don't think Ben is at his best on the encounter with Mulligan. BTW, there's some gorgeous floating/gliding Ben on "Nuages" and "Blue and Sentimental" from "Legrand Jazz" (Columbia), rec. 1958, where he's backed by four trombones, rhythm, and Herbie Mann. Ben captured in 30th St. Studio sound is something to behold.

I agree with Chuck. The way Fortune sounded in-person in the '80s with Nat Adderley's band (Larry Willis, Walter Booker, and Jimmy Cobb) and before that with trumpeter Charles Sullivan (don't recall the rhythm section other than bassist Junie Booth) was something I've yet to hear from him on record and, as I recall, was a good deal more potent than his playing in the '70s with Tyner. Letters in flame appeared on the wall.

I recall an interview or Blindfold Test in which Charlie Persip spoke of Wilson's drum work on the Basie recording of Jimmy Mundy's "Queer Street" (1945, I believe) as being of epoch-making quality and significance -- Persip, of course, being in a good position to judge because he became a superb big-band drummer himself. Not having heard it for years, I don't recall "Queer Street" clearly myself (sadly don't have it on the shelves -- it's available in that big Columbia Basie boxed set of a few years ago, and probably elsewhere too; perhaps someone who has a copy could take a listen and report). Other Wilson/Basie recordings ("Avenue C," "The King," "Taps Miller") certainly are impressive; there's a special taughtness to Wilson's beat and fills (kind of Philly Joe-like, maybe?), a nervous intensity that speaks of bop's atmosphere seen through Swing Era eyes. Wilson also can be heard in fine form on much of the Mosaic Illinois Jacquet box, and he contributes subtly but mightily to the success of Lee Konitz's "Very Cool" (Clef). I recall being told once that cocaine was Wilson's downfall.

You know the answer, Jim, but no, "Walkin,'" whatever it's real provenance (it sure wasn't written by Richard Carpenter), was not yet around in the late '40s. Also, Zwerin is to some degree illiterate. If Art Blakey had been "a fearful cat," that would mean that Blkaey himself was afraid. Instead, Zwerin meant that Blakey was "a fearsome cat," i.e. a person who inspires fear in others.

The band (first time for me) is a gas! Completely locked-in rhythmically and with an approach to the organ trio (essentially it's a mini big band) that may not be the only one but the one that I think is central and the best, unless you happen to be Larry Young. I'm no organ expert (watch yourself, now!), but I love Jim's warm, guttural, chest and belly level registration (don't care for lots of treble-y runs, myself); also I like his "key-y" attack, with just the right amount of "chuff" to it, if you know what I mean (I'm making up these terms, I think, but they do correspond, in my head at least, to what's going on in Jim's playing). Afterwards I was talking to Joe about how nicely Jim can lay back and then really build; Joe said that a good deal of that was due to Randy, who's older, has a good deal of prior organ trio experience, and had passed on that wisdom. In any case, Jim in a slow burn groove is something else -- very satisfying, quite personal while staying within the idiom, and, above all, in the moment; he's doesn't drown you in bluesy cliches. Also, when Jim has really built or is really building to a chordal climax, don't stop listening closely; in the midst of the Christmas dinner, he's playing some very hip, subtle, off-the-wall stuff. And, again, completely locked-in rhythmically, and while I think there was, in the first set, only one really up-tempo piece, "Jimmy Smith Goes to Washington," Jim was completely at ease there too. (Oh yes, most of the tunes are the band's, and they're fine -- particularly the one dedicated to Jim's daughter, "Punkin' Pie.") Joe knocked me out; his lines always sing -- again within the idiom, but not, or no longer, as a sharp-eared board member once said, really conventional, at least IMO. In particular, his phrasing lays across the beat so subtlely and fluidly that I think after this encounter that I'd know his playing anywhere; in his phrasing especially he's his own man. Only thing -- and this may be inseparable from his virtues -- for some reason I can't pin down, it took me a tune or two to really pick up on what he was doing. That could be me, of course, but it also may be that there's something kind of undemonstrative or even shy about Joe's music-making, which he overcomes as he gets going -- if so, well, that's part of what makes his playing genuine, and so be it. I was about to say that Randy is a force of nature, which is how it feels, but that's also silly -- you don't get just get into or fall into those grooves, you create them. A hell of a player. And his harmonica solo, with R.J. Spangler sitting in and tippin' light on drums, was a real JAZZ harmonica solo. Sound quality in the room was excellent. And I believe that Jim owns quite an instrument there, though, again, I don't know enough about the relationship between a particular Hammond in itself and how a player sets it up to be sure about that. Whatever, it's deep, rich, and caramel-y, not whiny or nasal, and you could listen to it all evening without getting worn out, which is what happens to me with a lot other Hammond players and/or their setups. Also, while Jim changes registration to some extent to suit the tune, he doesn't fiddle around with it in mid-solo (something I tend to dislike/distrust), nor does he alter the setup so much from tune to tune that you think you're listening to two or three different players. Wish I could have talked more with Jim and Randy (did get to talk to Joe for a while after the first set), but the music was speaking on their behalf regardless.

Chris. And I remember doing this a year ago, which is a bit eerie, because it feels like it was maybe four months ago.

About Tatro's still being with us, composer/arranger Bill Kirchner informs me that "Duane is alive and well--I spoke with him earlier this year, I think."

Mike -- Sadly, that's probably our DT who died. He lived in the Valley, and that's a pretty unusual name. And I wouldn't trust Nicholson on details. I notice now that he says "Easy Terms" is "virtually a feature for Niehaus," but it's Joe Maini who takes the alto solo there. Also, Bill Holman is the more prominently featured soloist on "Easy Terms." (The liner notes are quite clear as to who plays on what tracks, and it also would be nice to have ears and use them -- Niehaus and the Bird-like Maini are easy to tell apart. BTW -- Maini is in very good form on "Dollar Day.") Speaking of Bird, what would it have been like to have heard him on some of these pieces! I'm sure he could have assimilated Tatro's language at one or two gulps, and despite the difference in "temperature" between them ... well, check out Bird's solo on "Four Brothers" with the Woody Herman Band in 1951 in Kansas City on "Bird with the Herd" (Drive). It's especially interesting to hear how Bird can't hear how the bridge of "Four Brothers" goes the first time through, but then he eats it up the next few times. Also, to link back to Tatro, Bird is playing some different things because of what's going on behind him, and "Four Brothers" is pretty simple compared to Tatro's writing. Anyhow, I've listened again to "Jazz for Moderns" and have more thoughts. One of Tatro's key musical preoccupations (it's not his only one, but IMO it's his richest vein) is what Nicholson alludes to when says of "Multiplicity," "...the subject is developed, juxtaposed, and restated in keys quite remote from the tonic before returning once more to the home key...." OK, but what's really going on here I think -- what the "language" of this music is about -- is what it means to Tatro to move toward and way from "the home key." And I think "the home key" isn't quite the right way to put it, because fairly often that sense of "at homeness" is [a] not exclusively harmonic but timbral as well and it's often not part of the initial material of the piece, i.e. the piece begins at a point [or points] of implicit harmonic remoteness from a "home" that were not yet sure will be referred to at all; in other words the music, in part, is about reaching nodes of "at homeness" that we've come to think might not be there for us any more and then moving away from, even abandoning, them. Finally (or further) the relationship between the nodes of harmonic "at homeness" in Tatro's work is almost always "contrapuntal" (if you will) in terms of the formal expectations the piece has set up -- i.e. such moments tend to arrive just before or just after we expect them to, if we've expected them to arrive at all, and this sense of piqued expectations and off-center arrivals is again, a big part of what the language of this music is about; those principles and those moments are IMO typically lovely and moving, and crucial to the quality of Tatro's work. Some examples, in addition to the previously mentioned "Minor Incident," would be "Backlash" (were "at home" for the first time at about 1:36, then we're moving away from that -- and dig the gorgeous, ambiguous/ambivalent place we arrive at about 2:08!) and "Low Clearance" (BTW, how, i.e. out of what instruments, does Tatro get those near-symphonic, lower-register textures at the very end of this piece? There's an echo here of some moves in Schoenberg's Chamber Concerto No. 1, which probably lurks behind a lot of Tatro's thinking, though if so, he's fully assimilated that influence.) Finally, a question or thought about the titles of these pieces, if indeed they're Tatro's and not Lester Keonig's. We know several things from the liner notes and from the shape of Tatro's life after this album -- born in Van Nuys but reared in Iowa, Tatro was part of the anxious/hopeful migration (in his family's case, re-migration) to the West Coast that so many Depression-Era mid-Westerners lived through (my wife's family for one came West from Kansas at about the same time, 1941, that Tatro's family made their move). Also, Tatro was, in the early 1950s, kind of making it financially (as production manager at an electronics plant) but in such a way that this relative "success" was close to preventing him from doing his own thing musically -- both in terms of time and also, it's fair to assume, because the music he wanted to make wouldn't bring in any money. The "answer" for him, as it turned out, was to write TV scores for shows like "The FBI" (with Efram Zimbalist Jr.) -- at least then Tatro was being paid for writing music, not for supervising employees on a shop floor, but still.... In any case, a lot of those titles (if they are Tatro's) -- "Backlash," "Turbulence," "Low Clearance," "Dollar Day," "Easy Terms," "Maybe Next Year" -- seem like they might be linked to some of the financial/social/artistic stresses and dilemmas alluded to above. Not only that, built into the music in what seems to me to be a unique and potent way, there is that rich, tense dialogue between "at homeness" and no longer being at home -- a dialogue in which Tatro locates himself, at least at the time he wrote these pieces, in a very honest, even-handed manner. That is, harmonic "at homeness" in these pieces is, while we certainly experience it, is never really a matter of full-stop resolution, nor is it, in emotional terms, ever sentimental or (in terms of the way these pieces work) a "realistic" place to stay. What is real, instead, are the distances from which we (necessarily?) stand from this "at homeness" we no longer can realistically, honestly occupy, though we do visit it, look at it from where we stand, dance to and away from it as best we can. Duane Tatro was a deep customer.

Here is a link to a relatively informative article about Tatro by Stuart Nicholson (a writer I normally find a hollowly self-important twit): http://www.jazzinchicago.org/Internal/Arti...DuaneTatro.aspx Nicholson does make at least one error here. The baritone solo he cites on "Maybe Next Year" is by Bob Gordon, not Jimmy Giuffre. Makes me wonder, because why are you even writing about the music of this period with would-be authoritativeness/attentiveness if you can’t tell those two quite distinctive players apart? BTW, I’m pretty sure that Tatro didn’t write out Gordon’s solo for him. Here’s a link, through a website devoted to Howard Roberts, to that clip from the concerto that Tatro wrote for him: http://www.utstat.utoronto.ca/mikevans/hro...unds/music.html

Teddy Charles and Tatro were certainly swimming at the same end of the pool at that time, but I don't recall anything of Charles that has the fierce sotto voce compactness of Tatro at his best. Not that what's good about Charles isn't very good. Don't know the Don Grolnick Blue Notes. What would you recommend?

Sorry I'm late to the party; I had to root the White Sox home tonight. I've loved the Tatro album since I first heard it not too long after it came out. The only part of it that's a bit dated are the quasi-fugal touches that marred so much West Coast "progressive" writing of the time; otherwise, IMO Tatro is the most interesting of that bunch by a good margin, and if pushed, I'd say he was one of the major jazz composers -- the only drawback/doubt being that there is so little recorded evidence of what he could do, aside from AFAIK this album and a track on Red Norvo's "Music To Listen to Red Norvo By" (OJC -- originally Contemporary) that I recall as pleasant/interesting but nowhere near as intense as the music on "Jazz for Moderns." Tatro, who may still be with us, went into TV scoring, and did work for a lot of shows. He also wrote a 12-tone Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra for Howard Roberts, which Tatro (I called him up on the phone once in the 1980s) said he was going to send me a tape of, but that didn't happen. I recall being able to listen to some of it (a radio broadcast of the premiere) over the 'Net a few years ago, but that "some" was frustrating; the sound clip was maybe two minutes, and two-thirds or more was taken up by the announcer's introduction. From what I could tell, it wasn't a jazz piece, just strong modern music. About "Jazz for Moderns," what always gets me about it -- why I almost always listen to it straight through -- is not so much the overtly "progressive" aspects but the formal inventiveness and near uncanny economy of the writing, the way each piece takes you to a place you never quite expect to go (even if you've been down these tone roads many times before), with the transitions and switchbacks along the way typically being very intense, even climactic. My favorite "for instance" of this may be "Minor Incident," with (I once wrote) "its solemn central horn call" -- the arrival of/placement of which surprises me every time; and besides it's such a lovely austure melodic shape (beautifully played by Joe Eger). Also, it's on that piece that valve trombonist Bob Enevoldson plays a lovely (again quite austere) and fairly long solo (by the standards of these piece, which average about three minutes) that Tatro wrote out for him, backed by haunting and/or haunted saxophone figures. Also, again, note that that magical, mysterious horn call is intoned again (with slight different notes values?) to end the piece, though this time I believe it's Enevoldsen on the valve trombone who plays it. I've said "mysterious" once and perhaps hinted at it before; what I have in mind I guess is that this music, while it evolves in a quite natural manner by and large, leaves one (or leaves me) with the feeling that it's just put together differently -- and differently not to be far-out but out of necessity. I once tried to explain it this way: writing of "Minor Incident" that "it consumes all it proposes with a passionate puritanism." In this, Tatro reminds me a good deal (so shoot me, I'm crazy) of early to mid-'50s Monk, the way the shapes of a piece (or, in Monk's case, also a solo) seem to emerge from the belly of the still-stalking- about prior beast while it also gnaws at the legs of the yet-to-emerge next one. Not only does neither man waste a gesture, it's as though the moral principle that underlies that drive or impulse becomes what generates the beauty. BTW, the late bassist Ralph Pena plays his ass off on "Jazz For Moderns." Also, I believe that because of the harmonic complexity of much of the material, Tatro wrote out everyone's solos, with the exception of Lennie Niehaus' -- and maybe Joe Maini's and Bill Holman's. Certainly, Neihaus is the only soloist who sounds really at ease here (though Enevoldson does play his written-out solo quite well), but then not only was Niehaus' thinking as a player akin to Tatro's as a writer, Niehaus' facility in out-there harmonic territory was just plain remarkable. On the other hand, it's interesting to compare Niehaus' handsome but rather straight reading of Tatro's "Maybe Next Year" with Art Pepper's gorgeously flowing interpretation of the piece on his 1958 album "Smack Up." Genius will out.

I have fond memories of those opening Steve Allen Show segments in which Nye played a hipster jazz musician. In one (there may have been only two), having identified himself as a musician and being asked by Steve what instrument he played, Nye replied, "I play meat!" And he proceeded to slap a bunch of steaks around on a table with an air of soulful, crazed intensity. In the other, Nye's response was, "I play ice!" -- which lead to an assault with a pick on large block of ice, again with an air of soulful, crazed intensity. Much later on, in my days as a "night life critic," I reviewed Nye's club act. Sad to say, by this time (the late '70s or early '80s), he either had little left in the tank, or, I suspect, his talents just weren't suited to doing 40 or so minutes of material by himself in front of a live audience. He needed the framing device of a potentially giggling Allen or to be part of a sketch with other actors. To pick a somewhat comparable figure, I don't imagine that Howie Morris of "Your Show of Shows" (Sid Caesar) would have had a nightclub comedy act in him. On the other hand, also in the late 70s or early '80s, I reviewed Imogene Coca in one of the Neil Simon "Suite" plays, and she was still an incredibly funny actress (physically and facially, as well as verbally), at least as good as she'd been on TV with Caesar. In fact, seeing her onstage, some of the physical aspects of her humor were even more effective than they'd been on TV -- for instance, the way (when expressing exasperated rage) she could transform her whole body, or parts of it, into what was, by analogy, a deadly weapon -- like a spear or an arrow. What was so funny here, in addition to the sheer skill of the "business" involved and the suddenness with which Coca would enter and return from this "my body is a weapon" state, is that in order to express her rage so fully her character had to, in effect, surrender her identity as a human being and become a rigid, albeit self-hurled, thing.

Will the airplane with that girl and Jim's keyboard in it be parked out back?

I plan to be there -- barring fire, flood, or famine.

I'd go with this first: http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/...rt+Songbook.htm You can listen to sound samples.

Good stuff, but also hear the even better (IMO) albums that Bennett did around that time on his own label, Improv, with Ruby Braff and George Barnes. The version of "Lover" on the one of Rodgers & Hart songs may be the best thing that Tony has ever done.

About Dunlop, here's a passage from a review of "Criss Cross" that John Litweiler wrote in 1964: "Frankie Dunlop is certainly the major liability in this quartet. He is an exceptionally facile drummer, but it is amazing how a drummer can be so insensitive to Monk's playing. He has learned all the tricks from Roach, Blakey, Philley Joe, Elvin Jones, Baby Dodds, Joe Podunk and the rest of the gang, and he feels compelled to use every trick in his voluminous bag on every song he plays. It seems that way, anyway; good intentions do not a drummer make. John Ore is an asset to the group, in spite of his unwillingness to solo...; since he plays slightly on top of the beat, he keeps Show-off Dunlop from dragging the tempo." In tune with this, I'll add that one of Dunlop's typical "tricks," a kind of gulping-for-air, tickety-boom suspension, has always struck my as very lame and square, like a guy dancing around in a gold lame jumpsuit who has a really fat butt. It's related to and may be derived from a lick that Osie Johnson drove into the ground, but over time I've come to prefer Johnson to Dunlop. BTW, now that I think of it, the way Shadow Wilson plays with Monk may be close to the way Wilbur Campbell did. He and Wilbur Ware played a memorable engagement with Monk in Chicago at the Beehive in '54 or '55, which led to the Ware-Monk connection. Also, Campbell was within minutes of playing on the Riverside "Monk's Music" date when Blakey was very late in arriving.

Famously gone in the Atlantic fire ("famously" for the few who care about these players, but those who do care a lot) is an unreleased Tony Fruscella album with Brew Moore. There's not much Fruscella on record, and everything he played is potentially precious -- Moore likewise, though he recorded more.

Another vote for Shadow Wilson. He's as inside Monk's music as any drummer ever was. I know -- there's Blakey, but Wilson's is a different way, much less dramatic and contrapuntal but very loving, subtle, and ESP-level anticipatory. When he steps forward, as on the upfront cymbal work on the two versions of "Epistrophy," it's like a perfect knight's move. Don't care at all for Frankie Dunlop.

Although it sadly went back under the waves after it surfaced, Clifford and Max's "Live at the Beehive." IMO that's a signficantly different Clifford Brown than the Clifford who plays on any of his other recordings -- studio or live.

I go back and forth on this -- in part because I'm not normally a fan of this conductor and also because I've heard that cast members were unhappy with his rather know-it-all manner both in the recording session and the Glyndebourne production that preceded it -- but for the opera itself I'm very impressed by Simon Rattle's recording, which essentially turns "P&B" into a somewhat different work by emphasizing the harsher, more modernist aspects of the score (i.e. in the orchestra's contribution). Rather than being there more or less to accompany the singers, the orchestra is transformed in this recording into a semi-independent force -- a kind of Fate Machine is how it hits me. My guess is that, consciously or not, Rattle had in mind as a model here the role that Kurt Weill's music plays in the Brecht-Weill works. Whatever, it makes for a different "P&B" in dramatic terms and one that arguably fits the conclusion of the story quite well.

Thanks for checking, Soul Stream. Hadn't re-read those notes in some time; fun to read them again, in part because the "me" that wrote them (he had some bright ideas abut Jackie and Lee, I think -- and that's a hell of good record) seems kind of distant in time now. For instance, that reference in the notes to Jackie playing a great solo on "My Old Flame" at the Jazz Showcase in Nov. '78 -- I remember being knocked out by that solo but don't remember much else about it anymore.

I hope they disentangled the "Consequence" notes for the CD issue. I wrote them for the initial issue (on LP) of this material in 1979, submitting maybe four numbered sheets of typescript. In the event, someone at Blue Note mixed up the sheets, and in the liner notes as printed, several paragraphs are out of order. Specifically, on the LP issue the first four graphs are in correct order, but the next graph, which begins "As evidence of this..." and the one that follows it ("The rhythm section is 'up' too...") should be preceded by the graphs that begin "Immediately striking here..." and "But Morgan turns..." (That is, graphs seven and eight of the LP notes are graphs five and six in my typescript.). The "rhythm section is 'up' too..." graph then should be followed by the one that begins "Somewhat overshadowed in critical esteem...". From there on, the LP notes are in the right order. Soul Stream, could you take a look at the CD notes and see if they straightened this out? I think I mentioned what happened here to Cuscuna back in '79, but that was a long time ago, and he has a lot of stuff on his mind.

Brian Priestley kindly sent me a copy of his review in Jazzwise. Here it is: Jazz In Search Of Itself Larry Kart Yale U.P. £20.00 Kart has been commenting on jazz since the late 1960s, when he started contributing to Down Beat under the editorship of Dan Morgenstern. Less of a name on the international critical scene, and perhaps even in his native country, his work has appeared most regularly in the Chicago Tribune. So it’s appropriate that the cover photo and one of the early chapters both feature saxist-trumpeter Ira Sullivan, who also failed to gain a wide reputation through remaining in Chicago. It’s our loss that Kart isn’t better known, since he writes thoughtfully and often provocatively on a wide span of music, from Earl Hines to Roscoe Mitchell and from Frank Zappa to Tony Bennett. The book’s title suggests a heavy thesis but, instead, the pertinent questions about what jazz is (and who it’s for) come up in straightforward artist profiles, grouped in chronological order of significance, rather than their order of first publication. Even within a brief piece, Kart often focusses on significant details and, in his less enthusiastic comments (for instance, on Peterson and Jarrett), is helpfully specific. He’s also one of the only writers to identify the similarities between Wynton Marsalis and David Murray, and to deplore the influence of Coltrane and Bill Evans. Some of the portraits of early-jazz figures are fairly short obituaries or book reviews. But, as the chronology moves on to “Moderns And After”, the coverage becomes more expansive and, in the case of people like Miles and indeed Marsalis, the author’s reactions from different periods gives a more rounded picture. It’s a shame the only essay-length entry is from a boxed-set reissue of Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, because Kart is clearly capable of lengthier considerations of several artists here. But maybe Chicago-based writers don’t get those opportunities.

Mozilla. I'd tried to download it once or twice to replace my old browser, Internet Explorer, but each time the connection cut off just before the download was over. Then a kind soul (who shall be nameless in case this is not kosher) sent me Mozilla on a disc, and the rest was fairly simple.