Larry Kart

As I may have said before here, all things being equal, Clint could have made a great movie about Stan Kenton, especially if he'd done it when he was still of an age where he himself could have played the title role. And with Lennie Niehaus as Lennie Niehaus!

Re: Copy editors and Crouch. I think it was mentioned by someone in passing on the thread about the Rollins piece in The New Yorker, but place that one alongside the Heath-MJQ piece and imagine the labor that was involved in turning the Rollins piece into the relatively lucid piece of prose that it is. Funny thing about all this -- and I've been there as a copy editor, believe me -- is that the prose of some bad writers is not that hard to fix (though it can take a lot of time). because it's fairly clear what they meant to say, even though they weren't able to say it. In the case of others, though -- and Crouch is good example -- you discover that the chaotic writing and the chaotic thinking are often inseperable. You can finally say to yourself, "OK, I'm not going to try to preserve any of the structure or wording of that goofy sentence or paragraph, I'll just rewrite it from scratch and try to preserve its meaning," and find that it just can't be done. In a way at those times I've felt as though I were in the presence of an essential, almost magical, principle of language, though here it was upside-down or inside-out. That is, because many or all of the various collaborative "agreements" that allow people to communicate in words were being violated in front of my eyes, it seemed that one might be able to proceed from this virulent, demented, worst case scenario to the very place where words and thought are or are not effectively knit together and, to repeat myself, divine language's general principles -- a la Freud's experience with his key early patients, when he discovered or was led to believe that what was going with these hysterics etc. gave him window into the human psyche in general.

Don't mean to drive you mad, but does anyone else have copies of the two cassettes worth of Shaw material (maybe 70-90 minutes in all, but I haven't checked in years) that was recorded by National Public Radio at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago on 12/32/79 (i.e. New Year's Eve)? As I recall it's top-drawer Shaw, with Azar Lawrence, Mulgrew Miller, Stafford James, and Victor Lewis.

"One of the troubles, however, was that many of the be-boppers were heroin addicts, which meant that on one hand they were producing a difficult, virtuoso style, while on the other they were pariahs to musicians outside of their camp. Can't be sure, as is often the case with Crouch, whether this is sloppy writing or sloppy thinking -- maybe both? The "on the one hand, on the other" construction just doesn't fit what I think he's trying to say, though even when I apply my secret decoder ring, there's some confusion.

Marcello asked: "What saxophonist plays with the stamina, ideas and creates such excitement as he?" Two that come to mind (mentioned them before here in a slightly different context) are Von Freeman (age 82) and Lee Konitz (age 77). No need to cut either of them any slack. (Yes, if "excitement" means sheer heat, Lee doesn't match up, but listening to him invent is plenty exciting to me.) Jim S. asked: "Why all this emphasis on records?" Among other things, how common is it in the history of jazz for there to be an immensely talented artist who made a number of great recordings and then began to make recordings, over the course of almost four decades now, that, allowing for some ebb and flow and differences of taste, are arguably pretty mediocre? Can't we at the least agree, in the name of simple or not so simple human understanding -- and leaving aside deification on the one hand and snarkiness on the other -- that Rollins came to be more than a little hung up on some aspects of being both a human being and a jazz musician, or a professional jazz musician if you prefer, and that if this so. Hasn't he said as much himself? And if this is so, isn't it worth talking and thinking about? Of course, it's not easy being both a human being etc., but name me another jazz musican whose life fits Rollins' pattern, even comes close to it? Wayne? Maybe, up to a point, but not really IMO. Anyone else?

As I think that Rollins quote implies (and it's something I've thought and written about before), there's something about being a jazz musician that at a certain point began not to work for Rollins (and in ways that were hard not to hear). Not that "something about being a jazz musician" means that there's one thing involved here that's more or less the same for everyone, but the act of standing up there as an improvising soloist in "one" (as they say in the theater world) is a very stressful and, for some, very rewarding act, even a lifelong life-defining one; for others though the stresses come to far outweigh the rewards, though that implies it's a balancing act, when what I have in mind is more a setup in which you can function and that functions for you -- in the sense that the deepest, best strains in you are consistently enough expressed and realized. It's no accident BTW that the music of both Rollins and Wayne Shorter IMO at times came to brilliantly express (even to be about expressing) significant doubts about the act of standing up there as an improvising soloist in "one."

I love and admire John's book and have learned a lot from it, and from his other writing, over the years. A possible side issue, by way of a quote from Hans Keller's essay on Mozart's chamber music in "The Mozart Companion": "Most critics have never grasped the essential difference between analysis and description. Description gives a verbal account of what you hear and is essentially unnecessary. Can anyone seriously suggest that a music-lover has to be told that a contrasting theme is a contrasting theme? Verbal or symbolic analysis, shows, on the other hand, the elements of what you hear...the unitive forces behind the manifest music..." etc. I would prefer "tries to show" to "shows" and would add "the issues at work in" to "the elements of" -- especially when we're talking about a music like jazz, whose relationship to us tends to be so close-up and whose underlying "language" principles at any key point may be in the process of shifting about a good bit, and in arguably novel ways. Paragons of real musical analysis to my mind are Charles Rosen and the late Carl Dahlhaus; they try to give you the whole ball of wax, from the crucial atomistic detail to the broadest socio-historical perspective, which all things implicitly or explicitly bearing on everything else. In that vein, a favorite passage from "The Freedom Principle": "What the Tristano circle created was termed cool jazz for its difference from the emotional fires of bop, though in fact it was a no less passionate quest for lyricism. A more literally detached emotionality arrived with the West Coast jazz inspired by both Tristano and Miles Davis's 1949 Birth of the Cool nonet, a muted, scaled-down big band. The relaxed, subdued atmosphere of West Coast jazz had a healthy acceptance of stylistic diversity and innovation, but it also accepted the emotional world of pop music at face value; even original themes are treated like more hip, more grown-up kinds of pop music. In bop's freest flights it could not escape reality, but these Californrians were not aware of the conflict of values that was the source of bop." No technical description here but IMO a brilliantly compact, axe-to-the-frozen-sea account of what the underlying issues and elements are, an account that's essentially congruent with the most atomistic examination of the musical details. On the other hand, I once pointed out this very passage to a very smart jazz critic, who then read it and said, "I don't know what he's talking about."

Thinking again about Rollins' riddle or dilemma, two of the top three (or five or whatever) greatest living saxophonists come to mind -- Von Freeman and Lee Konitz. Knowing or knowing about them as people to some extent, and knowing to some extent how they worked out over time (and not without difficulty) their relationship to playing the music in ways that worked for them and for us (and also that how they worked that out is pretty much built into their music), it seems all the more remarkable that anyone ever figures these things out and pulls them off. Al Cohn was at the Cafe Monmartre in Copenhagen, and between sets a Danish acquaintance suggested that Al sample the potent local brew Elephant Beer. "No, man," said Al. "I drink to forget."

There is a quote in Crouch's piece that poignantly sums up Rollins' dilemma (or one of them -- and while it's not a problem that's unique to him among jazz musicians, well...): "...I never really liked being a bandleader, because if things didn't sound good, all the disappointment fell on me. At the same time, I couldn't be the real Sonny unless I was leading the band. So it was a riddle I couldn't solve, and I don't think I solved it for a long time. Now, even though I still don't really like it, they have my name up there and I have to show up and call the tunes and lead the musicians I've hired to play with me." Reading between the lines, this speaks volumes, I think, especially when it's placed alongside Rollins' memories of working with Clifford Brown: "He didn't try to mislead you and stunt your growth like some of the competitive guys out there. Being around him lifted me up completely. Near the end, we got that unified sound you almost never hear -- there was no saxophone, no trumpet." To coin (or modify) a phrase, jazz musicians are just like everyone else only more so.

I believe that Ravel's Pavane pour une infante defunte is also the basis of "The Lamp is Low." And Duke Jordan's "Jordu" makes use of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite.

Pliched? Sounds like it would be useful word, but I meant to type "plucked."

An excerpt from the intro to my book, which suffers a bit from being pliched out of its context but which touches on what Allen just said and perhaps also on what Chuck said before about "career pressures": "The rich complexity of Rollins’s musical thought, and his ability to at once dramatize and ironically comment upon virtually any emotional impulse that came to mind, led him to express multiple points of view--one could even say summon up multiple selves or characters--within a single solo. This was, however, not an approach that Rollins could sustain during the 1960s, in the face of rapid stylistic change in the surrounding jazz landscape. Responding to those changes in his own work, as he did quite strikingly up to a point, also meant that the broadly shared musical-emotional language of romantic sign and sentiment that had so deeply stirred Rollins’s own sentiments and wit was now becoming historical. It was a language that could still be referred to and played off of, but for him apparently not with sufficient immediacy."

I remember the same album Chuck does. At the time, at least for a while, I thought it featured one guy named Basso Valdambrini.

A somewhat younger veteran Italian tenor man (he plays soprano too) who's worth a listen is Claudio Fasoli (b. 1939 -- Basso b. 1931). Fasoli lists his favorite players as Konitz and Shorter and is definitely his own man. I've got and like his "Lido" (Soul Note), with K.Drew, NHOP and B.Altschul, "Ten Tributes" (Ram) with K.Wheeler, M.Goodrick, H.Texier, and B.Elgart, and "Resume" (Musica Jazz), with various fellow Italians. Interesting composer, too.

Allen: Don't have the energy to re-read the Lewis piece right now, but I had the feeling that he did have enough knowledge of the pre-avant garde Euro jazz scene(s) to go on to say what did about what he wanted to go on to talk about. Also, does he say or even imply that the state of pre-avant garde Euro jazz was "barren" in purely musical terms? Isn't much of what Lewis talks about a state-of-mind, sense-of-collective-self thing, and isn't it bolstered by a number of contemporary quotes from Euro players and critics? Those quotes may or not be as representative as Lewis suggests, but they are evidence of some sort of what some guys were thinking at the time or soon afterwards and are congruent with a lot other such stuff that I've read and heard about how that first generation of Euro Jazz avantgardists thought about themselves and how and from what they were trying to "free" themselves. Have to leave the house for a while, so if Allen or someone else replies, and I don't respond today, that's why.

Allen: Of course Gullin, Django et al. are unique and great, but there just aren't many connections ASFAIK (Lewis speaks of a key one, A. Mangelsdorff, perhaps the exception that proves the rule?) between notable Euro jazz figures of previous generations and the Euro jazz generation that Lewis is dealing with in relation to the AACM. To my mind, Lewis correctly reads the first generation of the Euro jazz avant garde as a kind of double rebellion/upheaval -- against "American" influence and against previous norms of jazz practice in general, with the those two impulses obviously, even unavoidably, overlapping quite a bit, though I'm sure that not every notable player there felt the against-the-American-way of-doing-things thing THAT strongly or consciously (yet it was in the air). A Hodier footnote: Advanced as his music was or may have been (don't care for it myself), his response as a critic to both the American and Euro jazz avantgarde was one of near-total repulsion.

I had high hopes for Lewis's book; this essay increases those expectations a lot. The let's-get- into-it/on-with-it compactness and density, the (as far I can tell) accuracy and makes-you-really-think shrewdness of this account, and its relative freedom from modish academic jargon -- hope I'll still be around when the book comes out. Have a friend who is or was editorially involved with the book at the U. of Chicago Press who said that Lewis was, perhaps understandably given the dimensions of his task, a good bit behind schedule, though I believe that's not uncommon in the publishing trade. In any case, if this essay is representative, Lewis sure isn't phoning it in.

Can't say for sure who the drummer was that Kenton was talking about, but my guess would be the recently deceased Stan Levey, who did have a drug problem and beat it and, of course, played with Kenton. But was Levey "really big in the field of jazz"? If it was Levey, "really big" seems an exaggeration (Levey's undoubted talent aside), but then exaggeration was often Kenton's mode (e.g. "This is an OR-chestra!") The only other drummer I can think of who played with Kenton and was a jazz notable in 1960 was Shelly Manne, who definitely would fit the "really big in jazz" label, but I'm virtually certain that Shelly was clean.

Agree on the Steeplechases. I also like "Young and Foolish" http://www.worldsrecords.com/pages/artists...eman_31187.html a concert recording from 1977 with longish tracks -- always a good thing with Von, in my experience.

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 two Clef dates (8/14/56 and 8/18/56), which no doubt accounts for the hand-in-glove atmosphere that prevails here. Kudos to Mondragon and Stoller too.

Niehaus may have the (pardon the expression) "whitest" rhythmic sense of any modern jazz musician whose playing arguably is excellent. An updated Frankie Trumbauer? Listen to where his accents fall and/or don't fall. At times things are almost unbelievably close to being backwards or inside out, his harmonic choices are perfectly in tune with this, and when and where the hell does he breathe? (Often he doesn't for alarmingly long stretches of time and then where you'd least expect him to.) Oddly enough, all things being equal (which they're not), there's some degree of kinship here, I think, esp. rhythmically, between Niehaus and Hank Mobley! Lord knows what a two-horn-plus-rhythm album with those two would have sounded like. I agree about the recent Fresh Sounds Niehaus albums, esp. the one with Bill Perkins and Jack Nimitz. Could be the best playing ever from the leader. On the other hand, a somewhat later live album, recorded in Las Vegas for I don't recall what label, showed a severe falling off.

Those are Burns' words Coming thro' the rye, poor body, Coming thro' the rye, She draiglet a' her petticoatie Coming thro' the rye. O, Jenny's a' wat, poor body; Jenny's seldom dry; She draiglet a' her petticoatie Coming thro' the rye. Gin a body meet a body Coming thro' the rye, Gin a body kiss a body - Need a body cry? Gin a body meet a body Coming thro' the glen, Gin a body kiss a body - Need the warld ken? but I don't know if the tune is borrowed or his. No jazz was played in my home, except by me when the time came, but the way my mother listened to classical music (mostly on the radio) when I was kid -- the way it seemed to sway her and speak to her, the way she homed in on its essence without any pretence -- was a nice living lesson.

More info: Many of the works of the celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns were written as lyrics to be sung to existing old tunes, in an effort to preserve them. In the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion, the English had forbidden the Scots to sing the old songs and the tunes were gradually being forgotten. Together with James Johnson, Burns endeavored to preserve these old melodies, by creating new lyrics--most often far superior poetically to the original. My Heart's in the Highlands is one outstanding example of such a practice. It was written to be sung to the tune Failte na Miosg ("The Musket Salute.") According to Burns' own notes, "The first half stanza [of the chorus] is old; the rest is mine." P.S. It's what the music does in the part of the chorus that Burns wrote (a simple but near-Schubertian move) that makes the song so potent.

Sorry, that should have been: My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer. A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe; My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go....etc. Perfect for doing the dishes.

The Andrews Sisters recording of "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe," from 1946 when I was four; and around the same time, my maternal grandmother, who had a lovely contralto voice, singing "My Heart's in the Mountains/My Heart Is Not Here/My Heart's in the Mountains/My Heart Is Not Here" while she did the dishes (Robert Burns words, I believe, don't know who wrote the music, maybe Burns too); and "Funiculi, Funicula," which was used as the theme song of the radio soap opera "Just Plain Bill." I decided or discovered on my own little hook that I just hated that melody, and I still can't stand it.