Larry Kart

Yes, McKie's was a few doors south on Cottage Grove, but that corner was a teeming urban hum in general -- the Trianon Ballroom was one block north on Cottage Grove, and I can only imagine how intense the scene was around there in its heyday. (I knew it some in the mid-1960s, when it was still intense but intense in other ways too -- Blackstone Rangers time).

Von's brief (maybe two bars each) demonstration of the difference between "running the chords" and "making a statement" was so vivid that the "statement" part almost brought tears to my eyes. It was kind of mysterious too, because there are moments in a good Von solo where you'll hear passages that sound pretty much like his "running the chords" demo, but they don't sound at all like filler in that context (because they aren't...there). Likewise, the ease with which Von came up with that storytelling "statement" demo might raise doubts, just because of that ease, about Von's and the listener's relationship to those statements -- that is, are we being manipulated a bit by the ready presence of what are in effect "shapes of feeling" that might not really be inhabited by their maker to the degree we (or at least I) feel they are? Again, I don't think so -- when Von handles/finds/refinds those shapes in the course of a solo, it's an entirely different matter. An analogy that comes to mind: Someone asks you what the corner of 63rd St. and Cottage Grove Ave. is like and you haul out a map and some photos, maybe a sociological study of that part of Chicago's South Side. Second answer: You remember all the times you yourself have been there, all the things you've done there and seen there, and you sum that up. Final answer: You add answer one to answer two, but you're also at the corner of 63rd St. and Cottage Grove Ave. right now -- alive, moving, and feeling.

Happy Birthday to a man of exquisite musical taste ... by which I mean that I think we like a lot of the same things.

I'm no Sanborn scholar, should there be such a thing, but I recall once catching a performance on the radio like "Try A Little Tenderness" (it may even have been TALT), and it was so damn riveting along just the lines that Jim mentions that I stayed in the car for some time after I got to where I was going in order to find out from the DJ who had played that thing.

Remember the "In a Coffee House" routine from the Mel Brooks-Carl Reiner "2,000-Year-Old Man" album, where Reiner's roving reporter approaches one of the more flamboyant coffee house denizens: Reiner: "Are you an actor?" Brooks: "Yes, I'm lesbian." (Laughter) Reiner: "I think you mean 'thesbian.'" Brooks: "Oh -- I'll never make that mistake again."

A bit self-serving for me to mention it, but the review of my dreams finally got posted on the website Classical Net: http://www.classical.net/music/books/revie...300104200a.html

Lazaro -- He struck me as a bit ... I don't know ... dour and preoccupied on that album. Also, even though the estimable Jim Anderson was the engineer, I wasn't too crazy about the sound either -- both on Von's horn and on the group as a whole. As I recall, the stereo spread struck me as rather wide for a one-horn-plus-trio date, and as for Von himself, it sounded like a good deal of effort had been expended on trying to capture his sound but perhaps from the point of view that there was a problem there -- that is, that Von's sound was problematic -- which certain recording techniques/strategies (mike placement, etc.) might lessen. All I know for sure is that yesterday afternoon I was two-arms-lengths or so from the bell of Von's horn, and he sounded fantastic -- while the Von of that album sounded a fair bit airier (if that's the right term) than he does/did in real life. I was almost reminded of the sound ECM got on Konitz on that Kenny Wheeler-led album he did with Holland and Frisell. A real horn in real space -- it didn't sound that way to me, though I know that "real" is a tricky word to throw around when it comes to recorded sound. BTW, I think that Wheeler album and Von's album were recorded in same studio, Power Station.

Actually, I think Von's not a whole lot taller than Gillian Anderson.

Von was in superb form, I thought, in a glowing-mellow mood for the most part. (That most recent album, with Jimmy Cobb and Richard Wyands, had me a bit worried about the current state of things. Oddly enough, that's the album that Dan Morgenstern recently told me had finally convinced him that Von was really good; he and Ira Gitler could never get past Von's intonation, as I recall -- too bad for them.) In a Pres mood, he began with "Lester Leaps In," went on to "In a Little Spanish Town" (!) at a gorgeous amble (he said that he'd heard Lester play this on clarinet, or at least I think that's what he meant) Like Chuck, I don't know what that tune was that started off like it might be "Lover Come Back To Me." Could it have been a heavily disguised "Avalon"? But who plays "Avalon" anymore? Von can think ahead further than anyone alive, maybe anyone ever -- he's like a man laying down what will be potentially the world largest living mosaic. Swear to God, if you wanted to lay out one of his better solos and subject it to the strictist formal analysis imaginable, there wouldn't be one false move, yet it hits in the moment like a landslide of boulders, rocks, and trees. At one point I began to think of this in purely physical/mental terms, trying to imagine the computational skills/storage capacity/what have you of the mind that's housed in Von's head.

For more Wilkerson as a soloist, check out the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble's "21st Century Union March." Samples can be heard here: http://www.fred.net/jbowie/ehe.html It's not as successful an album overall IMO as "Light On the Path," but Wilkerson holds up his end as I recall. I wish there were as much of Wilkerson on disc as a soloist as there is of, say, Chris Potter -- hell, even one-tenth as much Wilkerson on disc as there is of Potter would be a blessing.

I've listened to the first two discs -- which includes material I've heard before but never owned (the "Little Niles" album), stuff I've never heard (the Five Spot album), stuff I do have on LP (the Jubilee trio date), and stuff that's out for the first time (the Roulette date with Cecil Payne, Ron Carter, and Roy Haynes) -- and I'm delighted. Melba Liston's charts on "Little Niles" are so good and sound like no one else's writing, though it's hard to tell where her conception leaves off and that of Weston's compositions begins. And the band sounds like it's really committed to the music; this was no "another day in the studio" recording. The live Five Spot album has some fierce Coleman Hawkins, plus a deep Hawkins reading of Strayhorn's "Star-Crossed Lovers" (great to hear Hawk with Roy Haynes, and does he get into Weston's tunes and comping), and Kenny Dorham is in fine form too. The Jubilee trio date is the best Weston trio/solo album, I think (a wonderful stately-solemn-deep solo reading of "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," but every track is strong). and the remastering is a big upgrade. Finally, the quartet date may have the best improvising Cecil Payne ever did in front of a microphone.

Despite his reputation as the fastest 'bone in the East, Cleveland, I thought, was at least as good on ballads, where his attractively "veiled" tone could come through -- e.g. "My One and Only Love" on EmArcy and "If You Could See Me Now" with Gil Evans. BTW, there was guy around Chicago in the '60s, don't remember his name, whose goal in life clearly was to play faster than Cleveland -- and he did too. But musically he made as much sense as a fire in a popcorn factory. Guys used to cringe when he'd get on the stand at sessions.

Actually, they're not the original album notes, which as Cuscuna says in the booklet were "brief and superficial," but notes that Cuscuna asked Welding to write for 1989 reissues of this material. I have no beef with Welding, except for what he said about Sheldon here, nor with Cuscuna -- I just wanted to make sure that anyone who was inclined to take Mosaic notes (even Mosaic select notes) as gospel was aware that what's said about Sheldon here strikes some minds as odd and mistaken.

On the autobiography theme, some people with West Coast connections (Welding perhaps, even Martin Williams by way of gossip?) may have had a less than positive attitude toward Sheldon as a human being that they then brought to his music. Sheldon was something of a hipster wildman at the time (moved in Lenny Bruce's crowd, I believe -- there's a story about Lenny discovering him in bed with Lenny's wife, Honey -- and similar bust-out circles), and it would be easy to link negative attitudes toward such behavior, which damaged or destroyed so many lives (e.g. Lorraine Geller), with the music that guys like Sheldon and (on the East Coast) Tony Fruscella actually made. But whatever your moral compass might be, you've still got to use your ears.

A very nice man, too, so I've been told. BTW, Bank has said that the greatest sax section he ever played in was that of the 1949 Artie Shaw band: Herbie Steward, Frank Socolow (altos); Zoot Sims, Al Cohn (tenors) and Bank. Hell of a band -- too bad there aren't many recordings; interesting charts (Dameron, Johnny Mandel, George Russell, etc.), Shaw in great "modern" form; Jimmy Raney on guitar, Don Fagerquist the featured tpt. soloist, Irv Kluger the swinging drummer, even a very musical female vocalist, Pat Lockwood. In fact, perhaps Mike Fitzgerald or someone else can help me solve a mystery here. On an album of transcriptions by that Shaw band, which I have on a cheapo Brit label, Prism, and which now skips so much that it's almost unlistenable, there's a Lockwood vocal on "He's Funny That Way," wrapped in an a handsomely performed, remarkably subtle arrangment by I don't know who (the coda in particular is gorgeous and more than a bit mind-bogglingly far out). As far as I know, this piece was not recorded commercially by the band. In some ways, it's Gil Evans-like, but I'm sure it's not his -- no record of him writing for the band, and the musical fingerprints are someone else's anyway. Of the guys who are listed as regular contributors to Shaw's book, I'd guess it was either George Siravo or Paul Jordan, but Siravo and Jordan are mostly just names to me.

The piece is a delight. Metheny is a natural man with a big heart -- smart and somehow still innocent, in the best sense, after all these years. On the other hand, dig Ratliff's explanation of what "rushing" is. Ooops.

FWIW, I think that Martin Williams' whack at Sheldon came in a Down Beat review from the 1950s (probably of one of the Curtis Counce albums) in which Martin referred to him (this is close but not an exact quote) as one of those West Coast Miles Davis imitators who puts the climaxes in all the wrong places. Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure I know just what Martin was thinking of here -- there are some typical Sheldon gestures that sound like '50s Miles cliches played upside down, or inside out, or out of sync (in particular, the way Jack would juxtapose shouts and whispers, with the whispers usually coming right after, or in between, the shouts). But I'm sure that Sheldon, who certainly knew his Miles, also knew exactly what he was up to here, and that these moments were personal offshoots of his own soul and outrageous wit rather than failed attempts to sound like Miles. But then, if I were given the task of inventing a good jazz musician that Martin couldn't get in a million years, I might have come up with Jack Sheldon. P.S. If I remember Chuck's Sheldon story correctly, what Jack said was "I've been f***ing a lot lately" etc. If so, "lately" is comic genius.

Vinyl -- Do you know/have you heard anything about Cleveland being able to get around on the instrument with such incredible facility because, in part, he played a so-called "pea shooter" trombone (the phrase is Gunther Schuller's, I believe. I assume that would be a smaller than standard instrument?

While the music is great, as is the refurbished sound, I'm pissed all over again at the way the late Pete Welding pisses all over Jack Sheldon in the liner notes (reprinted from a 198Os compilation of this material): "simply outclassed by Pepper ... his solos have a meandering discursive quality, and too often he indulges in gratuitous effects ... overindulgence in the spurious" etc. (How much "indulgence in spurious" would be OK?) This point of view toward Sheldon is not exclusive to Welding -- Martin Williams once took a whack at Jack -- but it's dumb IMO, based on a failure to grasp what a witty, often deliberately bordering on the whacky, very hip player Sheldon was (and I'm sure still is).

If I recall correctly, "The Horn" is the book in which, at a jam session, the soloists exchange sixes instead of fours. Another vote for "The Bear Comes Home." The first time I tried, I didn't get it (the bear and all). The second time I liked it a lot.

Also, without any doubt, the two-tenor frontline of Quartet Out: Pete Gallio and Jim Sangrey. If they're still available, check out the band's "Welcome to the Party" and "Live at the Meat House."

Ron is still there.

Say hello to my son Jacob if you drop by -- he works there (and plays guitar in the rock band Crush Kill Destroy). Other musician-JRM employees at this time are cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, drummer Frank Rosaly (they have an album coming out on Delmark toward the end of March) and singer-songwriter Steve Dawson (of the fine alt-country band Dolly Varden).

Among the musicians Kerouac mentions are Allen Eager (in "The Subterraneans" under the pseudonym "Roger Beloit"), Richie Kamuca (in the same place, K spells it "Ricci Commuca"), Shearing (in "On the Road") Getz and Warne Marsh (in "Desolation Angels"), Miles Davis (in "Mexico City Blues") and, perhaps above all and most intimately, Brew Moore (in "Desolation Angels" -- K calls him "Brue").

Not that sure where the line between "inside" and "outside" can or should be drawn (I can see that some might feel that a player like, say, Ernie Krivda never really goes "outside," while others might feel that he's never really quite "in"), but I'd add: Ab Baars Tobias Delius (both of the above are Dutch) Ernie Krivda Rich Perry Mark Shim Walt Weiskopf