Larry Kart

73? Watch out, Chris -- I think I'm catching up. Happy Birthday.

Sorry. I meant "as Lester Bowie eloquently expanded upon in the interview quoted ABOVE."

Kevin: No one is saying that racial discrimination doesn't exist -- in the jazz world [in various directions, as you say] and in the world at large. What I'm saying is that Wynton is more or less taking a "racial prejudice is the only reason someone wouldn't celebrate my music" tack, which is a neat but ugly little maneuver. Also, show me one of those white critics who can't stand Wynton's music after a certain point in his career (I'm certainly one of them) who consistently praises white musicians and consistently decries the work of other black musicians. Bet you can't find a single one. Wynton's problem with folks like me is twofold 1) Musically there hasn't been much happening with him in a very long time 2) He's tried to -- as Lester Bowie eloquently expanded upon in the interview quoted below -- use the concept of tradition to destroy the tradition. Wynton's music will blow away from the scene, if it hasn't done so already -- there's just not that much there; can you think of one really memorable young player who's Wynton-inspired (i.e. in musical terms)? -- but what I think of as Wynton's "Neo-Con Game" seems to me to have done some real and perhaps lasting damage to jazz.

Mike Fitzgerald wrote: I think bringing the "race card" into this is just absolutely ridiculous. I don't like what Marsalis has to say. It's not the color of his skin. I don't like the music he makes. It's not about his ancestry. I don't like his treatment of the music. It's not about anything other than that. For heaven's sake, I spend my life documenting the lives and careers of musicians - *jazz* musicians - many of them *black* jazz musicians. So when I find a black jazz musician that I don't agree with, now it's somehow related to the color of their skin? That's just absurd. Exactly. Also, isn't it clear that it's Wynton who keeps playing the race card in an attempt to deflect unfavorable but well-grounded responses (e.g. Schuller's) to his music as music? For some time, IMO, Wynton has basically existed in the realm where politics beds down with publicity.

Anyone who wants it autographed, just send me a copy of the book, and I'll be happy to sign it and mail it back to you. If you want to take that route and don't have my address (I think Jim and some others here do), send me a PM. Or is there some simpler way to do this that I'm not thinking of? All this is new to me.

Just discovered that the link I posted to the site for the book at Barnes & Noble online (at a discount price, $28) doesn't work anymore, though the discount still stands. If anyone wants to take that route, it probably it makes more sense to go to the main Barnes & Noble site and search under the title "Jazz in Search of Itself." That's how I came up with the now defunct link in the first place, and doing that took me to the right place this morning.

A bit of I hope legitimate self-promotion. "Jazz In Search of Itself" -- a collection of everything I’ve written over the last 35 years or so that seems worth preserving, plus a fair amount of new stuff -- will be published, they tell me, on or about Nov. 16. You can read more about it here (click on the cover image and it gets larger): http://yalepress.yale.edu/YupBooks/viewboo...isbn=0300104200 I love that cover image BTW (taken from a circa 1957 photo I had of Ira Sullivan and Johnny Griffin at a Chicago club -- Nevin Wilson is the bassist) because its angled-upwards, front-table immediacy links up with one of the implicit themes of the book -- the inseparable relationship in jazz (for better or worse) between players and listeners. (And, of course, players are listeners too -- Griffin clearly is listening intently to what Sullivan is doing.) Also, the photo easily could have been taken on a night when I was present. Further info: I see that Barnes and Noble online is selling the book at a discount: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearc...R63&cds2Pid=946 Amazon at the moment isn’t. Finally, my favorite blurb (at least it’s a tie with Dan Morgenstern’s) isn’t on that Yale University Press website but is on the book jacket. It’s from Ira Gitler: "Larry Kart writes on jazz with a focus and clarity that makes me want to read on even when I disagree with him." My favorite quote in the book is this from a previously unpublished 1969 interview with Wilbur Campbell: "Every drummer who’s been playing can play anything he thinks of; the trouble is thinking of things to play. Lots of cats can play what they think, but they don’t think it."

Shaw on Dodds is a nice example of why the views on other musicians of very talented, even genius-level, musicians can't always be taken to the bank. What Shaw was striving for and achieved on the clarinet was so different from what Dodds was striving for and achieved that there could be, at least in Shaw's view, no common ground -- especially on an instrument that a musician who was oriented as Shaw was had to see in terms of either proper or gravely flawed technique. Artie on Dodds was like Jascha Heifitz faced with Stuff Smith (though maybe Jascha might have been hip enough to get what Stuff was up to). I think Shaw said similar things about Pee Wee Russell. I certainly recall a DB Blindfold Test in which reedman Dick Johnson, who led the band Shaw fronted in the '80s, said that Russell couldn't play the clarinet. Fortunately, we're in a position (I hope) where we can see the value in Dodds, Shaw, and Russell -- different as they are.

Yes, Eric, that's the one.

Guess I should take a pass on the Scott-DeFranco comparison because I don't know the later Scott. But even though I can think of DeFranco performances that have that "running off at the fingers" feeling (I used to think of him that way, too), seems to me now that there are many more of them (from all periods) where the speed and cleverness (at the very least) of DeFranco's thought matches his technique. About the coldness (coolness and/or reserve, I'd say) -- beyond a certain point, isn't that a matter of temperament, and temperament of a sort that jazz has (or ought to make) room for? In fact, the DeFranco I don't care for usually is the DeFranco who tries to sound more excited than he (probably) is. Otherwise, I've learned to enjoy the DeFranco who's genuinely absorbed in thinking and playing his way around corners.

Don't want to mislead anybody. Of the ones I've mentioned above, only the Sullivan "Bird Lives!" is decently recorded.

Also the Bird, Bud, Fats Navarro "One Night at Birdland" material from 1950, a week before Navarro died of TB (which seems impossible when you hear the way he's playing).

Lots of those mentioned above, plus the Ira Sullivan "Bird Lives!" concert on VeeJay from 3/12/62, with Nicky Hill, Jodie Christian, Donald Garrett, Wilbur Campbell, and Dorel Anderson (what a moment in time that was), and the "Bud Powell Trio, Birdland '53 Vol. 1" (I have it on Fresh Sound), with fantastic Bud and a mindboggling Roy Haynes solo on "Salt Peanuts" that might be the best thing he ever did.

Jim, your DeFranco meets the Jones/Lewis Band (minus Thad) encounter does sound traumatic, but I'd say that musically on most nights Buddy is hipper than Dick Oates and John Mosca put together (looks aren't everything). Do you know DeFranco's early '50s working quartet with Kenny Drew, Milt Hinton, and Blakey and the later quartet with Sonny Clark, Eugene Wright, and Bobby White (both recorded for Granz, the Clark quartet collected in that OOP Mosaic box)? Believe it or not, DeFranco and his undeniably hip sideman were of one mind musically. P.S. Don't know the Philology Tony Scott material, but the twiddly, piping, licks-driven Scott of the '50s (on Decca and RCA) usually gave me a headache.

Jim, what's up with that Buddy DeFranco remark? On a good day, Buddy's as fine as he ever was and still, as always, very much an "in the now" improvisor. Check out his excellent duo album with Dave McKenna from 1997, "You Must Believe in Swing" (Concord). And I've heard him play at that level several times since then. Another nominee -- Frank Chace.

Someone to keep an eye on is Aram Shelton, in his late 20s, Chicago-based since 1999. Some info here: http://www.locustmusic.com/dragons1976.html http://www.jazzweekly.com/interviews/ashelton.htm

Cannonball-Addict writes: "I can only understand the type of wide acclaim for a record if a substantial amount of publicity was going on to boost the album's sales. Then and today, a record was and is not bound to do well unless you've got good visible publicity. I am almost certain that this record had that behind it..." No disrespect C-A, but I was around then, and that's not the way it was, for several reasons. First, the jazz community in most places (certainly in the high school where I was at the time) was fairly tight-knit; if you loved the music, you knew other people who were on the same wavelength, and the sharing of enthusiams was a big part of the game. Second, in lots of urban areas there were goodish jazz radio shows to spread the word -- not through advertising but just by playing the records that the host probably liked just as much as, and for the same reasons, you did. Third, in the typical record store of the time, you could go into listening booths and play the new sides yourself -- a great way to pick up on things. I remember in particular buying Clifford Jordan's just released "Cliff Craft" that way, knocked out by a player I don't think I'd even heard of before. Finally, the impact of "Saxophone Colossus," and just before it "Worktime," was not only a more or less spontaneous word-of-mouth thing with a few modest trimmings (as outlined above), it was HUGE primarily because just about everyone who heard the album and was open to it (musicians and fans) knew right away that this was a really huge MUSICAL/CULTURAL EVENT -- what Sonny played just grabbed you by the throat and shook you like a rag doll. The impact of "Blue Train" a bit later on was comparable; you had to be half-dead not to get it. This was change-your-life music, and I guess either we were looking to change our lives and/or we recognized that in the light of what "Saxophone Colossus" and "Blue Train" were saying we were somewhat different people in a different place already.

Can't say I prefer it to Coltrane/Hartman but Nat Cole's pioneering version with Pete Rugolo ought to be heard. As you might imagine, Coles's voice and the song are a perfect fit.

A definite "yes" to Ed Wilkerson, as player and composer, though the last few times I've heard Eight Bold Souls that band seemed pretty frayed, and not just around the edges. Agree that David Boykin is promising, but I don't think he pays quite enough attention to what he's actually playing -- so much pretty good stuff seems to just flow out so juicily that he can come across as satisfied when IMO he ought to be more concerned with pushing things to a higher level (in terms of tightness/focus of thought, intensity etc.). Strikes me, I guess, as a things come to easy to him guy. Ned Goold (haven't head "The Flows" but know some of his other stuff) is one weird dude. Talk about a "system"! But, Jim, doesn't he strike you as more than a bit retro in a kind of alternate-world manner? It's as though JR Monterose had been the dominant stylist of the modern era (rather than Rollins, Trane, or Wayne), and the ride cymbal beat of c. 1955 Art Taylor (on a very subued day for him, too) were the agreed-upon limit in terms of polyrhythms or energy. (BTW, I hope you know what I mean about JR. A wonderful player, but if Goold's resemblence to him is not accidental -- it could be, but I don't think so, given the distinct resemblance of the charts of Goold's sometime compatriot bassist/composer Ben Wolfe to that mid-1950s ambience -- then it strikes me, again, as very alternate-worldish, as though one of today's would-be hot young alto players sounded like he'd sprung from the brow of, say, Lennie Niehaus, or even Pete Brown.

62. "Ah, the apple trees/blah blah memories..."

Walt Weiskopf -- lots of consistently fine albums on Criss Cross. He's out of sheets-of-sound Trane and early Wayne, but he's laid a personal intervallic system on top of this (written a book about it too, FWIW). Normally, I don't respond to playing that's got such a systematized base, but Walt's is sure inspiring to him, harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically; at best, all those elements are fused into what seems to be a single ball of energy. And does he ever swing! Tim Armacost -- big-toned, out of Rollins and Trane (you probably can't go both those ways at once, but he kind of does). "Live at Smalls" and "The Wishing Well," both on Double Time, are the places to go, esp. the latter. I think there may be a new one too. As with Weiskopf, there's a sense of an underlying system at work (perhaps more akin, though, to the way Hawkins and Byas went about things -- extensions upon extensions, which then have melodic and rhythmic offshoots/consequences), but all this, again, is inspiring to the player himself. Weiskopf and Armacost's solos usually sound to me like much-is-at-risk adventures. If I don't get that feeling from a player, I'm usually gone.

If I had to pick one Washington piece to start with (both as a composition and a performance), it would be "Yearning for Love" from "Natural Essence," because it's beautifully full of TW's characteristic blend of the cosmic/romantic/soulful on the one hand and the utterly explosive on the other. A potent setting of the piece, too, if indeed the piece can be separated from its setting in this instance -- dig the way Woody Shaw's part pokes out of the coiling ensemble textures at just the right moments (I wouldn't be surprised if Shaw played some conceptual role in this). Whatever, it just about stops my heart every time.

I don't like Joan Baez or Bob Dylan either, but THAT'S your next-day response to the March on Washington? FWIW, I believe that after Frazier's death he was replaced by Mike Barnicle.

Here she be: http://www.bobdylanroots.com/whose.html

That would be George Frazier the old Boston Herald columnist and contributor to Esquire who cultivated a piss-elegant, self-consciously cranky, Moldy Fig approach to jazz and life in general. An example of his work, "Homage to Bunny" (a Bunny Berigan obit), can be found in Robert Gottlieb's anthology "Reading Jazz." A classic instance of Frazier being Frazier (and prefiguring McDonough) can be found on the 'Net in a column he wrote in reaction to M.L. King's March on Washington. Plug in "George Frazier" and "Boston Herald" on Google and it crops up somewhere on the first or second page. If you can't find it, I'll find it again myself and post a link.