Larry Kart

Not to conflate two gifted individuals, but the late Bill Perkins' fascinating Cadence interview from a few years back has a great deal to say about the self-image of some West Coast or West Coast-based players of that era and how and why some of them (notably Shank and Perkins) more or less consciously decided to "toughen up" their music -- rhythmically, harmonically, timbrally, etc.

Impossible: He and William Parker were talking about a Clifford Brown/Max Roach recording from the Beehive that was so fast they considered it free. Is anyone familiar? I will post a new thread for this I guess. Pete C: Sounds like creative hyperbole to me. I don't remember anything qualitatively different when I heard those recordings from other performances by the group. They must be thinking of the "Cherokee" on "Live at the Beehive." I do hear something close to a qualitative difference between this performance and any other Brown-Roach uptempo performance of "Cherokee" (or anything else) I know -- it's so damn fast and Clifford and Max are so united/inspired--and I can see where it would make sense to think if it as "free." That is, while what Clifford and Max are playing sounds co-ordinated, esp. rhythmically, one gets the feeling that in practical terms that's because they're both in their topmost conceivable/executable gears, and those gears happen to coincide. Whatever, it's amazing, extreme music. FWIW, there's a piece about the "Live at the Beehive" set in my forthcoming book "Jazz In search ofd Itself" (Yale U. Press, fall 2004).

To pick up on a point that could have been made in the thread that was linked to above, I believe that the distinctive sound of the piano on RVG's vintage sessions (which some people grouse about, including some musicians and other fairly knowledgeable folk -- see p.136-7 of Peter Pottinger's Bill Evans bio "How My Heart Sings" -- but that I, like many listeners of my vintage, more or less imprinted on) had less to do with the instrument(s) themselves and more to do with the way RVG miked them (very closely I would guess, perhaps in order to place control and balance of the piano sound in relation to the rest of the instruments, esp. the drums, more in his own hands).

All I know of Desmond's father is what's been posted here. But much should be revealed in good time -- knowledgable, conscientious jazz writer Doug Ramsey (who actually knew Desmond) is working on a Desmond bio.

Don't have it anymore for some dumb reason, but I recall a Herb Pomeroy Band LP on United Artists that had a Bob Freedman ballad feature for Mariano, "On Another World," that was something else -- both as a piece of writing and for Mariano's interpretation.

Can't recall where I read or heard it, but I believe that Desmond once spoke of early Zoot Sims as being very meaningful to him. I can hear a kinship in the rhythmic poise and fluidity, plus a certain toying with the beat quality that in Desmond tends to get emphasized much more than it does with Zoot, even to the point of bounciness at times. Now that I think of it, that same toying with the beat/bouncy strain is the hallmark of Pete Brown's style, though the overall jump mood of Brown's music is not that much like Desmond's. On the whole, though, if you discount Konitz as a model (which I would, despite some I think deceptive similarities), Desmond strikes me as a notably self-invented player, given his era and his exposed to lots of music, urban background.

Dug out McDougal's "Initial Visit." Contrary to what I said before, I don't hear much Ammons in him. I do hear a kinship to Von Freeman (in timbre, intonation, and dual loyalty to the Young and Hawkins traditions), though each man is himself (and Von is a master). If my memories of McDougal live are accurate, on a good day he had another, higher gear or two than this record manages to capture. A Nessa-produced McDougal album probably would have been something else. BTW, McDougal's writing is worth a listen too; his McDougal's ballad "Ode" is a potent piece, and some of his blowing lines are really catchy.

Larry Kert (now deceased I believe) was a well-known performer in Broadway musicals, best known for his work as one of the leads in "West Side Story." He was the younger brother of tasty cabaret singer Anita Ellis.

Heard him live quite a few times. Out of Ammons, I'd say, with his own distinctive hip, "heady," soulful flavor. One those guys whose name and the way he sounded seemed a perfect match.

Interesting album. Teddy Edwards play the shit out of Hava Nagila, very soulful. Fun to compare his solo to Harold Land's on Jazz Impressions of Folk Music (on the Carmell Jones Mosaic Select). What are the odds that those two tenor players, closely related in several ways, would both find themselves playing on that tune?

I'm very fond of the (in my case, pretty beat up) circa 1957 Jubilee LP "Three For Duke," with Charles, Hall Overton, and Oscar Pettiford playing Ellington material. Could be something that Fresh Sounds will get around to one day.

Welcome, indeed. Lots of knowledge/experience/dry wit/common sense etc. is at Mr. Tracy's command.

I have somewhat uncertain/mixed feelings about him myself, but Jeff Parker is definitely worth a listen.

Listening again, I wonder whether anyone out there agrees that Warne's solo on "317 E. 32nd" is essentially one long line, a single, unbroken evolving thought. If so, it may be, at two choruses, the longest (or one of the longest) such sustained episode in recorded jazz or in any comparable improvised music, period. Bach no doubt could have done it in real time too, so could Usted Ali Akhbar Khan (if comparable).

Wesbed -- I'm not all that musically literate myself but thought I'd managed to detect what's different and attractive about this music and describe it pretty well -- in terms that the musically literate wouldn't find inadequate or just plain wrong and that wouldn't leave the less musically literate scratching their heads. If I did manage to do that, I'd say, Just keep listening. Also, if the tack I took doesn't help, Barry Ulanov's illuminating notes to several of the original albums are in the Mosaic booklet too.

Saw a posting just now on the Jazz West Coast list from a satisfied purchaser of "All Music." He praised the speed of delivery, the music, and offered his thanks to "Chick Nessa."

Impossible -- I like what you say here, particularly the idea of the built-in out-thereness of artistic avant-gardism (though I'd prefer something like "alternate reality" to your "distorted reality"): "Modern refers to that which attempts to reflect the current, be it architecture or a canvas. As an idea, if we were starting now, this is what music, or art would sound or look like. This is what our skyline would look like. "Avant-garde refers to that which will never be modern. The avant-garde is just left of modern, a distorted reality that resides in the fray of modern. This is what our skyline would look like from out here." Throwing another shrimp on the coals, here's a related passage from the introduction to ye olde forthcoming book: "...jazz now has what might be called a permanent avant-garde. Perhaps that sounds paradoxical, even absurd--how, after all, can the latest thing of several yesterdays ago still be avant-garde? But artistic avant-gardism in general and the jazz avant-garde in particular are not merely time-line affairs. In the words of music historian Carl Dahlhaus: "[N]ewness is also an aesthetic factor, which for example is inextricably bound up with the earliest atonal works, Schoenberg’s Op. 11 Piano Pieces and the final movement of the Second String Quartet. What is seemingly most transient--the quality of incipient beginning, of ‘for the first time’--acquires a paradoxical permanence. Even half a century later it can be felt in almost undiminished form, and as an immediate aesthetic quality at that…." The same could be said of the music of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, et al.--the sense of language upheaval is inherent and does not become normalized."

Oops, must have hit the wrong key. I meant to add: ...counterculture equivalent of samplers. Of course, Ayler took such notions to directly to heart in a way that few others could or did, and made a lot of genuinely transcendent music as a result.

Eric -- Have to admit that my knowledge of Poggioli's book is pretty much confined to the book itself. When I have time, I'll look for P. Burger's response. Where would I find it? P.S. As I recall, one of Poggioli's goals was to make as clear a distinction as possible between romanticism, modernism and the avant-garde. As I recall he did so by arguing backwards from his fairly direct experience with/understanding of avant-garde art and figures of the early 20th Century -- i.e. having divined the principles of avant-gardism in action, he looked backwards to see when and how they arose, and noted that those principles were only intermittently present (or present in nascent form) in romanticism and modernism. This approach, if I've described correctly, had a lot of appeal to me because it was rooted in things that P. himself had been through or witnessed close up. Simon -- Do we really have to go back to Plato, Plotinus, or William of Ockham to find examples of the kind of thinking that's present in the words of Ayler I quoted? As I recall, at the time these were ideas that were virtually been knitted on the counterculture eq

These excerpts from Terry Martin's (I think brilliant) Oct. 1963 Jazz Monthly essay. "Coleman Hawkins and Jazz Romanticism" seem to touch upon some things that Jim S. and others have been talking about here. (BTW, Martin was only about 22 when he wrote this): In his recent Cassell monograph on Coleman Hawkins, Albert McCarthy defends the long-held view of the tenorist as the arch-romantic of jazz, taking myself as an exponent of an opposing view suggested in some current criticism. Since I consider romanticism pure and simple, to be a rare flower in the jazz world and the limitation of Hawkins to this sphere a limited conception of his output, I should like to append a few brief remarks to my earlier comment on this musician (Jazz Monthly, December 1962). … Coleman Hawkins was one of the first virtuosi in jazz. At the time of his striving to maturity two great virtuosi, Armstrong and Bechet, illuminated the jazz scene, and a third, Earl Hines, was imminent. The outcome of virtuosity was the creation of a new flamboyance of line, a new individualism. The baroque was in the air, and it is the essence of the baroque that pervades all of Hawkins’s work; if we must limit his style to some pigeon-hole then it will more often fit under B than R…. Baroque form is an extrapolation of classical continuity made possible by extended technical accomplishment. It comes at best from a joy in technique viz, the freedom to catch up any nuance of thought, at worst, abuse of technique and spurious subtlety. Clearly the first is only possible if the artist has something to say, the second’s just food for the larder. For Armstrong the baroque is a magnificent freedom, for Bechet a mouthpiece for his strong personality and for Hines a challenge. Hawkins, coming after, accepts it as a method in itself. Later I feel Armstrong was trapped, this time for good, by the style he more than any other has fathered. Bechet, something of an odd man out in jazz history, is perhaps hamstrung by his own ego however imposing it may be. Hines retains his power in the face of a challenge, but Hawkins survives best. Perhaps the need to form a language for the saxophone in terms of a new aesthetic language instilled this concern for method, but whatever, the range of his expression can reasonably be explained by an interest in the application of a method, in this case mainly of his own creation. Such an approach would be heresy to an orthodox romantic…. The puzzling fact is that in jazz romanticism did not flourish as it did in an analogous period in the history of European art; I gather that Mr. McCarthy also sees very few jazz-men as romantics. I do not wish to imply from the above that I associate myself with those who see romanticism as decadence; for the limited ranks of jazz romantics contain some very important artists, Johnny Hodges, Erroll Garner, Ben Webster. . . for example. The case of Ben Webster makes one wonder if it was the romantic attitude of many of Hawkins’s followers that led to the misconception of his baroque style. I suppose Hawkins’s early ability to play ballads in a totally original way has also confused the issue, focussing an inproportionate attention on these solos. His approach to ballads is important to consider, however, because it is his main contribution to the expansion of the jazz repertoire. The significant innovation is his acceptance of the ballad on its own musical terms; he does not ‘jazz’ it as earlier musicians had done, even Armstrong to some extent. It is all too simple from a recognition of this achievement to transfer the romantic terms of the ballad to the outlook of the artist. Ben Webster will lend great romantic power to All the things you are (with Tatum) for example, giving truth to the weaker romanticism of the popular song, but Hawkins playing Body and soul is something else altogether. The difference is that Hawkins is more often involved in the statement than in the thing stated. The emotional power is generated by the solo in progress and does not pre-exist as it does for Webster. Hawkins has forged techniques applicable by romantics because this is one aspect of his exploration of method; the tone, the harmonic basis all ideal, but not only his approach to other types of material but also the extraordinary objectivity of his ballads themselves belie a romantic mind. He exploits (n.b. the baroque attitude) ballad structure but does not accept its aesthetic axioms. If Webster can create All the things, All too soon, You’re my thrill etc. by such an acceptance, and Hawkins Body and soul by remaining aloof, both means are justified although quite distinct. One can accept, let us say, Donegal cradle song as a most beautiful romantic solo; however, its consideration as a romantic persona, a concept fully justified not only by the strength of his up-tempo playing, his complex thinking e.g. Body again (it is ironical and facile that thinking on tenor should be thought to be the property of his rival Lester Young) but also by the notably odd melodic nature of the solo itself, which seems to have taken the title of tune absolutely at face value. Despite the fact that only Hawkins could have created this moving persona it is purged of the artist’s personality to a degree untenable by any true romantic. Such dramatic objectivity seems to be quite beyond even the most impressionistic statement of Hodges, e.g. Gal from Joe’s (one is tempted to attribute the quality to Ellington in any case). A third approach to the ballad and one found frequently in his work is to begin richly and romantically, later to betray this by paring down his phrases into highly emotive rhythmic figures. An example of this is Until the real thing comes along….. His solo here has a very firm dramatic structure; it begins with only a few touches of rhythmic tension marring an easy romanticism, the bridge has a fine sensuous quality and leads beautifully back to the theme which now beccomes a series of short close notes which become even stronger in the chorus. The tough elements are bared slowly, no sudden burst of emotion this, to reach a climax in the power of the second bridge whiich now shows extreme contrast to the first. A similar lead-back return is to the rich theme statement, and the solo closes as it began; the whole is a finely shaped drama. Dramatic structure may in fact point to the core of Hawkins’ art. He handles his materials with the ease and cunning of a great dramatist, and as with great drama the meaning may not respond exactly with what the characters are made to say. It is the personae and the relations generated between them that contain the essence of the achievement. It should be pointed out here that it is not the ‘hot’ elements of later Hawkins that undermine the theory of romanticism; Webster really drives along on Cottontail, Hoot, and others without being disqualified and much of Garner can hardly be said to be gentle. Hawkins’s self-awareness is as an artist, a creator not a sayer, and it is in this that he seems to be an important precursor of the modern idiom….

I took a somewhat abbreviated whack at this question in "The Avant-Garde: 1947-1967" chapter in The Oxford Companion To Jazz, as follows: However haphazardly the label "avant-garde" might have been applied to this music -- the "new thing" was its other early name , "free jazz" would come a bit later on -- something more than labeling was involved. As critic Renato Poggioli explained in his pioneering study The Theory of the Avant-Garde (1968), artistic avantgardism is more than a modern-day version of the perpetual byplay between new styles of art and old; the concept of the avant-garde (the term was borrowed from radical politics, which had borrowed it from the military) reaches back no further than 1880s France and is, in the words of critic Massimo Bontempelli, "an exclusively modern discovery, born only when art began to contemplate itself from a historical viewpoint." Moreover, avant-garde art possesses a number of traits that art contemporary to it may not possess, while avant-garde attitudes can (and perhaps must) precede the creation of avant-garde works. An extreme but revealing example is the way John Cage’s notorious silent piano piece "4’33"" takes two key avant-garde traits -- Antagonism (a negative reaction to the traditional) and Nihilism (destructive labor) -- and links them to our sense of what normally occurs when a person sits down at a piano in a concert hall. (The other traits of the avant-garde identified by Poggioli are Agonism, an air of passionate, hyperbolic struggle ; Futurism, the quest for the new, the unknown, as an absolute; Alienation , profound doubt about one’s relation to society as a whole and to the audience in particular; and Experimentalism , new techniques seen as a means of more than technical transformation, the work as a transcendental laboratory or proving ground. ) Not every figure in the jazz avant -garde exhibit s all of those traits, but they all exhibit some of them and do so in ways that affect the purely musical choices they make. To say that Futurism and Alienation permeate the music of Sun Ra is not to dismiss that music but to explain how it arose in order to better judge its nature and value. If the spectre of charlatanism seems to be lurking about here (as the poet LeRoi Jones once said, "I knew a guy in Newark who could whistle with peas in his mouth, but nobody ever said he was hip"), more often than not in jazz the byplay between avant-garde attitudes and specific musical choices has been both fruitful and unavoidable. For instance, when Albert Ayler said in a 1965 interview that "Music has changed so much from when Ornette Coleman started playing around the beat . [Coleman’s music is] neo-avant garde music and this beat will be eliminated ," surrounding those remarks with a host of avant-garde gestures ("[O]ur music is pure art.... I’m not trying to entertain people, I’m playing the truth for those who can listen.... [R]eal beauty [is] beyond most people, it’s only for the select few"), it seemed clear that, for Ayler, the elimination of the beat was a more than merely musical matter. But while it would be fair to ask whether Ayler was almost arbitrarily linking a particular technical-musical choice to a vision of liberation and transcendence, he and others did make that choice, which would turn out have specific and not wholly foreseeable musical consequences. End of excerpt: BTW, Poggioli's book is excellent, and he was, FWIW, the father of NPR's Sylvia Poggioli.

Agree with Sal and Chuck. Have had two encounters with Wilkes (and probably a third that was so much like the second that I don't recall it separately). The first, with Roscoe and a large ensemble on the Chi. Jazz Fest, was kind of impressive at first in terms of power and apparent (and in context appropriate) frenzy. The second was with Roscoe and Wilkes as the only horns in a quintet; here Wilkes' shtick was the same as before and now seemed like a circus act.

It's just one track from the Billy Eckstine 2-CD collection "Everything I Have Is Yours," but everybody who's interested in Marsh ought to hear his solo on the extended Metronome All-Stars recording of "How High the Moon" from 1953 (with an Eckstine vocal). In the words of John LaPorta, also on the date: "He played like Bach, total melodic flow, no licks." Lester Young, on the date too, plays no less sublimely on "Moon" behind Eckstine's vocal. Interesting that, a la Lou Levy's "Lunarcy" on "All Music," the second half of "Moon" (the half with Warne's solo) is double-time. Wonder if Levy remembered this recording.

Eric -- Sorry, I did mean Vol. 2. To amplify a bit, or maybe just repeat myself, the main problem I had with "Essential Jazz Records Vol. 2: Modernism to Postmodernism" is that it's a book, given its subtitle, that has to take us as close to the present as publishing schedules permit, but the elephant that's been in the room since at least 1959, the avant-garde, is just not dealt with adequately. For Nicholson, the avant-garde is essentially a socio-political phenomenon, a bunch of rebellious-sounding noises but nothing that involved or involves much musical choice or thought and whose main role in the course of jazz has been to alienate whatever was left of jazz's mass audience. (I have no interest in trying to convince anyone who doesn't respond to Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Ornette, Roscoe Mitchell, Evan Parker, et al. that they're wrong, but any approach to this music that says or implies that it's just rebellious sounding noise is a non-starter for me.) Harrison, on the other hand, seems to have a change of heart about certain aspects of the avant-garde -- I recall a letter from him extolling a Jack Cooke Jazz Monthly essay "Late Trane," and Harrison himself wrote about the Spontaneous Music Ensemble with great enthusiasm in the mid-1970s. Of course he's entitled to change his mind, but I think that in a book like this he (or at least someone other than Nicholson) has to step up at some point and tell us why the jazz avant-garde has been an aesthetic misadventure (if, in fact, that what Harrison now feels). But in "Essential Jazz Records Vol. 2" we only get whisps of Harrison's current take on this music; and I can't understand how, as the primary figure in this book, he could think that was enough.

I don't have the Morgan-Horricks book, but I think I read it at one time, probably on loan from a library. The writers who appeared in Albert McCarthy's magazine Jazz Monthly (later Jazz and Blues Monthly) were a high quality crew by and large. Morgan had that earthy commonsensical streak (he knew what the life of a professional musician was like) but had high standards and made up his own mind (I believe he was the first critic to write insightfully and in detail about Warne Marsh). The late Michael James had similar virtues (with a bit more of an intellectual edge) and was a pioneer in writing about hard bop (terrific on Mobley, Jackie McLean, et al.). Ronald Atkins and Jack Cooke had their fingers on the pulse of that music too; Cooke also was first-rate on the avant-garde (haven't heard anything from or about him in some time though). In the 1960s Terry Martin came aboard (an Australian then resident in Britain, he wrote brilliantly about Ornette, Art Pepper, and Coleman Hawkins among others; he's long been Chicago-based, a microbiologist at the University of Chicago; some of the key early Roscoe Mitchell recordings were made in his basement). Max Harrison also was a Jazz Monthly figure and much of the work in his fine collection "A Jazz Retrospect" first appeared there.