Larry Kart

Wish I had a photo to contribute -- don't have a digital camera -- but just wanted to say, along with others, that this thread is immensely enjoyable. Everyone looks like someone it would be very good to know, which is remarkable, right? This portion of the world is a more than OK place.

The "girl" part of "Fat Girl" came about because Navarro had a rather high-pitched voice.

I'm a bit surprised at how many of these posts on "Minor Move" have been about how it ranks compared to other Brooks recordings. What are we here, a bunch of stamp or coin collectors? Isn't the thing that's most worth talking about here the kind of music that Tina Brooks actually made and how it worked, to the degree that those things can be talked about. I had my say in the liner notes -- how about somebody else (a la Sidewinders' on-target IMO remarks about Doug Watkins)?

Talk about your three-cushion billiard shots, Jack Jenney's onetime wife, singer and vocal coach Kay Thompson, later went on to write the very popular "Eloise" books, about the hoydenish little girl who lived at the Plaza Hotel. In case you want to see Thompson in action (apparently she was quite a load) she gives a memorable performance in the movie "Funny Face," with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, playing a fashion magazine editor named Maggie Prescott.

Here's one by English poet/jazz pianist Roy Fisher: THE THING ABOUT JOE SULLIVAN The pianist Joe Sullivan jamming sound against idea hard as it can go florid and dangerous slams at the beat, or hovers, drumming, along its spikes, in his time almost the only one of them to ignore the chance of easing down, walking it leisurely, he'll strut, with gambling shapes, underpinning by James P., amble, and then stride over gulfs of his own leaving, perilously toppling octaves down to where the chords grow fat again and ride hard-edged, most lucidly voiced, and in good inversions even when the piano seems at risk of being hammered the next second into scrap. For all that, he won't swing like all the others; disregards mere continuity, the snakecharming business, the 'masturbator's rhythm' under the long variations: Sullivan can gut a sequence in one chorus-- --approach, development, climax, discard-- and sound magnanimous. The mannerism of intensity often with him seems true, too much to be said, the mood pressing in right at the start, then running among stock forms that could play themselves and moving there with such quickness of intellect that shapes flaw and fuse, altering without much sign, concentration so wrapped up in thoroughness it can sound bluff, bustling just big-handed stuff-- belied by what drives him in to make rigid, display, shout and abscond, rather than just let it come, let it go-- And that thing is his mood: a feeling violent and ordinary that runs in among standard forms so wrapped up in clarity that fingers following his through figures that sound obvious find corners everywhere, marks of invention, wakefulness; the rapid and perverse tracks that ordinary feelings make when they get driven hard enough against time.

Relevant passage from the Mosaic set notes: The process whereby Tristano speeded up the tapes of his piano playing on "Line Up" and "East Thirty-Second" to match the prerecorded (and also fiddled with) bass and drum work of Peter Ind and Jeff Morton inspired a fair amount of controversy at the time, and while it died away when "C Minor Complex" made clear again what ought to have been obvious from the first--that Tristano could execute at the speed of "Line Up" and "East Thirty-Second" without electronic assistance--perhaps his justification for what he did ("the result sounded good to me") ought be taken literally. That is, by recording bass-register piano lines and speeding up the tapes until the pitch of the piano lines is raised one octave, Tristano not only made the lines move faster, but he also made a new sound. The lower in register a note on the piano is, the more slowly it "speaks" and the less rapidly it decays. By forcing that effect upwards, Tristano alters the attack-decay relationship of each note--adding a tremendously propulsive, Chu Berry-like buzz or whoosh to tones that couldn’t possibly have that effect, that sound, if they actually had been played in the piano’s middle register. P.S. Other disagree with this point ("'C Minor Complex' made clear again what ought to have been obvious from the first--that Tristano could execute at the speed of "Line Up" and "East Thirty-Second" without electronic assistance") but I think on too literal grounds; yes, "Line Up" is faster than "C Minor Complex" and the latter is all (or almost all) single-line (don't recall for sure at the moment), while "Line Up" is both single-line and chordal, but the initial objections to what Tristano did on "Line Up" (pianist John Mehegan wrote in a Down Beat article that Tristano had "cheated") were that he couldn't play that way at all in real time, and to my mind "C Minor Complex" makes it clear that he could. Also, it seems likely to me that that the tempo and single-line texture of "C Minor Complex" was mostly a matter of the way Tristano felt it that day.

You're right on both counts, Jim. The Mosaic notes were posted on a Lee Konitz discography website, but the last time I looked, that site doesn't exist anymore. The notes are going to be part of my book, though (due fall 2004, if all goes according to plan). Thanks for the compliment on the notes BTW -- five years down the road from writing them, I still think they're pretty interesting; at the least they make some points about Tristano, Konitz, and Marsh that I don't recall reading elsewhere.

I have an Aebersold Music Minus One-type record with Jimmy Raney -- as I recall the deal is that you can play duets with Raney, who can be made to sound like he's on one channel -- and it's some of the best Raney around.

Jazz -- A good place to start would be David Thomson's "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film." Thomson's a stimulating, opinionated guy, and there are entries for just about everyone under the sun. I probably look up something in it several times a week, maybe even more than that. Cinematography as a subject in itself, I don't know -- most of the books I think would be how-to tomes for would-be cinematographers. There is a nice old Dover paperback by Leonard Maltin, "The Art of the Cinematographer," which may still be available. It's a critical-historical survey of the craft, followed by interviews with five celebrated veterans. But cinematographers, while highly skilled, creative guys at the top level of the profession, are still basically executing the wishes of whoever on a particular movie (almost always the director) is finally in charge. Gregg Toland, for instance, is famous for his work on Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," and Welles certainly fed on Toland's ideas and expertise. But Welles went on to make a lot of other distinctive, fascinating movies, none of them with Toland behind the camera, while Toland, when realizing the notions of other directors, was not part of a great movie again.

Jazz--I'm probably not a movie expert by movie-expert standards, whatever they are, but I have seen a lot of them, like to think about what I've seen, and have read a fair amount about movies here and there.

I'm not sure it's a matter of movies talking down to us but of a good and bad matches between a filmmaker's skills (or lack of skills) and the sort of story that's being told. Or maybe, which may amount ot the same thing, it's a matter of movies that talk in movie terms. For instance, Hitchcock's "Notorious," where as French director Jacques Rivette said everything resolves in the final three minutes -- "the love story, the family story, and the espionage story in a few magnificent, unforgettable shots" and in a way that would be difficult if not impossible to realize in any other story-telling medium. Likewise, a month or so ago, I tuned in the beginning of Howard Hawks' "To Have and Have Not" on TV and thought I'd watch a bit of a movie I'd seen a lot and then turn away to read the paper during a less than gripping and/or essential moment, only to find that there no such moments in the whole amazing thing. Again, this was a movie I'd seen many times. BTW, Bertrand Tavernier, who made "'Round Midnight," is a terrific director. What may have happened there is that Tavernier, a big jazz fan, got a little goggle-eyed about the project, and especially the fact of Dexter's presence in it, and thus wasn't as hard-headed and objective about shaping things as he needed to be.

One big flaw in the movie (among many virtues) IMO is that it's vital to the plot, as I recall, that Dexter's character, Dale Turner, be in less than vigorous shape physically and, above all, musically at one point, then get himself together and play with considerable strength before his final decline and death. But Dexter, at the point in his life when the movie was made, could only play one way, even if he had wanted to first sound a bit weak, then much stronger -- and that one way, however good it might be to hear, was definitely not on the strong side. Thus, what we heard from Dale Turner in the movie didn't match what the movie, and the people in it, said we were hearing from him. Also, while I'm sure that everyone here can tell the difference between the Dexter of the soundtrack and, say, the Dexter of "Go," I don't think that would be true of a whole lot of viewers any movie, including this one -- thus it might have been a "mistake" in movie terms to build the movie around a dramatic shift in behavior that most of the audience couldn't grasp unless it were spelled out (or cued in) for them in some extra-musical manner, like those films in which we know that Chopin's music is sensitive and fraught because he's coughing up blood all over the keyboard.

About Michael's point that the recorded sound of LaFaro might not be what one heard in a live setting from him, while I never heard LaFaro live, when I heard in a club setting (Shelly's Manne Hole) back in 1962 or '63 a bassist (Red Mitchell) whom I'd assumed from recordings had an unusually big sound, I was astonished to find that in a normal rhythm section with horns setup he was almost inaudible--and by that time in my life I'd heard lots and lots of bassists in live settings. FWIW, I've always assumed that Mitchell was LaFaro's chief stylistic model -- or at least that's the way it seemed to some of us at the time -- though LaFaro certainly was his own man.

Don't believe that there are many (if any) literal, fully worked out fugues on Duane Tatro's marvelous "Jazz For Moderns" (OJC) but Tatro's writing is full of fugal textures, handled with a organic inventiveness and air of necessity that is rare in jazz writing IMO. By contrast, check out the contemporary work of Tatro's fellow West Coast-based composer Jack Montrose, which is not without interest but where the fugal textures too often seem like bids for classiness and/or extra credit.

About the "rock star lottery," I thought of that Thursday night when I caught a bit of Harry Connick Jr.'s Christmas special and heard guys like Jimmy Greene playing with and beside the jaw droppingly out-of-tune singing of Connick Jr. At least Connick Jr. introduced the soloists by name, including a trumpeter named LeRoi (or LeRoy) Jones. Does A. I. Baraka know about this?

I knew that Ries was part of that Southern Michigan/Northern Ohio scene but didn't know that he and Margitza are friends or that they were on Maynard's band together. I've got a fair number of Ries' albums and particularly recommend, if you can find it, what may be his very first one: "Imaginary Time" (Moo) -- Moo is a Japanese label--with Randy Brecker, Scott Wendholt, Scott Colley, Joey Baron, Billy Hart, Franck Amsallem et al. I'm not saying that Tim hasn't grown as a player, but this sounds like it was just one of those great sets of days in the studio where everything clicked. If you have the album or can get it, check out Amsellem's solo on "Jasia."

Interesting how echoes of Mecca, Joe Cinderella (both Gil Melle guitarists) and Billy Bauer are cropping up in the work of several younger players, e.g. Liberty Ellman and Jeff Parker. I know that Parker is a Bauer fan, but it's also quite possible these days for people to "invent" stuff that was in fact invented 50 years ago, without the younger players ever having heard the stuff they seem to have been influenced by.

I only have "Heart of Hearts" of the ones he's made under his own name, and think I chose it over "Memento" after listening to both. Miller and and Blade are the bigger names, bit it seemed to me that Calderazzo and Ian Froman were a bit more tuned in to what what makes Margitza different from a lot of other players in the same general post-Trane/Wayne bag. I agree about the sincerity -- its presence or absence so difficult to quantify but definitely there in Margitza. Also, without being flashy, he's one hell of a fine saxophonist in purely instrumental terms -- a la Getz, perhaps, it sounds like he's making the whole the horn ring, could probably fill a large room without a mike, and yet is capable of very subtle shadings of volume and timbre. And his intonation is spot on. Another player who strikes me the way Margitza does is Tim Ries, though Margitza is a bit more openly or overtly "spiritual."

Speaking of Shafi Hadi/Curtis Porter, any ideas about where his highly distinctive style came from, especially those almost literally speech-like patterns of accentuation? The only biographical information on him I know is in Robert Levin's liner notes for "Hank Mobley" (Blue Note 1568), where Hadi/Porter mentions Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Benny Golson as inspirations and says that his current favorite tenorman is Charlie Rouse. It's not impossible that what makes Hadi/Porter so distinctive is all his own invention, but my guess is that Hadi/Porter, who spent some time in Detroit, also might have been listening closely to Yusef Lateef.

Another facet of Spahn's career. According to veteran Chicago sportswriter Terry Boers (formerly of the Sun-Times, now co-host of a sports-talk radio show on WSCR), Spahn had one of largest schlongs in the history of professional sports. Perhaps that helped him to keep his balance during that high-leg-kick windup--either that or it's why he needed to use that windup inm the first place: to get some clearance.

"Stella By Starlight" -- always disliked that tune, sounds like the musical equivalent of a cheesy chrome-played bathroom faucet.

"Prez and Teddy" and "Jazz Giants '56" had a big impact on me, partly because I'd seen Young with JATP at the Chicago Opera House in 10/55 -- the concert was recorded and issued as "Blues in Chicago" -- and was bewildered, even disturbed, as a 13-year-old near-total novice who had heard no Young at all before this by the strange watery sounds that this seemingly enfeebled (in fact, on the verge of a nervous and physical breakdown) man was placing next to the muscular fervor of Jacquet, Flip Phillips, Eldridge, and Gillespie. Of course, Young recovered and made these wonderful albums in early '56. Hearing them, especially "Jazz Giants," was a lesson-and-a-half, though I still don't have the words to say what was taught.

Woke up in the middle of the night with the thought that it might be Jimmy Jones, not Oscar Peterson, on "Ben Webster And Associates." Whatever, it's a clotted, crippled rhythm section IMO, and their work infects the horn players. (Usually I like Jimmy Jones BTW; his quirky solos are the main point of interest on that H. Edison Verve two-fer referred to above.)

I have (or have had) all the Felsteds, and IMO only "The High and Mighty Hawk" is top drawer. Usually there are a couple of things awry in each case (one or more guys who weren't up to snuff that day and/or hadn't been in a while [e.g. Buster Bailey, Wells on "Bones for the King"]). Perhaps Dance was too much of a worshipful and/or hands-off producer -- compare for instance the Felsted Budd Johnson to the Swingville one, or the Buddy Tate to any of the Swingville dates on which he appears. Also, I'm puzzled by the raves for "Ben Webster And Associates." The lineup looks great on paper, but as I recall, the rhythm section, and thus virtually the entire date, is sabotaged by the mechanical (even by his own grim standards) comping of Oscar Peterson. I would love to get my hands on "Jazz Studio One." Haven't heard it in years, but I remember in particular some choice Bennie Green.

"Back To Back" with Ellington, Hodges, a noble and virtually cliche-free H. Edison, Les Spann, Al Hall, Jo, Jones. Died and gone to Heaven music. About T. Flanagan on those Swingville dates, not being a big Flanagan fan (too bland by and large on most modern dates IMO), I think he's often just what's called for on Swingville, as he moves back in the direction of Teddy Wilson and puts some spine in his style. Certainly the relatively modern backing Russell gets on "Swingin' with Pee Wee" has a lot to do with the success of that date. On the other hand, I can certainly see that Sir Charles Thompson would have/should have been a first choice.