Larry Kart

A few years after he made his Argo albums, maybe 1965 or so, Clarence Shaw had a nice litle combo, himself and a rhythm section (don't recall the players' names), that worked fairly regularly at a Wells St. club (not the Plugged Nickel, not the Brown Shoe, it was close to the corner of North Ave. and Wells on the east side of the street). Shaw was in great form at the time. I recall a detailed, enthusiastic John Litweiler Caught in the Act review of the band in Down Beat.

One good place to add some flesh to this Bowie quote from Lazaro -- "It's just about really being sensitive, and trying to play a music that is about music. It's about emotion, it's about traveling through these different emotions, and it's about showing the listener all these pictures. We expect the listener to have, like, a movie going on when they hear us. That's what it's all about for us. -- might be "The Little Suite" from "Sound" (Delmark). As I recall, that incredible performance/creation was pretty much without precedent in jazz up to that time, though it probably has indirect, spiritual/musical roots in Red Hot Peppers Morton and some Mingus. But the spirit of it, the joy and wit, the play between abandon and control, the amazing "efficiency," for want of a better term, of every move! And it never gets old or even that familiar, just rears up on its hind legs every time.

I agree that Wilbur was a drummer unto himself, but here's what he had to say about Ike Day in a 1969 interview I did with him that wasn't published at the time but will be part of, as they say, my forthcoming book. I've tacked on the two sentences from Wilbur that end the interview because they've always struck as both profound and very funny. "Ike Day was about my age, might have been a little older. A thin guy. A truly amazing drummer. Max and Art [blakey] and everybody had respect for Ike. Ike was the kind of cat --it’d be zero outside, and he’d walk up to the stand and beat off some way up tempo and never miss a beat, clear and precise. He was more out of the Sid Catlett school because that was his era. He was established with his own voice and his own style before I’d ever heard of Max or any of them. He’d come by the house and we’d practice. He sort of brought me along and showed me a lot of things. Just listening to him was a lesson in itself. He could take two pieces--a cymbal and a bass drum--and make it swing. He was a natural drummer. He had fast hands, and he used both feet and both hands. If the tempo was up there, he’d be on the bass drum and it wouldn’t be loud--you felt it more than you heard it. Next to old man Jo Jones and Big Sid, Ike could do more with a pair of sock cymbals. He could make them breathe. Dorrel [Anderson] was like that too. A hell of a natural drummer. We all came up together--Dorrel, Ike and myself--but Ike was the older more experienced one and could play better.... "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."

Free For all asks, "How were Roscoe, Muhal, Jarman et al received by the jazz audience in Chicago at that time? Did they work in clubs? Was there a large audience for their music? Who was a big draw jazz-wise in Chicago around then? Were the north side/south side scenes separate- what I mean, was there much integration of the black and white musicians at that point?" And Chuck rightly warns that description of the local scene is complex. But I'll give it a try. The not large but for the most part dedicated basic audience for Roscoe, Muhal, Jarman et al. was drawn from maybe four somewhat overlapping groups: First, the members of the AACM themselves had some connection to an African-American cultural/political ... I don't think "movement" is quite the right word, but something between a movement and a yeasty, coalescing community; and I recall that, depending on the location of a particular event or concert, a fair percentage of the audience would consist of people who were connected with that community, including of course musicians who weren't playing that afternoon or evening but wanted to hear what fellow players were doing. Second, as in any good-sized urban center at the time, there was a body of hard-core jazz fans who'd been paying attention to what was up on the so-called cutting edge nationally as a matter of course , and some of those listeners had become aware of what was up in their own town and realized that these were world-class innovative players, even if they weren't yet well-known. Third, overlapping with the second group, and again as in any good-sized urban center at the time, there was a fair amount of free-floating counter culture sentiment, looking for sorts of cultural activity that had, or could be thought to have, a rebellious, "let's remake the world" tone. And Lord knows, a fair amount of this music gave you the feeling that the world was being remade. Fourth, and of course overlapping with the third group (as well as the second), a good number of AACM members lived in or near Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, which is where the University of Chicago is located, so there were a fair number of U. of C. students who belonged to groups two and three and began to follow these musicians, who were as it happens often synergistically jamming or holding concerts in U of C. student lounges or other venues. I don't think there was much if any club work for AACM-related players playing their music on their own terms -- other than the kind of Ajaramu/Claudine Myers gig I mentioned in a previous post, where players who had straightahead-ish inclinations were hired to play more or less that way and then could test the boundaries. Also, there was sideman work to be had in blues and r&b bands. I don't think there was much integration of the black and white musicians at that point, for a couple of reasons. First, there was both an actual and perceived by those white musicians who might be interested cultural/racial clannishness to the AACM community. Not that I recall any overt hostility, actually quite the opposite in many instances, just a sense that this is more or less our thing. Second, I don't think there were all that many (or at least not as many) white musicians in town at the time who were that interested in/knowlegable about the kind of the music that the AACM players were making, and some of those who were (e.g. bassist Russell Thorne, drummer Hal Russell) were just the kind of tightly wound customers who might have trouble getting along with most people they didn't already know, as well as a good many people they did. A shame, because I wouldn't have been surprised if Thorne and, say, the Jarman of that time had turned out to have a lot of common ground musically. Of course, Muhal, the elder statesmen, had had a long professional career in groups of many types, including the MJT Plus Three, which had included non-African-American trumpeters Paul Serrano and Willie Thomas.

Another Chicago late '60s memory, probably from 1967: Drummer Gerald Donovan (Ajaramu) and pianist/organist Amina Claudine Meyers had a gig at a bar on, I think, Stony Island Ave. Don't know if Roscoe M. and Maurice McIntyre (Kalaparush) were both sitting in or one of them was part of the band and the other was sitting in, but they were both there that night and in very relaxed form, yet this was a neighborhood bar, not an AACM concert, so as I recall there was some playful sense in the air of "How much are we (or they) going to get away with?" It was some customer's birthday, thus the inevitable request for "Happy Birthday." Roscoe, Maurice et al. not only played "Happy Birthday," but played it with as much motivically based intensity as, say, Monk played "Little Rootie Tootie," and as I recall, they played angular, beautifully logical variations on "HB" for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes -- not at all broad or parodistic, just taking what was given and running with it, though there was an underlying air of deadpan I'm not sure what to call it, maybe a distant echo of Buster Keaton. I recall that the audience was more than pleased.

An excerpt from a piece I wrote for Down Beat's 1968 year book, Music '69 (published in Jan. '69). The event described probably took place in April or maybe August 1965, the two times that year the Coltrane Quartet was in Chicago: "The second Chicago-based player of the new music I heard was Roscoe Mitchell [bassist Russell Thorne was the first]. Coltrane was in town, and Elvin Jones was appearing at an off-night session [at a club on Wells St., probably the Brown Shoe, definitely not the Plugged Nickel--and I think it was on a Sunday afternoon, not an off-night]. As Jerry Figi once put it, Elvin was laying about "with a vengeance, one of those prehistoric movie-monsters crashing through a city…"--in the process wiping out a James Moody-like tenor player [his name was Bob Poulian]. Suddenly, in the middle of a tune, a young alto saxophonist climbed on the stand and played a solo that met Jones more than half-way. What he played, a version of the bird-like cries that Dolphy used, was inseparable from the way he played it. His raw, piercing sound was powerful enough to cut through the drums, and Elvin found himself playing with and against someone. When the saxophonist had finished, he climbed down and disappeared into the audience. Someone was able to answer my question with the name Roscoe Mitchell, and I filed it for future reference."

In case Chuck isn't in a mood right now to go over those days again, here are links to three interviews in which he does: http://www2.kenyon.edu/Projects/Ottenhoff/.../Aacm/nessa.htm http://www.jazzweekly.com/interviews/cnessa.htm http://delmark.com/rhythm.nessa.htm They were amazing times, and Chuck, I'd say, was more than a midwife. The musicians involved would have to speak for themselves, but from where I sat, his commitment, savvy, taste, and across-the-board honesty had a great deal to do with that scene's flowering the way it did. I think of it like this: Imagine those musicians and either no one (or no one much) wants to record them, or those who do lack Chuck's qualities/abilities/attitude. The scene itself, not to mention our record of it so to speak, would not have been the same, and to an extent that's difficult to calculate.

Chris, Charles Burnett's segment of "The Blues" sounds like a disaster (haven't seen any of them myself), but I have seen two of his fiction films, "To Sleep With Anger" (1990) and "The Glass Shield" (1994), and they were excellent, especially the first one. Later on he did cross paths with Oprah on a project ("The Wedding"), which may have messed up his mind.

Ooops -- make that the Lost Cosmic Unity label. My own Cosmic Unit is, however, still missing.

David, I like "New Ideas" too and had the pleasure of reviewing an excellent but apparently quite obscure Al Francis trio album (with John Neves and Joe Hunt) from the mid 1980s, "Jazz Bohemia Revisited" on the Lost Cosmic Unit label. This led to brief amiable contact with Francis -- phone conversation or by letter I don't recall. You say you knew Francis at one time. Do you know what's happened to him? He was a helluva player and an original, maybe in a class with Walt Dickerson if there were more of his work to go by.

Interesting to get a former Borders employee perspective. I guessed there was something fishy about this coupon, though it didn't occur to me that it had been dicked around with in the way it seems to have been. When I tried to use it (on an $18.99 classical disc), suspicions were confirmed. The coupon coding when entered said that the price was now $7.60 (plus tax), i.e. 60 per cent off! The bemused clerk noted the discrepancy and then sold it to me anyway. Not a particularly good feeling but probably not the worst thing I've ever done.

Others who were around back then can confirm or disagee, but my experience was that encountering Coltrane on "Mainstream '58" in the context of that time was absolutely thrilling/shocking, even if (or especially if) you already were familiar with and knocked out by "Blue Train" and all the various Prestige dates from '57-8, under his own name and as a sideman, that flank "Mainstream." Fo whatever reasons, the phase of/style of Trane that Ira Gitler dubbed "sheets of sound" made ( or seemed to make, in terms of recordings) its full debut here, and again it was thrilling/shocking. I think that Trane's partners here had a lot to do with this -- in particular the several sorts of fairly extreme "laid-backness" that Harden and Louis Hayes display e.g. the former's slow-mo lyricism and the latter's glassily even, behind-the-beat ride cymbal work. Together with Doug Watkins' marvelously precise and also fairly laid-back time feel (laid-back by comparison with P. Chamber's more forward-leaning approach), this perhaps gave Trane just the sort of backdrop -- at once very alive yet kind of "neutral," if you know what I mean (a la, maybe the Basie Band rhythm section of the late '30s) -- that left him free to dump all the snakes out of the sack.

Shaw is a great clarinetist and bandleader, but am I the only one who, after watching "Time Is All You've Got," felt that he also is one of the all-time narcissisitc jerks? Also, and in much the same vein that his vaunted (esp. by Shaw himself) intellectuality is fairly hollow because it's mostly for show and/or a case of wishful mirror-gazing?

A lovely record, as are almost all the Vanguards. BTW, in later years Ruby, being Ruby, professed to despise all the playing he did back then. Nice to know the name of the place where these were recorded; the feeling of "space" around the band was akin to Columbia's 30th St. studio but a shade less reverberant. Who needs stereo? Also BTW, the person who screwed up the Vanguard reissues, initially at least (haven't checked to see if he's still got the gig) is Sam Charters. A couple of years ago I sent Vanguard a detailed, angry complaint about the hash he'd made of the Mel Powell material -- mis-attributions, jumbled sessions, etc. (Charters apparently didn't listen to the material or bother to look at the liner notes of the original LPs, or both). Vanguard's reply was noncommital, but a friend of mine who knows Charters says that Sam did get yelled at a bit and that, as might be expected, he was very upset that someone out there had made his life more difficult.

P.S. The NY club where I saw Mobley in such grim shape was The Tin Palace.

BTW, I'd seen that piece of John's before but didn't remember it well enough. What a beautiful, soulful, insightful piece of writing. There are two lives at stake and on view there -- Hank's and John's.

Chuck, I remember (or think I remember) being at the Jug, Von, Hank, Hank Crawford affair, but if so my memories of it are very dim -- perhaps because it was kind of a mess? Also -- and how many times does this happen? -- I probably wasn't thinking along "focus on Mobley and treasure the memory" lines because I didn't know how close he was to the end. On the other hand, I did hear Hank in New York, before or probably after this -- at some club-based "festival" with, I think Philly Joe in the band -- and he was in very poor shape, almost unable to get enough air through the horn to make a sound. That was indelible because it was so sad, almost shocking. Don't think I ever heard another great player, in person at least, who was in a similar condition but still trying to play -- maybe Lester Young with JATP in fall 1955, before he was hospitalized for a month or so and then came out to make "Jazz Giants '56" and "Pres and Teddy." As I recall, the New York thing with Hank just seemed cruel, like somebody should have stopped it, but maybe Hank himself felt otherwise, given the alternatives.

Guess I need to explore Smith more; all I know is the old Roost "Moonlight in Vermont" album. BTW, looking at my previous post. I notice an unintended ambiguity. I meant that Farlow's range of dynamics and touch had increased quite a bit over what I'd heard from before, not that he had gone beyond Tatum's range of dynamics etc.

Oops. Yes, Farlow, too. BTW, I heard him live in the mid-'80s in Chicago, with a bassist (probably Larry Grey) and a good boppish drummer (Robert Shy), and he was in a place that seemed to be a fair bit beyond anything I'd heard on record from him, incredibly fluid in thought and articulation, virtually Tatumesque, and with a good deal broader range in dynamics and touch, all sorts of expressive shadings as seen from an express train. In fact, the speed and intensity of meaningful musical events that night seemed to me to be at or close to the limit of what the human mind (or at least my mind) could assimilate. I got the feeling that what I heard was not the result of the fairly common difference between live and studio musical selves (the great Farlow material taped in Ed Fuerst's apartment is not stylistically different from studio Farlow of the time) but rather of a late-ish development in his overall musical approach that, as far as I know, was not documented on record.

FWIW, my old boss at Down Beat, Dan Morgenstern, told me that he went do an interview with Lloyd in his early "Love-In"/"Dream Weaver" hey-day, and when Lloyd answered the knock on the hotel room door, he said that it was too bad that Dan hadn't arrived a minute or too earlier, when Lloyd had been levitating. As I recall, Dan politely inquired further, and Lloyd explained that he meant that quite literally, that he'd been hovering a foot or two off the floor for some time that afternoon.

Django and Christian, in classes of their own. Grant Green is Grant Green. Otherwise, Jimmy Raney, in the top group of improvisers regardless of instrument (and an influence on Green, to complete the circle).

There's some wonderful, utterly relaxed and genuine, Getz blues playing on this album, maybe one of the earliest where he really got things together in that area: The Soft Swing (Verve MGV 8321) Stan Getz (ts) Mose Allison (p) Addison Farmer (B) Jerry Segal (d) NYC, July 12, 1957 All the Things You Are, Pocono Mac, Down Beat, To the Ends of the Earth, Bye Blues There's some superb stoptime playing from Stan on both blues (Pocono Mac and Down Beat), the whole thing just a lovely day in the studio. Don't see that it's out on CD in the U.S. right now, but it probably was/is out in Japan.

I like Herb Ellis a fair amount of time -- especially once in-person in the mid-'80s, when he was away from the O. Peterson orbit (BTW, Jim, "Twangity-splangity-fleep-floop-doo" is pure genius) -- but on Nothing But the Blues to my ears he and even more so Getz seem to be trying so damn hard. There are couple of places where Stan almost brays like a mule. My guess is that Roy's macho presence kind of freaked him out.

"Actually, I think he does go a little Cockney at one point - perhaps you have to be British to hear it." Maybe it's at the very beginning -- "Oiy like the sunrise" instead of "I like the sunrise."

Great on paper maybe, but I've always found it rather artificially heated and "off" in some way, as though the twanginess of Ellis' conception of the blues, combined with Getz's hardbreathing attempt to be even bluesier and more twangy (if you can be twangy on the tenor saxophone, Getz does it here), led the whole thing to curdle. Also, Stan Levey's typically mircoscopic ride cymbal beat, which I like a lot in other contexts, is not what was needed here. Maybe someone like Gus Johnson would have saved things.