Face of the Bass

Sure it does. In 1963, Cecil & Ornette had already been around long enough to have made an impact past being "novelties", Albert Ayler's name was beginning to get out there (and his music heard a little), Trane & Elvin were really beginning to get in gear, lots of things that had been fermenting were starting to come to the surface, none of which had too much to do with putting on a suit & tie, running the changes with a "bluesy" virtuosity, and saying "We sincerely hope you do enjoy". And that's just in the music... You gotta remember, Baraka was a "radical", musically and socially. His patience for the status quo was next to nil, and having real, viable options at hand just made it more so. No, I don't think the timing explains it. Sorry. If Blues People had been written in 1959 I think he would have been just as dismissive of the genre. Even before the free jazz era, Baraka was looking for musical rebels, and the hard boppers definitely weren't that. Look at it closely .. I am not being any more reductionist than you are. In your above statement as well as in the one preceding it, you subdivide "all of jazz into various sub-genres" yourself. Which is a statement of fact because there ARE different styles of jazz so nothing wrong about that, no matter who makes that statement. And good and not so good jazz was made in all styles through the histroy of jazz. As for hard bop being the artistically most successful style of jazz, that would be a matter of personal preferences and can indeed be contested but depends on what criteria you would consider essential for "artistic success". ANY style preceding hard bop can make that claim depending on whether you are willing to accept to see each style of jazz on the terms of its time and depending on whether you value the groundwork or later embellishments higher . It may be argued that most hard boppers by and large were technically more proficient than most 20s jazzmen (though in order to prove that they would have had to show they were able to play 20s jazz just as well as or in fact even better than 20s jazzmen, assuming this earlier jazz is technically and artistically more simple ) and they may have accomplished musically more advanced feats than 20s and 30s jazzmen, but does this alone make them "artistically more successful"? Not by a long shot if one is willing to judge music on the terms of the time the music was actually made FIRST. So IMHO it again boils down to personal preferences and therefore is pointless to try to debate. And let's face it - while I would not dare to judge what made Jones/Baraka write what he did in 1963, by that year hard bop had already become an also-ran in the field of jazz. By that time contemporary jazz hard been split wide open into soul jazz and free jazz, to name just two which were apart from hard bop. 1963 was to hard bop what 1947/48 was to big band jazz. It was still around but was it still the pacesetting form of jazz? I actually think one of the main reasons that I prefer hard bop over earlier styles has to do with technological change. Hard bop was really the first jazz movement that didn't have to restrict itself to a 3 or 3 1/2 minute performance on record. And as a listener that makes a huge difference for me, as most swing, big band and early jazz recordings sound pinched to me. I know that in some cases technological limitations can produce superior art (the silent movie era is testament to this) but for me the shorter times of early jazz recordings just don't work. (And yes, I've heard the argument about economy of expression many times. I don't buy it.)

well put. "During its prime" is the operative phrase here. During their prime, iambic pentameter, royal masques and epic poetry were pretty cool too. But art forms evolve, and artists move on. Unfortunately, not so with the school of hard bop. Miles knew he had to, Coltrane knew he had to, Ornette knew it too. However, lesser luminaries continue to flog this musical form decade after decade after decade, long after its artistic life has fled. Right but Baraka was writing against hard bop when it was arguably either still in its prime or very nearly past its prime. Blues People was written in 1963, not 1993. I agree that hard bop played itself out by the mid-1960s, but that doesn't explain the animosity Baraka felt for it in 1963. During its prime hard bop produced a lot of repetitive music, but also a lot of wonderful music. Just as free jazz produced some wonderful music in its time, a lot of uninspired music, and has arguably been flogging itself to death for decade after decade after decade as well. But couldn't that be said about ANY style of music (jazz style, in particular) so does this statement advance this "debate"? Well if you wanted to be extremely reductionist and group all of jazz into various sub-genres, I would say hard bop has been one of the most artistically successful areas in jazz history. I'd take it over all the genres of music from before the Second World War, over bebop (which had become repetitive within a handful of years of its first recordings) and fusion. I'd probably take free jazz over hard bop, but those would probably be my top two. Again, this is all personal opinion but I spend way more time listening to hard bop records than I do to swing records or early jazz records.

There's a lot of truth to what Baraka says in the quote that started off this thread, but there's also a lot of great hard bop music. Like all genres (including free jazz) it could easily fall into repetitive cliche, but during its prime it was responsible for some of the best music in jazz history.

Well, I already have a Kindle so I got the book and started reading it yesterday. I'm only one chapter in but I think it's going to be good. I also think (and no disrespect intended) the book could have used some heavier editorial intervention. There are some sections that are really not necessary at all to the narrative, some clunky sentence constructions, and his insistence on using neologisms like "afram" and "euram" to refer to blacks and whites is distracting. That said, I expect this to be a good book, if a bit long.

I've had a Kindle for a year now. I still like to read scholarly books on real paper so I can make notes more easily, but when it comes to regular reading of jazz biographies or novels or whatever, I much prefer to read them on a Kindle. Books take up way too much space. I'm not a big fan of digital music at all but for me the digital era is tailor made for EBooks. Now if I have the option between buying the book or buying the Kindle version, I get the Kindle version about 85-90 percent of the time. Also, if you lost your Kindle that would not mean that you had lost your entire library. Your library is stored in multiple places...on your Kindle, yes, but also in your Amazon.com account. So in the case where you lost your Kindle, you would just need to replace the Kindle in order to access your library again. That said, the Kindle is not easily lost and I'd be rather astonished if someone managed to destroy theirs by dropping it in a toilet.

Don't understand the resistance to Kindles and the like. I want this book to be great. Not merely good or serviceable.

Yeah, the thing though is that I could easily see it becoming really contrived and pretentious.

Interesting idea. I could see it being really good or really terrible.

It hasn't --- I suspect that ordering from B&N has its share of downsides. Yeah, I canceled the order and went through Amazon.

Does anybody know if the new Tord Gustavsen disc has been delayed? I ordered it through Barnes & Noble but got an email today saying there's been a delay.

My comments in the ECM Parker/Mitchell thread notwithstanding, I am looking forward to hearing the Gustavsen disc.

I accidentally bought myself a second copy of the RVG edition of Herbie Hancock's Takin' Off on Blue Note. It's still sealed. If you would like it, send me a PM. Update: CD is gone.

Somebody wanted the Wynton Kelly disc just a little bit more than I did.

The second half of the Curtis Fuller is pretty bad too. To be honest I'm glad they are reissuing this music but I hate the way they are doing it.

Certainly Parker on ECM isn't only electro-acoustic - ref. David Ayers point above and also his trio recordings with Bley. Not forgetting that storming solo on the first track of Wheeler's Around 6 and other contributions to KW's works on the label. Interesting, I wonder what it is that makes you feel that about these electro-acoustic recordings? Do you have similar feelings about other EA recordings of his, I'm thinking PSI releases? do you find them less interesting in comparison to other EA composers/improvisors or in comparison to othe Evan Parker ensembles? I'm no expert in this field and I found that my initial exposure to Parker's EA ensemble opened a route into a new type of music - so maybe I've a soft spot for them. Certainly the live performance by this ensemble I witnessed was a musically and almost physically extraordinary experience. Maybe it is because I came into electro-acoustic music at the deep end of the swimming pool--AMM, Keith Rowe/Toshi Nakamura, Sachiko M, all the stuff on Erstwhile and other labels. Then later I listened to the Evan Parker recordings. They just didn't match my expectations. Maybe it's just that the label (Electro Acoustic Ensemble) is all wrong. Well, consider that electro-acoustic improvisation really started in the late '60s with AMM, the New Music Ensemble, David Behrman's work, Musica Elettronica Viva, Gentle Fire ... some of that stuff is blindingly harsh music, other aspects more contemplative, and I think that some of the best examples really retain the spirit of improvisational risk, throwing shit at the wall and it just may not stick. Evan Parker was working with Hugh Davies (Gentle Fire) around the turn of the 70s, and Paul Lytton also brought an electronically-expanded approach to sound and rhythm in the duo that they had through the '70s and '80s. Parker's been doing Electro-Acoustic music his way for 40 years, and it may not be as rarefied an approach as one encounters on Erstwhile discs, but it's in keeping with the sense of risk and humor that pervaded the earlier work. I don't know. I'm a huge fan of Evan Parker generally, I love the stuff he's done going back to the 1960s right up to the present. The Parker-Guy-Lytton combination might be my favorite trio in improvised music. By comparison, the electro-acoustic stuff just fell flat for my ears. I guess I like my EAI a little bit harsher.

Certainly Parker on ECM isn't only electro-acoustic - ref. David Ayers point above and also his trio recordings with Bley. Not forgetting that storming solo on the first track of Wheeler's Around 6 and other contributions to KW's works on the label. Interesting, I wonder what it is that makes you feel that about these electro-acoustic recordings? Do you have similar feelings about other EA recordings of his, I'm thinking PSI releases? do you find them less interesting in comparison to other EA composers/improvisors or in comparison to othe Evan Parker ensembles? I'm no expert in this field and I found that my initial exposure to Parker's EA ensemble opened a route into a new type of music - so maybe I've a soft spot for them. Certainly the live performance by this ensemble I witnessed was a musically and almost physically extraordinary experience. Maybe it is because I came into electro-acoustic music at the deep end of the swimming pool--AMM, Keith Rowe/Toshi Nakamura, Sachiko M, all the stuff on Erstwhile and other labels. Then later I listened to the Evan Parker recordings. They just didn't match my expectations. Maybe it's just that the label (Electro Acoustic Ensemble) is all wrong.

Alright then, my contribution to the question is that I find Parker's output on ECM to be fairly dull. I have a great deal of interest in electro-acoustic improvisation, but in my opinion his efforts in that direction have not been particularly interesting.

Who here is trying to "suppress" discussion?

Well, I'm not an "art for art's sake" kind of listener. The historical and cultural context of the music I listen to is always important to me. As for Soviet jazz, I beg to differ. Some of the music that Leo put out in the 1980s in particular is wonderful stuff. Agree that many of those Leo releases were very interesting. How many of the artists involved would have identified themselves as creating "Soviet Jazz" would be interesting to know (not that we're ever likely to) How many identified themselves with the Soviet system rather than living and creating within it? Again perhaps a moot point. Interesting that Document, the eight CD box, is titled "New Music from Russia, the 80s", a presumably well-considered choice not to reference USSR or just a geographically accurate statement. I used Soviet simply to describe the political context in which the music was created. If the same music had been made in the 1990s I would have called it "Russian Jazz."

Well, I'm not an "art for art's sake" kind of listener. The historical and cultural context of the music I listen to is always important to me. As for Soviet jazz, I beg to differ. Some of the music that Leo put out in the 1980s in particular is wonderful stuff.

I figured I was setting myself up for ridicule by openly stating my politics. But, to answer your question, no, there is not a large working class market out there for experimental or avant garde jazz. (There isn't a large market for such music, period.) And that's part of the problem.

I am a Marxist...the word has a very specific meaning for me and that is why I used it. From a sociological perspective, the music on ECM tends towards bourgeois affectations. Of course, the vast majority of jazz listeners are in the upper/middle classes (and that's one of the biggest problems with the music today), but with ECM you see a refinement of product specifically aiming to appeal to middle brow tastes. In the case of the other labels I mentioned, that is much less the case, unless you think, in the case of Leo, for instance, that there's a large middle class market out there anxious to devour Soviet experimental jazz. Now, a lot of you might find this kind of shorthand sociological analysis pretentious, but I don't really care. It's a more interesting topic of discussion for me than the vapid threads on product accumulation that take up most of the bandwidth on this site.

I'm not hostile and I can see where you are coming from. I am trying to look inside this label a bit more and I am reminding myself (1) how many good and interesting recordings there are even if I do not especially like either the music or the engineering (2) how many good records they did and do which I do actually like - I mean when you study the list there are a lot, actually (3) I am also thinking how much they contributed to engineering of jazz or jazz-derived records back in the day when mixing standards often came from jazz rock and were garish and also when most vinyl (especially US vinyl) was pretty poor (4) I am taking stock too of how much variety they generated and how many new aesthetics they have promoted (5) and how they presented many artists I do really like to a large public under a commercially secure umbrella. Middle of the road? But less so than almost any of the hard bop LPs and labels we love here. Much less so, really: Evan Parker's performance at the Huddersfield festival (an avant-garde hardcore gathering) on Moment's Energy would never have made it to any jazz label, major or minor. What hasn't ECM done - yes, their Coltrane was Jarrett, so not quite there on that front, and some big names are absent - Brotzmann entirely, I think, same for Cecil Taylor, Braxton never under his own name, and very few of the FMP set. Etc. Yeah, my main criticism is that the market ECM seems to be aiming towards is very middle brow, one might say somewhat conservative as far as tastes go. Again, it is a music that seems to do an excellent job of capturing the Nordic scene. But I'll never believe that Eicher exerts NO influence on the people he records. There's far too much similarity from a range of artists for that to ever be the case. And yes, Blue Note material from the 1950s and 1960s also put together a distinct sound that was aimed at a fairly large audience. The difference for me, and I know I inevitably get into caricatures in saying this, is that Blue Note hard bop has a lot more energy, soul, and joy to it. ECM music is the kind of thing you imagine listening to in an outdoor patio while wearing sandals and drinking an old bottle of wine. Blue Note hard bop music, by contrast, sounded much more urban-metropolitan, like it came from the streets, R&B music roped into a jazz context. For me as a body of music it "works" much better than ECM does. I'd also note that Blue Note hard bop had probably played itself out after about 15 years...ECM is now going at this for more than 40 years, and while there have been changes, the music seems to be in pretty much the same place today that it was in 1995. And the cover art long ago slipped into repetitiveness and self-parody, which of course isn't the music itself but does speak to the aesthetic that is being cultivated by the label. I'd actually say that most of my favorite musicians from the last 40 years have not recorded on ECM, or if they have it was for only one or two projects: Peter Brotzmann, Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Joelle Leandre, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Jimmy Lyons, Steve Lacy, Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Irene Schweizer, Joe McPhee, Wadada Leo Smith and so forth. Evan Parker and Roscoe Mitchell are also two of my favorite improvisers of the last 40 years, and while they've recorded for ECM, nobody would say that their most essential or interesting work has come with ECM. These artists have been very well documented on a wide variety of labels, but particularly the ones I mentioned earlier: FMP, Black Saint/Soul Note, Leo, etc. Now, there are some musicians whose output on ECM I really like, and in most cases I think it's because their style of playing fits well within the ECM universe and maybe provides another dimension to it: Ralph Towner, Tord Gustavsen, maybe Tomasz Stanko on a good day and one or two Enrico Rava albums. But as a man who has become addicted to collecting jazz recordings, I've also wasted too much money buying ECM records that disappointed me...it took me a couple years to realize that I really don't like Keith Jarrett's Standards music, that Jan Garbarek's output bores me, that Crispell sounds way more compelling in her work outside of ECM. I think I once had to review one of Steve Kuhn's albums on ECM and I had to admit in the review that the music bored the crap out of me. I find this is often my reaction when I hear a highly touted ECM record. With the distribution they get, ECM tends to dominate the year-end top 10 lists that you see in the jazz media and on the Internet, but I think that's more because of the visibility of the label than it is a reflection of the quality of the music.

Criticism of criticism. Not of someone's creative output that is not to one's taste. I wouldn't congratulate yourself too much for having stimulated debate. This happens every time ECM is mentioned ('I'm too cool to like ECM' is a pose only marginally younger than the label itself). For your next trick, try telling the world that K%$£* J%$*&& isn't very good. You might...just possibly...strike a nerve. I just find it interesting that people get very hostile (and their attacks often very personal) when someone raises an opinion that is not adulatory towards the label. As for the history of ECM-bashing...I don't know of it and you don't see it on these forums that often. But I DO know that there are many out there who share my opinion, and it's not because they are trying to establish how cool they are. It's because they think the label's output is mostly boring and repetitive. I'm several years younger than the ECM label is and post 1970 jazz for me is best summarized by the EFI movement that has been well documented on the European labels I mentioned earlier. Again, ECM puts out the occasional fine record but the overall impression of the music recorded on ECM is that it is bourgeois and indulgent.

Eicher does NOT twist great players' arms so that they record music they do NOT want to record. I spoke to Abercrombie about this very subject about a month ago. He lives in my neck of the woods, and I run into him occasionally. Get over the ECM bashing already. It is old and extremely close-minded. Close minded? Listen to the difference between Marilyn Crispell on ECM versus Marilyn Crispell on other labels and for other projects. It's staggering. Do you honestly believe that an artist of Crispell's stature is in someway manipulated to produce work she'd rather not so it can be released on ECM? I hope not ,because that shows very little respect indeed for an artist which your other statements suggest you admire. Maybe she wants to record in the style she does for ECM? is that a possibility beyond your view? I, for one appreciate her recordings for ECM and other labels. As for the Parker/Mitchell - I've struggled to really enjoy the Mitchell (which has a line-up that i could take to a desert island) only because i find the first piece really doesn't stimulate me and puts a 'drag' on the rest of the album (I'm sure this is discussed on another thread elswhere). Maybe i should start at track two. The Parker I haven't done justice to, listened a couple of times and shelved it which suggests it didn't grab me straight off. I've noted the comments that it's a recording that reveals itself over several listens so will use this thread as aspur to revisit. Anyone got an antidote for Eicher's poison? It'd save me a lot of money..... I don't think Crispell is being manipulated. I just think her work becomes A LOT less interesting on ECM, and I happen to notice that the work of many artists becomes less interesting once they reach ECM. Isn't this the label that basically keeps trying to recreate the ambience of In A Silent Way? It gets old after awhile. I've heard a lot of "strange" statements in my life, but this one is truly bizarre...? As already mentioned in this thread and of course everywhere else, ECM's contribution to contemporary Jazz aesthetic, the development of the Jazz Art Form, the individual admancement of hundreds of Jazz Artists and many, many other virtues attributed to ECM and its owner are beyond discussion. I have witnessed the birth of the label from day one, followed it closely for over 40 years now, both on a personal and professional level and I must say that although many independent Jazz labels are crucially important, none of them comes close to ECM on any level. Of course I can understand that some American Jazz fans have trouble admitting that a non-American Jazz activity could overshadow everything done by American Jazz, but hey, that is a fact.... This is really unintentionally funny to me. I have almost no interest in "American jazz" today, just as I have almost no interest in most of the music being put out by ECM. If you asked me to name the most vital jazz labels of the last 40 years, I'd put FMP number one, easily, and then after them probably Black Saint/Soul Note and Leo. Notice that NONE of those are American labels. So your lazy assumptions are completely off base. Also to everyone who keeps repeating my use of the word "poison," please note that in my original post I noted that I was engaging in rhetorical excess. Obviously ECM does not "poison" everything. I like some of their recordings, even. But if I see that a player like Evan Parker or Roscoe Mitchell is on ECM, I become wary. And that's through experience with too many polished works that represent, for me, the musical embodiment of the worst excesses of the Baby Boomer narcissism that is the New Age movement. It's just all so very, very bourgeois. Your statements get more and more insane as we go along. Didn't realize the air was so fucking thick upstate! A nice, content-free attack. Well done. I gather that, on this board, the moment one stops slobbering over the numbers of limited edition box sets, people get prickly. The problem lies in taking a personal antipathy and projecting it as a universal absolute. Not 'the approach of ECM most of the time does not appeal to me' but 'most of ECM repeats a formula from 1969 and makes musicians who record well elsewhere produce less interesting work'. I know this approach is the currency of 'criticism' but I tend to find it a bit passée and ever so, well, bourgeois (if not aristocratic in its hauteur). Yours is also a statement of criticism. We all know that what I say is my own opinion. To reiterate that in everything I write would be a waste of time. Anyway, I'm enjoying the responses. Seems like I struck a nerve, which I regard as a good thing. Also, I don't think I should have to point it out but the influence of In A Silent Way on the ECM aesthetic has been well documented elsewhere.