Chrome

I happened to see last week's show and some woman, after she had been axed, actually got down on her hands and knees and started begging/crawling for a second chance ... it was one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen.

ScottB: How is that? I've been poking around the Rope-a-Dope Web site ... they seem to have a lot of interesting stuff going on.

He was arranger for Byrd's "A New Perspective" ... I know not everyone is keen on the voices on this, but I think the disc is fantastic and a great showcase for Pearson's skills as an arranger.

Tim Hagans does a trumpet/drum duet (and trumpet/bass duet) on Audible Architecture ...

Has anyone else heard this? It's Charlie Hunter on guitar, Bobby Previte on drums and other electronic stuff, and Greg Osby on sax. I just picked it up over the weekend and it's pretty cool ... some of it's almost ambient, some of its pretty funky ... recommended if you like your jazz mixed w/electronica. According to the liner notes, Hunter/Previte plan two more albums, each featuring a different third player, as kind of trilogy.

I've got a live Lou Donaldson disc called "Fried Buzzard" with Hardman that showed off a surprisingly funky side to him ...

As someone who never had the chance to see Coltrane live, I thought the Ultimate Blue Trane, with included video clips, was pretty cool.

So I'm reading the liner notes to Money Jungle (Ellington, Mingus, Roach) and they mention that Ellington also cut "summit" albums with Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane. The notes say the session tapes for these have not survived, but in a way that maybe implies the albums were released at one time ... is this true? Anybody hear these?

What do people here think about Geoff Keezer? I know he was kind of a prodigy and all coming up, but he doesn't seem to get to much attention here. I've only heard him as a sideman, but I think he's pretty expressive.

Calif. schoolers told stripping can be lucrative Management consultant tells eighth-graders money to be made as an exotic dancer The Associated Press Updated: 10:25 a.m. ET Jan. 14, 2005SAN FRANCISCO - The principal of a Palo Alto middle school may not invite a popular speaker back to an annual career day after he told girls they could earn a good living as strippers. Management consultant William Fried told eighth-graders at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School on Tuesday that stripping and exotic dancing can pay $250,000 or more per year, depending on their bust size. “It’s sick, but it’s true,” Fried said in an interview later. “The truth of the matter is you can earn a tremendous amount of money as an exotic dancer, if that’s your desire.” Fried has given a popular 55-minute presentation, “The Secret of a Happy Life,” at the school’s career day the past three years. He counsels students to experiment with a variety of interests until they discover something they love and excel in. But school principal Joseph Di Salvo said Fried may not be back next year. The principal said Fried’s comments to the class came after some of them asked him to expand on why he included “exotic dancing” on his list of 140 potential careers. Fried spent about a minute answering questions, defining strippers and exotic dancers synonymously. According to Jason Garcia, 14, he told students: “For every 2 inches up there, you should get another $50,000 on your salary.” “A couple of students egged him and he took it hook, line and sinker,” said Di Salvo, who also said the students took advantage of a substitute teacher overseeing the session. “It’s totally inappropriate,” Di Salvo said. “It’s not OK by me. I would want my presenters to kind of understand that they are coming into a career day for eighth-graders.” That stripping advice wasn’t the only thing that riled parents. Di Salvo said one mother said she was outraged when her son announced that he was forgoing college for a field he loves: fishing. “He really focused on finding what you really love to do,” said Mariah Cannon, 13. Fried, 64, said he does not think he offended any of the students: “Eighth-grade kids are not dumb,” he said. “They are pretty worldly.”

Anyone familiar with this? (From the Oregonian) Film lionizes Miles Davis' electric era Friday, January 07, 2005 MARTY HUGHLEY Within a few years of Bob Dylan's controversial adoption of electric instrumentation in 1965, the artistic legitimacy of that move was universally accepted among critics and the buying public. In the late 1960s, jazz giant Miles Davis made a similar transformation in his work, and in some corners he's still viewed as a traitor and a sell-out. "The electric Miles," as the trumpeter's post-1968 period is colloquially known, is the subject of "Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue," a 2004 documentary by Murray Lerner that opens the Northwest Film Center's 22nd annual Reel Music Festival tonight. The festival continues through Feb. 13, with more than two dozen films on subjects ranging from country songwriter Townes Van Zandt to synthesizer pioneer Bob Moog to German pop culture's role in the rise of Nazism. Davis has been a frequent topic of Reel Music films through the years. Lerner's film essentially is an argument for the quality and significance of the music Davis made in the late 1960s and early '70s, when his fame and sales reached peaks but when a schism developed in his critical reputation. Stanley Crouch, the purist grouch who figures prominently in Ken Burns jazz documentary and has been the foremost champion of Wynton Marsalis, is the token detractor here, relating his earnest attempts to enjoy such Davis albums as "Bitches Brew," only to end up feeling like someone was driving nails through his hands. Davis abandoned acoustic instruments and the probing, haunting style he'd fashioned with them not because he yearned to communicate more broadly, Crouch asserts, but because he wanted to make money. Most of Lerner's interviews, though, are with musicians who performed with Davis. They point to his brief marriage to singer Betty Mabry, a fascination with boxing, and the general tumult of late-'60s culture as influences on his change of direction. Having argued a case for the music, Lerner then simply unleashes it, presenting a 38-minute set from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. In front of more than a half-million fans, Davis, Jarrett, Chick Corea, Airto Moreira, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette and Gary Bartz played an intense, roiling, free-form jam that, according to Carlos Santana's typically airy-fairy interpretation, "converted a lot of people into multidimensional consciousness." Perhaps. But it's likely that neither that performance nor the engaging "Miles Electric" will settle the great debate about the electric Miles.

From Slate: The Late Show Why Duke Ellington's late work deserves our attention. By Stanley Crouch Posted Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005, at 3:36 PM PT The late, great Ellington Like most artists of heroic proportion, Duke Ellington's sweep is difficult to comprehend. His output of original compositions and co-compositions is estimated to number between 1,000 and 3,000 works, ranging from starkly simple pieces to complex adventures in long composition, from the lowest low-down blues (the swamp water virtually runs off the notes) to the most urbane renditions of the big city (its people, its architecture, its pulse, and its dreamy, private situations). His grand aesthetic vision was to bring work songs, spirituals, blues, and ragtime together with jazz, that aesthetic idiom of great latitude. Ellington combined his sources with more blistering force, imagination, and understatement than anyone had before him, inventing variations and grooves along the way. He produced music that would not only extend the reaches of jazz but would become one of the largest and most original bodies of American music ever created. Ellington's early classics, produced between 1927 and 1940, have been often and rightly praised; his late work has been largely neglected. But the late work offers plenty of masterworks for the listener of sufficiently refined taste, or the one willing to sophisticate his or her taste. Put simply, Ellington's late work is largely a secret treasure. Anyone purporting to be civilized, or who desires to be, should have as many late Ellington recordings as possible in his or her audio collection. In conventional jazz writing, Ellington is said to have reached his musical peak in the three years of 1940 to 1942, when there is supposed to have been an unimpeachable balance between composition and personnel, resulting in stellar renditions and eloquent improvisation. But Ellington's ongoing evolution, from 1943 to the end of his life, runs counter to the standard critical take. In that last 30 years of band-leading and composing, Ellington achieved a remarkable range and authority. This was the result of both the time he had spent in the musical game and the vast technical and human experience his players were able to bring to the music, resulting in an abundance of varied tonal depth, emotional expansion, and subtlety—all of which is revealed in an increasing number of reissues and remixes now available. These recordings, stretching from the '40s to the '70s, demonstrate just how brilliantly Ellington and his band developed, decade by decade, almost right up to his death in 1974. Given its remarkable variety (some of it due to the length made possible by compact discs), Ellington Uptown is a perfect place to enter the world of late Ellington. The basic areas of investigation and expression that Ellington would look into for the next quarter-century are laid out on this recording, made between 1947 and 1952. Ellington reveals how in control of his New Orleans blues roots he remained and the many refinements, extensions, and elaborations he was still bringing to them. Three different masterpieces appear in a row: "The Mooche," "Take the A Train," and "Harlem." "The Mooche," made in 1928, is a piece that reflected Ellington's love of New Orleans and had been played in many versions by 1952. (Ellington constantly remade his pieces, and they are thus examples of how an inventive jazz composer works. He personally wrote or co-wrote new arrangements, commissioned new arrangements, or, upon listening to the improvisations of his players, found fresh material that could enrich or reinterpret a familiar part of his repertoire.) On "The Mooche," we hear the two colors that were essential to Ellington's sound. There's the clarinet, which Ellington never abandoned even though jazz orchestras usually set the instrument aside after the emergence of Charlie Parker in the middle '40s. Then there is the equally important plunger-muted brass (trumpet, on this track) that also remained a fundamental element of his style. "Take the A Train," is an example of Ellington's jauntiness, his "boudoir" tenor saxophone, and his unexpected shift to a swift, high-tailing virtuosity. Written in 1940 by Billy Strayhorn (a longtime Ellington collaborator), it was once the most famous band theme in the world. This is Ellington's arrangement, which foreshadows the many forthcoming jazz pieces written by other musicians that would present more than one tempo and mood. This version is a puckish, medium-tempo swinger, boasting a vocal feature by Betty Roche that is so sensual and knowing it will show listeners what hip actually means. There is plenty of erotic suggestion but not one overworked note of vulgarity. This performance is also a two-part musical platform for the masterful tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, who first uses his breathy, seductive lyricism at a walking ballad tempo before he seems to snatch up his pants and his shoes, jump out the window, and exhibit his red-hot virtuosity at a champion sprinter's tempo. "Harlem," an extended piece that was Ellington's favorite longer work, opens with a trumpet announcing the two-note theme. Wynton Marsalis considers this one of Ellington's great masterpieces. In this musical portrait, Ellington, always at war with limitations, seeks to create a varied set of musical images that goes beyond narrow, popular stereotypes. His Harlem is an epic community of endless, varied types. There is wistfulness, gravity, delight, mocking humor, sexual banter, mourning, hope, dancing, and calibrated power. In short, Ellington achieves an emotional fullness as inclusive of joy as of grief. It is a glorious moment in his output. " 'Harlem,' " says Marsalis, "shows how a musical genius can use his original, technical imagination in order to capture the vitality, humor, resourcefulness, spiritual depth and great sadness of the people he knew. No one has ever celebrated the humanity of Harlem as deeply as Duke Ellington did." After 1950, Ellington's band went through many personnel changes, losing some of its unique voices such as alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges and trombonist Lawrence Brown. Hodges returned in 1956, at which point Ellington and Strayhorn seemed to step into another dimension of melodic, harmonic, formal, and rhythmic development that sustained itself for a decade. A clear high point of this period is the 1957 Such Sweet Thunder, which is Ellington's "Shakespearean Suite." (Three of these 12 pieces were written by Billy Strayhorn.) Here Ellington made the startling decision to challenge himself by creating a number of "real" musical sonnets, meaning 14 phrases of iambic pentameter (which equals 10 notes). "Sonnet to Hank Cinq" is a perfect example, but each one is unique in mood and execution. This is Ellington and his musicians at their very best, exhibiting their unmatched range. 1959 was the year before the decade when jazz began to struggle with its own identity, resulting in much experimentation, most of it hopeless noise and confusion. In that last year of the '50s, Ellington showed how firmly he had solidified his greatness with signal achievements in jazz parties, film scores, and suites. Jazz Party (1959), with its variety of material and unexpected guests whom Ellington makes compatible, is unusual even for Ellington. It is an example of the ever-surprising repertoire that became characteristic of late Ellington from 1959 to the end of his music-making. The recording contains an intriguing six-part suite (Ellington's first six-part suite was the masterful 1948 "The Liberian Suite," on Ellington Uptown), some witty blues writing for concert percussion and jazz orchestra, and a classic Strayhorn vehicle—"Upper Manhattan Medical Group"—used to challenge an inspired Dizzy Gillespie who appears in a guest slot. There are also a couple of luscious, humorous features for Johnny Hodges, and a rousing blues finale in which the great Oklahoma blues singer Jimmy Rushing and the Bop King Gillespie are propelled by the soft-shoe strutting and declarative riffs of a brass-and-reed ensemble clearly enjoying the weight of its groove powers. (For several more examples of Ellington's talent and range in his late years click here.) The 1966 Far East Suite (RCA Victor) finds Ellingtonia enriching itself with new Third World influences. (This remix, which brings absolute clarity to it, is an example of contemporary technological gifts.) This is probably the best jazz-orchestra recording of that decade, the most forcefully successful blending of jazz and outside music. The musicians are in masterful and inspired form, which allows Ellington to effortlessly remake his palette once again, this time with the influences of the Middle East and Asia. The superb And His Mother Called Him Bill (RCA Victor) is a salute to the then recently deceased Strayhorn, which finds Ellington the pianist outplaying everyone else on the album. Like the hero in winter, with death and retirement taking many of his finest voices, Ellington continued to make superior music, as revealed by the 1971 "Goutelas Suite" found on The Ellington Suites (Pablo). He remained busy remaking his past and taking in new influences, as revealed on The New Orleans Suite (Atlantic Records) and the especially impressive very late Ellington of Afro-Eurasian Eclipse(Fantasy). There is no thrill in the arts like hearing a grand master expand his palette, reinvigorate himself, and take on all of the challenges specific to an era. Ellington said to a relative when asked what he thought of the new generation: "It's not about this generation or that. In Art, the issue is regeneration." These records make that case as powerfully as it has ever been made. Into the face of death Duke Ellington wrote music until the end, and we are all the better for it.

Those titles are no longer on the BMG site. I already have "Unity" but I guess that explains why the other two, which I ordered recently from the BMG catalog, haven't come yet!

I guess he's batting .500 then ...

yes. yourmusic.com is BMG-everything the same, even the invoice and boxes they use to ship the discs in. I don't understand it, but I like it! I don't think so ... just a few examples: BMG is offering Sonny Stitt "Personal Appearance," Larry Young "Unity" and Johnny Griffin "JG" ... I don't see any of these at yourmusic. Of course, I joined anyway.

Marley to be exhumed, buried in Ethiopia Wednesday, January 12, 2005 Posted: 10:51 AM EST (1551 GMT) "Bob's whole life is about Africa," says Marley's wife, Rita. ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- The wife of reggae star Bob Marley said Wednesday that she plans to exhume his remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his "spiritual resting place," Ethiopia. The reburial is set for an unspecified date after monthlong celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Marley's birth to be held next month in Ethiopia. Both the Ethiopian church and government officials have expressed support for the project, Rita Marley told The Associated Press. "We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia," said Rita, a former backing singer for Marley's band, The Wailers. "It is part of Bob's own mission." Marley was born in St. Ann, Jamaica, in 1945. He died of cancer in 1981. Rita Marley said her husband would be reburied in Shashemene, 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Addis Ababa where several hundred Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie. Hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans embraced Haile as their living god and head of the Rastafarian religious movement. Marley was a devout Rastafarian, a faith whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair into long matted strands called dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament. "Bob's whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica," said Rita, a Cuban-born singer who married Marley in 1966. "How can you give up a continent for an island? He has a right for his remains to be where he would love them to be. This was his mission. Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place," she said. "With the 60th anniversary this year, the impact is there and the time is right." Together with the African Union and the U.N. children's agency, Rita Marley has organized celebrations in Ethiopia, including a concert on Marley's birthday, February 6, to be held in Addis Ababa. The monthlong celebration, dubbed "Africa Unite" after one of Marley's songs, aims to raise funds to help poor families in Ethiopia. The Marley Family, Senegal's Baaba Maal and Youssou N'Dour, Angelique Kidjo of Benin and other African and reggae artists will perform as part of the US$1 million (euro760,000) program. The event is expected to be broadcast in Africa and beyond.

I just got mine on Saturday! I only wish the entire thing was unedited ... does anyone know why only some of the edited tracks on this were restored? Are the full versions of the edited tracks just not available?

William Friedkin remade Wages of Fear as Sorcerer in the '70s ... not quite a masterpiece but well worth seeing.

Peeping Tom was an incredible movie ... way ahead of its time ... are you familiar w/the plot? I can also recommend Black Narcissus by the same director (Michael Powell). www.allmovie.com has a pretty accurate review of the film.

Has anyone else picked up the CD by Fly (Mark Turner, saxes; Larry Grenadier, bass; Jeff Ballard, drums)? Nice stuff that, IMHO, combines the modern Bad Plus kind of vibe (which I like) and the "outer" side of more traditional jazz.

One of my favorite jazz names: Thornel Schwartz!

I was reading some of the "do we need jazz critics?" thread and it got me thinking ... whatever happened to "explanatory" liner notes for jazz albums? I mean, I know the RVGs, for example, do the "A new look at" thing, but the current Blue Notes (Osby, Moran, Stefon Harris, etc.) don't have anything like that.

Have you seen the TV commercial with Snoop Dogg shilling for cell phones?

Randy Johnston!

Wes kind of went the crossover/"sellout" path (depending on how you look at it) during his last recordings ... I'm sure this had a pretty significant impact on name recognition.