Mark Stryker

A quite remarkable 1962 news report on the "the music and the cult called bossa nova." A full 7-1/2 minutes long. Amazing footage and an amusing journalist's frame to the story.

Proud my city -- three of the four inductees are from Detroit -- and happy to make an appearance in this report. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/14/1111505514/regina-carter-kenny-garrett-and-louis-hayes-named-2023-nea-jazz-masters?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR2T6WXNixGpjiXtWvU3dmcyRrIjFzIAKkTVLMK1CdptVrhYpcjusIwaN54

That "Lazy Bird" arrangement is good one -- Stapleton -- if I recall. A lot happens in just over three minutes and the chorus based on Trane's solo works well, scored creatively and integrated into the whole better than that kind of thing typically is. I always liked Tony Klatka's "Blues for Poland." I didn't realize until I got older that it was not just layered riffs ala Basie but very much a take on Thad Jones. The 4th chorus -- the full ensemble chorus that leads to the baritone sax solo -- has melodies cut from Thad-like intervals and contours and the dissonant brass voicings often sound lifted from any by any number of Thad's charts. That's cool. It's all syncopated and swinging.

I had "Thundering Herd" and "Giant Steps" as a kid, and the last time I listened to those records a few years ago, I thought the best of the charts and the playing held up surprisingly well, though it can be hit and miss track to track. But the Alan Broadbent arrangements in particular have legs. Try his original "Bebop and Roses" and his chart on Zappa's "America Drinks and Goes Home." When I started writing big band arrangements in high school, I used "Bebop and Roses" as a model. Funny story: When I was 13 in 1976, my middle school jazz band played at a jazz festival in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Woody's band was the guest attraction. There were clinics in the afternoon and Woody's longtime lead tenor man Frank Tiberi ran the one for saxophone players. He was also a fine bassoon player, and I remember that he told us how beneficial it would be for us saxophone players to take up a double reed instrument like oboe or bassoon because the double lip embouchure would force you to really support the air column from the diaphragm -- that's the only way to maintain your pitch -- and this would help prevent you from biting down too hard on your saxophone mouthpiece with your top teeth or exerting too much pressure from the bottom lip. And this would thus improve your airflow and sound. He's right about this, but I recall thinking at age 13 that this was really odd advice to give to a group of young musicians who could barely play the saxophone, and yet he wanted us to start learning the oboe. Back to Broadbent, I will say this rococo arrangement of "Blues in the Night" from a little earlier in 1970 is completely nuts, and not always in a good way. The curve ball at the 6:40 mark is not the choice I would have made. I won't spoil it for those who don't know what's coming. But the whole thing was a showstopper. I think Woody wanted something akin to Buddy Rich's "West Side Story" -- a big production number.

Yep -- that was it was all about. Thanks for the kind words.

Not CD, but that's Getz's fashion show quartet.

Favorite: No. 5.

A giant has passed. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/arts/music/richard-taruskin-dead.html

Geri Allen’s “Open on all Sides” and “Twylight,” and pretty much any MBase/Steve Coleman-related recordings on JMT, etc.

Burning Hawk throughout. Thanks.

Gang -- anybody know Shelly Manne's output as a leader well enough to know whether it's fair to say that "2-3-4" might be his best record as a leader, or perhaps his most distinctive?

This is a heartbreaking story. I never met Meghan Stabile, but I remember reading the NYT's profile referenced in this obituary and thinking at the time that the life described was not sustainable. I don't mean to suggest that I ever considered it would end in suicide, but I recall thinking that she was running so hard toward something (the music and a cause) that she also seemed to be running away from something else. R.I.P. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/15/1105310987/meghan-stabile-promoter-who-united-jazz-and-hip-hop-dead-at-39

I have no inside knowledge of whether Hill or Hindemith actually met, but I can reliably tell you (based on conversations with an acquaintance who has done enough work to know) that Hill is an unreliable narrator of his own life.

I have always doubted the veracity of Appel's "eyewitness" account of the Stravinsky story, though it is easy to imagine that Stravinsky at some point might have heard Bird play and that he would have been delighted by hearing his music quoted within a saxophone improvisation-- though it is less easy to imagine him so surprised and astonished that he slammed his drink down with enough force to liberate the libation from its container. Having said all that, I liked the Appel book for its framing ("Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce") and for drawing creative aesthetic parallels between Armstrong/Ellington and the pillars of European modernism (Matisse, Picasso, Calder, Joyce, etc.). Bebop is generally considered the modern movement in jazz, which has the effect of relegating pre-war masters into a deeper haze of dead history, but I think there's validity and value in the "all jazz is modern" perspective.

The Real Deal. Charles McPherson, Michael Weiss, Tyler Mitchell, Leroy Williams. August 10, 1991, Birdland, NYC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HawM4fYSS5A

Wow. Never seen that.

Gang -- I'm trying to help a friend who asked if I had the issue of Downbeat containing a review of Byrd's "Black Byrd," which was released in early 1973. Alas, my collection of the magazine is incomplete and in 1973 I'm missing 1/4, 4/12 ,4/26, 6/7 and 7/5. Review is probably in one of the April issues. Anybody got that and who could take a photo and post? Thanks.

Thanks much!

She's name-checked but I don't go into any depth -- just didn't have the space to cover everyone. One of the things that's interesting about her is she is a product of the famous and unique harp program at Cass Tech -- same high school school that produced Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Donald Byrd, Roland Hanna, Hugh Lawson, Geri Allen and a zillion others. The harp program dates back to 1925 (!) and continues to this day.

"Lucky Lips will always find a pair of lips that will be true."

Amen.

The "thing" is saxophone-plus-rhythm playing a standard song form with more creativity, spontaneity, expression, authority, and swing than anyone ever did before or since -- constructing an extraordinary improvised structure that hangs together as if it was composed, except it was created on the spot in real time. As I said before: the essence of the art form. At least that's one of the "main things."

I got down some related thoughts on Sonny in this long interview about saxophonists a few years ago with Iverson. Scroll down to the Rs ... https://ethaniverson.com/mark-stryker-and-the-saxes/

Fair enough. Live at the Village Gate should have been a two-record set (at least). I know it's a bootleg, but I cherish the European box of all that material. But if we have to keep it to a single LP, then replace Dearly Beloved with the unreleased Lover from 7/28 if it'll fit, and if it won't, then cut Doxy and just make it a one-track side. There's a side two to What's New? Never get to it.

I vary my hats. Am I still to be eyed with suspicion?