Mark Stryker

The simple answer to what happened to James Newton is that his career took a left turn into academia in the early 1990s, when he started teaching at the Univ. of Calif at Irvine and focused his attention on (more or less) classical composition. There's a very interesting recording on New World that documents these activities, "As The Sound of Many Waters," which came out in 2000. I'm not sure where/if he's still teaching. His website seems to indicate that his last academic job was at Cal Intitute of the Arts-LA and ended in 2006. Nor do I know how the impact of the suit. I've lost track of him. But FWIW, I reviewed that New World CD back in 2000. Here's what I said: In case you were wondering whatever happened to flutist James Newton (b. 1953), one of the most compelling left-of-the-mainstream instrumentalists to emerge in jazz in the late '70s, here is the album to get you up to speed. It turns out that about a decade ago, he quietly traded a life in the maelstrom of vanguard improvised music for the relative serenity of the academy, where his focus has become primarily composition and the intriguingintersection of the experimental jazz tradition and contemporary classical music. Not that life at the University of California-Irvine has dulled Newton's creative fire. The music here -- including pieces for solo flute, solo violin and small combinations of winds, strings, percussion and soprano -- encompasses unusually diverse compositional strategies, though almost everything pulsates with energy, surprise and the kind of clarity and craft that enhances the emotional thrust of the music rather than dulling it. The 14-minute title track is a tour de force solo performance by Newton. There are brilliantly improvised passages in which glissandos and multiphonics (playing more than one note at a time by singing through the instrument and false fingerings) add monumental weight to the cavernous vocal sound of his tone. His quick reflexes and the freedom of his phrasing suggest his jazz background, but there is also a fleeting yet telling quote from Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta." "Violet" for flute, clarinet, cello, piano and two marimbas is a highly rhythmic work reflecting African roots music but transformed by the imagination of a Western composer too smart to merely go slumming in the music of another culture. The layered polyrhythms, repeating cells, brief but memorable melodic gestures and the luminous tonal colors all suggest, for those looking for a classical reference, the music of Olly Wilson. But Newton doesn't sound like anyone but himself.

Tayor is a maverick. He graduated with honors from Harvard with a degree in Math. He won the bronze medalist at the Van Cliburn competition in 1993 when he was in his early 20s. He played the Goldberg Variations at the competion (highly unusual repertory choice) and it's clear that the reason he didn't win that year was because he didn't fit the standard competition pianist mold. Since then he's built a teaching and performing career on his own model -- he's not at a big conversatory but at the University of Wisconsin (nothing against UW; I'm just saying), he's written scholarly articles on philosophy and instead of doing standard rep with big orchestras he focuses on recitals and modern and contemporary repertoire, from Ligeti and Messiaen to Bolcom (though he still plays Liszt, Beethoven, etc.) Generally, I think he's brilliant, though I found a program of standard repertoire he played in metro Detroit earlier this fall a mixed bag interpretively. Here's the review. There were two concerts, one with a quartet that tackled Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" and the second a solo recital. Also, though it's not mentioned in the review because of space, it's almost surely the case that the more conventional program he played was influenced by the presenter, which is notoriously backward when it comes to contemporary music -- I've bashed them in print many times over this. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article...ENT04/810060366

A big strong HELL YEAH on that one! Thanks for the heads-up. I'll add this to my list. I looked at it on Amazon a moment ago and there's no real info. I don't recognize the cats. Also, where's the Cellar?

As good as some of the recordings are, I'd encourage anybody to try and hear McPherson live -- the melodic ecstasy and rapture of his phrasing and the luminosity of his sound really make their best impact when you can feel the air move in the room. He doesn't play licks -- though he's totally coming from the vocabularly of Bird and Bud (and his mentor, Barry Harris). To me, Charles' best stuff is rooted in the go-for-broke spirit you hear on certain live Bird recordings and the elaborate melodic and rhythmic drapery of Bird on "Just Friends." Re: "The Child of Death" I did a piece about Charles a few years ago in which the premise was that I played various recordings -- most of which he played on -- to get his reaction and use it as a jumping off point to talk about his life and music. One of the pieces was "The Chill of Death." Here's that section of the story: McPherson joined bassist-composer Charles Mingus in 1960 shortly after arriving in New York. He and Hillyer were recommended to Mingus by former Detroiter Yusef Lateef. Mingus auditioned them at an afternoon jam session at a coffeehouse, hired them on the spot and had them report to work that night. Mingus' aesthetic was gloriously chaotic. Lush Ellingtonian colors collided with roiled textures, searing intensity and extended forms. Mingus also loved Charlie Parker and in McPherson found a fresh disciple to fold into his sound world. Recorded in 1971, "Let My Children Hear Music," a masterpiece with an expansive ensemble of winds, brass and strings, includes a Mingus recitation of his own heart-of-darkness poem to dense and brooding accompaniment. McPherson then improvises freely against a hallucinatory backdrop. "Oh, wow," McPherson says softly at the sound of Mingus' voice: The chill of death as she clutched my hand/ I knew she was coming so I stood like a man. McPherson, who was given no music at the sesson, was told to react to the abstract sound around him. "This is pretty good," he says. "It didn't make me cringe. What I'm consigned to do is not easy. There's no standard harmony or sequential construction. And look what this is about: The emotions are foreboding, mystery and fear. How do you play that? I don't know if melodicism is what you need. Dissonance might be what's called for. I did some of this fairly well, but there were some areas where I think I get too tonal. If I did this now, I'd be less concerned with trying to be melodic. I'd think about how to melodically handle dissonance."

Well, that explains that. Thanks. I don't really know much about Coleman. Looks like a world-class bon vivant -- something to aspire to.

Playboy's Penthouse was on for a couple of years 1959-60, maybe 61. Playboy After Dark was a late '60s reincarnation of the show. Those of our more, um, mature board members may have more specific memories. At least in the early years, jazz (and cabaret/adult pop cousins) was integral to the party concept of the show, just as jazz was central to the original Playboy philosophy. Here's some youtube evidence: Sammy Davis Jr. (at 34, with the whole schmear: full band, singing, dancing, clowning, impressions; when he keeps his focus, it's swinging.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPhdzxytTcU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXnkkK5oldk...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY-9AbLFewQ...feature=related Lambert, Hendricks and Ross with Count Basie Trio (with Tony Bennett in the audience) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StDLnFrbi78 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqmUgDUx7o0...feature=related Cy Coleman (singing "Witchcraft" with a second half chorus that I've never heard. Was this part of the original that Sinatra's arrangement just passed on?)i ("The Best is Yet to Come. Anybody know who the trumpet player is? ) Ella Fitzgerald: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XxhmV5-9pw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWWph2FxwwU And, good God, just for fun: James Brown on "Playboy After Dark" (dig all the white chicks chanting "I'm black and I'm proud.")

Not fascinating at all. The whole point of Playboy was that it was supposed to be a sort of road map to sophistication for the postwar male. Jazz was a part of that sophistication. What IS fascinating is that the mastermind who dreamed this up now surrounds himself with a bunch of bimbos with boob jobs and bad plastic surgery. I thought he had better taste than that. To be clear, what's fascinating to me are the specifics discussed by the participants, the perspective from the trenches in 1964 viz. our view today and the fact that jazz has slipped so far off the radar of popular culture. I get that Playboy in its early years offered a road map to sophistication for the post-Eisenhower male; what's intersting is how/why/when jazz fell out of the equation as far as the wider culture was concerned and the degree to which it could/should be restored.

In the Nat Hentoff thread down below, I mentioned a 1964 round table discussion on the state of jazz with a stellar panel (Dizzy, Cannonball, Schuller, Mingus, Brubeck, Russell, etc.) that ran for an amazing 17,000 words in Playboy. I found a copy online so I thought I'd post a link here. (I don't think it's been posted previously.) Fascinating on many levels, including the realization that jazz was still considered relevant and interesting enough to the wider cultural dialogue that a general circulation magazine like Playboy would devote so much space to such a rarified discussion. Such a thing would never happen today. This was, by the way, billed as a special Jazz & Hi-Fi Issue on the cover. FWIW, I found my copy in a used bookstore down by the University of Chicago (forgot the name of the store; it wasn't Powell's) about 6 years ago. No wisecracks, please. The issue just happened to be sitting on the top of a stack in the corner. I really did buy it for the articles! The unnamed moderator is Hentoff, who also wrote a separate overview piece. Anyway, here's the link: http://www.cannonball-adderley.com/article/playboy2.htm

To return to the original intent of the thread, I found this to be a really terrific CD, with an emphasis on the poetry of bebop, even on the uptempo tunes. Think of the lyricism inherent in Dameron's music or a song like "Con Alma" -- that's the spirit of the album. There's a nice cross-generation vibe in the band too, with bassist Todd Coolman and drummer Adam Nussbaum.

Assuming I'm not missing an element of sarcasm, I can't remember a post I found so infuriating or boneheaded (with all due respect). Everyone has a right to their opinion, so let's leave aside the evaluations, dubious as they may be in my view, that Moody will only be remembered for "Moody's Mood" and that Hank will only be remembered for his famous brothers; this drastically underestimates Hank's gifts as an individual stylist, profound synthesizer of pre-bebop and modern styles and influence on several generations of pianists. Instead, let's focus on the abhorent ageism, mean-spiritedness and spleen behind salvos relating to the irrelevance of their music because of their age and that, really, both of these guys just should quit or die. For me, players like Moody and Jones are among the biggest inspirations that music -- hell, life -- has to offer. The fact that at their age they are not only playing with such energy, creativity and especially a sense of wonder at the possibilities of music and learning and a commitment that their best work is still ahead of them -- well, that's what I want to be like at their age. Shit, that's what I want to be like now at half their age. Hank still practices two hours a day, and Moody, well, here's a quick story: I was introduced to him for the first time backstage at the Detroit Jazz Festival a few months ago after he had played with the Dizzy All-Star Big Band. As we were talking, an awestruck kid who played saxophone with the Temple University band earlier in the day came up and stammered a few things to Moody, who still had his tenor around his neck. He told the kid, "Just practice, practice, practice, practice. And the more you learn, the more you'll realize you don't know." Then, excitedly, he asked the kid if he had seen Jerry Bergonzi's latest book. ("Hexatonics"). "You gotta get that book!" he said, shoving his saxophone stand and music into my hand so he could play for the kid. He started running a sequence of triads that weaved in between C and D major up and down the horn. To see an 83-year-old so geeked about the latest wrinkle he had learned about harmonic motion, and to see him breathe musicianship and inspiration into a young musician he had just met and to have heard him 20 minutes earlier play with a ferocity and a frankly more modern edge than the other saxophonists in the band was to witness the life force at its most compelling. Jazz needs more of this not less.

Valid points all around. Consistency demands that I should have called Larry on the posting issue, but, frankly, I didn't even notice, probably because I was responding to the original Weill post and the infraction occurred in a secondary follow-up and it was a first-time offense. But Larry got overheated, apologized, says he won't do it again and offered a pint of fluid. Let's grant absolution. For the record, my position on posting entire articles has not changed, and let me thank everyone for their efforts in recent months on following the rules. Still, everyone is entitled to one inadvertent fuck up. As I said previously in this thread in another context, no harm no foul. Let's move on.

I see what you mean. This might be a good time for a few days of R&R.

Larry, I'm surprised that two logical explanations seem to have eluded you as an old newspaper man -- either it was the damn copydesk that screwed it up or carelessness on the writer's part induced by deadline pressures, distractions or the many varieties of gremlins that have a way of getting between your brain and your best-intentioned copy. I'm guessing that Tony meant to write "composed in France" -- a factually accurate statement that makes sense to note in the context because Weill was on the move in those years -- but instead wrote "composed in French" and then never caught the slip, reading over it because we often don't notice our own typos. If that's the case, then 99 out of 100 copy editors would not have questioned the phrasing. Alternatively, Tony may have written something awkwardly (or not) and in making a change, the copy editor condensed it to "written in French" and introduced the problem. Of course, it is possible that Tony meant to write what he did, but we all have brain cramps. No harm, no foul.

I've really been enjoying everybody's contributions. Thanks to Bill for starting the thread. Jazz Times' Top 50 LPs from the 35th anniversary issue. Sept. 2005 Woody Shaw, "Little Red's Fantasy" (Muse, 1978) As a freshman at the University of Illinois in 1981, I asked my parents for $90 to buy football tickets. Rah-rah and all that. It was a ruse: I bought records instead, among them trumpeter Woody Shaw's "Little Red's Fantasy," a blistering and profound 1976 quintet date that defines mainstream modal post-bop. It has also become my default response to the canard that straight-ahead jazz died in the 1970s. I was an American history major in 1981 but also a budding alto saxophonist. At 18, I knew my way around bebop tunes like "Confirmation," "Yardbird Suite," and "Oleo." But modal harmony was a mystery. When I tried to tackle the Jamey Aebersold play-along set devoted to Shaw's music, the music's formal riddles proved way too complex for my elementary skills. I was speaking one language; Shaw spoke another. I bought Little Red Fantasy because I recognized three tunes as beguiling Shaw originals that had stumped me, and I was intrigued by the presence of Frank Strozier, an alto player unknown to me. Pianist Ronnie Mathews, bassist Stafford James, and the late drummer Eddie Moore complete the group. Still underrated, Shaw was the next link in the trumpet chain after Freddie Hubbard and Booker Little. He applied the lessons of Coltrane and Dolphy to hard-bop roots, and the result was an angular but swinging style spiked by dissonance, pentatonic scales, wide intervals, and a disciplined inside-outside approach anchored in history but never limited by it. Shaw's music speaks of the eternal quest. Each tune here is a melodic and memorable journey. Execution snaps to attention. Shaw's corpulent and burnished copper tone and Strozier's darkly plangent sound merge into thick expression; the splashy rhythm section creates a tidal-pool churn. Side 1 is given to the exploratory vamps of Mathews' waltz "Jean Marie" and James' lyrically edgy bossa "Sashianova." Side 2 opens and closes with Shaw's steeple-chase structures "In Case You Haven't Heard" (with solos based on a revolving series of four Lydian Scales) and "Tomorrow's Destiny" (intervallic melody, shifting Latin and swing rhtyhms, pedal points, advanced harmony). Shaw weaves in and out of chords like a Manhtattan taxi barreling down 7th Avenue, creating tension and release through chromatic side-slipping, clipped ferocity and maniacal spikes of volume and range. Strozier compliments him with deviously original phrasing that should have made him a star. The title track, Shaw's signature ballad, exposes his psyche with a gentle melody framed by a heart-of-darkness bridge. Issued on Muse in 1978 as Shaw was reaching peak visibility with a newly minted Columbia contract, "Little Red's Fantasy" remains the definitve document of his art. The record is thrilling, brawny, soulful and sweeping in its aestheic field of vision. Head, heart, tradition and innovation are held in alchemist proportion. Nearly 30 years later, the music remains state-of-the-art. It helped teach me to play modern jazz--and it still has much to teach us all.

I liked this record quite a bit, though I'm sure it won't be to everyone's taste. High-quality crossover, with a lot of imagination, variety and very lovingly and smartly produced. Here's a link to a review -- you have to scroll down (classical fans may want to to take note of the essential Leon Kirchner string quartet set discussed at the top.) http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID...361/1039/ENT04) Back to Tim. He's local for us in metro Detroit so I've written a lot about him over the years. Sweet guy and a great post-bop player. In 1999, shortly after he got the gig with the Rolling Stones, I wrote a profile that included the following sidebar about the day he got the job. It's quite a tale: Feb. 21, 1999 CALL CAME WHILE SAX MAN WAS HOBNOBBING WITH CLINTON BYLINE: MARK STRYKER Free Press Music Writer Tim Ries was on his way to the White House in November when he got the call from the Rolling Stones. He was going to perform with a quartet of Broadway singers -- James Naughton, Patti LuPone, Jennifer Holiday and Brian Stokes Mitchell -- in a concert PBS is to air later this year. Ries never tires of telling the tale: "The day I left I got a call from the trombonist in the Rolling Stones band. This is a guy I do a lot of work for in New York -- jingles, movie dates -- so I've played with him for years. He says, 'There's a possibility that Andy won't be going out on the next tour. Do you want the gig?' "I was like, 'Are you kidding? Yeah!' He said, 'You can't say anything because nobody's told management, and I've got to set this whole thing up before they tell Mick. "The next day we're at the White House. We rehearse. We get the cameras set up. I'm in my tux. And it's time for the photo op with the president. We're in the East Room. There's about 20 people lined up, and my wife and I are in the middle. A door opens and we see Yasser Arafat in the other room. The Clintons walk in. The president goes to each person and shakes their hand. "He gets to me, and I had my saxophone around my neck. He looks at my horn and he knew it was a Selmer; it's old, beautiful and pristine ...He said, 'What's the serial number?' and I said, '49,000,' and he said, 'Oh, 1950.' "Turns out he knows every serial number from the Selmer series, which dates back to 1922. If you tell him a number he knows exactly what year it was made. I don't even know this, and I'm a saxophone player! We started talking about horns and it was wild because, all of a sudden, 15 minutes had passed and we're still talking about instruments and mouthpieces and reeds. It was just like we were two kids. "Finally, it was time for the show and as I'm heading for the stage my cell phone rings and it's the guy from the Rolling Stones: 'Tim, you got the gig. We cleared it with Mick and we just have to check with Keith. It's 99.9 percent but don't say anything. We don't want news to get back to New York until it's final.' "Meanwhile, the pianist I'm playing with is from New York and has a gig starting in February for six weeks that I'm supposed to do. After the concert, Clinton comes up and gives me a big hug. Again we started talking about saxophones. Then we go into the reception room and we're eating shrimp and it's like a wedding except that you're with the president. I gave him my CD, and we talked about my mouthpiece, which was specially made for me in Belgium, and he asked if I could please have one sent to him. "So he's writing his address and it's Bill Clinton, c/o Betty Currie. He looks at me and says, 'That's my secretary,' and I thought, 'Yeah, I've heard of her.' Then he asked what other gigs I was doing. I said, 'Well, this is an incredible day. I'm playing at the White House and I just got a call to play with the Rolling Stones.' "And I didn't say, 'Shh, don't say anything,' because I figured who's he know that I know? A second later, he walks over to get a picture taken with the rest of the band and he yells across the room: 'Hey, saxophone player with the Stones! Come here!' "The pianist looks at me, like, What?! I said, 'Oh boy, I have to talk to you.' "It was one of those days I wished I'd bought a lottery ticket because if they come in threes, that would've been the day I won the $4 million."

I've always been a fan and heard great personality in his playing, even if the heavy influence of Trane and, later, Sonny, were always on the surface. That shift from a Trane aesthetic to Sonny has always fascinated me. Did Grossman grow up enamored with Trane, the tenor of the moment, rejecting Sonny as too beboppy and old-fashioned, and then later in maturity change his mind? Or did he swallow Rollins whole as a kid but then subliminate the influence for a long time. For me, Grossman's best latter day playing is on "Love Is The Thing" (Red) with an incomparably suave trio of Cedar Walton, David Williams, Billy Higgins. http://www.amazon.com/Love-Thing-Steve-Gro...0340&sr=8-3 The orientation is more Rollins than Trane, but lots of the playing also strikes a very rewarding balance between the poles and it all still sounds like Grossman to me, starting with that distinctively raspy violence in his tone. "Easy to Love" is remarkably inspired, from the limber way he phrases the melody to the melodic-rhythmic rhyme and wit during his solo (very Sonnyish). In a way, that solo has always reminded me of George Coleman's note-perfect solo on "Stella" on Miles' "My Funny Valentine" -- two journeymen tenors rising to incredible peak in a single concentrated improvisation. On a related topic, Liebman and Grossman's solos have been transcribed in a "Lighthouse Omnibook." http://www.lighthouseomnibook.com/Main.shtml Great record, too.

There is no comparison. While Milwaukee is a fine regional orchestra and probably a top 20 symphony, Minnesota is a world class ensemble. Bigger budget. Better players. Truly outstanding conductor -- Vanska is the real deal, a major international player. Minnesota's peer group by budget size includes Detroit, St. Louis, Cincinnati and I tend to more or less group these orchestras together in the sense that on any given night, with the right conductor in the right repertoire, they can sound as good or better than any of the traditional Big 5. Now, consistency and peak performance capability is another discussion and so is artistic vision. I cannot comment on Minnesota's programming since I haven't studied what they play -- and this is in some ways just as important or more important than how they play. But if the question is how do they play, the answer is great. Plus, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is terrific.

Speaking of appearing in Ann Arbor at the Kerrytown Concert House, the 2008 EdgeFest line-up has been posted. Lots of strings and reeds this time out. No Andrew Bishop this year, but Gerald Cleaver sits in twice. In case it's not been made clear, Cleaver is Detroit-born and went to school at the University of Michigan. Allen's resume is the same I believe. Not sure where Bishop was born but his advanced degrees are from U-M and was/is part of the extended scene.

Related note: Lightcap is in metro Detroit for the next three nights with Gerald Cleaver's Violet Hour, also with two reeds, J.D. Allen and Andrew Bishop. Tonight in Ann Arbor at the Kerrytown Concert House and Friday and Saturday at Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. The band also played at last weekend's jazz festival here in Detroit, where they were smokin.' Heard them at The Hungry Brain in Chicago last Saturday night. A good deal of talent onstand (Bishop in particular IMO, though an aquaintance found him too slick), but after a few pieces Allen and Cleaver gave me a headache. Cleaver is f------- loud, while Allen's lines have a difficult-to-evade forcefulness but a good deal less rhythmic/melodic variety than I would wish. At times I felt like he was laying down strips of asphalt. How old is Allen? If he's no longer in his 20s, I'm not optimistic about future growth. Allen is 35. Bishop has an interesting background -- ph.d in composition, plays in all kinds of styles, from bebop to free, including a post-modern Hank Williams band. I know what your friend means -- there's that Brecker-derived harmonic and technical facility, but the ideas are rhythmically interesting enough to me that he slips the noose. In the festival setting, the drums didn't come off as unusually loud, but club dates can be different. Should have also noted that Jeremy Pelt was playing trumpet, which added an interesting mainstream voice into the mix and filled out the melodic contrast/variety on the front line. Was he with the band in Chicago? He's on the latest record called Gerald Cleaver's Detroit, from which most of the material they played here was derived.

Related note: Lightcap is in metro Detroit for the next three nights with Gerald Cleaver's Violet Hour, also with two reeds, J.D. Allen and Andrew Bishop. Tonight in Ann Arbor at the Kerrytown Concert House and Friday and Saturday at Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. The band also played at last weekend's jazz festival here in Detroit, where they were smokin.'

The budget for the Detroit festival has reached $2 million this year. After years of living on the brink of extinction, a measure of financial stability has come since 2006, when Gretchen Valade -- a Detroit philanthropist, heir to the Carhartt Clothing forune, jazz lover, owner of Mack Ave. Records and a new restaurant-jazz club in Grosse Pointe Farms called the Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe -- created a non-profit foundation to manage the festival with an initial $10 million bequest. Even drawing income from the endowment, the festival still has to raise a ton of money every year to break even and, as everyone in the arts can tell you, that's no picnic in this economy, especially in Michigan, where things are literally worse than anywhere in the country. Investment income gives the festival about a $500,000 annual head start in funding and if there are deficits they can dip into the principal to cover the debt. However, finance 101 tells you that's a recipe for disaster longterm because if you keep drawing from the endowment principal, pretty soon you got bupkis. The Detroit festival is all free. Six stages. More than 100 national, local and school acts. It's the largest free jazz fest in North America. Chicago's programming I think has always been more sophisticated, but Detroit has really sharpened its profile in the last couple years under a new executive/artistic leader. One thing I've always appreciated about the Detroit festival is its intimacy. If you've never been, the sound is very good for these kinds of events and even the bigger stages have a coziness to them far different from Grant Park. That $250,000 figure for Chicago's budget has to be a misleading apples-to-oranges number. Hell, Sonny and Ornette each cost in the $75,000 range so that's 60 percent of the budget on two headliners. You still gotta pay for the rest of the music, the stages, labor, travel, administration, equipment rental, etc. No way that's being done on $250,000 -- maybe that's the figure for the talent alone. Not sure. Lots more about this year's Detroit festival here: http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID...me=JAZZFEST2008 The Detroit-Philly bass story is mine -- check out the video of Rodney Whitaker and Ralphe Armstrong. (Another writer did the Marvin Gaye piece). Also, we'll have lots more stuff coming starting tomorrow and continuing over the weekend for anyone who's interested. MS

I second that, and would note that Jim's reference to "community" in many ways takes us back to where this thread started and the notion of a particular kind of "spirituality" in Jug's music.

Hands down my favorite is "Jug," and if I had to pick the greatest Gene Ammons solo I've ever heard, it would be "Exactly Like You," which leads off side 2. The phrasing and pacing of that solo are amazing -- nobody could tell a story quite like Jug, but the narrative quality of the way that solo is structured is as nuanced as a novel. Plus, the expressive use of timbre, dynamics, sly double time, witty asides and turns of phrases, ideas that rhyme, winks at the blues -- I've had the fantasy that somebody should dive bomb all the jazz schools across the country with Gene Ammons records; the jazz world would be a lot better off. I got hip to Jug in college at the University of Illinois in the early '80s. There were a lot of great things about the scene there in those days, and one of them was that it was hip to dig Gene Ammons. I'll always be grateful for that. Question for board members old enough to have heard Ammons live: What was it like in the room? How big was the sound? Was he consistent night to night, set to set, solo to solo? What was his stage presence like?

Great piece of writing, Larry -- alive with insight. Thanks for posting.