Martin Williams

[Alon Marcus]

In the last few months I am reading two books by Martin Williams. The first one called The jazz tradition. It took me some time to understand what a tresure it is. At first it seemed too general and phylosophical (it is!) but as soon as I read the chapter on Ellington and his analysis on Koko and Main Stem I felt there ought to be something special and more interesting insights in the book. There are!

The second book I found called Where's the melody? and it's great too. Also a friend of our family supplied me with the Smithsonian collection of classic jazz. The 5 cd's are accompanied with a booklet also by Williams. This collection is probably intended for newbies but I think it's no less interesting for the rest too.

I think he writes very good. His descriptions of musical pieces are always an eye opener. This kind of writing is what I miss the most in jazz literature. Short and clear descriptions of the music instead of long volumes filled with history, gossip and boring name dropping.

So who is (was?) Martin Williams?

What do you think of his books?

What other stuff he wrote?

[JSngry]

I think he had a stick up his butt a lot of the times, and that his musical analyses are sometimes accurate-as-far-as-they-go-but-they-don't-go-very-far, but having said that, I think he's an important figure in the history of jazz writing, and that "The Jazz Tradition" is a mighty fine book, especially for newbies.

But don't take anything he writes as the final say. That would be like accepting a map of your state as a map of the world, no matter how detailed and accurate the map of your state might be.

[John Tapscott]

The first jazz book I ever read was by Martin Williams. Yes, it was The Jazz Tradition, which I admit I lifted from my high school library some 32 years without signing it out and never bothered returning it. I console myself by saying I'm probably the only one who would have read it! I always enjoyed that book, and later bought the revised edition. One of the great things about that book was that it introduced me to musicians I'd never heard of before. For some reason, I always enjoyed the chapter on Horace Silver. I'd never heard of Horace before but the way Williams wrote of him made me want to really check out his music. But that was true about a lot of the musicians in the book. I've read Where's the Melody, but to me, The Jazz Tradition was the better and more memorable read.

I also picked up the Smithsonian Jazz Collection Set on Lp while on a trip to DC some years ago.

Williams was a good writer and quite insightful, though of course, his opinion is not necessarily any more valid than anyone else's. From the little I've read of him he tended to stand somewhat aloof from the "jazz community" and he didn't make himself any friends with his criticism of John Coltrane. 'Trane seemed to be one musician Williams never really "got".

Edited December 24, 2004 by John Tapscott

[Alon Marcus]

I think he had a stick up his butt a lot of the times, and that his musical analyses are sometimes accurate-as-far-as-they-go-but-they-don't-go-very-far, but having said that, I think he's an important figure in the history of jazz writing, and that "The Jazz Tradition" is a mighty fine book, especially for newbies.

But don't take anything he writes as the final say. That would be like accepting a map of your state as a map of the world, no matter how detailed and accurate the map of your state might be.

O.K. I'll keep that in mind. I don't take anything by anyone (even you my friend ) as a final say. I don't want a world map - I already have it in endless books and websites. My point was that he picked a task for himself which he did very good, his explanations are short and clear and aestathically that's what important.

Whom could you recommend that does a better job? Thanks.

Edited December 24, 2004 by ztrauq22

[Alon Marcus]

Williams was a  good writer and quite insightful, though of course, his opinion is not necessarily any more valid than anyone else's. From the little I've read of him he tended to stand somewhat aloof from  the "jazz community" and he didn't make himself any friends with his criticism of John Coltrane. 'Trane seemed to be one musician Williams never really "got".

You are right. Many times I can't agree with him but it seems he is one of the few who really writes about music and not everything else that is somehow related.

Edited December 24, 2004 by ztrauq22

[JSngry]

Whom could you recommend that does a better job?

Well, nobody gets it totally "right", because if youy could write about music to that extent, there would be no need to play/hear it, dig?

But for various styles, I'd give Gunther Schuller a big nod for sheer technical analysis, Larry Kart a big not for intellectual awareness, Dan Morgenstern a big nod for captruing the emotional essence of the music, John Litwieller a big nod for getting to the crux of where "there" is, Frances Davis a big nod (up until lately) for writiing about now with the clear perspective of others who do the same about then, and so on and so on.

Point is, I'd imagine that all of these writers share a feeling of, at least, respect for what Williams accomplished in terms of setting the tone for critical jazz writing, even if they and others have taken it to a different level. When I point out the reservations I have about him, it should not be taken to mean that those reservations come at the expense of the same respect.

And there's a book edited by Williams called "Jazz Panorama" that is a collection of essays from the old Jazz Review magazine, a magazine that I think Williams was the editor of, that is as good a read as you can find. Not coincidentally, perhaps, many of the pieces were authoured by musicians themselves, including Schuller's "legendary" analysis of "Blue Seven" (don't remember if Zita Carno's not-quite-as-legendary one of "Blue Train" is in there, but it should be...). It's to Williams' eternal credit that he had the perispacity to put out such a erudite publication using such insightful writers (not al of whom were musicians, btw).

"Jazz Panorama" is, in the long run, I think, a more useful book than is "Jazz Panorama", not so much in terms of "education", but in terms of "understanding" the music. But if you're really into jazz writing, you need both, imo.

[JSngry]

O.K. I'll keep that in mind. I don't take anything by anyone (even you my friend ) as a final say. I don't want a world map - I already have it in endless books and websites.

Exactly!

I see too many newcomers to the music, fans and players alike, who latch on to a book, or an author, or a teacher, or a player, as their "definer" of the music, the filter through which all must pass in order to reach them, and that bugs the piss out of me. All you're doing is letting other people's prejudices (favorable and unfavorable) become your own. MAybe as the music's become more "standardized" the response to it is becoming likewise, or maybe it's the other way around, I don't know. But I don't like it! Bah! Humbug!

Everybody owes it to themself to develop their own prejudices on their own time!

[Christiern]

Martin wrote well and had important things to say about the music. I did not always agree with him, and he could be difficult to deal with, but there were also times when he was a joy to be with. Sad to say, Martin passed away a few years back.

[Alon Marcus]

Gunther Schuller - I like what he writes very much. I like his essay on early Duke that appeared in a compilation by Hentoff and McCarthy. The problem is that he is very academic and his essays sometimes hard to grasp by someone who doesn't have even the most basic abilities of reading music and music theory. But he does go to a higher level of detail than Williams and digs deeper.

John Litwieller's book "The freedom principle" is also great but he looks at everything from a different point of view. His descriptions are sometimes very subjective. This book is another example of something that took me quite a long time to like. At first I just used it as a reference about jazz history. Only later it made me think and listen to some music.

In fact both John Litwieller and Williams have parallel chapters on Coleman and Davis. I'll try to read both of 'em once again just for comparison.

...and thanks for your recommendations JSngry.

[JSngry]

You're welcome!

One correction - Nat Hentoff was the co-editor of Jazz Review, not MArtin Williams.

Who the other co-author was, I can't say.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

No, no, no, you were right. Martin Williams and Nat Hentoff were the co-editors. Check Jazz Panorama introduction.

Mike

[Christiern]

Here's the proof...

[JSngry]

DOH!!!

[JSngry]

Now...who were the brave souls Israel Young & Leonard Feldman who put up the moneies and such to publish the magazine?

[Larry Kart]

Hentoff and Williams were the co-editors of The Jazz Review.

Martin had a big influence on a lot of people of my age group -- certainly on me -- for a lot of reasons. For one thing, there was the (mostly) earned, genuine, and forthright intellectual tone (which as Jim says could be a bit "stick up the butt" at times -- you wouldn't want to Martin to be the one to comment on, say, Arnett Cobb or Gene Ammons, but then again he might surprise you there; he had fine ears that were more unprejudiced than many, and he was eager to use them, though he had blind spots). For another, there was the role he played in getting what Ornette was up to right off the bat and writing well about him right then, when it really counted. From where I sat, this seemed to me like a critic's dream -- to be an honorable, useful, intelligent witness to/advocate of something that was new, great, and necessary -- and to some extent I found myself imitating or trying to imitate some of Martin's moves (or what I imagined them to be) when the AACM came along. (This was not entirely a good thing, because at times it led me to too aggressively sort out in print [a la Martin the imperious lawgiver] some things that I didn't yet understand.)

By this time, I knew Martin a bit. He was, as some of the above suggests, a father figure par excellence, but there was a dark side to that, which I fortunately skirted for the most part. The son of a career military officer I believe, Martin damagingly bullied ( a la an intellectualized Great Santini) at least one of the bright young guys who worked under him when he was at the Smithsonian, and he tried to do that with a lot of people I think. I know that one of them, in the Smithsonian days, told Martin to fuck off in no uncertain terms and that Martin, as it supposedly goes with some bullies, backed down right way and stayed backed down.

Martin was known for firing off angry postcards that told you where to get off if he thought you'd strayed from the path of righteousness. I've told this tale before, but my 1983 (more or less contra) Bill Evans piece led him to send a letter in which he "explained" that the reason I had these feelings about Evans' music was that I was "afraid of tenderness." This seemed a silly thing for him to say -- we didn't know each other THAT well -- but more bewildered/bemused than mad, I said in a longish reply that it seemed to me a mistake to equate lyricism and romantic moodiness, that I thought that lyricism in jazz (or in music in general) primarily had to do with the care and feeding of a relatively dominant melodic impulse, that I thought Evans (especially latter-day Evans) wasn't so much a true lyricist (at least in my sense of the term) but a harmonically based player whose melodies were essentially generated by highly patterned harmonic thinking -- and I offered Jimmy Raney as an example of a true jazz lyricist. To this came the postcard, which contained only these words: "Jimmy Raney is a bebopper!" (Apparently, Martin felt that "beboppers," by definition, weren't melodists.)

Martin had a lot of other interests -- American comic strips (he was a scholar there), D.W. Griffith, television, etc. -- and he wrote about these things in much the same way, and as well as, he did about jazz. (His takes on what was good in contemporary TV were completely free from high-toned intellectual prejudice and really enlightening because as far as I know he was the only guy who was looking at TV in that way -- I remember some terrific stuff about "Gunsmoke"). Also, if he liked your stuff, he'd try to tell other people about it; he was very generous along those lines in my experience. At heart (whatever else was going on there), he was a man of deep enthusiams, many of them right on target IMO. Wish he were still around to talk to and argue with.

[JSngry]

Martin had a lot of other interests -- American comic strips (he was a scholar there), D.W. Griffith, television, etc. -- and he wrote about these things in much the same way, and as well as, he did about jazz. (His takes on what was good in contemporary TV were completely free from high-toned intellectual prejudice and really enlightening because as far as I know he was the only guy who was looking at TV in that way -- I remember some terrific stuff about "Gunsmoke").

Where could one go to read these writings?

I'm intrigued, to put it mildly, about the notion of Martin Williams writing about "Gunsmoke"...

[Larry Kart]

Written in the early 1960s for the Evergreen Review, which is where I read them, Martin's popular culture pieces (or most of them) were collected in his "Hidden in Plain Sight" (Oxford U. Press, 1992), which can be found used through a good online search service, e.g. Bookfinder. I don't have a copy and should get one.

[Simon Weil]

I think he had a stick up his butt a lot of the times

The guy was a close to a Great Jazz Writer as we've got, but Great this or thats are out of fashion these days, as well as the writing style that goes with that position. Also he was an intellectual (not perhaps a great one, perhaps that was his flaw) - and to some that equates to "stick up the butt".

For me, he's flawed with the highest level of content of any Jazz writer.

But I'm biased 'cos I love him.

Simon Weil

Edited December 24, 2004 by Simon Weil

[Larry Kart]

Clem -- Yes, I read and enjoyed (if that's the right word) "Sheeper" when it came out, still have it on the shelf. Didn't know Rosenthal though -- think he was a bit ahead of my time, either that or different circles.

Another thing about Martin -- he really tried to ride the surf board of jazz's living history as far as it was in him to go, rarely if ever overrating anything merely because it was new (or claimed to be new) or disparaging anything because it was old and unfashionable. It's a simple principle, but for me if you don't get, say, Jelly Roll Morton, then I have big doubts about your ability to really get Monk, or Bird, or Ornette or whomever. Not that it's impossible to get the latter without getting the former, but the music is more or less of one piece, and I think that Martin felt that in his bones in a way that a lot of other good writers about jazz don't (or haven't), even if they pay lip service to the idea.

[Christiern]

Bob Fass!

[Larry Kart]

Williams on TV, correction. Some of those pieces may be in "Hidden in Plain Sight" (Martin recycled a lot), but the core collection is his "TV, The Casual Art," which is available used. Need to read it again (I have a copy), but just opening it up I noticed that he has some shrewd positive things to say about "Green Acres," differentiating it clearly from "the simple rusticity of 'The Beverly Hillbillies' or the sticky, self-satisfied cuteness of 'Petticoat Junction.'" ["Green Acres"] "joins farce and whimsy, a difficult task.... Eddie Albert is superb. If he showed one more degree of exasperation and anger at his bungling but triumphant bumpkin antagonists, he would become a bully or a bore. But he never does."

Also, a lot of these pieces were written for the Village Voice.

[garthsj]

For those of us working in the field of popular culture, Martin Williams was always a very helpful source at the Smithsonian. I met him once on a research trip related to a "comic strip" project, and he was pleasantly surprised that I also had an avid interest in jazz. His edited collections (together with Michael Barrier) "A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics" and (with Bill Blackbeard) "The Smithsonian Book of Newspaper Comic Strips" with their short essays are classics in the field.

I have used his television collection in my class on "Television in American Society," but I believe that it is now out of print.

Garth.

Edited December 24, 2004 by garthsj

[couw]

Written in the early 1960s for the Evergreen Review, which is where I read them, Martin's popular culture pieces (or most of them) were collected in his "Hidden in Plain Sight" (Oxford U. Press, 1992), which can be found used through a good online search service, e.g. Bookfinder. I don't have a copy and should get one.

abebooks.com has several copies for 1$ and up.

[couw]

"The Smithsonian Book of Newspaper Comic Strips"

now THAT book's a well selected treasure trove

(FWIW, it's titled "The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics")

[ghost of miles]

Hentoff and Williams were the co-editors of The Jazz Review.

Martin had a big influence on a lot of people of my age group -- certainly on me -- for a lot of reasons.

Larry--a couple of nights ago I was reading your book & playing "spot the influence," and the two I came up with were Martin Williams (true story!) and (I mean this as a compliment) some of Norman Mailer's better critical pieces.