The "I Never Cared For Oscar Peterson's Playing" Corner

[JSngry]

As a wise man once said, "My ass is stayin'!"*

*--overheard at swell party in my youth

No doubt that was said after somebody passed a hat around to collect cash for another keg.

Shall we start a "I-never-cared-for-a-kegless-party" thread?

Now that should create some unamity!

Not necessarily... alcohol is so....filling.

Other buzzes are... lighter on the body.

But no disrespect to the drinkers. Oh hell no. Once I became concerned with things like not going to jail and shit, I became one. A very good one in fact. Professional calibre, actually.

But today, the only keg I know is Keg Johnson, and the only bud(d) is his brother.

[catesta]

As a wise man once said, "My ass is stayin'!"*

*--overheard at swell party in my youth

No doubt that was said after somebody passed a hat around to collect cash for another keg.

Shall we start a "I-never-cared-for-a-kegless-party" thread?

Now that should create some unamity!

Truth be told, I often found keg beer to be flat or have an ackward taste, so I used to keep a private stash on hand and pour it into the standard red plastic party cup.

Of course, this is not to say I didn't respect the principals and necessity of the keg. And I always donated to the cause, private stash or not.

[randissimo]

Smiley Winters was a cookin' drummer and a nice cat... Had a chance to get to know him when I lived in the Bay Area in the mid-late 80's ..

Did you get to know Sonny Simmons there/then too?

Neither met or even heard of him. Was he a drummer? I arrived in Oakland 12/85 and Smiley was one of the first drummers I heard. The other Bay Area drummers of note at the time were Eddie Marshall, Vince Lateano, Bud Spangler, Eddie Moore, and Gaylord Birch. All great players and nice people.. Right about now I miss the Bay Area and the redwwods.. Too damned much snow here in west Mich..

[JSngry]

I think we better start a "I Don't Dig Kegs Thread" before the pro-keggers get too pissed off.

Or better yet, hell, fuck it - I KEGS!!!

REALLY!

[catesta]

I don't blame the keg as much as I do the dip shit doing the tap work.

A keg tapped properly can be just fine, one done poorly is a foaming nightmare.

One major downside was the hassle of having to return it the morning after to get your deposit back. Kegs should have been able to find their own way home.

[JSngry]

Smiley Winters was a cookin' drummer and a nice cat... Had a chance to get to know him when I lived in the Bay Area in the mid-late 80's ..

Did you get to know Sonny Simmons there/then too?

Neither met or even heard of him. Was he a drummer? I arrived in Oakland 12/85 and Smiley was one of the first drummers I heard. The other Bay Area drummers of note at the time were Eddie Marshall, Vince Lateano, Bud Spangler, Eddie Moore, and Gaylord Birch. All great players and nice people.. Right about now I miss the Bay Area and the redwwods.. Too damned much snow here in west Mich..

Sonny's an altoist who played w/Smiley in the early 70s. Great player, in the cracks between bebop & free, totally naturally so.

My understanding of his bio is that he was in the Bay Area at this time as sort of a "street player", but cats like Smiley would have known him, unless there was some "bad blood" or something, which is always possible.

But yeah, Smiley. I jsut checked out this thing:

http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=yy5...p%3Bincl_cs%3D1

The poetry - of contemporary vintage - may or may not work for you, but the Smiley-led band behind it (from the early 1970s & including Simmons & Barbara Donald )is hot!

[ghost of miles]

As a wise man once said, "My ass is stayin'!"*

*--overheard at swell party in my youth

No doubt that was said after somebody passed a hat around to collect cash for another keg.

Shall we start a "I-never-cared-for-a-kegless-party" thread?

Now that should create some unamity!

Truth be told, I often found keg beer to be flat or have an ackward taste, so I used to keep a private stash on hand and pour it into the standard red plastic party cup.

Of course, this is not to say I didn't respect the principals and necessity of the keg. And I always donated to the cause, private stash or not.

Too late... you've already outed yourself as a member of the Beer Elite.

Seriously, I hope everybody here, no matter what their take on O.P., gets over any bad feelings generated by all of this. Compared to some past discussions, I feel like it's been pretty civil.

[JSngry]

One major downside was the hassle of having to return it the morning after to get your deposit back. Kegs should have been able to find their own way home.

I hear yeah. After all, why them mutherfukkas round if not to roll themselves back home?

Myself, I blame us - we romanticized the kegs too much, they got to thinking that we needed them rather than the other way around, and they just got lazy.

Let's put some corners on their asses and see how they like that!

[ghost of miles]

I don't blame the keg as much as I do the dip shit doing the tap work.

A keg tapped properly can be just fine, one done poorly is a foaming nightmare.

One major downside was the hassle of having to return it the morning after to get your deposit back. Kegs should have been able to find their own way home.

Tilting at half-mast in some fat blue tub, all the ice melted into moldy water... oh yeah, those mornings-after!

Here in B-town the police would occasionally confiscate the keg if your party got busted, and then you were out an $80 deposit. Never happened to me, but had a friend get shafted that way.

[catesta]

One major downside was the hassle of having to return it the morning after to get your deposit back. Kegs should have been able to find their own way home.

I hear yeah. After all, why them mutherfukkas round if not to roll themselves back home?

Myself, I blame us - we romanticized the kegs too much, they got to thinking that we needed them rather than the other way around, and they just got lazy.

Let's put some corners on their asses and see how they like that!

Are we talking about kegs here, or women?

[7/4]

Man...I step out to the office supply and p/u food and all hell breaks loose.

[catesta]

I don't blame the keg as much as I do the dip shit doing the tap work.

A keg tapped properly can be just fine, one done poorly is a foaming nightmare.

One major downside was the hassle of having to return it the morning after to get your deposit back. Kegs should have been able to find their own way home.

Tilting at half-mast in some fat blue tub, all the ice melted into moldy water... oh yeah, those mornings-after!

Here in B-town the police would occasionally confiscate the keg if your party got busted, and then you were out an $80 deposit. Never happened to me, but had a friend get shafted that way.

Shit, I lost one once, it hurts.

[JSngry]

One major downside was the hassle of having to return it the morning after to get your deposit back. Kegs should have been able to find their own way home.

I hear yeah. After all, why them mutherfukkas round if not to roll themselves back home?

Myself, I blame us - we romanticized the kegs too much, they got to thinking that we needed them rather than the other way around, and they just got lazy.

Let's put some corners on their asses and see how they like that!

Are we talking about kegs here, or women?

I thought I knew the answer, but...

Oh wait....

THIS is why we don't have more women posters here. You sir, should be ashamed!

Edited December 28, 2007 by JSngry

[catesta]

I'm hoping Rachel will happen upon this thread and let loose a chuckle post to bail me out.

3....2....1.....

[JSngry]

Ok, I am getting waaay dark here, all this....whatever. Think I better head for the gym, play a house mix or two, and regain some balance.

To amybody I've pissed off, sorry. Really.

To anybody I've "intimidated"... Sorry, but are you sure it's all me? Speaking as somebody who's been intimidated more than once (to put it mildly...), it probably ain't.

[randissimo]

Smiley Winters was a cookin' drummer and a nice cat... Had a chance to get to know him when I lived in the Bay Area in the mid-late 80's ..

Did you get to know Sonny Simmons there/then too?

Neither met or even heard of him. Was he a drummer? I arrived in Oakland 12/85 and Smiley was one of the first drummers I heard. The other Bay Area drummers of note at the time were Eddie Marshall, Vince Lateano, Bud Spangler, Eddie Moore, and Gaylord Birch. All great players and nice people.. Right about now I miss the Bay Area and the redwwods.. Too damned much snow here in west Mich..

Sonny's an altoist who played w/Smiley in the early 70s. Great player, in the cracks between bebop & free, totally naturally so.

My understanding of his bio is that he was in the Bay Area at this time as sort of a "street player", but cats like Smiley would have known him, unless there was some "bad blood" or something, which is always possible.

But yeah, Smiley. I jsut checked out this thing:

http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=yy5...p%3Bincl_cs%3D1

The poetry - of contemporary vintage - may or may not work for you, but the Smiley-led band behind it (from the early 1970s & including Simmons & Barbara Donald )is hot!

Thanks Jim.. I'll ask my cousin, bassist Scott Steed if he knew Sonny.. Scott was active on the BA scene from '81 - '96 and worked with everybody in the BA and is currently living near Portland Or and is music director for Diane Schuur.

[Larry Kart]

Larry, it seems to me that what you're saying is that some nights, OP was really hot and other nights he wasn't. Isn't that what we EXPECT of jazz musicians? We expect that every night they'll play what they feel; and some nights it won't come together. Jazz fans know that there's a risk in this music. It's the risk that makes it valuable; that makes every kind of improvised music valuable, that it reflects life as the musician lives it and feels it. And knowing all this, they're still prepared to pay money to go and see this stuff. Because they know that the guy who never made a mistake never made anything.

MG

Well, my point was to try to describe with some precision what the difference was between one night when he was hot and one night when he was not. For instance, there may be a few ways for a major league ballplayer to hit a home run by accident (or there may not be any such ways), but I'm sure that there are many thousands of ways and reasons for a major league ballplayer to miss a pitch completely. Now if both things I've just said are so, and I'm interested in how people who hit successfully do it and how those who do not do it do not, then I want to look closely at just what's going on when things work out well and likewise when they do not. It's not like I'm a coach or anything, but just by chance I was about to post something elsewhere that stems directly from this way of looking at/responding to things, so now I'll post it here.

It's about Horace Silver's comping on "The Milt Jackson Quartet" (OJC). In a rather quiet way for Horace -- whom one thinks of from the way he often backs soloists in his own groups as a very aggressive accompanist -- his playing behind Bags on this album, particularly on "My Funny Valentine," is so subtly suggestive-supportive that I'm filled with a blend of something like joy and awe. Further, as one might expect, the sense of collaboration here is so total that it's possible to get kind of choked up about what artistic and emotional heights this music can attain -- and this in a performance that one can take as pleasant background music if one isn't paying attention. I'm saying then that to detect and enjoy the heights when they're there, we probably need (in our various ways) to take fairly close notice of what's actually going on. Otherwise, how do we really know when someone is hot and when they're not? But then I guess that's where my home run analogy breaks down a bit. In baseball there's an obvious external sign of successful effort: the ball leaves the park. In jazz there's only the music-making itself, its functioning details.

[Larry Kart]

BTW, MG, I'm not saying that you need consciously to be aware of or brood about these details. But genuine hotness is made up of such things, such differences between this way to do it and that way, no matter how spontaneously or casually we take them in. If we don't notice them somehow, though, what have we got?

[clifford_thornton]

(As for OP, if you look at Notes & Tones, Carmen McRae is the only person who regards him at all. That she does so highly is odd but doesn't change the silence of the others.)

Don't recall them being asked, but...

It's funny - and this may be pointless now - I haven't listened to Oscar Peterson very much of my own accord, but have had his music played for me many, many times. A lot of this was early on in my jazz-listening career, where I'd already picked out the things I knew I liked - Bud, Monk, Cecil, Trane, Ayler, Ornette - and then sought out extensions of those things. That's pretty much how it has stayed. Anyway, there were many occasions where people would either play OP's records for me because I say I'm into jazz ("oh, well have you heard ____?") or they ask me/assume I'm into his music.

I've heard him and he doesn't do enough for me to feel like I need to investigate further. I, personally, just don't care. It's just a matter of taste, and others are allowed theirs, so whatever.

I do think that he had a respectable career, it's just not based on what I tend to enjoy the most, musically. Same goes for Pavarotti.

Some people feel called out when their tastes are not to those of an opinionated few. That is an entirely different issue. Sangrey is right to say that, unless it's personal, one should feel proud enough of one's tastes to let that dissent be just what it is - dissent. Personally, I don't care if Chuck and Jim don't dig Arthur Doyle, or if Clem smack talks James Spaulding till the cows come home. I like those particular players' music a lot, they've brought countless hours of beauty and joy to me, and that's how it should be. If that's what OP has done for you, Matthew (or anybody else weighing in here), that's great - keep on keepin' on. But it shouldn't make you feel bad yourself that OP has never done that for me.

[Guest Bill Barton]

Some good points there, Clifford.

I just checked in on this thread and, sheesh, the fur was a-flyin' for awhile there. Damn, tap one of those kegs and relax...

To repeat/paraphrase what I said on the R.I.P. thread: "...one's worth as a human being has nothing to do with one's relative worth as an artist."

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Larry, it seems to me that what you're saying is that some nights, OP was really hot and other nights he wasn't. Isn't that what we EXPECT of jazz musicians? We expect that every night they'll play what they feel; and some nights it won't come together. Jazz fans know that there's a risk in this music. It's the risk that makes it valuable; that makes every kind of improvised music valuable, that it reflects life as the musician lives it and feels it. And knowing all this, they're still prepared to pay money to go and see this stuff. Because they know that the guy who never made a mistake never made anything.

MG

Well, my point was to try to describe with some precision what the difference was between one night when he was hot and one night when he was not. For instance, there may be a few ways for a major league ballplayer to hit a home run by accident (or there may not be any such ways), but I'm sure that there are many thousands of ways and reasons for a major league ballplayer to miss a pitch completely. Now if both things I've just said are so, and I'm interested in how people who hit successfully do it and how those who do not do it do not, then I want to look closely at just what's going on when things work out well and likewise when they do not. It's not like I'm a coach or anything, but just by chance I was about to post something elsewhere that stems directly from this way of looking at/responding to things, so now I'll post it here.

It's about Horace Silver's comping on "The Milt Jackson Quartet" (OJC). In a rather quiet way for Horace -- whom one thinks of from the way he often backs soloists in his own groups as a very aggressive accompanist -- his playing behind Bags on this album, particularly on "My Funny Valentine," is so subtly suggestive-supportive that I'm filled with a blend of something like joy and awe. Further, as one might expect, the sense of collaboration here is so total that it's possible to get kind of choked up about what artistic and emotional heights this music can attain -- and this in a performance that one can take as pleasant background music if one isn't paying attention. I'm saying then that to detect and enjoy the heights when they're there, we probably need (in our various ways) to take fairly close notice of what's actually going on. Otherwise, how do we really know when someone is hot and when they're not? But then I guess that's where my home run analogy breaks down a bit. In baseball there's an obvious external sign of successful effort: the ball leaves the park. In jazz there's only the music-making itself, its functioning details.

Thanks Larry. I'm not capable of that kind of analysis so I'm broadly content to leave it at something mysterious that I can feel (sometimes). (Though there are times when I do wonder how a musician can convert life into sounds so hot your face might well be blistered.)

MG

[BruceM]

People should talk about artists they like. Whats the point in discussing how much you don't like someone?

I think Cecil Taylor is the biggest phoney of all time, but you won't see me saying it here.

Woops.

[B. Goren.]

People should talk about artists they like. Whats the point in discussing how much you don't like someone?

[JSngry]

Larry, it seems to me that what you're saying is that some nights, OP was really hot and other nights he wasn't. Isn't that what we EXPECT of jazz musicians? We expect that every night they'll play what they feel; and some nights it won't come together. Jazz fans know that there's a risk in this music. It's the risk that makes it valuable; that makes every kind of improvised music valuable, that it reflects life as the musician lives it and feels it. And knowing all this, they're still prepared to pay money to go and see this stuff. Because they know that the guy who never made a mistake never made anything.

MG

Well, my point was to try to describe with some precision what the difference was between one night when he was hot and one night when he was not. For instance, there may be a few ways for a major league ballplayer to hit a home run by accident (or there may not be any such ways), but I'm sure that there are many thousands of ways and reasons for a major league ballplayer to miss a pitch completely. Now if both things I've just said are so, and I'm interested in how people who hit successfully do it and how those who do not do it do not, then I want to look closely at just what's going on when things work out well and likewise when they do not. It's not like I'm a coach or anything, but just by chance I was about to post something elsewhere that stems directly from this way of looking at/responding to things, so now I'll post it here.

It's about Horace Silver's comping on "The Milt Jackson Quartet" (OJC). In a rather quiet way for Horace -- whom one thinks of from the way he often backs soloists in his own groups as a very aggressive accompanist -- his playing behind Bags on this album, particularly on "My Funny Valentine," is so subtly suggestive-supportive that I'm filled with a blend of something like joy and awe. Further, as one might expect, the sense of collaboration here is so total that it's possible to get kind of choked up about what artistic and emotional heights this music can attain -- and this in a performance that one can take as pleasant background music if one isn't paying attention. I'm saying then that to detect and enjoy the heights when they're there, we probably need (in our various ways) to take fairly close notice of what's actually going on. Otherwise, how do we really know when someone is hot and when they're not? But then I guess that's where my home run analogy breaks down a bit. In baseball there's an obvious external sign of successful effort: the ball leaves the park. In jazz there's only the music-making itself, its functioning details.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a fellow tenor player back in college, somebody whose tastes were generally far more "conservative" than mine, but with enough positive intersections (Budd Johnson, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon, etc.) to make for some good hangs. One day, Peterson came up, and I expressed that, eh, not for me, and this guy said, "I think that as you get older (he was one year older than me! ) you'll appreciate the specificityof his playing - when he plays an eight note, it is an eight note, always. When he plays a triplet, it is a triplet, always. Very few people play with that much precision."

Well, as time went by, I realized that I personally felt better when an eight note wasn't always an eighth note, etc. Sometimes the "in between" stuff is what I need to feel/be real on myterms. That's not how I talk, that's not how I walk, that's not how I think, that's not how I do anything.

It's been a while since I heard that Getz/Shrine thing, but how you describe it -one night the soloists not in Peterson's zone, the other they are, and the whole performance varying in qualtity accordingly to me speaks of that "precision", of wverything always being exactly waht it is. Obviously, there's a strength of self in thaat that is admirable. But it's also a bit exclusionary - if you wanna ride this train, hey, here's how it is going to be. Always. And not all jazz is played that way, the Silver/Jackson thing you mention being one of but innumerable examples.

Sure, I have heard Peterson adapt, but only slightly, and never too far outside of his zone. Again, no reason why he should, it's his domain and he's master of it. But it goes a long way towards why some people dig him so much, and some people don't, and why some people dig other stuff a lot more, and some people a lot less. Peterson knew who he was, and he did not back down. Major philosophical props to him for that. But if you don't like it, he ain't gonna ask you to. And I give him huge props for that, even though I'm one of those who just don't want in.

Now, as for Tatum (was that in this or the other thread?), edc mentioned "etudes" and I know exactly what he means, and most of the Tatum on record fits into that category one way or the other. But that 20th Century Piano thing, hey... Like all Tatum for me, the music is so concentrated that I can only listen in small doses, but that's where you can hear the etudes getting fucked with, and sometimes mindboggingly so. I think that Tatum had another gear that he kept to himself except on rare occasions, for who knows what reasons. But I hear these things and all the notions about "Tatum as virtuostic parlor act" get reconsidered real quick.

[JSngry]

And now the question must be asked - why post about people posting about things you don't like them posting about, why not post about things you like to post about?

Can we just talk about our reactions to the music here and leave the personal finger-wagging out of it?