The Chicago music scene in the 60s/70s

[Dan Gould]

What was Von doing in Vegas? Gigging?

I recall seeing a Cadet LP of a couple of singers, a live recording in Vegas, up on Ebay and being quite surprised to see Von listed in the backing group. I checked out the Argo/Cadet discography and if I remember correctly, this was the album:

LP*-4057 - Carryin' On - Milt Trenier & Micki Lynn [1967]

So I'd say the answer, Jim, is that Von *was* gigging in Vegas

EDIT:

Pretty sure I'm right, here's an image of the album cover:

Edited October 6, 2003 by Dan Gould

[Chuck Nessa]

Von had toured for years with the Treniers. In the late '60s he was in Milt Trenier's lounge act at Caesar's Palace. Cadet issued a live date called "Carryin' On". Recorded 3/22/67, the band was Danny Long (p), Von (ts), Joe Diorio (g), Jimmy Johnson (B) and Frank Shea (d). This is Cadet 4057.

I believe Chico was mostly raised by his mother and didn't have regular exposure to Von until his return to Chicago.

Wilbur was too individual to be considered an Ike Day heir.

Edited October 6, 2003 by Chuck Nessa

[Dan Gould]

Hey Chuck, is the album worth hearing?

[Chuck Nessa]

Depends on your tolerance for the "show business".

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Von was back by the time Moody was in Vegas. He recorded in Chicago in March 1969, then was playing at the Concept Ballroom (a few times in the summer of 1969), with organist Eddie Buster at both the Living Room (summer) and at the Red Carpet Room (formerly Sutherland Lounge - fall), then at Sloppy Joe's (Feb. 1970), then at the North Park Hotel on 8/23/70 (Charlie Parker Memorial album). That's about 10 minutes worth of research into the subject. If anyone needs more, let me know.

Moody started with Dizzy Gillespie in 1962 and was still touring with that band until at least late 1969. They played Chicago at Kim Martell's Supper Club in the early fall of 1969.

BTW, the Ammons return was at the Plugged Nickel, 2 wks starting 10/22/69. The band was King Kolax on trumpet, Wallace Burton on piano, Chester Williams on bass, and Bob Guthrie on drums. There is video of Kolax with Ammons from the Just Jazz TV show produced by Dan Morgenstern. I saw it a couple of months ago. I think it's 1970 or 1971.

Maybe this has been mentioned before - great interview of Von Freeman by Ted Panken here:

http://www.jazzhouse.org/library/index.php...3?read=panken12

Mike

Edited October 6, 2003 by Michael Fitzgerald

[Joe G]

Wow -- Joe Diorio on that album too! Crazy stuff.

[maren]

Maybe this has been mentioned before - great interview of Von Freeman by Ted Panken here:

http://www.jazzhouse.org/library/index.php...3?read=panken12

Thanks, Mike. More Chicago stories in the Eddie Harris interview just a few pages over!

http://www.jazzhouse.org/library/index.php...3?read=panken15

Hearing what both Von Freeman and Eddie Harris had to say about Captain Walter Dyett at DuSable High School brought to mind an old BNBB thread about "who was the most essential person in jazz history?" -- one of those questions that's silly in its form (since jazz is so much about INTERACTION, how could one person be the only essential one?) but enlightening in the responses it generates --

but anyway, when you think of all the musicians who came out of DuSable High School, Captain Dyett was pretty essential!

[Simon Weil]

Second, as in any good-sized urban center at the time, there was a body of hard-core jazz fans who'd been paying attention to what was up on the so-called cutting edge nationally as a matter of course , and some of those listeners had become aware of what was up in their own town and realized that these were world-class innovative players, even if they weren't yet well-known. Third, overlapping with the second group, and again as in any good-sized urban center at the time, there was a fair amount of free-floating counter culture sentiment, looking for sorts of cultural activity that had, or could be thought to have, a rebellious, "let's remake the world" tone. And Lord knows, a fair amount of this music gave you the feeling that the world was being remade.

I don't know how much this matters for Chicago, but I thought I'd throw it in anyway. Albert Ayler (who did influence Roscoe et al) was specifically making music for a changed world - his conception of getting beyond the notes to Sound was meant to fit in with that. So that the changed world would have this changed music to go with it. But also, there's the thing about how the world did change for Blacks in this period.

They made it change.

Simon Weil

[Larry Kart]

I agree that Wilbur was a drummer unto himself, but here's what he had to say about Ike Day in a 1969 interview I did with him that wasn't published at the time but will be part of, as they say, my forthcoming book. I've tacked on the two sentences from Wilbur that end the interview because they've always struck as both profound and very funny.

"Ike Day was about my age, might have been a little older. A thin guy. A truly amazing drummer. Max and Art [blakey] and everybody had respect for Ike. Ike was the kind of cat --it’d be zero outside, and he’d walk up to the stand and beat off some way up tempo and never miss a beat, clear and precise. He was more out of the Sid Catlett school because that was his era. He was established with his own voice and his own style before I’d ever heard of Max or any of them. He’d come by the house and we’d practice. He sort of brought me along and showed me a lot of things. Just listening to him was a lesson in itself. He could take two pieces--a cymbal and a bass drum--and make it swing. He was a natural drummer. He had fast hands, and he used both feet and both hands. If the tempo was up there, he’d be on the bass drum and it wouldn’t be loud--you felt it more than you heard it. Next to old man Jo Jones and Big Sid, Ike could do more with a pair of sock cymbals. He could make them breathe. Dorrel [Anderson] was like that too. A hell of a natural drummer. We all came up together--Dorrel, Ike and myself--but Ike was the older more experienced one and could play better....

"Every drummer who’s been playing can play anything he thinks of; the trouble is thinking of things to play. Lots of cats can play what they think, but they don’t think it."

[Michael Fitzgerald]

No one has ever turned up any recorded evidence of Ike Day other than that one 1949 Ammons date for Aristocrat/Chess, correct? Broadcasts? Bootlegs? Anything?

[i'll answer my own question -

http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/archia.html

proposes that Day is on the Tom Archia material recorded live at the Pershing in 1948. I'll have to pick up that Archia CD on Classics.]

Mike

Edited October 6, 2003 by Michael Fitzgerald

[Chuck Nessa]

I will now try to tidy up some dangling questions, mostly from Free For All.

The "local bar" was "Talk of the Town" in Montague, MI (my locality - across the river from Whitehall) and I drank St Pauli Girl. Don't remember Bob's choice.

The scene in Iowa City when I was there included JR Monterose and Paul Smoker. I explained this in some detail in a Monterose thread a month or so ago.

Larry Kart's description of the Chicago scene at the time is very good. I would only add a number of "young professional blacks" brought their families to the Sunday AACM concerts at the Abraham Lincoln Center. Sometimes maybe 20% of the audience would be families in their Sunday finest - just like church. I have not seen that sort of thing (black or white) since then. I hope George Lewis deals with this - I spoke to him about it a few years ago.

In the late '60s the "local" club favorites were Eddie Harris and Yusef. They regularly played on Wells St.

Lastly, for Mike Fitzgerald - I don't know of any Ike Day tapes and never heard rumors of them.

[chris olivarez]

I would appreciate recommendations of Art Ensemble of Chicago music.

[Chuck Nessa]

Under that name, the best is People In Sorrow, now on an EMI disc from Dusty Groove and others - search for AEC. Next best is the Byg/Actual disc called Reece and the Smooth Ones. I believe the stuff on this level (or better) is on my label or Sound on Delmark. The later discs are really spotty. For later music I reluctantly recommend the bootleg Live In Berlin on WestWind. This is an interesting journey but I don't want someone hearing a lame performance.

Jump in guys, and I won't hold any grudges - argue, but not hold grudges.

[chris olivarez]

I just checked out AMG and they gave "People in Sorrow" a nice review likewise for "Live at Mandel Hall" and "Bap-tizum". Later releases got fewer stars does that concur with your opinion? I'd like your thoughts on the releases I mentioned. What other titles do they have of note on your label and Delmark.

[Chuck Nessa]

A "nice review" from AMG is irrelevent. People In Sorrow is their masterpiece and Reece is very good. I stand by what I said and feel everything else comes later. After you digest that, I'll talk.

Again I welcome contrarians.

Sorry if I come off as snotty, but if I don't know this stuff, I don't know anything.

Act accordingly.

Edited October 7, 2003 by Chuck Nessa

[chris olivarez]

The only reason I went to AMG was I expected them to trash "People In Sorrow" because they do have this tendency to trash anything that is good but they did give it 4 stars. Using that as a yardstick it's probably about 400 stars. I appreciate your input and now I'll go digest for awhile.

[Chuck Nessa]

I see I came of harsher than I'd wish. Listen and have fun.

[chris olivarez]

Thanks Chuck.

[JSngry]

Fwiw, MESSAGE TO OUR FOLKS is my "standard" album to introduce people to the AEC.

But I'm not arguin', no sireebob!

[chris olivarez]

Thank you JSngry.

[Chuck Nessa]

I always viewed "Message", "Jackson" and "Sophie" as records of excellent encores.

[Lazaro Vega]

While the question to the forum is for "Art Ensemble of Chicago" recommendations, there's no doubt that of all the band's recordings the "Art Ensemble" Nessa set is the most essential. If you're aware of that, sorry to be redundant, and thanks for the fresh look into that scene by Kart and especially Nessa.

Pieces such as Quartet No. 1, Number 2 in all it's variations, and the solo pieces for Malachi Favors, Roscoe and most famously Lester Bowie ("Jazz Death") are signal moments in the evolution of jazz, announcing the music of Ornette, mid to late Coltrane, Eric Dolphy and the whole New York energy school sowed seeds for future creation. The Art Ensemble were first responders to the dramatic changes jazz was undergoing.

Reading Larry Kart's first person accounts of how Elvin and Roscoe sounded together on what Brubeck would describe as "first blush" are vivid. These AE records are the first to validate, to signify the New Thing is not a fluke. The Art Ensemble is to the the New Wave what the Austin High Gang was to the New Orleans originals....that's inane..nevermind... ,

By laying in an emphasis on open, ethereal textures to counterbalance the weight of free blowing improvisations, these recordings find the music evolving to the next level, but not in a freakish sense, but with craft right out of Ellington and Mingus: disguising the written from the improvised. In some general ways what the Art Ensemble did by injecting light or roots driven percussion colors into "free jazz" is what Miles did to bop with Birth of the Cool: they air it out, open it up and find space where cement-like musical textures were becoming a norm.

Staring down "Ascension" and finding Afro-centric impressionisim in response is not a move anyone was expecting. Moreover, finding a way to deal directly with "Ascension," what David Wild has called the single extended examination of a single theme, and the suite-like construction of "A Love Supreme" and "Meditations," not to mention "Free Jazz" by Ornette, the Art Ensemble are first responders to some of the biggest changes in orchestration and solo style since Ellington and Gillespie. You can't seriously talk of this band in quartet terms pre-Art Ensemble. Their instrumental scope..if the AE's colors and vocabulary weren't as vast as the oceans of Ellington's, their palette was large enough to fill the Great Lakes.

On the Nessa set the bands are captured grappelling with the implications for large suites for extended instrumentation as no one since. Within their individual sounds, well, Larry, Chuck and some of the players around here might do a better job with that than I can.

What I have for that is anecdotal.

From September 11, 1998: Lester Bowie on the phone. The whole thing is at the Art Ensemble discography web page.

Bowie: The music we (the Art Ensemble) play is kind of hard to explain. It's music that we really feel. It's like we take all sorts of elements, all sort of different reference points, and we have the freedom to be able to reference anything at any time. And at the same time to be able to listen and to be able to instantly create a situation.

Many times you never know what's going to happen. You'll play songs that you never thought you were going to play. You play ensemble things that you had no idea you were going to play two minutes before. It's just about really being sensitive, and trying to play a music that is about music. It's about emotion, it's about traveling through these different emotions, and it's about showing the listener all these pictures. We expect the listener to have, like, a movie going on when they hear us. That's what it's all about for us.

It's about being in tune with what music is -- without limitation of what is or what isn't, without necessarily regarding a certain rule. We have the freedom to either play a tempo or not to play a tempo; to play a note or not to play a note; or to play what some people would say is a sound.

The way we look at it, everything is a sound. A chord is just the name of a sound. They say C is a pitch; it's the name of a sound. So is a cat's meow a sound, so is a motorcycle, so is anything. There are a lot of sounds. We try to incorporate any sounds into the music. Sounds of life. Sounds of everyday, and incorporate that as part of the music. It's just like an endless research into the music that the deeper you get into it, the deeper you get into it.

And all of it you can't explain yourself, it's something you have to really do.

Vega: That's why I like listening to you because it's what jazz is supposed to be, it's carefully considered listening, but at the same time spontaneous and freewheeling.

Bowie: That's what I always thought it was supposed to be, like you say. These are the elements that really constitute the music.

We have to understand that this is a very young music. We're just beginning to really develop this music. This is not a time to put in any narrow definitions or parameters on what this music is because we're only at the beginning of the possibilities of this music. We're just beginning to learn the importance of music in our society. What we as musicians and artists have to offer to the intellectual development of the people that live here.

Music is very important. It's important as a tool for learning, it can be a tool for healing, it can be no telling what, as long as we remain free to be able to create the music, to be able to experiment and to really research, and to really get time to develop the music. (end).

Last night as I was laying in bed listening to my two week old baby Eleanor weeze and fuss, gurgle and chirp (you've heard a newborn's breathing?) I thought to myself, sounds like Lester. In his being able to do that, imagine the sound of a baby breathing and bring it out the horn, he redefined what a jazz virtuoso could do, how far they could take their instruments into life's sound. Man, Wilbur Campbell had it right. Thanks for including that Mr. Kart.

[Joe G]

Thank you, Lazaro.

[Larry Kart]

One good place to add some flesh to this Bowie quote from Lazaro -- "It's just about really being sensitive, and trying to play a music that is about music. It's about emotion, it's about traveling through these different emotions, and it's about showing the listener all these pictures. We expect the listener to have, like, a movie going on when they hear us. That's what it's all about for us. -- might be "The Little Suite" from "Sound" (Delmark). As I recall, that incredible performance/creation was pretty much without precedent in jazz up to that time, though it probably has indirect, spiritual/musical roots in Red Hot Peppers Morton and some Mingus. But the spirit of it, the joy and wit, the play between abandon and control, the amazing "efficiency," for want of a better term, of every move! And it never gets old or even that familiar, just rears up on its hind legs every time.

[Joe]

Was pianist King Fleming part of the Muhal rehearsal band / pre-AACM circle? I seem to recall reading something about this somewherer (Davis' OUTCATS), but my memory could be faulty.

In any event, Fleming's Argo date MISTY NIGHT is certainly interesting, and I love to have more information on him.

Ditto the post-Mingus Clarence "Gene" Shaw.

Edited October 7, 2003 by Joe