Stan Kenton "Bound To Be Heard"

[JSngry]

I still remain ambivalent (at the very best) about "Stan Kenton" as a "figure", but...this clip of a documentary from 1968(?) is kind of poignant...the once King Of The Future-As-Now was by then reduced to a nearly-forgotten figure whose records ranged from loopy to droopy, and whose orchestra of stars had more or less become a bunch of (relative) kids from "jazz education" backgrounds, when the movement was still in its embryonic phase.

But these kids believed in something...maybe not "Progressive" or "Innovations" or "Artistry In Artistry"...but it sure sounds like they believed in there being a Stan Kenton Orchestra and in them being it, no matter how jacked the records were and no matter how fallen their Fallen Star of a leader had become.

"Kenton's music" was always (ok, mostly) based on a neurotic insecure grandiosity, but here the band adds something more basic, more universally human- anger. Anger at what, who knows? Anger at maybe being dedicated to a cause that nobody really cared about any more, at being a band of brothers in a world always its own, but a world now isolated from the same world it once at least hyped its way into being a part of (and occasionally actually belonged). But whatever, this is KentonMusic that is not creepy at all.

Dee Barton's writing is, as usual, device-driven, but with as much emphasis on "driven" as on "device", which was not always the case with Kenton's writers. I fully believe what he is saying, even if it ultimately lands towards the bottom of my own Necessity Hierarchy (and maybe that's what all this brand of anger is about...the realization somewhere inside that that's where it's all going to end up. Maybe?) But there are moments here (and on Kenton's all-Barton album, and even on the earlier "Turtle Talk" from the outstanding Adventures In Jazz album)) where Barton & the Kenton band do things that would not be out of place on the Charles Tolliver Music Inc. big band albums, usually based on whole-tone devices. Again with the devices. There are time when Barton's writing resembles Gerald Wilson's, but I'd be willing to allow for the possibility that for Dee Barton, born in Mississippi and getting on the Kenton band straight out of North Texas, writing his Contemporary KentonMusic and having it resemble Gerald Wilson might have been an Unavoidable Cultural Overlap.

Anyway, this is a really good synergy of band, writing, attitude, time, and place. Apparently this is part of a documentary that had one local showing on L.A. TV and has not been released since. I might like to see the whole thing, if it's about the band and not it's leader....

[Larry Kart]

Based on "neurotic insecure grandiosity"? Geez -- sounds like something I might have written. Certainly a point worth entertaining, but it should extend almost unbroken from Kenton to his onetime audience of young true believers. I recall, in particular, some things that one member of that audience, Mort Sahl, said about what he and others took (in that postwar social context) as the primal rebelliousness of the Kenton sound -- something overtly "modern" shoving aside all that was "old" and in the way of "progress." One should never forget the impact that WWII had socially on much of America.

[JSngry]

I've been seriously revisiting Kenton lately, based on the recent "monster" thread, and am finding that the stuff I already liked, I liked that much more. Conversely, the creepy stuff sounds even more creepier.

And most of it has the creepy factor to one extent or another (such as, why, on the otherwise often-brilliant Contemporary Concepts, is there next to no freaking bass? I mean, you're making an album of a band and charts that swing like crazy and you don't want to make sure that the bass is adequately recorded? CREEPY. Or, what, do you intentionally dampen the bass in some perverse way to hide from the swing? CREEPIER STILL!!!)

Anyway...

WWII had its impact, Vietnam had its, and lord only knows what impact our various desert storms are having (I think I can tell, but it's too damn ugly and too damn current to be objective about it...). Wars fuck with people, no way around it. But I think Kenton would have been fucked up no matter the time/place. He just seems like that type of guy. Awkward, neurotic, and always ready to ingratiate through imposing. Case in point, his "program note" to a simple-ass swinging Shorty Rogers chart - "The impact and sensation derived from feeling a powerful beat will never be dulled, nor should it be ignored." In how many ways is that fucked up? More than I can count, that's for sure...

Whatever. I can go off on all that all day long, but that's not what this thread was put here for, to go off on how "Stan Kenton" the figure is ultimately Not A Good Thing, no matter how many Good Things bear his name.

This thread is here because I really like the music in this clip, and the way the music gets played. The whole thing has an "exile" quality to it, a fire that for once springs from the gut rather than the head, and it's not at all creepy. And although Stan Kenton Plays The Jazz Compositions Of Dee Barton is in no way the "masterpiece" that Moms Mobley claimed it to be in the monster thread, it too has this same quality and is all the more appealing because of it. There's something about how this edition of KentonMusic screams from The Valley that makes it infinitely more...real that other editions' Pontificating From the Mountaintop. especially since that mountaintop is usually, at the end of the day, just a Hollywood prop, albeit it often a very well-made and well-considered one.

Edited January 18, 2012 by JSngry

[John Tapscott]

Anyway, this is a really good synergy of band, writing, attitude, time, and place. Apparently this is part of a documentary that had one local showing on L.A. TV and has not been released since. I might like to see the whole thing, if it's about the band and not it's leader....

I've seen it all (1 hr) , and it's pretty much all like this- summarizing the band's tour in early '68 and showing the various venues where they played. It's not so much a biography about Kenton (in fact, not at all really), but more about the band and the ends to which the whole organization goes to play it's music - in clubs, churches, prisons, anywhere really. One of the problems is that there are no full pieces, only segments. In that sense it is disappointing. The band ran the film at school clincs for a while, but it soon became outdated. I cannot watch it without being immediately transported back to 1968 and where I was and who I was at the time. It just evokes a whole era for me. Very much of its time.

[JSngry]

Anyway, this is a really good synergy of band, writing, attitude, time, and place. Apparently this is part of a documentary that had one local showing on L.A. TV and has not been released since. I might like to see the whole thing, if it's about the band and not it's leader....

I've seen it all (1 hr) , and it's pretty much all like this- summarizing the band's tour in early '68 and showing the various venues where they played. It's not so much a biography about Kenton (in fact, not at all really), but more about the band and the ends to which the whole organization goes to play it's music - in clubs, churches, prisons, anywhere really. One of the problems is that there are no full pieces, only segments. In that sense it is disappointing. The band ran the film at school clincs for a while, but it soon became outdated. I cannot watch it without being immediately transported back to 1968 and where I was and who I was at the time. It just evokes a whole era for me. Very much of its time.

I like the sound of that, and would like to see it.

One question - why are there two basses in the band on video? Was a new guy getting broken in, or did Kenton try two basses for a while?

[John Tapscott]

If you like this music and this era of Kenton, check out this CD. It's an excellent representation of this band in very good live sound.

http://www.tantaraproductions.com/roadband67.htm

Edited January 18, 2012 by John Tapscott

[Larry Kart]

"WWII had its impact, Vietnam had its, and lord only knows what impact our various desert storms are having (I think I can tell, but it's too damn ugly and too damn current to be objective about it...). Wars fuck with people, no way around it."

Yes, but all different cases and not merely a matter of f------ with people. In the view of a lot of people back then (pro and con and you name it), WWII violently propelled America into the 20th Century, from which much of the country had been shrinking until then. That Graettinger piece wasn't titled "This Modern World" for nothing. Sure, lots of fantasies involved there, but I'm old enough to recall reading articles in Look and Colliers c. 1947-8 about how ten years down the road people would be commuting to work via individual mini-helicopters they would wear on their backs. Laugh if you will, but such fantasies, with in this case their blend of "individualism" and new technologies, were potent and part of a perhaps forgotten brew that has in part led to what we are. Consider, for one, the fairly broad belief that the Internet et al. has fundamentally altered our world(s). Not saying that's not true (I'm in no position to judge), but I think that the belief that it's so is in part a matter of belief/desire that seems to me to be peculiarly American and not unconnected with one strain of Kentonian-ism.

[JSngry]

I'm old enough to have watched The Jetsons in prime time, so futuristic silliness is in my blood. Besides, I can now commute to work via my laptop. Who needs a helicopter on your back?!?!?!?

Thing is - technology does change the world, and it does change outward behavior. Thinking that it doesn't is a fool's game. But it doesn't change basic human nature. Thinking that it does is the suckers game. It's the fools who rush to become the future, and it's the suckers who rush to prevent it. Somewhere in between, those who just be what they are when they are, that's where those who stick around usually end up being.

Or something.

Graettinger was a crazy genius, pure and simple, and the one does not negate the other. I take him at face value because there is so much value in that face. (Just wondering - was This Modern World his title or Kenton's? The individual titles are pretty,,,objective! Some Saxophones...A Trumpet...A Table...Some Chairs...)

John - I've seen that Road Band disc, and have been tempted. I might go ahead and get it, because that band seems to have played well as a band. No great soloists (or even really good ones), but they played together with unity of purpose and spirit, and I like to hear that.

This would be the earliest recording of Barton's "Here's That Rainy Day" chart, right? God, that's a beautiful piece of writing...

[John Tapscott]

John - I've seen that Road Band disc, and have been tempted. I might go ahead and get it, because that band seems to have played well as a band. No great soloists (or even really good ones), but they played together with unity of purpose and spirit, and I like to hear that.

This would be the earliest recording of Barton's "Here's That Rainy Day" chart, right? God, that's a beautiful piece of writing...

Jim: Re Rainy Day - I think so, though the tempo is slightly faster on this early version (not at all fast, mind you), but not quite as dead slow as the later recordings which which I think bring out the beauty of the writing a bit more. It really is Barton's masterpiece, if he has one.

I think you would be surprised at the soloists Ray Reed on alto and Jay Daversa on trumpet on this CD. They're pretty darn good. There's also an obscure tenor player named Alan Rowe who's a good soloist, too. And the band is really together. Dee Barton is clumsy as he** on drums (not my description, someone else's), but in some strange way it all works. He really fired up that band. A really good 75 minutes of music.

Edited January 18, 2012 by John Tapscott

[JSngry]

Funny, I was just coming back to edit out those comments about Reed & Daversa...revisiting the Jazz Compositions Of Dee Barton album as we speak, and, yeah, they are pretty good, with a little "interior drama" to their playing....they sound like "well-schooled" players who are hearing Jackie McLean & Freddie Hubbard's (then) more recent work and finding it impossible to resist...gotta wonder how that went over with Kenton himself..or if he even knew what the references were..not that it matters.

That's the poignancy at work again, there was this whole other world of jazz and progress going on at the time, and it had next to nothing to do with the Kenton "world". Yet here these guys are, letting that other world into Kenton's, and it's like neither world is ever going to really intersect with the other, or really want to, yet...here it is. I gotta wonder what the vibe in that band was at that time, surviving mostly on dance gigs and clinics, very few "real world jazz gigs", if you know what I mean. You got all this other stuff going on around you, and you're digging it, but how often does your gig speak directly to that? And yet you like your gig. Weird place to be, I'd have to think...

Agree about Barton's drumming too, it's from the gut, 100%. All things considered, I think him and Jerry McKenzie might be the archtypical "Kenton drummers", which is not the same as saying they were the "best drummers" the band ever had.

That "Rainy Day" chart...yeah..played it many times...you know you're at the right tempo when you have to count eighth notes instead of quarters...if you can comfortably count the quarters, you're either a sleepwalking metronome or else you're playing it too fast.

[king ubu]

Though I bet Shirley Horn could have easily counted it in half notes... and still be slower than y'all!

Most interesting discussion here!

[JSngry]

To hear Shirley Horn sing a ballad with the Kenton band might not have worked in terms of dynamics, but in terms of tempo, you're talking a most provocative hypothetical!