2013 NEA Jazz Masters

[Larry Kart]

FWIW, Miles was a great admirer of Blossom:

[Larry Kart]

Teddy Wilson named her as one of his favorite pianists, and according to Dave Frishberg, she was a significant influence on Bill Evans, FWTW:

"During the late sixties I played a couple weeks solo opposite the Bill Evans Trio at the Village Gate on Bleecker St, and had some conversations with Bill. I asked him how he came upon his piled-fourths voicing of chords, and his immediate answer was that he heard Blossom Dearie play that way and it really knocked him out. Then he did a little rave review of Blossom, naming her as one of his models of piano playing. It was such a surprising response that I never forgot it."

What Evans heard in her piano playing is evident I think in this performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZQuVRox5l0

[JSngry]

Ok, from Blossom Dearie to Bill Evans to Dave Frishberg...that's a trail I do not willfully travel...parallel universe not of interest. Some are and some aren't.

[Larry Kart]

Ok, from Blossom Dearie to Bill Evans to Dave Frishberg...that's a trail I do not willfully travel...parallel universe not of interest. Some are and some aren't.

I'm no Frishberg fan myself, and my mixed views on Evans are known to the FBI, but that Frishberg (and there's no reason to doubt his account) tells us that Evans told him that he went to school on Dearie the pianist in at least one respect is a fact that is not without interest -- parallel universe or no.

[JSngry]

Well, yeah, it explains plenty, that's for sure, especially a big part of why he ended up such a muddle-headed mush in terms of what good tunes, harmonic choices and voicing were.

Another creative but weak-willed soul gets sucked into the strong and beguilingly insane yet ultimately empty world of some nutty diva.

Happens every day and in every walk of life. (and it happens to chicks with rich guys in the same way).

[Larry Kart]

Well, yeah, it explains plenty, that's for sure, especially a big part of why he ended up such a muddle-headed mush in terms of what good tunes, harmonic choices and voicing were.

Another creative but weak-willed soul gets sucked into the strong and beguilingly insane yet ultimately empty world of some nutty diva.

Happens every day and in every walk of life. (and it happens to chicks with rich guys in the same way).

See -- not without interest. I know I could bring you around.

OTOH, while I agree about the specifics of Evan's latter-day "mush" insofar as I understand them, they are pretty specific musically, not just ready-made slop, and the specifics do matter -- up to the point where people who want to remain sane need to flee the room to preserve what's left of their minds.

[JSngry]

I just stay out of the room to begin with.

I mean, what good is having good instinct if you don't use it?

[AllenLowe]

thank you, Valerie. Unable to disagree with me without turning it into a personal attack - but you did make me hungry:

Type: JPG

[Larry Kart]

I just stay out of the room to begin with.

I mean, what good is having good instinct if you don't use it?

I'll get back to you on that later on today -- interesting aspects to this, I think, but I've got to leave the house.

[JSngry]

GET OUTTA THAT ROOM!!!! :g

[Larry Kart]

I just stay out of the room to begin with.

I mean, what good is having good instinct if you don't use it?

This is where we part ways. For instance, I think of Scriabin, a composer whose music (pace Michael Weiss) I instinctually don't much like. Do I then just "stay out of the room"? Well, yes, I don't listen to a lot of Scriabin, but I have thought about him/tried to figure out what makes his music tick, for several reasons. First because, like Bill Evans, his music is not nonsensical or cheap; second, because it it has deeply fascinated/moved many people over the years; and third, because it affected other significant makers of music for a good while and may still be doing so right now, in part because (again like Evans' music) it seemed to be a "path" down which those music-makers both could and needed to travel. Thus, we have, both in the case of Scriabin and Evans, what might be called a "reception" event and an evolution-of-the-music event. And my interest in music in general (both in terms of how it's made and works [or doesn't work]; in terms of how it affects people, etc.) means that up to a point I'm interested in paying some close attention to Scriabin, and to Bill Evans as well. Not like I would pay attention to Mozart or Monk or Roscoe Mitchell, but life isn't exactly like a restaurant.

[JSngry]

I'm perfectly happy to know that such things exist, what they're more or less "about", that such things are valid enough in their own world, to leave that world to those who enjoy living there, and to know that living there would not be a live I would want to live (and after a while, if you've not yet figured out when/what/how to know that....certain critical decisions remain to be made). I don't belong in all worlds, and not all worlds would benefit from me being in them. More than fair enough for all concerned, and as long as I can have my world. I'll extend the same courtesy.

Point being just this - neither Mose Allison nor Blossom Dearie are hugely important in any of my worlds. But Mose gets in a little of some of them, and Blossom Dearie none in any of them. So for me to contruct a common "there" for them both to inhabit as, presumably, co-equals, at least in that place, that's not a construct I see any benefit in pursuing.

Although I will say this - the finest, most perfectly shaped and contoured ass I've yet to see in my life was at a Playboy Club. So there is that. But neither Blossom Dearie nor Mose Allison was playing there when I saw it. so there is also that.

I'm going with the ass that I saw versus the gigs I didn't.

[Larry Kart]

No blame here, Jim, but on second thought I'm struck by your "my own world"/"any of my worlds"/"as long as I can have my world." It may be just a habit of speech, but it occurred to me that (unless I'm fooling myself here) I don't think in "my worlds'/their worlds" terms, that it all seems and feels like one world to me -- not at all in any sappy "Kumbayah" sense but simply because most everything seems to me to be connected to most everything else, even Scriabin and that perfectly shaped and contoured ass you encountered at a Playboy Club. Or to put it another say, whenever I've tried to wall off one world where I felt especially comfortable or safe from another world or worlds where I didn't, I realized that this wasn't going to work.

[JSngry]

Well, nothing always works, nor should it. But I know pretty well what I want and what I don't want. What I'm very open about it how it gets here.

Ring the door, I answer. Make your pitch, I listen. But the door closes quicker as time goes by, because how many ways are there to be true, and how many ways are there to lie?

And of course, what is the truth and what is the lie? But of course. But my world is only sometimes the world, so sometimes I get to make the call and sometimes I don't.

And I'm ok with that.

[AllenLowe]

apropos of nothing, since Larry mentioned the Playboy Club, I want to mention that the one in Midtown Manhattan used to have very good jazz, in the 1960s; Dave Schildkraut had a gig there for a while.

Edited July 22, 2012 by AllenLowe