Jazz Jews

[fasstrack]

I've been reading this at Loren Schoenbergs National Museum of Jazz in Harlem. I think this Englishman has written a social history that will last-and has appeal beyond jazz jews like myself (; For one thing it has some of Artie Shaw's last interviews, and does he have things to say! The stuff about Roy Eldridge and prejudice alone almost had me in tears. And there's lots more. There are some factual errors like calling Julian Adderley a 'fellow tenor player' to Al Cohn-but do not be put off. I located Mr. Gerber's contact info and wrote him as a fan of the book who would humbly point out a few bloopers-and received a gracious response. I have no doubt there will be a 2nd ed. in which Mr. Gerber can make corrections he is eager to. Meanwhile for a valuable read on this music's history rife w/conversations on sensitive subjects like race relations, w/musicians alive and working, I think the man has done a commendable job. Bravo!

[Chuck Nessa]

I will be really interested in a "tome" titled like that written by a black or a Nordic type.

Message to editors: he has me blocked. I am really tired of having posts in his threads deleted

[J.A.W.]

I will be really interested in a "tome" titled like that written by a black or a Nordic type.

Message to editors: he has me blocked. I am really tired of having posts in his threads deleted

How can you tell that he has you blocked? By the way, he can only delete his own posts, not the ones others posted to his threads - only moderators can do that.

Edited September 14, 2012 by J.A.W.

[fasstrack]

Message to editors: Comments like those, and other personal attacks, are the reason I 'blocked' this guy-which I believe is both my right and business. Now I'd be thrilled to get back to the subject, Mike Gerber's Jazz Jews.

[Chuck Nessa]

Personal attack?

[JSngry]

Does this book deal only with players, or are there businesspeople included as well?

[fasstrack]

Other interviewees: Flora Purim, Steve Lacy, Stan Levy, Terry Gibbs (AKA Julius Gubenko), Jane Ira Bloom. A few of the comments were about how the musicians were inspired by cantorial music heard in temple. This made me think of 2 things: how much like blues Klezmer akways sounded to me-down to the note bends and vocal inflections-and the musical life of Harold Arlen, who came from a family of cantors and IMO is the most blues-influenced of the big-name ASB composers. Gershwin dealt w/it too, but Arlen made it sound like he was born to the blues. There seems to be a deep connection and, in some cases, Jewish musicians have been initially attracted to jazz for reasons other than its greatness or exposure. That's one value of a a book like this as oral history.

[fasstrack]

Jim, I didn't read the whole thing, and naturally am attracted to musician's comments. I do believe I recall references to Oscar Goodstien and Morris Levy. As a social historian I get the feeling Gerber was pretty comprehensive to talk about club or record company owners. I'll have a closer look next time I crack it, OK?

[David Ayers]

Does he talk to/about John Zorn?

Zorn makes all those klezmer links, by the way.

[AllenLowe]

there's actually a very nice passage on me in this book:

"Jews in Hell is a Jewish jazz album that is not a Jewish jazz album in the sense that there are no obvious Jewish music influences on it.

Jazz, as most people would understand it, accounts for fewer than half the tracks, many of which have a fractured country blues air. But the

album is the work of a jazz musician and his anguished Jewish sensibility pervades all. The artist concerned is Allen Lowe. Jazz-wise he is a superb wide-ranging saxophonist, but he also plays laconically blistering blues, folk-roots and garage rock guitar and electric banjo. He extracts the most soulful sounds out of a synthesiser since Steve Wonder, composes ambient-evocative instrumentals, and songs with vernacular lyrics

that stick in the mind like those of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Mose Allison or Lou Reed. Intellectually, Lowe's up there with Artie Shaw;

just as angst-ridden too about his Jewish identity as Artie was, only combatively upfront about it. All this is packed into the thirty-eight tracks across the two CDs that comprise Jews in Hell.

The titles of some of Lowe's compositions, followed by his sleevenotes, give a good idea of where he's coming from, for example: 'He Will Walk Across the Water (We Will Walk Across the Water)' — about which he says, "He, being Jesus, we being the Jews following Moses in the wake of the parting of the Red Sea. Expressing a very basic tension between Judeo and

Christian systems of belief, with their alternate ways of looking at reality"; 'Leni' — "Hate song for an old Nazi (Riefenstahl)"; 'Goyishe

World' — "More impotent outrage, with a nod to the Velvet Underground, via the great dobro-ist Stacey Phillips' story about getting beat up on the way home from Yeshiva on Passover eve..."; 'Soundtrack Theme From the Film Jews in Hell' — "The film, directed as part of his Community Service by Mel Gibson..." Lowe is having a dig here at the actor/director whose movie The Passion of Christbrought charges of anti-Semitism.

Some Lowe compositions are tributes to his heroes, including 'Shiva 1' and 'Shiva 2' — a shivais the Jewish bereavement ceremony and

these tracks are dedicated to the late Jewish blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield. Lowe says "... the dual spirits of Lenny Bruce and Mike

Bloomfield hover, inevitably, over my intents and efforts, and on a daily basis." Another title is 'Jewtown Shuffle (Who's that Lovin' You

Baby?)' — this inspired by the late blues musician Jimmy Reed and also by the "merchant section of Chicago where the Jews met the

blues." Jewtown was the area in Chicago filled with pawnshops — so- called because the pawnshops were largely owned by Jews — where

many blues musicians busked in the street.

On several tracks Lowe performs solo or, on overdubbed recordings, plays all the instruments, vocalising in his vernacular manner.

Elsewhere, some wonderful guest musicians contribute, among them pianists Matthew Shipp and Dr Lewis Porter, trumpeter Randy

Sandke, guitarist Mark Ribot, contra bass clarinettist Scott Robinson and singe Erin McKeown. Porter, who is Jewish, (and who is founder

and director of the Rutgers University's jazz history and research masters degree, and a jazz writer), plays solo on the instrumental 'To

Dance Beneath the Cuban Sky'. The latter, Lowe explains is, "A piece I wrote trying to evoke the great New Orleans composer and pianist

Louis Moreau Gottschalk."

Lowe, who is also a music historian, comments in his extensive sleevenotes for Jews in Hell, "Jewish musicians, from Louis Moreau

Gottschalk to Doc Pomus to Mike Bloomfield to Dave Schildkraut, represent a movement of permanent post-modernism (our version of the

permanent revolution ... a vernacular hybrid musical Fourth Stream of memory, obsession, and aggressive self-interrogation ... often mis-

taken for self-hate). We/they are a cult without a leader, freelance wise-asses without portfolio."

Schildkraut, who died in 1998, is the alto saxophonist Dan Morgenstern described to me as very gifted. He is one of the bebop

generation active in American jazz, but performed little after the 1950s. Lowe, who knew him, told me, "Schildkraut had, as Lee Konitz

once commented, 'a Yiddishe soul'. He was a complete genius and virtuoso — Dizzy Gillespie once told me 'he was the only alto player who

captured the rhythmic essence of Bird', and Bill Evans told me there were only two alto players from that era who did not copy Bird—

Konitz and Schildkraut. Dave had the most amazing time of any player I have ever heard, and he was a good friend as well. Pan-reli-

gious in his personal beliefs — told me he believed in all religions. Davey was rarely active after the 1960s, but did work for wedding

bands and also did the occasional concerts."

In reference to Jews in Hell, Lowe explains in his liner notes, "Thematically I am thinking of Jews in the post-WWII era, some born

of the so-called baby boom generation, and some who fall just outside of it. Agreeing with the pianist Anthony Coleman, what I find inter-

esting is not the conventional ethnicity of these Jews but their (often very Jewish) response to all that American and world culture had/has

to offer. It's not just Klezmer, but also black and white country music, jazz, the blues, American pop, rock and roll, et al. Jews have always

been natural post-modernists, open to virtually anything in cultural influence and reference, and (hopefully) largely free of pretentious

fusions of same. I ... posit a recurring theme of the Jew as permanent outsider, though in some ways well assimilated, always feels the need

to struggle and prove him or herself. The Jew I am describing regu- larly suffers a vision of himself and in THEIR image, of the fish out of

water, the odd duck..."

In Lowe's case, the feeling of being a fish out of water is accentuated by his having been stuck out in Maine. He moved there with his fam-

ily around the mid-nineties and found little support from the local cultural establishment for a jazz musician of his creative vitality.

Originally from New York, Lowe performed there at The Knitting Factory and Sweet Basil. He worked with David Murray, Doc

Cheatham, Don Byron, Julius Hemphill and Loren Schoenberg, and recorded six albums in his own name. But Jews in Hell, released in

2006, is his first recording for some fifteen years.

Jews in Hell stands out from most of the product that has been churned out by record companies in the last forty or so years. Anthony

Braxton, (vanguard African-American saxophonist/composer) said about it, "I was absolutely astonished by Jews in Hell ... Allen Lowe

is one of the few musicians doing anything new today." He's right, but the chances are that Jews in Hell will do little to endear Lowe with the

Maine grandees. "

Edited September 14, 2012 by AllenLowe

[Christiern]

Fass' preoccupation with his own ethnicity and his innate ability (desire?) to stir up hostile rather than reasoned discussion is tiresome.

[J.A.W.]

Fass' preoccupation with his own ethnicity and his innate ability (desire?) to stir up hostile rather than reasoned discussion is tiresome.

All preoccupations are tiresome in the end.

[papsrus]

there's actually a very nice passage on me in this book. ...

Nice writeup indeed. Makes me want to get that bad boy off the shelf and give it a spin.

[fasstrack]

Another one for ignore. This from a guy so self-absorbed he put the board through changes deleting his posts after making a big drama queen speech about leaving the forum only to return and delight everyone with courageous accounts of the private sex lives of dead musicians. Tiresome.

[fasstrack]

Allan, um, aside from the fullsome praise heaped on yourself what did you think of Gerber's book (;

[fasstrack]

Excuse me, it's Allen. BTW I've had a few email exchanges w/Mr. Gerber, who is very happy w/the reception his book has gotten. He told me it even outsold a Sonny Rollins bio at one event! Make of that what you will... He mentioned he will be launching a series of radio shows on related themes. I can't send links from my Stupidphone, but if someone wants to try it's probably on the book's site, which can be Googled.

[AllenLowe]

look, when someone writes something like that about you, it doesn't matter what else he does in the book.

actually, I though it was a very good book, but, since I'm one of his subjects, I don't think my opinion is really objective; so I would disqualify myself,

[fasstrack]

Okay, you're disqualified. And, as per Woody Aiiem's Hassidic tales, 'If you don't get off my foot you're excommunicated'. And I reached back to 1972 and Getting Even for that dumb quote. Oh, the time we waste....

[AllenLowe]

that's ok; I own a copy of Without Feathers.

[fasstrack]

One thing I should clarify after Chris's sour remark, and it's for everyone else, including the person who correctly responded that ALL obsession is bad: I don't like or endorse playing off ethnic identity. Be proud then move on. If you're a musician and not good and loving the art first all the yarmulkas, dashikis, etc. won't save your ass. Good is good, and you take the best from what moves you -from who and whatever-and find yourself. Ethnic banding in self-defense, like Black Nationalism or the JD-to cite 2 extreme examples-is useful I guess in its place and time. When it becomes a 'thing' or esp. invades art that's lame-and destrucive IMO. Art, done right, brings out the best in everybody. In my own life it was actually REBELLING against my Jewish middle-class rearing to hang out w/black klds that led me to R&B, and finally Jazz. Shut off your eyes, ears. and soul and risk living a pretty limited life.

[fasstrack]

Make that JDL.. Sorry.

[fasstrack]

The chapter on Gershwin was good, but seemed to make him poet laureate of American music of the time. I would say one among others. I was wondering, among other things, about Irving Berlin's influence on Gershwin---specifically with the syncopated type writing. Ellington was brought up, but according to Mr. Gerber had little to say about Gershwin's more expansive pieces. An Ellington musician (whose name I can't recall but will cite next time I see the book) said Gershwin approached Ellington to collaborate 'but Duke wouldn't do it'. Wish he had more to say than that.

I have to say I never knew of an author so willing to have email dialogs with readers and even graciously accept constructive criticism as Mike Gerber. (It's not like I write to authors every day). He's happy with the reception his book has gotten---and I'm happy for him, it's a worthwhile bit of social history.

Edited October 3, 2012 by fasstrack

[johnlitweiler]

but he also plays laconically blistering blues, "

looks dangerous

[fasstrack]

Did the blister heal yet? (;

[robertoart]

Other interviewees: Flora Purim, Steve Lacy, Stan Levy, Terry Gibbs (AKA Julius Gubenko), Jane Ira Bloom. A few of the comments were about how the musicians were inspired by cantorial music heard in temple. This made me think of 2 things: how much like blues Klezmer akways sounded to me-down to the note bends and vocal inflections-and the musical life of Harold Arlen, who came from a family of cantors and IMO is the most blues-influenced of the big-name ASB composers. Gershwin dealt w/it too, but Arlen made it sound like he was born to the blues. There seems to be a deep connection and, in some cases, Jewish musicians have been initially attracted to jazz for reasons other than its greatness or exposure. That's one value of a a book like this as oral history.

I don't think Klezmer music sounds like Blues at all. I think the formal elements you highlight as similar, are a part of nearly all (European and other) grass-roots folk musics. Not sure about the connections that Zorn makes either, are these to do with formal structures or word based story and narrative? To me the Blues is the Blues - and its essence is not paralleled in any other music (save for its original African musical-etymology). In fact the thing about the Contemporary zeitgeist with Klezmer/Cabaret and Gypsy type musics, possibly has something to do with their disconnection to the Blues and American music traditions.

Does he talk to/about John Zorn?

Zorn makes all those klezmer links, by the way.

I suppose it's in a lot of peoples self interest to do so.