Desmond/Konitz

[JSngry]

Sometimes to advantage, sometimes not so much, Desmond made a heck of a lot more use of sequences than Konitz did -- significant chunks of Desmond solos are built that way, again sometimes to charming effect, sometimes not.

When he's really playing, it's more than just "charming", I think, the line goes on and on with a logic that threatens to be broken at any second but never is.

 

Exactly. But OTOH that logical continuity IMO seldom if ever builds to peaks or reaches down to depths -- a la, say, Pepper on "Besame Mucho" or "I Surrender Dear." 

That might be seen as floating in the perpetual eternity...or something equal in meaning but phrased with a whole lot less bullshit.

I'd Bizarro World compare it to Sonny on the On Impulse version of Green Dolphin Street - everywhere all the time all at once, just that Sonny is not really revealing the details as much as he is creating/inhabiting the shadows that exist everywhere, where there is light, there is shadow, or else what is light?, whereas Desmond is spilling the full beans out in the fullest  light of day, and yet with full objectivity, and how do you do that, exactly? Light, but no discernible heat, excuse me, is that even of this world, how does that work? That i do not know.

So, was Paul Desmond the first neo-con in jazz?

 

I don't really have much of a problem with Brubeck's music for what it is, as long as I don't expect it to be anything more. It swings in an off-kilter way, and is interesting and inventive. But it lacks the multiple levels of engagement that, for me, sustain interest and encourage further invention.

I'm pretty much with you all the way on Brubeck per se...interesting, original, and quirky. But it is what it is, and that's pretty much ALL that it is. Which I've come to appreciate as being no small feat itself, really. But yeah, self-contained world, really, Desmond, though, he brought something extra, he had another set of gears. Gears which not unlike his hair (and unlike Brubeck's hair) got more and more implied as the years went on. And a gear to which he did not seem to put in motion at all times, for whatever reason, but which was always in reserve. some guys are like that, you always sense that they got something extra, don't fuck with them like they don't.

I also wonder if the changes in Brubeck's music brought about by the addition of Joe Morello and the whole Time Out thing that saw a permanent shift in the Brubeck group dynamic brought out that middle-class thing in him, a passivity to not fuck with something that's working. I say that, because comparing his playing with Joe Dodge in the quartet when they're just blowing on standards (with or without those cleverass harmonized heads) is not the same as his playing with Morello behind him. Might be a coincidence, might just be that he got comfortable with the indulgences that his success afforded him, but either way, there is a difference. And the material contained in the Desmond/Hall Mosaic is...harder than it look, if you know what I mean. Jim Hall did not make cheap music, and what he does with Desmond really sorta blows Desmond's cover as being an "easy" player. OOPS!

Point just being that "Brubeck" and "Desmond" might be synonymous, definitely are sympathetic but they are not really equal. Brubeck was good, clean, hard work, he'd make his intentions known honorably. Desmond was getting the angle in and then having all the fun he wanted to have. One, the devoted family man, the other the renowned drinker, womanizer, just all-around SCOUNDREL!

And here's some waaay late props to Joe Dodge, him being the Brubeckian World Jo Jones to Joe Morello's Sonny Payne, and yes, love it, all of it, variety is the ultimate trip as well as the ultimate test.

The above looks like you wanted to return a one-liner to my snorty post ... so come and let me have it!

Anyway, thanks for your insight here and in other recent Desmond/Brubeck threads. Not sure I agree in every detail (for one, I probably am more positive towards Brubeck), but it's surely interesting to follow your line of thought!

This new software saves your posts even if you have to reboot your computer...which I di. So I went to respond and the old post-to-be was still there, I did not see the newer quote, oh well, live and learn!

But yes, one liner planned, namely "You're thinking of Bob Crosby, maybe?" but it looks like that  moment has passed.

[Larry Kart]

Untouched by Bird -- well, at the time Perk's running mate Kamuca seemed to be, but in fact, as later Kamuca showed, especially that lovely album he made on alto, that was not the case at all. The semi-obscure but darn good Ray Turner? A fair number of East Coat Al Cohn disciples like Eddie Wasserman. Dick Hafer. Bob Hardaway. Dave Pell. Probably a whole lot of other guys at that level and in that stylistic bag.

[AllenLowe]

I think I have gotten tired of logical continuity; it's kind of the last refuge for those who don't know how to be incoherent.

[JSngry]

Another thing about Desmond that is perhaps reflective of his classical training - he plays outright Hawk-ish way more often than a "general impression" might suggest, the sequences, the arpeggiations, the connecting tones, the starting a phrase right on the beat and charging right through it, these are all characteristic Hawkins traits that Desmond would routinely use in the earlier recordings. And yet we tend to think in terms of things like "cool", "languid" "lyrical", etc., all of which are there, but not ALL that is there.

Untouched by Bird -- well, at the time Perk's running mate Kamuca seemed to be, but in fact, as later Kamuca showed, especially that lovely album he made on alto, that was not the case at all. The semi-obscure but darn good Ray Turner? A fair number of East Coat Al Cohn disciples like Eddie Wasserman. Dick Hafer. Bob Hardaway. Dave Pell. Probably a whole lot of other guys at that level and in that stylistic bag.

Trying to think of where I've heard Ray Turner (or if I have?), but those other players, not exactly undeservedly "obscure" in the grand scheme of things, although Dick Hafer, I will always have time for some Dick Hafer, grand scheme or not.

But Dave Pell? really? Limits of relevancy being pushed, perhaps?

[jlhoots]

I don't know what we're talking about - but, Hal McKusick.

[JSngry]

I don't know what we're talking about - but, Hal McKusick.

Personally, have never really felt him too much, but objectively, yes, definitely. And definitely in terms of enabling writers.

Guess you could say John LaPorta too, but at some point, history sorts it all out...

[Larry Kart]

One place where Ray Turner can be heard is on Xanadu's "Bebop Revisited, Vol. 2" -- a four-track 1945 date for Manor with Kai Winding, led by trumpeter Roy Stevens.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Larry Kart

[JSngry]

Is this the same guy?

http://www.amazon.com/Baja-By-Chance-With-Saxophone-ebook/dp/B00TGXRD3E

Probably not?

[jlhoots]

I don't know what we're talking about - but, Hal McKusick.

Personally, have never really felt him too much, but objectively, yes, definitely. And definitely in terms of enabling writers.

Guess you could say John LaPorta too, but at some point, history sorts it all out...

George Russell: Jazz Workshop - maybe too far afield. McKusick is great on this.

Edited August 19, 2015 by jlhoots

[JSngry]

Ok, two tenor solos here, on of which is Ray Turner, the other Al Young. Can't say that either one sounds untouched by Bird, although not bluntly so.

 

The second guy (Turner?) is significantly less so, but even then...it's there. The eighth notes are a little more Bird than Pres, no matter what else is going on. All those guys had that mix to one degree or another, Bird/Pres. How could you not? Why would you not?

Sure, Desmond too was touched by Bird (again, how could/why would you not be? ). But it wasn't fundamental to his flow...and that's what I'm coming to appreciate, he had his own flow, and it was uniquely his, and what I find interesting is that he could pretty much do whatever he wanted. Not to say that there aren't moments of hesitation or little flubs along the way, there are, but the vision was all encompassing. I've heard him just drop some of the most off the wall shit in there and keep on moving like nothing happened - and then bring it back again, re-contextualized. And he was really improvising, these were not set solos, nor did they follow a basic set outline. I count at least three "legit" versions of "Stardust" before 1954, and the only thing you can really plot is that it's Paul Desmond playing like Paul Desmond.

Actually, I mentioned Hawk earlier, but really, sometimes it gets Don Byas-y only through a totally different lens. The thought of Don Byas and Paul Desmond occupying the same space is a weird one, I imagine some weird phantom space where nobody acknowledges but all the better lest it come to an end in a world that was not ready for it to even think about ending, for sure, but...we have seen the imagined borders and no longer do they serve us as they now need to. But if you know the Byas 1941, "Stardust" solo on the Everest Charlie Christian album, it's like that, flawless architecture I mean, really, that's one of the great jazz solos, ever, imo), and if Byas' got to be more of a set piece than Desmond's, well, fuck it, he's Don Byas, he could do whatever he wanted, and did. Point being is that the indications are that so could Paul Desmond.

 

[BillF]

Lee emerged earlier than Paul and at the time (late 40s/early 50s) a few years made a big difference in the climate of the music. So undiluted bop was a background influence for Lee (though he got it tempered by the Tristano experience) in a way that it wasn't for Paul, who came along a few years later. Of course, Lester was a huge influence on both, but in Lee I hear it as Lester plus bop and Tristano, which I don't hear in Paul.

 

Really gotta wonder about the role geography played in all that, too. northern California/Bay Area...not sure that the imperative to conform to the general "modern" orthodoxy was there 

 

 

Good point.

[AllenLowe]

for those who doubt me, check out various Desmond interview quotes - full of a nice but not-particularly-insightful, bland wit, sort of Dorothy Parker-ish. I find his playing to be the same. A  non-comedian's idea of a comedian.

which, like an intellectual, is both a thing AND a way of being.

 

Edited August 19, 2015 by AllenLowe

[A Lark Ascending]

On balance I prefer 40s/50s Konitz to Desmond. But once you get into the 60s I'd rather listen to Desmond...there's something in Konitz's tone from there on that grates on me and prevents me enjoying whatever else may be happening.

That reaction has bugger all to do with 'intellectual'.  

[clifford_thornton]

Huh. YMMV. I feel like his 60s and 70s recordings are often excellent. Not all of them, mind you, but a lot of them.

[king ubu]

Lee emerged earlier than Paul and at the time (late 40s/early 50s) a few years made a big difference in the climate of the music. So undiluted bop was a background influence for Lee (though he got it tempered by the Tristano experience) in a way that it wasn't for Paul, who came along a few years later. Of course, Lester was a huge influence on both, but in Lee I hear it as Lester plus bop and Tristano, which I don't hear in Paul.

 

Really gotta wonder about the role geography played in all that, too. northern California/Bay Area...not sure that the imperative to conform to the general "modern" orthodoxy was there 

 

 

Good point.

Good point indeed - not more than an educated guess but yeah, I'd assume it did indeed not matter. Or not much.

The San Francisco gang seems to have been different again from the SoCal scene (which allowed much more room for experimentation in the fifties than New York did, it seems).

Other question: was Konitz really there earlire? Maybe he was on the scene/visible earlier ... but would it have mattered at all to Desmond who was practicing in San Francisco? After all, the Brubeck Octet (albeit not their recordings, at least not mostly, and contrary to what Brubeck said himself, later on) does pre-date the  Birth of the Cool band - and it made music that's funnier and more genuine (whatever that is) than most of the "third stream" that popped up in the fifties ... why look for towering influences when you can do your own stuff?

[JSngry]

I wasn't really proposing that we "need" to "like" one over the other...I love them both, really for different reasons and at different times. The initial purpose of the discussion was to examine their similarities as well as their differences, mostly because I find it interesting that when you talk about "alto players who didn't play like Bird", people of my time/place will generally cite either Desmond or Konitz, seldom both, and over the years it seems that in my "ground level" experiences, the people who like the one will tend to not so much at all care for the other. It's almost like they have a self-imposed quota for non-Bird alto-ing, so it HAS to be either/or. People are cool with Konitz becuase he's "probing" and not like Desmond because he's "soft", or they'll like Paul because he's "pretty" and dis Lee because he's "too dry", always that either/or.

I got it then, but today, I find that type of thinking very much of its time, and wholly inadequate for objective receiving of their musics today. Konitz' evolution has been a true delight to follow, and all the more so because it's the exception to the typical route of any musician, especially a "jazz" one. And Desmond's core work (which to me will always be the Fantasy things with and without Brubeck) and the very first 2-3 Brubeck Columbia albums (and people who haven't gone back that far with Desmond, I would urge you to do so, what you get from,say, 1957 onward is quite a different matter than what you get after...again, a generalization, but a generally sound one, imo) has a lot of things going on, layers upon layers of things that are as real as they are "disguised".

The "issue" of "jazz" today (of life, really, but we ain't got time for all that right now), is individualism. How do you deal with ALL that stuff behind you, around you, how do you get yourself to see forward through all of that and step out of it instead of simply riding along with it? Konitz & Desmond both figured that out, and if their end results diverged as widely as they did, the time when their worlds seemed to float around in a loosely common orbit is a, for me, interesting way to examine how commonalities can intersect, temporarily merge, even, yet still continue on as individual evolution. The music(s) may be of another time(s), but the stories are at least as relevant today as ever, maybe even more so.

Maybe creating a space that is entirely your own is going to be discarded as a desirable evolutionary trait as we move towards greater and greater always on connectivity. But if not, then this, among others. Two voices who made it a point to be unique, Konitz doing so very publicly, Desmond appearing (perhaps/probably deceptively) to just aw, shucks be born with it, but both of them pretty blatantly defending themselves against becoming somebody else, whatever that meant, wherever that went. Desmond on CTI works (when and to what degree it does work) because it's Desmond, not because it's CTI. Paul Desmond would go a lot of "unsavory" jazz places, but he always brought Paul Desmond, he made shit work with him, not the other way around. And Konitz, hell, Konitz has tried everything with damn near everybody at some point, and whatever the results, it's because he kept true to Lee Konitz. You put him on a Bird tribute, he'll bring Lee Konitz. You put him in a free improv setting, he'll bring Lee Konitz. You put him anywhere, he'll bring Lee Konitz, and at times pointedly so.

If a quality of a great artist is being able to ultimately have their way with the results of their craft, these two are greater than many, and fundamentally greater than most.

Not that that's all there is, but, for now anyway, there still is that.

[HutchFan]

On balance I prefer 40s/50s Konitz to Desmond. But once you get into the 60s I'd rather listen to Desmond...there's something in Konitz's tone from there on that grates on me and prevents me enjoying whatever else may be happening.

That reaction has bugger all to do with 'intellectual'.  

Funny. Konitz becomes most fascinating to me after his self-imposed break from jazz in the 1960s. Before that, for me, he was much more hit-or-miss. Some of it is great -- but some of it doesn't appeal to me.  OTOH, I LOVE how Konitz's tone seemed to get wilder and woolier in the latter 60's and into the 70s. Those Milestone records are particularly wonderful, I think. And that's where the changes in Konitz's sound are really evident.

By way of contrast, Desmond's sound seems much more consistent straight thru from start to finish. My very favorite Desmond records are the pre-Morello DBQ (at the beginning) and then jump all the way to end with the duos with Brubeck (1975: The Duets) and Live! (also from 1975).

 

BTW: I do agree that Desmond's appeal has nothing to do with him being an intellectual or not. (Or my being an intellectual or not, for that matter.)  From my point of view, it has more to do with whether I prefer oranges to mangoes or peaches to plums or X to Y. It's a personal preference. That's it.

Edited August 19, 2015 by HutchFan

[colinmce]

I haven't heard as much recent Konitz as I should but the 2011ish Birdland set on ECM is one of my favorite records ever. 

[clifford_thornton]

I think I agree with HutchFan, though I'm not knowledgable enough on the Desmond side of things to offer any observations on his music outside/post Brubeck (and only somewhat within the context of Brubeck).

Then again, the last time I saw Konitz - in a quartet with Peacock, Frisell and Baron - it was a musical shit-show.

[A Lark Ascending]

He always sounds slightly out of tune to me from the mid-60s. I suspect it's a form of colouring that I'm not relating to...just sounds shrill to these ears. I appreciate others hear differently and are most likely attuned to things that escape me.

I read the book of interviews with him some years back which were fascinating - he clearly thinks a lot about what he is doing. 

Edited August 19, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[clifford_thornton]

Yeah, I understand that. It took me a while to relate to what Noah Howard was doing, until I got to the point where I realized his intonation could really cut through a large ensemble and had/has an identifiable quality. Kent Carter said Steve Lacy's tone was "like gold and could cut through anything" and I think that's important in itself, whether or not the sound has an individual appeal from moment to moment.

Then again, of course it's perfectly all right not to dig someone's sound.

[JSngry]

What's amazing to me about Lacy is that he played on the softest reed possible, which allowed him almost infinite control over the most finite aspects of his sound.

I say "allowed" him instead of "gave" him, because a soft reed is exponentially more difficult to control than a hard one, or even a medium one. So he worked for all that he got, believe me. Not "worked", worked - hours, years of hours, of true physical labor.

[gmonahan]

As I've read this often thoughtful and interesting thread, I've gone back to something that struck me years ago, and that is that, purely creatively speaking, "Take Five" was a disaster for Brubeck and Desmond.  Not financially of course.  It put the dollar sign on the music and set them both up more or less for life, but creatively, I think it sent both of them into a dead end, and I wonder if they ever really managed to pull out of it.  In that sense, *not* having a "Take Five" probably helped Lee Konitz creatively.  Or am I making too much of it?

 

gregmo

[clifford_thornton]

What's amazing to me about Lacy is that he played on the softest reed possible, which allowed him almost infinite control over the most finite aspects of his sound.

I say "allowed" him instead of "gave" him, because a soft reed is exponentially more difficult to control than a hard one, or even a medium one. So he worked for all that he got, believe me. Not "worked", worked - hours, years of hours, of true physical labor.

Interesting - thanks.

[JSngry]

Summertime in 5 with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Leo Morris(!). He sounds less overtly "active" than the work of I prefer,but he doesn't at all sound disengaged, sounds pretty much in control and aware at all times.

Recommended reading about Desmond is Joe Goldberg's chapter on him in Jazz Masters Of The 1950s, a really good observation about Desmond and aht makes his playing so special when it was special, It also talks about the changes in the DBQ's music after the addition of Morello and the success of Take Five, as well as drawing the parallel between Desmond w/Brubeck and Milt Jackson with the MJQ, It also contains this splendidly fuquitous quote:

...His only professional ambition is to make a record on which he would play successive choruses like Johnny Hodges,Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, and Ornette Coleman.

So perhaps Desmond will continue to be hte "illustrious sideman", as he puts is sardonically, keeping a distance between himself and whatever he might actually feel about his musical and personal situations, and making the music that comes so easily to him. "I will become the Mantovani of 55th Street," he says. "I will make a series of lush string albums and retire into fashionable obscurity."...

Which is more or less what happened (almost). Dude had a plan and executed it.