Wooley thread gone again

[fasstrack]

Guys, I think it would be a good thing to tone it down some. Just my opinion.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, jlhoots said:

I still think you should read Wooley's notes, not the Clean Feed blurb.

 

So would someone just post them for those who don't chose, for whatever reasons, to buy album? Like scan them in or, however tedious it might be to do so -- but how the long are the notes anyway?  -- just sit down and type them in. That certainly would be a serious contribution to fruitful future debate.

15 minutes ago, fasstrack said:

Guys, I think it would be a good thing to tone it down some. Just my opinion.

Tone it down? Just stand still while I rip your throat out!

[fasstrack]

18 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

So would someone just post them for those who don't chose, for whatever reasons, to buy album? Like scan them in or, however tedious it might be to do so -- but how the long are the notes anyway?  -- just sit down and type them in. That certainly would be a serious contribution to fruitful future debate.

Tone it down? Just stand still while I rip your throat out!

Could you rip my gut out instead? I'm overweight...

[mjazzg]

I would scan but don't have the tech to do so. Hopefully someone does as it would hopefully give Wooley a voice of some sort in this thread. Motives have been attributed to him on many posts. The notes run into a few hundred words. A taster,

"inwardly recognising the inherent danger in navigating an exceedingly thin line between inspiration and appropriation and into the equation the political snares involved in altering the early music of one of America's most devout defenders of repertory practices - Wynton Marsalis - and the result will almost certainly lead me to defending the decision to make the recording"

"My age, and probably a certain amount of naivete allowed me to listen to them [early Marsalis recordings] without having to deal with political or social positions represented by Marsalis or his antagonistic role in the music I would grow up to make. I was just moved by the energy, virtuosity and novelty on Black Codes, J Mood and Wynton Marsalis at that age.

there's lots more and there's danger in my choice of these extracts, out of their context, leading to misinterpretation of Wooley's thoughts and motives that are fully explained in the complete notes. So I post them only to give a flavour of the complete notes

 

Edited December 11, 2015 by mjazzg

[Scott Dolan]

"Fruitful debate" isn't something Moms has any interest in. I blocked the dude. Life is too short to muck about in his/her egotistical bullshit.

I'd like to read the liner notes, though. I wondered earlier if perhaps Wynton's music was some kind of gateway for Wooley to get into Jazz. Or if Wynton was a musical hero to him to a certain extent because he got him interested in Jazz. That kind of thing. And if that is indeed the case, then it makes perfect sense that he would want to revisit the music that essentially led him to where he is today. 

[mjazzg]

Your thoughts aren't a million miles off Scott although Wooley does explain why it felt the time to visit them now, at his age and his current stage in a career.

Also interesting the think that Wooley was just eleven when 'Black Codes' was released. I'd hate to make public what I was listening to at that age

[Scott Dolan]

Good god no! 

Not that I can really remember what I was listening to at 11 other than KISS and The Beatles. But I can guarantee it wasn't pretty...

[Guy Berger]

10 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Or perhaps, and possibly a really, really big perhaps, Wooley simply wanted to play this music. 

People needing to attach all kinds of nefarious reasons to it says more about them then it does him. 

1) Who said it's nefarious to want to reach a broader audience?

2) Even if he was indifferent to selling more records, he must have been aware that this would be a likely outcome of this kind of project...

[Scott Dolan]

I was referring to what Moms has been posting. 

[danasgoodstuff]

So I went to Youtube and listen to some of the album in question.  Made me thing 'Lester Bowie Plays Wynton Marsalis', only that would've been more fun.  Interestingly, NO comments to any of the videos from the album that I looked at.  I found the other work of Wooley's embedded in this thread even less interesting, oh well.  On the other hand the Sil Austin/Red Prysock is rockin' my world as we speak.  As does the Bradford/Carter, in a different way.

[Scott Dolan]

Wow. What else did you listen to? Pretty much everything I've heard from him (aside from the Wynton stuff I've heard) was incredibly interesting!

Even bought the Paul Lytton double album mentioned earlier because of how phenomenal Wooley plays on it. 

Did you check out the tune Jim posted on the first page? 

Edited December 11, 2015 by Scott Dolan

[danasgoodstuff]

5 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Wow. What else did you listen to? Pretty much everything I've heard from him (aside from the Wynton stuff I've heard) was incredibly interesting!

Even bought the Paul Lytton double album mentioned earlier because of how phenomenal Wooley plays on it. 

Did you check out the tune Jim posted on the first page? 

Yeah, maybe it's just not the right day for it for me - I'll give it another listen later.

[Scott Dolan]

That's cool.

It's worth the time invested, IMO. 

[JSngry]

7 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

Made me thing 'Lester Bowie Plays Wynton Marsalis'...

And the reality is that when Wynton first hit New York, him and Lester interacted, maybe even did a few gigs together. And then all "that" happened, and that was the end of that.

But earliest post-Blakey/pre-JazzHolyWar Wynton...the documentation exists if anybody wants to look. He could have had a very useful apprenticeship in all that was going on in jazz at the time. Hell, I found a freakin' Afro-Beat record with him on it (looking for the Afro-Beat, not the Wynton), and he sounds like he's playing the music like he's into it, not like he's gracing it with his presence.

[Dan Gould]

On Tuesday, December 08, 2015 9:24:54, JSngry said:

 

To move the discussion forward, we were looking at this:

 

 

 

There is not enough Excedrin in the world to make this "music" palatable to me.  In fact I find it astounding that anyone could think of this as anything other than noise.

YMMV and all that, but the last time I subjected myself to this sort of thing (I could swear it was a Steve Reynolds posting about that chubby saxophonist that people were criticizing over his slobby clothes, IIRC) ...  godallmighty I could not wrap my mind around the belief those sounds constitute music or that anyone would willfully subject their ears to it.  Vive L'difference and all that stuff but ...

 

 

 

 

[danasgoodstuff]

Yeah, I have a tape of him sitting in with Stanley T. in the Twin Cities, so I do remember before the shit hit the fan, too bad we're still trying to get all that off of us now.

[JSngry]

Some stains just won't wash out.

[Scott Dolan]

Hahaha...

Hey, Steve! How many times did you see me post almost the exact same things that Dan posted above over the years? 

[JSngry]

Thinking about Lester...one of the more memorable quotes from him was one in some interview from well into the war, memorable more for substance than specifics obviously...but he was feeling pretty chesty about his place in history and was talking about you got to go through me, I'm one of the trumpeters you got to go through, and I'm like, hell yeah, Lester, tell it, and then he starts naming names of the younger players who know that they got to go through him, that they have come to him to learn, not just technique but life lessons, and then he names one guy, geez, I wish I remembered who it was, he called him out right there in the interview - Hey, Jombilly Woohantz - Stay strong, don't lose your nerve. I KNOW they been working on you!" And I just gutbusted right there, because, yeah, Lester WAS one of those guys, and I KNOW they been working on you, yeah, I heard THAT!

 

[Larry Kart]

Speaking of Lester and "the war," reposting this from 2013:

I'm at my desk at the Chicago Tribune in the mid-1980s. The phone rings, and it's Stanley Crouch; he's at the Ragdale Foundation in north suburban Lake Forest, an artist's colony a la Yadoo, working on a book. He starts to chat about jazz (we've never met before), and he obviously knows something about my background because out of nowhere he launches into a steamroller attack on Lester Bowie, making a point that I think he already had made or would make in print -- that he had heard Bowie play "Well You Needn't" and Bowie used the much  simplified bridge that Miles came up with for the tune way back in 1954 rather than the bridge that Monk actually wrote, and that this was proof that Bowie was incompetent, a fraud, etc. I immediately sensed (or so I thought) what Crouch was up to -- it was not so much that he wanted agreement from me on this but that if he could spew out this attack on Bowie with me on the line and I didn't stop him, he could think, maybe even say, that I had agreed with him. So I broke in to say that I thought that Lester Bowie was a remarkable musician etc., that Miles had come up with that simplified bridge, just as he had simplified the bridge to Benny Carter's "When Lights Are Low," because in both cases those simplifications were better suited to what Miles wanted to play when improvising on those pieces, etc. Hearing that, Stanley, without a further word, hung up the phone.

Details on the difference between Miles' version and Monk's original one:

http://uebergreifen.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-bridge-on-monks-well-you-neednt.html

•  

[Steve Reynolds]

Larry - I think you are about to capsize the thread once more!

fwiw, it's very understandable to me that some couldn't possibly imagine that Paul Lytton (among others) is an incredible accomplished musician

There is no doubt that if listeners listen to similar easy to grasp melodic music on a regular basis for a very long time, whether it be jazz, blues, pop, rock or whatever, then that what some avant-grade musicians play will sound off putting and extreme. First time I heard Evan Parker on soprano was foreign sounding and extreme, but I had the patience and the interest and inquisitive nature to know that he was very accomplished in what he was playing. Whether I would be interested in listening further was unknown but I had already heard Ornette, Cecil and then guys like Oliver Lake, David Murray, David S Ware and many others. 

Damn first time I heard Dear Mr. Fantasy or Jimi Hendrix when I was 13 or 14, it sounded foreign and grating. All I had heard was top 40 or the Boston Pops on my mother's phonograph!! If I shut it down then, I never would have even liked Steely Dan or Traffic, let alone Paul Dunmall or Herr Peter Brotzmann 

I wasn't turned off by Albert Ayler or Archie Shepp or Ascension. Once I was accustomed to saxophones that didn't sound like Stan Getz or basses that didn't sound like Oscar Pettiford and once I *heard* Sunny Murray, I could hear Paul Lovens, Mark Sanders, and the *great* Paul Lytton.

Seeing Lytton this fall with Wooley in two quartets was breathtaking. Sure not music for all ears, but no one who would hear those quarters with any sort of open mind, live in person, would question their musical acumen, whether they liked the music or not. 

 

Edited December 11, 2015 by Steve Reynolds

[Scott Dolan]

Hahaha...Larry, WTF?!

[Chuck Nessa]

All three threads have been an interesting read for me and I am more than glad I have not posted. I have gained some new insights to a few posters here.

[Scott Dolan]

BTW, Steve I was listening to Evan Parker's Time Lapse yesterday. Holy fuck are the first two or three tracks on that album some really incredible stuff! 

[Larry Kart]

Capsize the thread? How? Why?