So, What Are You Listening To NOW?

[Peter Friedman]

[jlhoots]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Well that won't be boring!

[garthsj]

On 3/14/2017 at 9:57 AM, Larry Kart said:

After listening to "Mal-1" I put on a Coral album from 1957 led by trombonist Tommy Shephard, “Shephard’s Flock,” with charts by Manny Albam, Al Cohn, and Nat Pierce (mini-big band personnel: Nick Travis, Sam Marowitz, Hal McKusick, Cohn, Charlie O’Kane, Pierce. Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton, Osie Johnson). In some respects a rather tame affair, built around Shephard’s Dorsey-like horn, but the charts are not fobbed off stuff, and all the solos by the other players (not that there’s anything wrong with Shephard's balladeering ) are quite committed, especially Cohn's — he has a gem on bass clarinet. In any case, ’55-’56 was when I first began to listen, and sometimes when I run across something from that era, particularly when, as in this case, I haven't heard it in years, it speaks to me with such a peculiar oblique intensity — speaks to me OF that era, perhaps, of how a good deal of music was being felt and made back then  — that I find myself full of emotion.

 

By  the same token, I recall what it was like as a child (in the early 1950s) to read the Chicago Tribune comics on Sunday. (We didn't get the Trib, so I saw their elaborate comics section only when we visited a family that did get the paper.) In any case, virtually every strip in the Trib (Little Orphan Annie, Prince Valiant, Dick Tracy, many more) while they still were being drawn in the present, originated in the early 1930s and still were drawn in that era's style. Thus, even though, this wasn't spelled out for me, I was being brought into direct contact with The Flavor (virtually The Smell) of The Past, and felt and knew this. A tremendously important experience I think this was -- to grasp not only that the way things were in the then present (e.g. the way they were, speaking only of comics, in L'il Abner, which was in the paper we got, the Chicago Daily News)) was not the way things always were, but also to detect and attempt to decode all the various implicit messages from the past (social, political, Lord knows what else) that, say, Little Orphan Annie still reeked of in 1952. BTW, one of strongest odd examples of this was the old but futuristic strip Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. What could date more decisively than a c 1930 style strip about the future? It was like watching an old Flash Gordon serial with Buster Crabbe as Flash. (p.s. I recall finding "The Teenie-Weenies" [see below] to be especially weird in its past-ness -- the way those women were drawn!)

 

Back to the music. The next thing I put on after Mal-1 was a Don Sickler album of Kenny Dorham music from 1978 on Uptown, and while these were all good players (Jmmy Heath, Cedar Walton, Ron Carter, Billy Higgins)  I found myself during a too closely recorded (no doubt at his own request) egomanical Carter bass solo so utterly repelled by the whole thing and the era that represented/spoke of to some degree that I turned it right off. Responses of these sorts to eras and their characteristic habits, especially in relation to one’s own history, are no small matter perhaps.

 

Larry, I am sorry it has taken me two and a half years to respond to this very interesting post. I totally identify with you ... I am always aware of the past  experiences in my young life and how they compare with the present. I enjoyed your examples of the comic strips. I teach film history, and I look at these older films, particularly ones that I saw in the fifties and how they contrast with images today.  Anyway, thanks for your most stimulating post. 

[Larry Kart]

Garth -- I wonder if kids who are the age we were in the early '50s now have similar feelings about the  inherent "pastness" of survivals of archaic styles and habits in popular culture. Maybe not because such survivals have become few and far between these days; the corporate shapers of popular culture don't tolerate their presence, and we certainly don't have many eccentric creators around like Harold Grey (of "Little Orphan Annie"), who have the clout to keep doing it their way no matter what.

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, jlhoots said:

Well that won't be boring!

Quite the point! I don't  mind listening  to things I don't  like, bot boring is often the worst offense of them all. That and overly-celebrated unmoderated vulgarity.

Cecil, otoh, there are no bad Cevil Taylor  records, and even fewer boring ones.

[GA Russell]

Welcome back Garth!

[duaneiac]

Disc 2 of 2.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

Garth -- I wonder if kids who are the age we were in the early '50s now have similar feelings about the  inherent "pastness" of survivals of archaic styles and habits in popular culture. Maybe not because such survivals have become few and far between these days; the corporate shapers of popular culture don't tolerate their presence, and we certainly don't have many eccentric creators around like Harold Grey (of "Little Orphan Annie"), who have the clout to keep doing it their way no matter what.

Speaking of things from the past that speak of the past, I've been listening to (see below). Odd thing is that while I more or less turned my back on this sort or vein of music a year or so later on, as I got into Blakey, Horace Silver, Rollins, Jackie McLean et al., Niehaus' music seems to me to have dated much less than I would have thought. Yes, both his rhythmic and harmonic approach are to a considerable degree quite symmetrical, for want of a better term, but the ensemble writing, the precise execution of that writing, and Niehaus' solo work, are more than merely clever, or so it seems to me. The compactness of most of these pieces adds to the effect -- I'm reminded, switching eras, of the John Kirby Sextet.

[Justin V]

Disc 1: This is my third run through this partial set (no Disc 3), and this Eureka Brass Band album may be my favorite session on this excellent set.  

[T.D.]

Something I found in a closeout bin.

Plus a couple of Lester Bowie discs (The Great Pretender, All the Magic! / The One and Only) from this box

Edited August 23, 2019 by T.D.

[HutchFan]

I really like this one.

[sidewinder]

[EKE BBB]

17 hours ago, HutchFan said:

John Lewis - Private concert

I've never seen that one, EKE. 

What do you think of it?

 

Stunning live performance in his intimate and concise style. No flashy runs, no ornaments. Excellent for the evening hours, alone at home, sitting on your favourite armchair with a glass of good red wine. 

[kinuta]

Edited August 23, 2019 by kinuta

[EKE BBB]

[EKE BBB]

[erwbol]

This

from this

[erwbol]

Now this

from this

[EKE BBB]

[John Tapscott]

[soulpope]

2 hours ago, EKE BBB said:

👍👍👍!!!

[erwbol]

[JSngry]

[B. Goren.]

[JSngry]