I need a good jazz book to read.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

You must have been a math major....

The "11 days" came from down beat 11/17/66, the other date from the Ayler website at http://www.ayler.supanet.com/html/ayler_remembered.html. db was likely inaccurate since it also listed the intended personnel of Henry Grimes and Sunny Murray who didn't make the trip.

Mike

[rockefeller center]

Michael, is it common practice for discographers to adopt mistakes made in liner notes like misnamed tune titles or misspelled names of artists without adding footnotes to provide the correct information?

Sorry for going off topic.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Misspelled or variant names are a real bitch - what one needs is what is known in the library science world as "authority control" - where there is ONE correct and true entry to which all variants are made to conform regardless of how the boneheads at the various labels print things.

Otherwise it's like the tower of Babel - for example with tune titles, you've got:

'Round Midnight

'Round About Midnight

Round Midnight

Round About Midnight

or

I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance

(I Don't Stand) A Ghost of a Chance

Ghost of a Chance

or how about:

Corcovado

Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars

or:

The Blues Walk (Clifford Brown)

Loose Walk (Sonny Stitt)

Somebody Done Stole My Blues (Chris Woods)

So personally, what I try to do is establish what is the correct (or best choice) one and use it everywhere, but note if there is a variant on the issue. For example, I just did an update to the Ted Dunbar discography and found a Frank Wess tune that was labeled "Flowers" on the back sleeve; labeled "Fading Flowers" on the record label; but the same tune exists as "Fading Fleur" elsewhere (earlier reference). So I used "Fading Fleur" and put the other information in a footnote.

These issues of conformity appear in other areas too - instruments, labels, etc. Sometimes you just have to make a decision. I'm sure I've made mistakes.

Mike

[Dr. Rat]

On Collier's "Jazz" article:

Didn't have my Grove with me yesterday (and didn't relaize it was online), but I looked up Collier's essay on jazz last night.

What Simon quoted is in bold. I don't feel Collier does anything terrible to free or out jazz in these passages when you read them in context. If he hates free jazz, he restrains himself here.

Certainly he makes disputable points, but the alternative to making disputable points in a case like this is being hopelessly bland

I think most people would walk away with a fairly neutral attitude toward the music having read this and nothing else. My last quote is just something I ran across on the usenet while searching. This person's take seems to be that the Grove is either neutral or mildly supportive of the music.

1. The rise of free jazz.

[some disputable, but not stupid IMHO, lead-in excerpted]

But by the late 1950s a few musicians were taking a far more dramatic way out of the chordal straitjacket of bop. As early as 1949 Tristano and his group made a recording, Intuition, that was harmonically quite free. It puzzled listeners and was quickly forgotten. Then in 1956 Mingus included in his work Pithecanthropus erectus a good deal of exceedingly free nonharmonic playing, though the music was essentially in the standard tonal system. Mingus’s experiment received much attention, but it did not inspire imitators – free jazz was to be built by younger men.

The first of these was Cecil Taylor, a classically trained pianist. Taylor, like many jazz musicians of the time, was interested in the music of Igor Stravinsky and the French impressionists, as well as in the experiments of Dave Brubeck, who was attempting to introduce devices from the same composers into jazz. He developed a highly percussive piano style, in which chords, bars, and formal structures were ignored and passages of sound were strung together, acting as patches of color rather than related parts of a whole. By the late 1950s Taylor was working with a quartet that included Steve Lacy (who had begun as a dixielander), playing in a manner that many jazz fans found incomprehensible. In 1956 he made some recordings and the following year he began, with Lacy and others, to play casually at the Five Spot, a nightclub in New York frequented by artists, writers, and others sympathetic to Taylor’s innovations. The raffish atmosphere and the strange music attracted the attention of the press: very quickly Taylor became a prominent, though highly controversial, figure in jazz, and in the summer of 1957 he was invited to play at the Newport Jazz Festival.

At the same time, in Los Angeles, Ornette Coleman (who had come to maturity playing in rhythm-and-blues bands in Texas) was developing an equally difficult music, which also ignored chords and bar-lines, and frequently employed sounds not in the equal-tempered chromatic scale. Unlike Taylor, Coleman arrived at his method by instinct rather than study and theory. He was accused by other musicians of not understanding what he was doing, and was often driven from bandstands by the boppers with whom he tried to play. However, he eventually gathered some younger musicians around him, among them Don Cherry, who began rehearsing under Coleman’s tutelage (fig.7). In 1958 Coleman’s group was recorded by the small Contemporary label. The recording, Something Else!!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman, did not at first sell well (though it remained available for decades), but it gave Coleman some legitimacy and impressed a few established musicians, notably John Lewis and Gunther Schuller. With their support more recordings were issued, and in autumn 1959 Coleman’s group began an engagement at the Five Spot. It caused a furor in the jazz world and attracted the attention of formidable musical figures, such as Leonard Bernstein, and inevitably that of the press as well.

The majority of jazz musicians disliked, even detested, the music of Taylor and Coleman, and many jazz critics agreed with them. However, some younger musicians, especially African-Americans, were excited by it. Again, sociological forces contributed to the interest. By the late 1950s civil rights for African-Americans had become an important national concern; African-Americans were vociferously and explicitly demanding “freedom.” It occurred to young African-American jazz musicians that they should seek freedom in their playing as well – freedom from the tyranny of bar-lines, chords, and formal structures. Their main aim was to express themselves unfettered by outmoded conventions: this meant not only throwing off the shackles of the conventional rules of music, but also, because no instrument should be subordinate to another, bringing forward rhythm instruments from their traditional supporting role to a place in the front line. These ideas were pursued to some extent by Coleman in his recording Free Jazz (1960). While one duo of double bass and drums maintained a steady beat, providing walking bass lines and swinging ride-cymbal patterns, a second duo engaged in collective improvisation with the wind instruments; the latter either played solos of variable length and indeterminate harmonic content, or supported one another by performing wildly changing short accompanying motifs that served the same function as did riffs in the swing style.

By the mid-1960s there were a number of young players at home in the new music – by then variously called “the New Thing,” “avant-garde jazz,” or Free jazz – among them Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, John Tchicai, Donald Ayler, Sunny Murray, Milford Graves, and Roswell Rudd, as well as the musicians around Coleman and Taylor. It is difficult to describe their music, since, by its nature, it was built on few musical principles that were common to all. At its most free, as on Coltrane’s album Ascension (1965), it may appear to some listeners a cacophonous jumble of musical sounds; others, surmounting the common first impression of the piece as noise, discover an orderly progression of solos and collective passages, a variety of imaginative timbres, a loose harmonic underpinning. Other performances of free jazz are quite simple and draw largely on the more standard jazz modes of bop or even swing, as does much of Shepp’s work on the album Four for Trane (1964). Indeed, some of Coleman’s themes, such as Peace or Lonely Woman, could easily have been transformed into popular tunes. However, certain principles run through much of free jazz. One is the employment, to some extent, of shouts, cries, or simple noise – sounds that are not musical in the ordinary sense; a second is the complete freedom of the improviser (apart from the requirement, at times, to work from a given theme or idea); and a third is the avoidance of order: if the music seems to be falling into a pattern, some means are usually found to break it.

The free-jazz movement did not find easy acceptance. Older jazz fans, who were at ease with the New Orleans style or the big bands, had had considerable trouble in coming to terms with bop, and many were not prepared to make the effort to learn yet another musical language; they tended to dismiss free jazz as the ranting of angry men. Even younger fans, accustomed to the relatively uncomplicated cool and hard-bop styles, found avant-garde jazz difficult. But the new music was not easily dismissed. It appeared to be saying something, and many musicians and critics who basically disliked it acknowledged that they had to come to terms with it.

© Oxford University Press 2003

3. Further developments in free jazz.

Free music never became the dominant mode in jazz in the same manner as did swing and bop, but it continued to develop alongside the mainstream. In the late 1960s a second generation of free-jazz players arose, the most important of whom were drawn from a loose group called the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), founded by Muhal Richard Abrams in 1965. Associated with this organization at various times were Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, and Leroy Jenkins, among others. Out of the AACM grew a number of performing ensembles, the best known of which was the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

The music of this second generation was extremely varied and therefore less relentlessly inaccessible than some of the work of Coleman, Taylor, and Shepp; at times it sounded like ordinary bop, at others it was almost completely unstructured. Much of it used principles derived from the work of John Cage and other composers: in such cases the musicians worked to an outline, perhaps with predetermined emotional connotations, which allowed the improviser much freedom; randomness was deliberately sought, and there was considerable emphasis on variety of tone-color, produced by a huge array of conventional and unconventional instruments.

Even harder to categorize is the music of Sun Ra, one of the most highly regarded figures in the jazz avant garde. Sun Ra began his career as a stride pianist, under the influence of Earl Hines, and continued to play occasionally in this style to the end of his life. But generally his music was more advanced, ranging from fairly approachable pieces in a bop style with inflections borrowed from Coltrane (in which the saxophonist John Gilmore figured prominently) to extraordinary cacophonies played by two dozen musicians on a wide variety of standard and exotic instruments and sound makers. Sun Ra’s music was supported by a simplistic mystic philosophy and was often presented theatrically, with outlandish costumes and unusual lighting effects.

Despite the fact that free jazz never took precedence over other forms, it has continued to show strength and attract followers. Furthermore, almost all the players who came into jazz after 1960 occasionally used passages of free playing in their work; by the 1970s this practice, called playing “outside” the conventional scale, chord changes, and rhythmic structure, was common in many performances.

There is some question as to whether all these forms of free music can be defined as jazz. Free jazz frequently lacks a fixed ground beat or pulse – an indispensable characteristic of earlier jazz – and such usual hallmarks of jazz as blue notes, the conventional scale, tonal harmonies, and the like; however, it utilizes such standard features of jazz as improvisation, jazz instrumentation, bent pitches, distinctive tone-colors, and polyrhythms. Sun Ra’s Saturn and Coleman’s Lonely Woman are certainly jazz, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Ninth Room is at least jazz-like. But it is hard to see how a definition of jazz could be formulated that would encompass Sun Ra’s Somewhere There and Braxton’s Composition 69N.

The Grove Jazz encyclopedia acknowledges the lack of commercial

viability in free jazz, but says it was/is "highly regarded by the

critics".  Regarding Cecil, it talks of "high critical acclaim".

But surely some music authors out there who hate free jazz and Cecil

have made their opinions known in print?  I would *greatly* appreciate

anyone recommending an article or book chapter that criticizes free jazz

or Cecil. 

--eric

Edited March 7, 2004 by WNMC

[Dr. Rat]

Thanks to Larry and Michael for their very informative posts re: the Grove.

I agree that these errors (and all the rest you've noticed) constitute a to-do list for revision.

I do not agree, though, that these errors constitute a reason for dissuading people from buying the book.

But on that, I think we'll just have to disagree.

Interestingly, Larry, you start your Tribune review (and lucky they are to have a reviewer capable of such a detailed look at the book) with a discussion of the standard to be applied in reviewing the book.

All we ask of a reference work is that everything be included that should be there and that none of that everything be wrong.

Of course, measured against that simple standard, all reference works must fail--not only because one person’s "everything" is another’s mass of useless detail, but also because one expert’s fact or shrewd conjecture is another’s dubious assertion or outright lie.

Yet if no reference work can be perfect, we do expect relative virtue--especially when, as is the case with the just published, two-volume, 1,360-page "The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz" (Macmillan, $295) . . .

Which I think may get right to the heart of our disagreement. I think the standard of perfection may be an appropriate one for the editors of such a book--you'll never reach it, of course, but it's the right goal to aim for. Here there may be a heuristic purpose behind applying an unreachable standard.

But I think it is wrong standard for a reader or reviewer to apply, becuase there is no purpose at the point of consumption in applying a standard that the book can never satisfy. All you are doing is unnecessarily courting disappointment.

So, I feel, when a reviewer finds himself applying an unreachable standard, the thing to do is formulate another standard, and not one that's just a slightly more forgiving version of the unreachable one. A reviewer's standard ought to reflect a reasonable consideration of what the thing under review is supposed to do, how it will be used, and what its consequences will be.

And here again, we may just have to disagree (either about standards or your employment of them).

On the Oxford Companion: I know it, own it, and have read, enjoyed and profited from the articles written by Chris and Larry. I actually give the Companion away as a gift/reward to particularly valued volunteers. It's a fine book, though my copy is pretty coffee-stained!

Edited March 7, 2004 by WNMC

[Brad]

A sociopath is one who is generally regarded as having a psycopathic personality, anti social or sexually deviant.

To call Bird a sociopath is assinine. Yes, he had problems. Who doesn't? And even if he could be labeled a socipath, what of it? What's the revelance. If my memory is not off, wasn't Collier given quite a wide berth on the Burns series which instead of glorifying Bird's music spent too much time on the drug culture of those years. Enough said. The problem with types like him is that to those with a limited interest in jazz, that's the image they're left with of jazz. I've had people say that to me. They remember the image not the music and that's the shame.

WNMC, I think it's time to give it up. You keep beating against the wind when Larry and Mike have shown what Grove is all about.

[Dr. Rat]

I'm not involved in psychiatry or any related field, but my understanding is that sociopath is essentially the new word for "psychopath" and that about 1% of people in the US have a sociopathic personality.

So I don't think it is too far-fetched to think this about Parker.

If he was, what does it mean? Well, that's an open issue. Like what it means that he was black. But I don't think we can just say it means nothing.

I take no responsibility whatsoever for Ken Burns. If you read through the thread, you'll see I am not arguing that Collier is passing down holy writ, but I don't think he should be blacklisted, either.

--eric

[Simon Weil]

On Collier's "Jazz" article:

Didn't have my Grove with me yesterday (and didn't relaize it was online), but I looked up Collier's essay on jazz last night.

What Simon quoted is in bold. I don't feel Collier does anything terrible to free or out jazz in these passages when you read them in context. If he hates free jazz, he restrains himself here.

Just so people don't miss the wood for the trees, here's the wood:

"...wholly free jazz has proven, in sum, to be less than successful...Most audiences today find that free jazz is too random for them to deal with. (It has been suggested to me that one reason for the rise of free jazz was that it was often listened to by people on marijuna highs, which would have made the randomness more tolerable.)...a great deal of free jazz is in fact random...What the avant-garde sometimes forgot was that the first thing that the Lord did was not to pronounce freedom, but to make an ordered universe out of chaos."

The Making of Jazz/James Lincoln Collier p476-7 (Papermac 1981)

Collier hates free jazz.

Simon Weil

[Dr. Rat]

On Collier's "Jazz" article:

Didn't have my Grove with me yesterday (and didn't relaize it was online), but I looked up Collier's essay on jazz last night.

What Simon quoted is in bold. I don't feel Collier does anything terrible to free or out jazz in these passages when you read them in context. If he hates free jazz, he restrains himself here.

Just so people don't miss the wood for the trees, here's the wood:

"...wholly free jazz has proven, in sum, to be less than successful...Most audiences today find that free jazz is too random for them to deal with. (It has been suggested to me that one reason for the rise of free jazz was that it was often listened to by people on marijuna highs, which would have made the randomness more tolerable.)...a great deal of free jazz is in fact random...What the avant-garde sometimes forgot was that the first thing that the Lord did was not to pronounce freedom, but to make an ordered universe out of chaos."

The Making of Jazz/James Lincoln Collier p476-7 (Papermac 1981)

Collier hates free jazz.

Simon Weil

But this is a different stand of woods (a different book).

The point not being what Collier thinks, but whether he slags or disrespects or seriously misrepresents free jazz in the Grove,

If you were a music student and pulled out the reference book of record for Jazz, the New Grove, you would find that Free Jazz is deliberately chaotic or random.

which I do not think he does.

At this point, from what I can gather, the Harrison "Jazz" article has also been replaced in the general Grove by yet a third jazz article.

--eric

Edited March 7, 2004 by WNMC

[Simon Weil]

weuhf poiuhe3qpoth09

Simon Weil

[JSngry]

I think the standard of perfection may be an appropriate one for the editors of such a book--you'll never reach it, of course, but it's the right goal to aim for. Here there may be a heuristic purpose behind applying an unreachable standard.

But I think it is wrong standard for a reader or reviewer to apply, becuase there is no purpose at the point of consumption in applying a standard that the book can never satisfy.

Well, hey! Now reviewers are being held to an unattainable standard of perfection when reviewing books that attempt to meet an unattainable standard of perfection. Makes me glad that all I have to do is play. That's easy in comparison.

Actually, I find reviews like Larry's most useful, because I'm not a "deep" expert, but I probably know more than the average fan (and lest that be read as arrogance on my part, let me add that so do most of the people who get into discussions like this in forums like this), so what I am looking for in a review of something like this is simple - is the item under consideraton going to prove to be a reliable source to turn to in order to learn more about what I don't already know when it comes time for me to want to learn it? And I figure, rightly or wrongly, that if a book screws up badly on what I already know, how/why should I feel comfortable turning to it for help with what I don't?

Unless I sense some deep-rooted underlying agenda, when people who know more than me (or more accurately, people who know more than me AND have demonstrated what, to me, is an understanding of what it is they know that goes beyond mere recitation of facts) question things like the accuracy of both "simple" history & critical appraisal, I listen, even if it's only to "file away for future consideration" when formualting my own opinion further on up the road. Ignoring/disregarding people who know more than you is a good way to never learn, and I'm SO not into that.

As for Collier, he might have more facts at his disposal than I do, but I've seen no indication whatsoever that he "knows" more than anybody.

Edited March 7, 2004 by JSngry

[paul secor]

Breaking away from the current topic, here are some further recommendations:

A.B. Spellman: Four Lives in the Bebop Business. This was later reprinted as Blck Music: Four Lives. I hope that it's currently in print.

Two collections of anecdotes by Bud Freeman - You Don't Look Like a Musician and if you know of a better life! please tell ME. I haven't yet read his Crazeology - The Autobiography of a Chicago Jazzman.

Don Asher: Notes from a Battered Grand. Asher is the co-author of Raise Up Off Me, the Hampton Hawes autobiography. He is also a jazz pianist, and Battered Grand gives a look at the jazz life from the perspective of a journeyman musician.

Ornette Coleman - A Harmolodic Life by John Litweiler.

William Zinsser's Willie and Dwike is a well written look at the interesting lives of Willie Ruff and Dwike Mitchell. Someday I'll get to Willie Ruff's autobiography, A Call to Assembly.

[Christiern]

weuhf poiuhe3qpoth09

Simon Weil

Makes sense to me!

[Dr. Rat]

Well, hey! Now reviewers are being held to an unattainable standard of perfection when reviewing books that attempt to meet an unattainable standard of perfection. Makes me glad that all I have to do is play. That's easy in comparison. 

Yes, its a high standard, but not an unobtainable one. Larry's review makes it clear that, whatever else we may disgaree on, we agree that making your standard clear is important to criticism. He and I probably disagree about what sort of standard to apply, but there you go.

Your joke about playing being easier than my version of criticism has a certain truth to it: I tend not to think of criticism as being secondary to artistic production. Criticism, at its best, can expose important things about the reception of teh aesthetic that art producers have no priviliged access to.

Myself, I am less intereted in criticism that talks a lot about the production side of the equation. (Though, of course, I am keenly interested, just less so.)

Actually, I find reviews like Larry's most useful, because I'm not a "deep" expert, but I probably know more than the average fan (and lest that be read as arrogance on my part, let me add that so do most of the people who get into discussions like this in forums like this), so what I am looking for in a review of something like this is simple - is the item under consideraton going to prove to be a reliable source to turn to in order to learn more about what I don't already know when it comes time for me to want to learn it? And I figure, rightly or wrongly, that if a book screws up badly on what I already know, how/why should I feel comfortable turning to it for help with what I don't?

Unless I sense some deep-rooted underlying agenda, when people who know more than me (or more accurately, people who know more than me AND have demonstrated what, to me, is an understanding of what it is they know that goes beyond mere recitation of facts) question things like the accuracy of both "simple" history & critical appraisal, I listen, even if it's only to "file away for future consideration" when formualting my own opinion further on up the road. Ignoring/disregarding people who know more than you is a good way to never learn, and I'm SO not into that.

I see what you are saying, and I knew someone like Larry knows more than me from the get-go--I've read him before. But I wasn't questioning his knowledge, I was questioning his judgement, which is a very different thing.

And certainly I do not mean to disrespect or disregard the deep background of someone like that. I've had a lot to do with experts in my time: people who know lots and lots about things, far more than I do (scientists, academic scholars, non-academic scholars, physicians, regulators . . .).

All that knowledge is no guarantee against faulty judgement.

I definitely respect technical and expert knowledge, but I think it has its place. And technical knowledge and expertise, I think, is really put to work by skepticism and questioning, not by deference.

By my lights, to be challenged is to be respected, to be deferred to (except in specific cases, such as the one Larry brought up) is to be patronized. This probably makes me an odd duck today and probably shows just how much my head may still be stuck in eighteenth-century periodicals, but it does seem to be a better modus operendi if we are really interested in truth.

And, even in scare quotes, that's an important thing for me.

--eric

[JSngry]

Well, yeah, sure, ok, but it's still a useful review that gives me a good reason not to buy the book in question: if I can't trust it on what I DO know, why should I trust it on what I don't? Do I figure that the law of averages dictates that since they messed up royally on what I do know that they suceeded splendidly on what I don't? From people playing odds like that are casinos perpetually profitable!

If a review gives me news I can use, really use, then I think the reviewer used good judgement, because I have been communicated with in a personally relevant manner, which I THINK might be sorta the object of the game. If not, then how the hell should I know, and/or why should I care? I just figure the writer's perspective and mine are too far apart for either one of us to give a rat's ass about the other's, and I'm cool with that, having been on the giving end of that stick often enough to not mind being on the receiving end of it sometimes. It's a big world. He/she is merely writing for an audience that I'm not a part of.

On with the show, doncha' know.

[Bright Moments]

i'm currently reading (and enjoying) "bird lives! the high life and hard times of charlie (yardbird) parker" by ross russell (founder of dial records).

is this the best parker bio out there?

[Brownian Motion]

i'm currently reading (and enjoying) "bird lives! the high life and hard times of charlie (yardbird) parker" by ross russell (founder of dial records).

is this the best parker bio out there?

←

Don't know whether it's the best, but that first chapter is a classic piece of writing!

[Christiern]

Ross Russell's book is interesting but far too fictional to be taken seriously by any scholar or historian. He knew Bird well and I have often wondered why he felt a need to embellish.

So far, IMO, there is no definitive Parker bio, but there are more reliable sources out there. Stanley Crouch has allegedly been working on a Parker bio for a very long time, but--based on his previous writings--I don't expect it to prove worth the wait. Let's see, he may surprise us all.

[Harold_Z]

Apropos Ross Russell - there was a novel by him written years before "Bird Lives". It was called "The Sound". The main character of the book was "Red"" and the book was a novelization of Bird's career. Russell's writing worked better as a novelist that a biographer - the book was entertaining.

Edited June 17, 2005 by Harold_Z

[Rosco]

I enjoyed Ross Russell's Bird Lives although it is one of those books that (like Miles' autobiography) ought to be taken with a hefty dollop of salt. Pulp fiction with saxophones but entertaining nonetheless.

The great thing about these threads is being reminded of things you meant to get round to. I've just dug out Scott DeVeaux's book The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. I was totally absorbed by it on reading it about five years ago and I think it's due for a re-read.

[AllenLowe]

please don't advocate for Russell - it is a complete work of fiction - I knew a few musicians mentioned in that book and they, without exception, held it in nothing but contempt -

[Rosco]

please don't advocate for Russell - it is a complete work of fiction - I knew a few musicians mentioned in that book and they, without exception,  held it in nothing but contempt -

←

Oh I'm sure. It reads like a work of fiction and I'm sure anyone with a handle on Bird takes it as such. I certainly wasn't vouching for the probilty of the book or its author. Like I said, HEFTY dollop.

What was the deal with Russell anyway? He was in a position to write something more substantial than a dime-store jazz novella.

[Bright Moments]

how about some specifics folks, where russell's "fiction" varies from the "facts?"

[Jazzmoose]

I just ordered Rat Race Blues from Amazon. I don't know why. Just seems that whenever I came on line I saw a picture of it somewhere...

[Bright Moments]

how about some specifics folks, where russell's "fiction" varies from the "facts?"

←

well?