Branford slams Miles

[felser]

28 minutes ago, chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez said:

do we dislike this album too, because i happen to have a japan 1st pressing, but i could be persuaded- whats the over/under on this one with you guys here?

 

I like most (not all) of his early albums up through Live at Blues Alley just fine.   More than Branford's early albums.  It's the pretention that came after which troubles me.  Though I actually enjoyed his commentary in the  Ken Burns' Jazz series, since that ended with Parker/Gillespie threatening the peace anyways.  But I can't listen to his stuff from '89 on too well, the more "significant", the more troubling it is to me.

2 minutes ago, JSngry said:

It was fun at the time, but it made promises that were never delivered. So...maybe I was a fool to even think they WERE promises instead of a set of well-crafted head fakes.

Good summary.  I really liked his earliest work with Blakey a LOT.   The Live at Bubba's semi-boots are magnficent.

[JSngry]

Eh...so much hype, so little delivery. Yeah, the guy was facile, but in the words of more than one older guy of the time, "let me hear him play a ballad".

and when they did....

[Scott Dolan]

Years ago Steve Reynolds, who likely despises Wynton more than the rest of you combined, gave a thumbs up to the outstanding seven disc boxset, Live At The Village Vanguard. 

I’m not sure how anyone could listen to that, and Black Codes (From The Underground), and not hear fire. 

I get the disdain for Wynton, I honestly do. But I think it tends to color perception a little too much for some people. 

4 hours ago, mandrill said:

The last I checked, the classic Coltrane Quartet albums were still in print and readily available.

Glad you checked. I was worried that that comment was somehow relevant to the conversation. 

1 hour ago, felser said:

I like most (not all) of his early albums up through Live at Blues Alley just fine.   More than Branford's early albums.  It's the pretention that came after which troubles me.  Though I actually enjoyed his commentary in the  Ken Burns' Jazz series, since that ended with Parker/Gillespie threatening the peace anyways.  But I can't listen to his stuff from '89 on too well, the more "significant", the more troubling it is to me.

Good summary.  I really liked his earliest work with Blakey a LOT.   The Live at Bubba's semi-boots are magnficent.

The Tony Williams piece, Sister Cheryl, from that album is one of my favorite Jazz tunes. Herbie is just dancing all over the place on that one! 

[felser]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Eh...so much hype, so little delivery. Yeah, the guy was facile, but in the words of more than one older guy of the time, "let me hear him play a ballad".

and when they did....

And he dared us to listen to five CD's worth or whatever.

@Scott, I do admit that VV box is pretty good.  Though I'll still take Live at Blues Alley over it.

[Chuck Nessa]

Marsalis family has been a roadblock for creative music.

Edited April 16, 2019 by Chuck Nessa

[JSngry]

54 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Marsalis family has been a roadblock for creative music.

I've heard more than a few anecdotes about Ellis having the highest disregard for Miles of any era, not unlike Lou Donaldson has with Wayne Shorter.

I can allow it for the old fuckers who had to breathe the same (more or less) air, but when I heard Wynton's bullshit, and now Branford's, it sounds lo me like the sons are still fighting the father's battles, and sure, that's The New American Way, but fuck that, really, fuck that. My mom was a whiz at taking yesterday's meal and turning it into today's, but she ALWAYS made it different and meaningful, and she didn't try to bullshit about that it was leftovers. These motherfuckers think those of us who ate it yesterday don't know the difference. They're wrong. My mom knew, so there's no battle to fight about that. Apparent these sons either never had to eat leftovers or else they got some big lies told to them that they still believe.

Here's Branford as a effectively functional placeholder, allowing later Sonny to be on the same record as earlier Sonny. But where is Branford? Is there such a thing, really? Really? Because when real Sonny comes back in, Branford just...goes away. He was only there for the one scene and he executed his lines really well. Pay the man!

 

1 hour ago, felser said:

And he dared us to listen to five CD's worth or whatever.

@Scott, I do admit that VV box is pretty good.  Though I'll still take Live at Blues Alley over it.

If your best work is "pretty good" (and it is that)...wow!

 

[felser]

26 minutes ago, JSngry said:

If your best work is "pretty good" (and it is that)...wow!

Totally with you there.  And as far as Ellis, don't even get me started.   

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

i dumped it and spent the money on a deluxe cinanmon roll

[jlhoots]

5 minutes ago, chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez said:

i dumped it and spent the money on a deluxe cinanmon roll

I love cinnamon rolls.

Wynton et. al. lost me when the Burns series ended way before anything "inventive" continued to exist.

[Gheorghe]

15 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Didn't Branford play with Miles for a minute in the 80's?  Couldn't remember, but I'm finding this.  It's the only thing in Plosin's database, so he must not have ever played live with him (or nothing that got caught on tape) -- or am I forgetting something else?

http://www.plosin.com/milesahead/Sessions.aspx?s=830910

September 10, 1983 (3 items; TT = 25:35)

Record Plant Studio, New York NY

Commercial for Columbia

1 -	Decoy (R. Irving III)	8:32
2 -	Code M.D. (R. Irving III)	5:55
3 -	That's Right (M. Davis)	11:08

That´s what I mentioned in my first posting on that thread.

I purchased "Decoy" as soon as it came out in 1984 but as much as I liked the before album "Star People", "Decoy" somehow bored me. But this is not Branfords fault. I think he was just a studio replacement since I think (saxophonist) Bill Evans had left that band at that time. I saw Miles quite often in the 80s, only while in the early 80´s it still had something to do with jazz, it later became a show act with an aging Miles who played "Time after Time" as someone who just might try to learn that incredible simple tune....really boring. But as I said, that was not Branford´s fault. It was just the whole situation, the 1981 Miles still played something a jazz fan might like, even if his chops were not up to his earlier standards, it was a band that played live music. But I think you don´t need to hear "Tutu" "Full Nelson" "Time after Time" live, you can hear that with headphones...... it was done in the studio with all that machines, no real band......
Don´t misunderstand me: Miles was one of the greatest musicians of the century, period. As long as he was able to be creative. And the 60´s was an extremly creative phase for him. Listen to all the stuff he did from 1963-1969, each album is fantastic and the music developes further and further. And even if some people didn´t like it, the stuff from 1970-74 still had much creativity in it.

[soulpope]

Believe nearly everything is said about the Marsalis Family (not by everybody though 😎) ..... btw when Branford was with Sting's group, he did fine as being just part of the "zeitgeist soundtrack" ....

 

[Teasing the Korean]

Why does everyone let the Marsalises get under their skin? Just ignore them, like I do. The only times they've ever intruded into my life included that time when Ken Burned Jazz, and even then, I had a volume remote.  The other times have included passing over all those dollar Wynton albums in the jazz dollar bin.  

If anyone is listening to jazz in 200 years, they will still be listening to Miles's 1960s quintet, and no one will know or remember a Marsalis.

Edited April 17, 2019 by Teasing the Korean

[Scott Dolan]

15 hours ago, felser said:

And he dared us to listen to five CD's worth or whatever.

@Scott, I do admit that VV box is pretty good.  Though I'll still take Live at Blues Alley over it.

Live At The House Of Tribes is a really smoking set, too. You just have to get past the over-enthusiastic sycophants in the audience. 

[Guy Berger]

20 hours ago, mandrill said:

The last I checked, the classic Coltrane Quartet albums were still in print and readily available.

Exactly, having a cardboard cutout of John Coltrane in your living room doesn't mean John Coltrane is actually standing in your living room

[ghost of miles]

Here's the passage from the DownBeat article (sorry, screwed around with trying to upload this through a free hosting site for about 15 minutes and have no idea why it re-rotated the image):

Edited April 17, 2019 by ghost of miles

[Larry Kart]

52 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Live At The House Of Tribes is a really smoking set, too. You just have to get past the over-enthusiastic sycophants in the audience. 

 Wynton's long thematic (or, perhaps better, "thematic") solo on "Green Chimneys" is one of the weirdest things I've ever heard -- a more or less joyless, even punishing in its "I can and will just do this" act of single-minded "willed spontaneity" that to my knowledge has no parallel in the history of recorded jazz. One can see why one might think that this solo has some bearing  on some of Monk's own music -- e.g. his thematic solo on "Little Rootie Tootie" or the almost motionless  "Think of One" -- but after a while all I could think of was "I give up; take my cattle, my wife and kids, take the whole damn ranch, but just STOP this."  Again, I would ask -- and I assume others hear this performance differently -- where is the pleasure and/or what is the expressive goal of this obsessive exercise, for the player or for the listener?

[Scott Dolan]

1 hour ago, Guy Berger said:

Exactly, having a cardboard cutout of John Coltrane in your living room doesn't mean John Coltrane is actually standing in your living room

That would be a relevent retort to an irrelevant comment if in fact said cardboard cutout were still making new music. 

[clifford_thornton]

14 hours ago, chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez said:

i dumped it and spent the money on a deluxe cinanmon roll

Branford did make a couple of David S. Ware records happen on Columbia. However, the label didn't promote them at all. That said, they got constant rotation at the college radio I worked for in the late '90s/early 2000s.

[Scott Dolan]

Yeah, I don’t really understand Chuck’s statement, and I doubt he will explain it any further. I guess I can kind of understand Wynton having a small impact on more creative musicians, but how Ellis and Branford have been road blocks for creative music is beyond me. 

Hell, Nate Wooley recently released an album of Wynton covers, and cites him as one of his influences. There aren’t many modern trumpet players more creative than Wooley. 

[felser]

25 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Yeah, I don’t really understand Chuck’s statement, and I doubt he will explain it any further. I guess I can kind of understand Wynton having a small impact on more creative musicians, but how Ellis and Branford have been road blocks for creative music is beyond me. 

Hell, Nate Wooley recently released an album of Wynton covers, and cites him as one of his influences. There aren’t many modern trumpet players more creative than Wooley. 

Here's my take.  The whole early-mid 80's Wynton phenomenon kicked off the majors looking for "young men in nice suits" for their jazz releases, which flooded the market.  Some, such as Terence Blanchard, were substantial talents.  The vast majority were not.  18 year olds (and younger) were getting Columbia and RCA contracts), the creative masters could not.  Even the talented new players could often be traced directly to older masters.  Christopher Hollyday did a mean Jackie McLean, but Hollyday could get recorded and McLean couldn't.   Vincent Herring did a swell Cannonball Adderley.  Kent Jordan, Marlon Jordan, Amini A.W. Murray.  And so on.  And so forth.    Josh Redman (who I do like OK) could get a contract, but Dewey could not.   Though some of this started in the 70's, where even in some of the cases where masters did get contracts, they were expected to make safe, marketable music (Bobby Hutcherson, Cedar Walton, even MCoy Tyner on Columbia).  That also affected what got played on jazz radio stations.   Broad brush, I realize, but that's sort of my impression of it.    Ellis totally puts me to sleep without fail.  I have to think his contracts were totally on the coattails of his sons.  And he was even (much) more reactionary than they were.   

Edited April 17, 2019 by felser

[JSngry]

If you want to find out about the Marsalis roadblocks, you have to go into the business, the financials, the way they appropriated so much of the available capital and then used it in furtherance of their own agenda.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's Old Fashioned All-American Capitalism. But make no mistake, they sucked up a LOT of available capital from all sides of the business, and diversion of capital is certainly a roadblock, if not in intent, then in effect.

It's been discussed to death here on the board, btw.

btw - I read Branford's quote, and it's even more ignorant in its totality than it was in the one isolation.

[felser]

No offense to (then) young Mr. Hollyday, whose output I rather enjoyed (and I saw him live once, and he was good), but here is the major record companies were looking to do for jazz in the 80's.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

53 minutes ago, felser said:

Here's my take.  The whole early-mid 80's Wynton phenomenon kicked off the majors looking for "young men in nice suits" for their jazz releases, which flooded the market.  Some, such as Terence Blanchard, were substantial talents.  The vast majority were not.  18 year olds (and younger) were getting Columbia and RCA contracts), the creative masters could not.  Even the talented new players could often be traced directly to older masters.  Christopher Hollyday did a mean Jackie McLean, but Hollyday could get recorded and McLean couldn't.   Vincent Herring did a swell Cannonball Adderley.  Kent Jordan, Marlon Jordan, Amini A.W. Murray.  And so on.  And so forth.    Josh Redman (who I do like OK) could get a contract, but Dewey could not.   Though some of this started in the 70's, where even in some of the cases where masters did get contracts, they were expected to make safe, marketable music (Bobby Hutcherson, Cedar Walton, even MCoy Tyner on Columbia).  That also affected what got played on jazz radio stations.   Broad brush, I realize, but that's sort of my impression of it.    Ellis totally puts me to sleep without fail.  I have to think his contracts were totally on the coattails of his sons.  And he was even (much) more reactionary than they were.   

this is a really good analysis

[JSngry]

It wasn't just the record companies. There's also the capital that was available for concert bookings, festival circuits, in some cases, promotional capital needed for club work (ah., the 20th Century...)

[Rooster_Ties]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

btw - I read Branford's quote, and it's even more ignorant in its totality than it was in the one isolation.

I hate to say it, but I think that's probably right.  I was fully prepared to read whatever Branford said, and give him half the benefit of the doubt that maybe it came of worse than intended.  But there's no real way to spin what he said as being anything other than some real in-your-face "Miles didn't know shit" nonsense.  There was certainly tons of give and take in that band, both ways -- there would have had to have been.

Has anyone ever heard anyone in that 2nd quintet ever say a negative word about Miles?  Realizing it would have never been in their interest to cross Miles publically.  Still, as many interviews as I've seen footage of and heard (audio) with both Herbie and Wayne, it seemed they both genuinely got an enormous amount out of their experience with Miles (and presumably from Miles).

What the hell is Branford talking about, really?  Miles grew up listening to Pops, but tried to stay modern?  What kind of nonsense is that?

Edited April 17, 2019 by Rooster_Ties