Chris Albertson, R.I.P.

[Brad]

34 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

I am going thru the Stomp Off blog so much material that must be saved but I don't know how that can be done. And there were things he shared with others that I don't think made it onto the blog, recordings from the radio station marathons. God only knows what else might have been in the "tape closet" he mentions on the blog. 

Some websites have maintenance fees so that if they’re not paid, they’re shut down. Others, not. Looks look like he used Blogspot.com, which I think is owned by Google. I note that he hadn’t updated the site in more than two years. 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Brad

[Ed S]

Sad news.  I've enjoyed Chris's posts on the Blue Note Board and while he was here.  Never a dull moment.  I particularly like the occasional photograph he'd post of Central Park from the window of his apartment.  One in particular that I recall was a photo or the installation of the work of the artist Christo - in which Central Park was covered with a series of orange gates, hence the title of the work "Gates".  It was stunning and while I did not get to see it in person, I felt like I did thanks to Chis.  I used to think of him from time to time and check out Stomp Off and figured something was going on when it stopped being updated.

May he rest in peace.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

R.I.P.  our fellow board member

I admired chris albertson for how he did things from recording pioneers of blues & jazz in the Chicago "the living legends" series, to conducting interviews with friends and associates of besie smith,  and even, i cant recall right now specfically, but he also had a foot somehow in rock and roll, and was around for some big moments of that genre as well

Edited May 10, 2019 by chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez

[Hot Ptah]

1 hour ago, chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez said:

R.I.P.  our fellow board member

I admired chris albertson for how he did things from recording pioneers of blues & jazz in the Chicago "the living legends" series, to conducting interviews with friends and associates of besie smith,  and even, i cant recall right now specfically, but he also had a foot somehow in rock and roll, and was around for some big moments of that genre as well

Chris reviewed rock albums for Stereo Review for several years. In high school I would read his reviews to help decide which rock albums to buy with money from my after school jobs. It was before I could “hear” jazz. I always really liked the way that he wrote and his ideas about rock. I told him about that in private messages on one of the three online jazz boards we shared.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

---he rediscovered Alberta Hunter

-he taught us about some of the unsavory interactions he had with Columbia records/John Hammond

[sgcim]

10 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

He did seem very unhappy, and I’m sure he had legitimate reasons. He rage quit both here and JC, and at his age that seemed a bit off. I’m sure he was a good dude, but he seemed to be dealing with stronger demons than most. 

 

He was very unhappy about the deterioration of the quality of the content on the public radio station that he used to manage. He was certainly justified about feeling that way, especially because he was very proud of the work he did as station manager there in the 60s. Today, they've turned into a forum for the lunatic snake oil salesman, Gary Null, who preys on the infirm with his 'alternative health' practice. I listened in disbelief as Null once claimed that AIDS was caused by gay guys jerking off too much!

Chris devoted most of his website to trace in painstaking detail how various station managers and directors had turned WBAI into the POS it's become today. They once had people like Nat Hentoff, Chris and other knowledgeable people doing jazz shows there, and today don't have any regular jazz shows, and don't even play the music, except on rare occasions.

[GregK]

He called me "human" once on here, so I appreciated that.

 

what was his last post here?

Edited May 11, 2019 by GregK

[Brad]

2 hours ago, GregK said:

He called me "human" once on here, so I appreciated that.

 

what was his last post here?

A search indicates that it was in January 2016. 

[medjuck]

20 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

He did seem very unhappy, and I’m sure he had legitimate reasons. He rage quit both here and JC, and at his age that seemed a bit off. I’m sure he was a good dude, but he seemed to be dealing with stronger demons than most. 

I just read on-line that he had "come out" and was bitter about how some of his former friends reacted.  I had a couple of pleasant e-mail exchanges with him  and he was very forgiving about my obvious ignorance of the matters I was asking about. 

[mjzee]

I always thought he was an anti-semite.  I won't miss him.

[Big Beat Steve]

13 minutes ago, mjzee said:

I always thought he was an anti-semite.  I won't miss him.

Don't confuse Anti-Netanjahu and anti-semite.

(I don't go for a lot of that unconditional pro-palestine stuff myself but this would not be the time and place here now anyway )

Edited May 11, 2019 by Big Beat Steve

[Scott Dolan]

31 minutes ago, mjzee said:

I always thought he was an anti-semite.  I won't miss him.

He was staunchly opposed to the Israeli government. He had nothing against Jewish people to my knowledge. 

[JSngry]

Nor mine.

1 hour ago, medjuck said:

I just read on-line that he had "come out" and was bitter about how some of his former friends reacted.  

Yeah, he never discussed that on the board. When he was included in a Jazz Times piece about homosexuals in the jazz world and somebody here kinda trolled him about it, he shut it down with remarkable efficiency by asking the guy straight up - what are you asking and why are you asking it? End of story for that one.

[Scott Dolan]

I didn’t even know he was gay. That really complicates life. I’ve witnessed it firsthand in my family. Anyone that still believes it is a “lifestyle choice” is a fucking imbecile. 

[Brad]

1 hour ago, Scott Dolan said:

He was staunchly opposed to the Israeli government. He had nothing against Jewish people to my knowledge. 

That’s a question for another time although probably not on this Forum. Suffice it to say, to many there is no distinction. 

[Scott Dolan]

9 minutes ago, Brad said:

That’s a question for another time although probably not on this Forum. Suffice it to say, to many there is no distinction. 

Which is silly, of course, since the majority is usually opposed to their government. No matter the country. 

[Brad]

I understand but it’s a question that can cause a lot of controversy.  

[JSngry]

I never even heard him say that he was anti-Israel. Just anti- the current government''s leaders and policies

If that alone qualifies you as anti-Semitic, then uh-oh, I myself might be becoming one.

But I think not. No, I know not.

[Dave Garrett]

On 5/10/2019 at 3:36 PM, Dan Gould said:

I am going thru the Stomp Off blog so much material that must be saved but I don't know how that can be done. And there were things he shared with others that I don't think made it onto the blog, recordings from the radio station marathons. God only knows what else might have been in the "tape closet" he mentions on the blog. 

Since it's hosted by Blogspot it's probably not in any danger of disappearing any time soon, but in the event that it does, the Internet Archive appears to have a reasonably complete backup. Spot-checking links to the earliest posts from the blog shows they are there, which is usually a pretty good indicator of completeness.

http://web.archive.org/web/20190410133716/http://stomp-off.blogspot.com/

[Larry Kart]

4 hours ago, JSngry said:

I never even heard him say that he was anti-Israel. Just anti- the current government''s leaders and policies

If that alone qualifies you as anti-Semitic, then uh-oh, I myself might be becoming one.

But I think not. No, I know not.

To make a perhaps meaningless distinction, IIRC it was that Chris was very much pro-Palestinian, thought that the outcome of 1948 war (indeed, the whole Zionist enterprise going back to the Balfour Declaration and beyond) set in place one of the greatest moral-political injustices imaginable,  that everything that flowed from it on the part of Israel (regardless of which regime was in power there) amounted to criminality, and that every act of retribution from the Palestinian side (car bombs, rockets, etc., the various post-1948 wars) was wholly justified. Again IIRC, he was fond of using the word Nazis to describe Israelis who engaged in acts of repression (or worse) against the Palestinians -- in part I think because Chris knew how readily that gets the goat of some, in part I would guess because he actually lived under Nazi rule in occupied Europe as an adolescent, which gave him a template he never abandoned or that perhaps never abandoned him. In any case, despite the Israelis = Nazis business and related name calling, Chris wasn't really anti-Semitic by my reckoning. 

[JSngry]

I'll take you word on all of that.

I had forgotten that he had actually lived under Nazi rule, though. I guess if you're going to have a baseline for thuggishness, that's about as base as it gets.

[Scott Dolan]

As far as I know, Larry hit the nail on the head. 

[Larry Kart]

54 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I'll take you word on all of that.

I had forgotten that he had actually lived under Nazi rule, though. I guess if you're going to have a baseline for thuggishness, that's about as base as it gets.

Chris was a teenager in Nazi-occupied Denmark.

[John L]

RIP.  I really appreciated Chris.   

It is worth noting that the course of recorded jazz would have been a bit different without him.  There would be no Ida Cox comeback album with Coleman Hawkins.  There would not be those beautiful Lonnie Johnson albums with Elmer Snowden.  

"Bessie" is one of the truly great jazz books. 

Chris was a unique individual, always very generous and consistently intolerant of racism and injustice.   

 

[EKE BBB]

13 minutes ago, John L said:

RIP.  I really appreciated Chris.   

It is worth noting that the course of recorded jazz would have been a bit different without him.  There would be no Ida Cox comeback album with Coleman Hawkins.  There would not be those beautiful Lonnie Johnson albums with Elmer Snowden.  

"Bessie" is one of the truly great jazz books. 

Chris was a unique individual, always very generous and consistently intolerant of racism and injustice.   

 

Amen to that!