"Take your time!" - Listening to George Braith

It's taken me a long while getting next to the music of multi-saxophonist George Braith. Ethan Iverson - http://dothemath.typepad.com/ - pulled my coat about Mr. Braith - see the Braith item at: http://www.georgetbraith.com/George_Braith/George_Braith.html
   George Braith plays a saxophone configuration consisting of the strich, soprano, alto and/or tenor. Since he oftentimes plays two of these saxophones at the same time, in the same breath; he created the Braithophone, a mereological and metallic sum of two the horns. Between 1963 - 1965 Braith made three recordings for Blue Note with Billy Gardiner (organ), Grant Green (guitar), and Donald Bailey or Hugh Walker, or Clarence Johnson (drums). Braith also recorded with the organist "Big" John Patton. Blue Note recently reissued Braith's recordings under Rudy Van Gelder's engineering flag as the Complete Blue Note recordings. Braith touches on Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Sonny Rollins, and that Caribbean-thing. Braith's groove is more relaxed than Kirk's - his arrangements of "The Man I Love" and "Every time We Say Goodbye" are quite unusual. Try his very beautiful "Ethlyn's Love" for $0.99 as an MP-3 download from your favorite, corner record store/Cloud.
   I suspect that one of the absurdities, promulgated by self-appointed critics, that has 'clouded' George Braith's reputation as a 'serious musician' is that he has been termed a "soul-player". Another compelling and prodigious musician is the late, Soulful!, tenor saxophonist, Harold Vick. When I was in my teens, soul and soulfulness was much sought after - we all wanted it and were always in search of it, "Oh yea! he's a soulful cat - we reckoned women to be ensouled on occasion too.
   I meant to bang on about Blue Note soul compared with ECM soul - and I have been turning this over in my thoughts for too long. I'll leave this subject for another time. Anyway why should I go on when my man Billy Hart has an ECM CD about to be released?

Naked City & Junior's Bar

Naked City (1958 - 1963) is my all-time favorite television program. This morning's rerun-program featured a young Peter Falk in the staring role as a killer for hire. It also had a shot of Junior's bar, a legendary musicians' hang featured in Downbeat magazine back in the day. Brilliant!

Detroit Days

Five beautiful days in Detroit, Michigan is exactly what I needed. I have lived in Columbus, Ohio for the past eighteen years. Musically and culturally there are many significant differences between the two cities. Columbus is in the South - the capitalized 'S' is significant; Detroit is in the North. Columbus is the capital of Ohio. It is as far south as I  would ever want to be. Both Columbus and Detroit have produced great musicians - the former city accounts for Harry 'Sweets' Edison, 'Sweet' Nancy Wilson, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk; the latter for Yusef Lateef, Milt Jackson, Lucky Thompson, and Barry Harris.

    As I remarked in a previous post, I had the occasion to produce a number of concerts over the course of four years, beginning in 1991, that featured the music of David Murray, Oliver Lake, the World Saxophone Quartet, and D. D. Jackson (in addition other musicians). This long story appears in the link below:

http://rayesti-thoughtmatters.blogspot.com/2011/05/once-twice-then-gone-music-moments.html

   My thoughts today were stimulated by Ethan Iverson's post From the Ground Up http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/2011/10/from-the-ground-up.html 
Iverson was writing about the trumpeter Nicholas Payton's tweets on an article by Ben Ratliff that appeared in The New York Times. (See Iverson for the NYT link). The issues of racism (institutional or otherwise), innovation, and folk-culture in  African-American music and jazz are sanely and well discussed by Iverson in his post.

   A number of years ago I was told by the Artistic Director of a major arts presenting organization that African-American jazz musicians don't draw as well as white, European, or Asian musicians. My own visual experience tells me that the latter demographic group of jazz musicians doesn't draw so well either!

One could term this stance to be institutional racism, marketing incompetence or both. My own view is both.

   Village Vanguard-ECM Phenomenon.

   For many years upon getting my New Yorker magazine in the mail I'd turn to the "Jazz and Standards" section to see what was not up at the Village Vanguard (Trane was recorded at the Vanguard too!). What I have found over many years in checking the Vanguard out is that it's policy seems to be one of hiring non-African-American artists predominately. There may be double-thinking (duplicitous?) aspects to this Vanguard-Stance. I believe that this kind of double thinking is characteristic of ECM also. 

   Ethan Iverson believes that a cultural and economic divide has come about as a result of the core urban- cultural-center's slide into Hip-Hop. The mainstream Blue Note audience, the Lee Morgan, Three Sounds, Jazz Messengers audience is no longer a cultural or economic force - it's dying off. How many of the Hip-Hop generation buy the recordings of Shirley Scott, Jimmy Smith, Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis . . . . It's Funk for a minute and Hip-Hop for the moment. This is a cultural and economic reality.

   The ECM aspect is interesting. Jack DeJohnett and Keith Jarrett are ECM recording stars. Keith Jarrett launched Brad Mahldau. The latter is Jarrett without any pulse at all. Jarrett is someone I play when I'm in a Jackie Gleason mood - at least Gleason used Lawrence Brown, Bobby Hackett, Benny Bailey, and Charlie Ventura in his wonderful, moody cocktail-hour recordings, recordings to be admired. The Vanguard-ECM mood-musics employ distillers and diluters of the music inventions of Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Lee Konitz, and Lennie Tristano. The illusion of invention for the cocktail hour crowd.

   The economic side of ECM is interesting. ECM recordings are wonderfully engineered; they sound great. It appears that there's a lot of rehearsal time available for it's recording artists. The recorded performances by ECM artists sound like what Iverson terms "interview performances", aimed at securing gigs in venues that pride themselves on not upsetting the cocktail crowd, on letting the table-talk flow instead (at the expense) of the music. The blues! Who needs it? Don't need to play the blues.[*]

   The blues was the core of creative improvised music. During these very trying economic and political times the blues has been supplanted cocktail, movie music - the Hollywood hegemony. Let Ethan Iverson pull your coat - or else.

   Detroit? Detroit is happening. Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble appeared in performance at George N'Namdi's N'Namdi Center for Contemporary Art last tuesday. On Saturday N'Namdi presented a showing of the wonderful Quentin Tarantino film Jackie Brown followed by a discussion with Elmore Leonard, author of the novel upon which the film is based. There were also significant improvised music performances at the Detroit Institute of Arts and Cliff Bells. 

   On Wednesday, the dramatist, music-poet, and educator Bill Harris read from his new docu-poem Booker T & THEM - A Blues (Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2012). I'd love to hear El'Zabar and Bill Harris performing and RECORDED! together. There is a great deal to be learned from Booker T & Them. It would be a great recording with Prof. Harris reading. His reading certainly excites and improves an auditor's knowledge and poetic sensibility. The reading and book launch took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MOCAD). The museum is just a few blocks from N'Namdi's fine gallery.

   Joel Peterson used to have the National Bohemian Home space off of Michigan Ave. in Detroit. I enjoyed many wonderful evenings there - enthralled the music of Ken Vandermark, Sun Ra Arkestra, led by Marshall Allen, Sylvie Courvoisier, Salim Washington, among other worthies. Mr. Peterson, who is also a contrabassist, is opening a performance space in the Eastern Market in Detroit. Given his taste and passion for the music, this is a major event. This when conjoined with Georg N'Namdi's gallery, and his taste and passion, deserves our attention and support.

   Detroit is my spiritual home. Links for those who desire to know and feel:

http://grnnamdi.com/

http://wsupress.wayne.edu/event.php?event_id=670

http://mocadetroit.org/

[*] 1969 - Mal Waldron's ECM disc was, according to Ethan Iverson, the first ECM recording. What happened after that? See http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/on-mal-waldron.html