Listening to the 1957 Verve recording Only the Blues - reissued in the fabulous Real Gone Jazz 4 CD set, Sonny Stitt: Eight Classic Albums - knocks me out, kills me, etc. These recorded performances by Roy Eldridge and Sonny Stitt, supported by the rhythm section of Oscar Peterson (p), Ray Brown (b), Herb Ellis (g), and Stan Levey (d).
Roy Eldridge could play with anyone, in any context, Jimmy Ryan's to Birdland & beyond. He was known as Little Jazz to jazz-loving enthusiasts. But to musicians he was known as Jazz. I think the latter appellation is most apt; as a musician his talent was immense. He was one of Lennie Tristano's very, very favorites. And of course Bean and Prez loved Jazz.
Listen to Jazz with Billie Holiday - Fallin' In Love Again; with Mildred Bailey - I'm Nobody's Baby; with The Chocolate Dandies (Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, John Kirby, Bernard Addison and "Big" Sid Catlett) - I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me and I Surrender Dear; with Teddy Wilson's band (Buster Bailey, Chu Berry, "Big" Sid et al.) and with Anita O'Day & The Three Sounds - Whisper Not. Sublime! Perfection!
Sunday, April 29, 2012
"Because they're the best songs"
Andy Hamilton's Sal Mosca interview:
Like Konitz and Tristano, you focus a lot on standards.I had intended to blog on about the above. But I've decided not to do so. See Prof. Hamilton's home page. By the way he's one of the few writers on music aesthetics that I am able to read without coming down with a recurrence of that nauseating virus without a name, but which might bear the description, "academic - why not publish anyway - music aesthetics?".
Yeah, that's it – just standards.
Most of the originals I like are based on standards. I've composed some that are based on
standards, and some that are not.
What is the reason for focussing on that repertoire?
Because they're the best songs. They're better than folk music, better than classical or opera
they speak of the people, and they speak of Broadway, and they speak of love and they're by some of the greatest composers – Gershwin, Kern...it's much more pleasant to be singing a beautiful song inside yourself while you're improvising, than to be singing some senseless ditty.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Mal Waldron - Creativity Without Parentheses
Mal Waldron on composing his "Soul Eyes" as house composer and pianist for Prestige Records:
Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD (5th Edition), page 311 give The Prestige Recordings of John Coltrane a grade of ***(*)! [See my previous post regarding parenthetical matters.] These are my last words on Messrs. Cook& Morton.
I am spending today with, among other music, the music of the Jackie Gleason recordings featuring Bobby Hackett and others - nota bene one can't say the music of Jackie Gleason; when asked about The Great One's role in the recordings, Hackett commented that Gleason brought the checks. Bobby Hackett's trumpet on these recordings knocks me out. Hidden in the grooves of my Gleason vinyl recordings are solos by Nuncio "Toots" Mondello, Lawrence Brown, Charlie Ventura, and Roy Eldridge - knockouts all.
Next, I spent some time will the militaristic ballads of Carl Loewe (1796 - 1869) performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Baritone and Jörg Demus, Piano. Loewe fits in with my recent, renewed, interest in the lieder of Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Wolf, Mahler, and Die Neue Wiener Schule.
Next up were the Clef and Norgran recordings of Stan Getz, with the wonderful Bob Brookmeyer (vt), John Williams (p), Teddy Kotick (b), and Frank Isola (d). I wore out my Interpretations By The Stan Getz Quintet #2 vinyl Norgran disc during my high school stay which ended in 1959. A couple of really important Highland Park High School (Michigan) items are to be noted below.
Jazz & Basketball. My high school stay was consumed by jazz music and basketball. I subscribed both to Down Beat and The Jazz Review. At the time I read Down Beat for the gossip; although even as a young impressionable jazz fan I found the magazine's malevolent reporting of Billie Holiday's arrest at her hospital bed for drugs possession disconcerting. After my high school years I never read Down Beat much - it's racialism and philistinism disagreed with my sensibilities. Compared with The Jazz Review, Down Beat was infantile.
The Jazz Review began with its November 1958 issue and ceased publishing with its January 1961 issue - four volumes in all. All of the issues are now available on the internet through the offices of one of the journal's co-founders, Nat Hentoff. The late, and very much missed, Martin Williams was the other co-founder. So it will be worth one's while to peek at the online Jazz Review and see what grown up music journalism and criticism looks like. To wit:
http://jazzstudiesonline.org/?q=node/923
Highland Park High School in Michigan was a Class A basketball power in the 1950s and 1960s. Among its important luminaries were George "Baby" Duncan, George Lee, John Trapp, Terry Duerod, and (most importantly) Bobby Joe Hill. I direct the readers' attention to the online item that treats Texas Western's and Bobby Joe Hill's 1966 NCAA championship season among other important things . To wit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesYdBm6j9Q&feature=email
That tune was written for John Coltrane. I knew he was on the date the next day. The way the setup was in those days, they’d tell me who was on the set and then they’d tell me to write six or seven compositions for the date. So I had to stay up all night long and write the changes, and next morning I’d come in to Hackensack, N.J., and make the records, then I’d go home and write some more music for the next date.https://tedpanken.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/two-interviews-with-mal-waldron-on-the-86th-anniversary-of-his-birth/
Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD (5th Edition), page 311 give The Prestige Recordings of John Coltrane a grade of ***(*)! [See my previous post regarding parenthetical matters.] These are my last words on Messrs. Cook& Morton.
I am spending today with, among other music, the music of the Jackie Gleason recordings featuring Bobby Hackett and others - nota bene one can't say the music of Jackie Gleason; when asked about The Great One's role in the recordings, Hackett commented that Gleason brought the checks. Bobby Hackett's trumpet on these recordings knocks me out. Hidden in the grooves of my Gleason vinyl recordings are solos by Nuncio "Toots" Mondello, Lawrence Brown, Charlie Ventura, and Roy Eldridge - knockouts all.
Next, I spent some time will the militaristic ballads of Carl Loewe (1796 - 1869) performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Baritone and Jörg Demus, Piano. Loewe fits in with my recent, renewed, interest in the lieder of Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Wolf, Mahler, and Die Neue Wiener Schule.
Next up were the Clef and Norgran recordings of Stan Getz, with the wonderful Bob Brookmeyer (vt), John Williams (p), Teddy Kotick (b), and Frank Isola (d). I wore out my Interpretations By The Stan Getz Quintet #2 vinyl Norgran disc during my high school stay which ended in 1959. A couple of really important Highland Park High School (Michigan) items are to be noted below.
Jazz & Basketball. My high school stay was consumed by jazz music and basketball. I subscribed both to Down Beat and The Jazz Review. At the time I read Down Beat for the gossip; although even as a young impressionable jazz fan I found the magazine's malevolent reporting of Billie Holiday's arrest at her hospital bed for drugs possession disconcerting. After my high school years I never read Down Beat much - it's racialism and philistinism disagreed with my sensibilities. Compared with The Jazz Review, Down Beat was infantile.
The Jazz Review began with its November 1958 issue and ceased publishing with its January 1961 issue - four volumes in all. All of the issues are now available on the internet through the offices of one of the journal's co-founders, Nat Hentoff. The late, and very much missed, Martin Williams was the other co-founder. So it will be worth one's while to peek at the online Jazz Review and see what grown up music journalism and criticism looks like. To wit:
http://jazzstudiesonline.org/?q=node/923
Highland Park High School in Michigan was a Class A basketball power in the 1950s and 1960s. Among its important luminaries were George "Baby" Duncan, George Lee, John Trapp, Terry Duerod, and (most importantly) Bobby Joe Hill. I direct the readers' attention to the online item that treats Texas Western's and Bobby Joe Hill's 1966 NCAA championship season among other important things . To wit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesYdBm6j9Q&feature=email
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Jazz - An Asterisk Enclosed in Parentheses
I've attempted to be disciplined in writing (blogging on) about certain definite subjects - George Braith, "Big" John Patton, Grant Green, Harold Vick (musicians all). So, I have a number of unfinished blog-posts concerning Messrs. Braith et al.. The flow of each blogging occasion, of each occasional piece, was jammed back in this blogger's face by parentheses' worries. The philosopher G. E. Moore had a dream wherein he conflated his Moorean-self with that of a proposition! I can certainly reckon myself as an asterisk (a star-shaped symbol used as a mark of reference) even while awake (or believing myself to be awake). Richard Cook & Brian Morton in their Guide To Jazz On CD, Fifth Edition (p. vii), in a section explaining their ideas about aesthetic-evaluation criteria and marks write,
One of the great, practical attributes of Blue Note vinyl recordings was their resistance to wear and tear, to the wear of basement parties and teenage transport to and from parties - even the scratches sounded good! Musically Blue Note recordings have held up very well. Admittedly the first Blue Note CDs sounded awful, but Blue Note and Dr. Rudy van Gelder fixed subsequent reissues (20 and 24 bits).
As Bob Marley says, let me put my cards on the table. Some aestheticians and critics regard recorded music as an art-form - recorded performances involving musicians and sound-engineers. David Murray who has made over 100 recordings told me some time ago that he had never made a request of a record company or record producer to record himself or his music. I've often reckoned recordings to be advertisements for working musicians and/or groups. Back in the days when performance opportunities were more plentiful and when groups such as Miles Davis's quintets where performing on a regular basis, rehearsals took place on the bandstand; not in the recording studio. Today many recordings sound to my ears like they have been over-rehearsed in the recording studio - there's no snap in the recorded performances. This criticism doesn't even take into account recordings that are over-produced - too many microphones and too few creative musicians. Etta James (R.I.P.) made a couple of wonderful recordings of standards in which the music was arranged Cedar Walton and performed by groups of musicians led by him. The third recording of standards by Etta James was an absolute disaster. I couldn't understand how the superb Miss James and her superb musicians could have made such a mess of things after the previous two superb recordings. When I finally got around to reading the liner notes to the third terrible recording, I found out why. Etta James and the supporting cast of musicians were not even in the same neighborhood. She was ill and there was a hell of a lot of overdubbing going on.
Igor Stravinsky remarked when he was asked what he thought of Hi-Fidelity recordings, Isn't fidelity enough? Fidelity to the music, would be my interpretation of Igor's response.
Back to Messrs. Cook & Morton. Sonny Stitt! No ****s or ♛****s out of 21 CDs reviewed! Case closed a la Perry Mason. Kenny Wheeler! Four ****s out of eleven discs reviewed! Four ***(*)s. One ***. This psudo-statistical stuff is really tiresome and unnecessary. Stitt is one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. Stitt burns and takes no prisoners. Wheeler? ECM movie music. Nice, over-thoughtful. Jackie Gleason with Bobby Hackett, Charlie Ventura, Buster Bailey, Lawrence Brown - that's a soundtrack for the soul!
Gotta bounce. Later. There may be more.
***(*) A fine record, with some exceptional music. Only kept out of the front rank by some minor reservations.The "front rank" is denoted by "****"; whilst the ga-ga rank is denoted by "♛****" If I were measuring my efforts in living (life) with asterisks and parentheses in pairs, I'd rather have a grade of *** verses ***(*). "(*)" signals a defect, a manifest deficiency - no matter how minor. One is, no doubt, aware of this title, Jazz: The Imperfect Art. Cook & Morton do confuse imperfect recordings with imperfect recorded performances. Allow me to reveal my own prejudices regarding jazz, jazz journalists, jazz recordings, and the Down Beat, American Bandstand, Guide To Jazz On CD star or asterisk systems of grading recordings.
One of the great, practical attributes of Blue Note vinyl recordings was their resistance to wear and tear, to the wear of basement parties and teenage transport to and from parties - even the scratches sounded good! Musically Blue Note recordings have held up very well. Admittedly the first Blue Note CDs sounded awful, but Blue Note and Dr. Rudy van Gelder fixed subsequent reissues (20 and 24 bits).
As Bob Marley says, let me put my cards on the table. Some aestheticians and critics regard recorded music as an art-form - recorded performances involving musicians and sound-engineers. David Murray who has made over 100 recordings told me some time ago that he had never made a request of a record company or record producer to record himself or his music. I've often reckoned recordings to be advertisements for working musicians and/or groups. Back in the days when performance opportunities were more plentiful and when groups such as Miles Davis's quintets where performing on a regular basis, rehearsals took place on the bandstand; not in the recording studio. Today many recordings sound to my ears like they have been over-rehearsed in the recording studio - there's no snap in the recorded performances. This criticism doesn't even take into account recordings that are over-produced - too many microphones and too few creative musicians. Etta James (R.I.P.) made a couple of wonderful recordings of standards in which the music was arranged Cedar Walton and performed by groups of musicians led by him. The third recording of standards by Etta James was an absolute disaster. I couldn't understand how the superb Miss James and her superb musicians could have made such a mess of things after the previous two superb recordings. When I finally got around to reading the liner notes to the third terrible recording, I found out why. Etta James and the supporting cast of musicians were not even in the same neighborhood. She was ill and there was a hell of a lot of overdubbing going on.
Igor Stravinsky remarked when he was asked what he thought of Hi-Fidelity recordings, Isn't fidelity enough? Fidelity to the music, would be my interpretation of Igor's response.
Back to Messrs. Cook & Morton. Sonny Stitt! No ****s or ♛****s out of 21 CDs reviewed! Case closed a la Perry Mason. Kenny Wheeler! Four ****s out of eleven discs reviewed! Four ***(*)s. One ***. This psudo-statistical stuff is really tiresome and unnecessary. Stitt is one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. Stitt burns and takes no prisoners. Wheeler? ECM movie music. Nice, over-thoughtful. Jackie Gleason with Bobby Hackett, Charlie Ventura, Buster Bailey, Lawrence Brown - that's a soundtrack for the soul!
Gotta bounce. Later. There may be more.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
"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?
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?
Monday, March 12, 2012
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!
Sunday, March 11, 2012
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:
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.
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://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
[*] 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
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