"We Almost Lost Detroit"

I watched the Gil Scott-Heron documentary that aired on TV-One yesterday. I knew his music, his poetry, and his story. Sitting in front of my 'idiot's lantern', taking in the spectacle of Gil Scott-Heron's stardom, his music, and his American life; I began to wonder about the powerlessness of an individual to shape a decent life even when one has talent, and thereby is, presumably, afforded something of a 'head-start' in life.
   I wonder what power music, poetry, art, or philosophy holds for the assumed consumers of these arts. Scott-Heron's music, poetry, and philosophy (his Art) has influenced a number of hip-hop artists. The power of hip-hop seems to be almost entirely economic for the few 'artists' who have made it. Sampling is everywhere: ours is a remote-control, MP3 culture. We flip real estate, cities, channels, tunes, nations, cultures - all sorts of stuff. Yet an artist - Gil Scott-heron was an artist - rarely has control over the byproducts of her art - not even Lady Day, Mingus, or Stockhausen.
  Sometimes it's best to stay underground and away from the Clive Davis's of the culture industry.
  The Last Poets and Kip Hanrahan, whether by choice or chance, manage to stay underground. I return to Kip Hanaran's music-collages quite often. I'm sure it's because of the heavy-weight musicians that Hanaran employs - If you want to know who they are, buy his CDs.
   "We Almost Lost Detroit" is a nuclear-power-danger protest song that Gil Scott-Heron wrote. It didn't take a nuclear power plant melt-down to loose Detroit, did it? We remain at a loss to formulate the proper questions. As a nation we are quite adept at providing answers - "crime", "terrorism", "sloth" - before asking the proper questions. "Power to the people!"
   Thanks to Walter Kim Heron.

Teddy Wilson, "Jumpin' For Joy" 10 CD set, and Do The Math

I've been working my way aurally through Teddy Wilson's magical 10CD set, entitled Jump For Joy. There are no personnel groupings provided with these discs. The trio and solo performances aren't troubling from a discographical point of view. The small groups are another matter. Admittedly the recordings that Teddy Wilson made with Billie Holiday are easy to put together in terms of personnel groupings, since we have documented recordings under Lady Day's name - these are the recordings that I blogged on about under the rubric Jam Session Aesthetic. In listening to Wilson's CD10, I re-discovered the Sarah Vaughan sides with Teddy Wilson - "Penthouse Serenade (When You're Alone)", "Don't Worry 'Bout Me", "Time After Time", and "September Song". When I write that I rediscovered the Vaughan-Wilson sides, I mean that I knew about them (in a previous life, perhaps); but I had never heard them - don't recall hearing them.
   Needless to say the early Divine One's performances are 'heavenly'. A couple of other surprises reside in the bopish arrangements of "I Want To Be Happy" and "Just One Of Those Things". I guess I'll have to examine the 65 page Teddy Wilson Discography to find out exactly who created the wonderful music captured in these 10 discs.
   I urge you again to look in on Ethan Iverson's blog Do The Math: http://dothemath.typepad.com/
 
P. S. I forgot to note that there are three amazing tracks featuring Teddy Wilson, piano; Harry James, trumpet; Red Norvo, marimba; and John Simmons, bass that knocked me out. "Ain't Misibehavin'", "Honeysuckle Rose", and "Just A Mood (Blue Mood) (Part 1 & 2)" reminded me of the Don Ellis (t) recording, New Ideas (OJC 431), with Jacki Byard (p); Al Francis (vib); Ron Carter (b); and Charlie Persip (d). I am now reminded of Arthur Blythe's recordings with marimba and percussion. I love the dark sounds in the marimba's wood.

Mr. Roy Eldridge, Messrs. Hank Mobley and Amiri Baraka

Among my favorite recordings by trumpet-man and master musician Roy Eldridge is his circa 1956 recording on Savoy with the British pianist Ronnie Ball. Mr. Ball was at one time a house pianist at Savoy - Mr. Hank Jones was the Savoy house pianist; the trio recordings with Jones and Messrs. Wendell Marshall, bass and Kenny Clarke, drums are a delight. Ronnie Ball was way back in the day a student of the pianist Lennie Tristano. Roy Eldridge was very highly regarded by Mr. Tristano. Hang on! It gets thicker. Ronnie Ball is the pianist on the wonderful 1956 Hank Mobley Savoy recordings. Also, on Mr. Mobley's recordings are some of Detroit's finest musicians: Mr. Donald Byrd; trumpet; Mr. Barry Harris, piano; and Mr. Doug Watkins, bass. What a tremendously strong bassist was Doug Watkins - no wonder Mr. Charles Mingus called on him. In addition to being a fine tenor saxophonist, Hank Mobley was a composer of many post-bop/hard-bop standards. His "Funk in Deep Freeze" is one of my favorite Mobley tunes - a very hip title.
   Roy Eldridge was from Pittsburg, Pa., as were Art Blakley, Erroll Garner, and Mr. B, Billy Eckstein. Hank Mobley was from Newark, N. J., as were Sarah Vaughan, Wayne Shorter, Woody Shaw, and Walter Davis, Jr.
   The poet and much else Amiri Baraka was of Newark. Mr. Baraka passed on, joining all of those mentioned above - except Barry Harris who is still with us. He died on January 9 of this year at the age of 79. I return often to Amiri Baraka's 1996 book Eulogies. As I noted in previous blog-posts, I had the great fortune to have been spellbound by the music and artistry of Miss Sarah Vaughan, Mr. Billy Eckstein, and Mr. Baraka, the music-poet.
   This evening as I write this, I'm listening to discs from the Hank Mobley10-CD set Kind of Mobley. The playing and the musicianship on these recordings is so strong. Art Farmer, Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Horace Silver, Donald Byrd, Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Doug Watkins, and Milt Jackson said what they had to say musically - no tricks and no footnotes required; just like Roy Eldridge and Amiri Baraka. Fetch Baraka's India Navigation recording with David Murray and Steve McCall - if you've hung with me up to this point, you know who these musicians are, what their respective horns were &c.
   Those who know and who desire to know suggest that immortality resides in the good that one has contributed and set out during one's lifetime. My bet is that those who I've mentioned herein are immortal because of the work that they've done, because of the music they've created, because of their compositions, poetry, and plays.
   Just listen to Messrs. Eldridge, Mobley and Baraka's music-poetry - no footnotes required.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJnSpL2Y-gk

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/uptown/amiri-baraka-honored-posthumously-harlem-article-1.1605063

Let's Call This Music "'Jazz'"

Jazz Wax: What do you call your music if not “jazz?”

Yusef Lateef: The term I like to use is autophysiopsychic music. This means music from the physical, mental and spiritual. I think it’s an adequate term. 

My first live-listening experience involving a string quartet involved the University of Michigan's quartet in residence, the Stanley String Quartet. I was in high school (1955-9). A couple of friends and I attended a performance by the Stanley Quartet that took place in the small auditorium in the Rackham building next to the Detroit Institute of Arts. I don't recall what the Stanley's music program consisted in; whether it was Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven, I don't remember. What I do remember, as a refined devotee of this and that music, is something that has caused me distress throughout my life. It is with horror that I remember that occasion.
   For me the string quartet - two violins, viola and 'cello - and the improvisor's quartet - horn, piano, bass, and percussion are for that music (aka 'classical music' and this music (aka 'jazz music') are forms of music of which none greater can be conceived.  'Jazz' quartets allow substitution-instances, another horn or guitar instead of piano. 'Classical music' quartets are fixed; it's 2+1+1, as noted.
   [Note the four instances of scare-quotation marks. In the terminology of those who know, 'jazz' is in one sense a notational variant of the term "jazz"; but it's something else in addition.]
   The Classical Style in Charles Rosen's sense is embodied, for the most part, in the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. When people contrast 'classical music' with 'jazz music' they may have in mind non-improvised verses improvised music. Most of us are aware of another divide that has separated 'jazz' and so-called "classical music" [note in most cases we have "jazz" v. "classical music"]. "Classical music" is reckoned to be straight-up music while 'jazz' may not be so-reckoned. In my view both 'jazz' and 'classical music' [note the scare-quotes!] are, or can be, straight-up music. Today more and more European-inspired music is influenced by 'jazz' music, by improvisation techniques and 'jazz' improvisors. It should be noted that improvisation has always been a part of European music - indeed Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven used to jam, used to improvise at the organ and/or piano, used to play in taverns &c. So what we're left with here is just music. If one understands what's happening in a music performance, one feels comfortable with the music, whether it's composed or improvised or both. If one feels discomfortable with music, then certainly one can get comfortable with it. Witness all of the ardent rap-music enthusiasts. There are no bars to understanding music; just let the music - be it this music or that music - take you.
   When my mates and I descended upon the Stanley String Quartet that afternoon, we had no notion of what we were about to hear - it was our very first string-quartet adventure. What we did notice when we sat down in our seats was that the backs of the seats in front of us had ashtrays embedded therein. "Hey," we thought, "this is going to be alright, just like a 'jazz' joint." So we lit up and smoked throughout the quartet's entire performance. This is what I've been embarrassed about for all of these years. Talk about a lack of respect for the music, the musicians, and our lungs. The quartet's members pressed on. Because they were University of Michigan faculty members, the quartet may have been used to the silly ways of youth. Perhaps they were conversant were the ways of a 'jazz' audience - smoking, drinking, talkin' loud, etc. I asked David Murray if the antics of 'jazz' crowds annoyed him when he was performing. He told me that he didn't mind; he just played harder. Perhaps the Stanley Quartet held the same view.
  The differences between this music and that music, between 'jazz' and 'classical music' are in many ways stylistic or notational. But as music both are straight-up.    
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Eet937d4I
    

Yusef Lateef, Amiri Baraka, and Roy Campbell - R.I.P.

December 23, 2013

Yusef Lateef I first saw and heard when I was a senior in high school. In 1959, I on a field trip at Wayne State University (WSU) with the Highland Park High School senior class. We were being shown around the WSU campus with the hope that some of us at least would find our way there after graduation. We were walking past the student center - McKinsey Hall - when we heard improvised music coming from the second floor. A couple of us broke off from the group and spent the rest of our time on campus with Yusef Lateef, tenor saxophone and flute and his musicians; among whom were Abe Woodley, vibes and Frank Morrelli, baritone saxophone. Prior to this instance, my first live experience of Yusef Lateef's music, I recall today hearing this music a part of a luncheon program that my friend Thom Pride hosted as DJ in my high school auditorium. Thom was playing Yusef Lateef's 
album Jazz for Thinkers, the album cover of which was shot in front of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
   After high school, my friends and I used to hang out at the Minor Key music venue in Detroit. The only time that I heard Yusef Lateef in person after WSU was once when Maynard Ferguson's band was playing there with Clifford Jordon on tenor. After the band's sets were finished, Yusef and Clifford got into something quite special with their tenors. I was quite impressed with what was happening musically. That evening, I managed somehow to sit down with Yusef Lateef over coffee. I don't remember everything that we talked about, but I expressed my disappointment that he was moving to New York.
   I've collected Yusef Lateef's recordings and listened to his wonderful music over the past fifty years. There's a special  rhythmic element in Lateef's music that I hear and feel in the music of other Detroit musicians - in the music of Barry Harris, Hugh Lawson,  Shafi Hadi (Curtis Porter), Clarence Shaw, Charles McPherson, Sonny Red Kyner, Curtis Fuller, Wilber Harden, Lewis Hayes, among others. This is before Motown. Listen to Sonny Red's tune "Teef" on Lewis Hayes CD with Yusef Lateef and Barry Harris. There's rhythm and blues in this music, rather there's that in rhythm-and-blues.     

http://www.freep.com/article/20131223/NEWS08/312230128/yusef-lateef-dies-obituary-jazz

January 9, 2014

The music-poet Amiri Imamu Baraka died today at the age of 79 years. I can’t recall when I was first made aware of Baraka or back in the day of Leroi Jones. He’ll aways be Baraka to me. I probably became acquainted with Baraka through the pages of the Evergreen Review, Jazz Review, or Downbeat - I subscribed to the latter publications and I used to buy the former to keep up with the Beat poets and others. This was in the fabulous early ‘60s.

   This last two stanzas from Baraka’s poem “Wise 3” knock me out,

Son singin

fount some words. Think

he bad. Speak

they

language.

‘sawright

I say

wit me

look like

yeh, we gon be here

a taste

Yes, 79 years is just a taste - we’re only here for a taste. I often return to Barak’s Eulogies and his Transblusency: Selected Poems 1961-95. “Wise 3” is to be found on pages 222-3. 

   In  1998/9(?), my wife, some friends, and I travelled to Chicago from Detroit and Columbus, Ohio to attend a concert that featured David Murray’s Fo Deuk Revue at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Revue featured Senegalese traditional drummers, American musicians, among whom were Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Hugh Ragin, Craig Harris, and Amiri Baraka reading his poetry. This was the first time that I met Baraka. The second meeting took place in Columbus at the King Center. Baraka came through with his group that included DD Jackson, Wilber Morris, and Pheeroan AkLaff. Baraka recited his poetry as an integral part of the music. Both concerts was quite thrilling.
  The last time that I saw and heard Amiri Baraka perform was in Guelph, Ontario Canada in September 2007 as part on the fabulous annual Guelph Jazz Festival. He on stage with bassist William Parker's Ensemble, performing The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield - William Parker's rearrangements of Curtis Mayfield's classic songs - "The Makings of You", "People Get Ready", among others. Leena Conquest provided the vocal and Amiri Baraka recited his poetry - Conquest sang "People Get Ready" while Baraka 'sang' his poetry. The rest of the group included Dave Burrell, piano; Hamid Drake, drums; Lewis Barnes, trumpet; Darryl Foster and Sabir Mateen, reeds. It was a wonderful evening of splendid music-making. The audience delighted in the music and showed its appreciation with a tremendous ovation. But there was one American in the audience, a person who both my friend Jim Murphy and I knew from the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor, Mi., who expressed to Murphy and me his view that Baraka and the performance were "unAmerican" in some crazy sense. This made me love Canada and doubt another American propagandist. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/nyregion/remembering-an-activist-with-politics-and-poetry.html?_r=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INOSIjtCRt4

Trumpet-man Roy Campbell died recently. He was often a member of William Parker's ensemble. Their collaborations began in 1978. Roy Campbell studied with the great Lee Morgan. And like his mentor was of the fire-this-time school of trumpet masters. I only heard Roy Campbell once in person. I heard Roy with Peter Brötzmann, William Parker, and Hamid Drake at the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor. Trumpet-men like Roy Campbell are rare now - too many slick-men; not enough Campbell and Tolliver trumpet-men.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8Q-eH93NA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Eet937d4I

Sun Ra - Purple Shades: "A story that humanity needs to know about."

In Memorium: Douglas P. Kalish

As a young man I was introduced to Sun Ra's music visually. Discount Records in the early, fabulous '60s was located on the ground floor of the Book Cadillac Hotel, at Michigan Ave. and Washington Blvd., in downtown Detroit. Each year Discount Records had an annual storewide Christmas sale. For a number of Christmas holidays I worked as a temporary employee at the main US Post Office at Michigan Ave. and Trumbull St., not far from Tiger Stadium. One afternoon, on my way to my post office gig, I stopped in Discount Records to get an idea of what I'd spend my Postal Service earnings on - I worked solely for the certain benefits of Discount Records' Christmas sale.
   In the Jazz section of the store there was a very well-dressed, tweedy, horned-rimed man examining a Sun Ra vinyl recording with a purple jacket. Today my image of the holder of the Sun Ra disc comports with what I imagine the New Yorker's Whitney Balliet looked like - see his photograph on the vinyl Impulse recording of the concert that he produced featuring the greats Henry 'Red' Allen and Charles Ellsworth 'Pee Wee' Russell.  I conjecture that the Sun Ra album I saw was either "Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy" or "Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow" (circa 1961-1963). I should note that many of Ra's album covers are in purple - my favorite color too.
   I don't recall when it was that I first heard Sun Ra's music. It was probably on Bud Spangler's fabulous program on Wayne State University's then great radio station WDET-FM. I may have seen Sun Ra's Space Arkestra at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival; we were so far removed from the stage that we couldn't discern what or who was going on.  A few years ago I did  hear the Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen at Joel Peterson's National Bohemian venue. Sun Ra had already taken to the Space Ways by then; he died in 1993.
   I had been thinking about Duke Ellington and his music recently and this led me to think about Sun Ra's music. And this time of year is a period when I think about times' past and people that I've known and music that I've listened to that has affected, and continues to affect, me. There is a direct connection between Sun Ra's world and Duke Ellington's world - the musical worlds of both men. If one knows something about Duke Ellington's music and his musical life, the 58 minute You Tube presentation of the BBC-4 production entitled "Brother From Another Planet" is a vivid account of what it means to be a creative musician in America. Ellington and Sun Ra worked at their craft - inventing music and leading their bands - all the time. The link to the BBC program is second item listed below. While this program is devoted to Sun Ra, one could (in essentials) substitute the professional lives of Duke Ellington or Count Basie. What the program shows is how much work it was to create Sun Ra's music and how devoted Sun Ra and his musicians were to the music. Our Detroit/Ann Arbor friend, John Sinclair - the poet and most everything else - is featured in the BBC program along with Amiri Baraka, Archie Shepp, and John Szwed, author of Space Is The Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. The third link below concerns the Jackie McLean documentary, Jackie McLean on Mars. It is very interesting and connects with Sun Ra and the musician's life in America in many interesting and painful ways.
   I sat down this afternoon to write a holiday piece on my favorite holiday music. Each year at this time I make recordings for my friends, one or two CDs, of music that fits my current holiday mood. To be up front I'll note that my favorite Christmas music consists of Charles Brown's "Merry Christmas Baby" - best Christmas song ever, Babs Gonzales', "Be-Bop Santa Claus", and everything included in Billie Holiday's recording Lady In Satin. The last item takes care of the new year too. The ultimate holiday film, taking care of Thanksgiving and everything else, is Woody Allen's Hanna and Her Sisters. The scene in the record store is precious showing the album covers of the great Cleveland and Detroit tenor saxophonists Ernie Krivida and Yusef Lateef.
   After you've been spiritually awakened by the three items linked below, spend some time with Hanna and Her Sisters.
 



http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2007/02/ave_whitney_balliett.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A74bjt0yGDc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ap1HJ8Cd4M 

Asteroid-Time, Jellyfish, and "Naked"

I don't bother with most recent movies, film, cinemá, or (especially) film reviews and film criticism. My distrust of film results from my distrust of visual phenomena. Mine eyes evolved to read books. I listen to music in complete darkness, visual goings-on are distractions. I've not always been blind to the movies. Indeed, even today black-and-white films shown by TCM on TV captivate me. But the TCM films are to my mind akin to listening to music in the dark; they, like music, appeal to that which is unseen, to something deeper, to something that remains after discounting the soundtrack and banal dialogue, a fixed-point of the mind's eye. In other words 'feeling' and 'understanding'. If you go to The Guardian link below and watch the 4+ minute film clip from the film Naked, you'll get the idea that I'm trying to get next to. What brought this on?

I'll get back to you.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/nov/18/how-we-made-naked#start-of-comments