AllenLowe

IMHO dont't miss the late 1940s (early 1950s?) stuff and the recordings on electric - brilliant accomodation to bebop - despite what has been said otherwise -

you gotta love Django - one of the true certifiable geniuses of jazz - and a nice disrupter of certain sociological assumptions about the playing of jazz -

well, there are different issues of aging - Barry Harris is a much more profound pianist at 75 than he was at 30, though he was great even than. Max Roach, however, lost his way as he tried to emulate younger drummers; he became stiff and unswinging. Even Al Haig, in his 50s, , was not the player he was in his 20s; he at times spent too much effort trying to sound contemporary, and wandered from the style at which he was best. Similar issue with Art Pepper, who was great unless he was thinking about Coltrane. Coleman Hawkins grew as a tenor saxophonist (before his very last sad years). Dexter Gordon changed for the better, than got too stoned to care. Personally I think I have better taste at 50 than I had at 20, it's just hard getting the damned walker onto the stage -

to parpahrase an old joke, it's in the groove -

didn't vandermark win one of those McArthur's?

whatever happened to Chuck Nessa? Seems like his and his brother Elliot's crime fighting days are over -

what, no "Hot Dog"?

they shouldn't have executed the trio, even if they did give some secrets to the Russians (actually, I think it was a duo) -

YAAAAAWWWWNNN - anybody up yet? You guys have got me interested - isn't there some record company out there that can issue an anthology of post-1980s Chicago bands? sounds like it's needed -

I'd be very interested to see Clapton again in this context - I've always thought his weakness, even on the old Cream Records, was rhythm,or, really, a lack of rhythmic imagination (as opposed to Peter Green or Mike Bloomfield); I'm particulary alarmed at the way he plays now, because all the fire seems to have gone out of his music. He played better when he was on the junk -

Actually, I was amazed by how much the music in Catch Me If You Can sounded like Teo Macero -

when I lived in New Haven there was a tree in a local park on which someone claimed to have seen the image of Jesus weeping. I wanted to get a posse of Jews and chop it down - I figured, we killed their lord, might as well get their tree, too -

well, it's been so many years since I last saw her - let the lawyers worry about it -

yes - I did some checking around - she was quite an admirer of Monk, as a matter of fact she's the one who came up with the term High Priest of Bebop -

well, here goes - moderators please delete if this will cause problems - I knew the bass player Curley Russell in the middle-late 1970s - he was telling me, one time, about what an incredibly nice guy the owner of Bluenote records was. "Man," Curley said, "he was so nice that he once caught his wife giving a ****job to Monk in his car, and he didn't even say a thing to her!" Well, a few years go by. I 'm sitting at a table with a bunch of people, including Lorraine Gordon, at the West End Cafe. Conversation goes around. Somebody says, "hey, did you know Lorraine used to be married to the guy who owned Bluenote Records?" I had to to leave the table until I could stop giggling. It was hard to look at her in the same way after that -

well, Lorraine is a character. I got to know her a little bit when she was managing Jabbo Smith. I have one story about her which is absolutely hilarious, but I won't tell it unless someone can guarantee that she doesn't read this site -

by the way, my post, above, was not to take issue with Larry but with the sense, indicated earlier, that a young audience insures that a music will remain vital -

Larry's post makes me want to travel to Chicago to hear these guys - because, and I've discussed this with him in emails, I've gotten a little jaded about the new music/free jazz scene - this, however, is based primarily on recordings I've listened to after reading articles in the Wire and Signals to Noise - I just have this feeling that there is a generation out there that has learned to talk the talk but not really play the music - lots of learned rhetoric on sound and sonority and theory, and lots of cliched playing. And I know I'm an old guy now and out of touch (and in the way) but I believe I understand all aspects of the spectrum, having played it all and having recorded with a few new music luminaries (Hemphill, Rudd, Byron, Murray) and having played or recorded with a few of the older generation (Walter Bishop, Doc Cheatham)- the fact that the young audience likes all of this does not mean it's good - those young 'uns also like Niels Cline (a leading bs'er in my opinion) and Brittany Spears -

wasn't Capitol using three track in the 1950s?

I've worked my way up from nothing, to a state of extreme poverty -

this is one area in which Sudhalter has it right - read his chapter on Mole in Lost Chords - some of Miff's late work is astonishingly modern -

Aleman's quite a guitarist; I only get a little edgy when people say he's in the same league as Django.

I thought we were talking about Mrs. Miller, who is one of my personal favorites -

I played with Sparks at a jam session in Bridgeport, Connecituct, early 1990s. I knew some of his playing from records, but what amazed me in person was what a great bebop player he was. He was incredible -

yes, absolutely right - Evans used to come up on weekends to Branford Connecticut and lock himself in his room up in their house - his method of injestion was the classic junkie one, reminding me of what Lenny Bruce was supposed to have said when the cops broke into his room and found needles: Bruce: I never take anything stronger than aspirin. Cop: Than why all the needles? Bruce: I can't stand the taste of the stuff.