AllenLowe

agree completely; I have to admit I was somewhat relieved.

I wrote a whole book on the blues, inspired by a nasty little argument I had, in person, with Wynton. It's a large and wondrous subject, long on detail, short on insight. I am thinking I will go back and revisit the manuscript now that I can (sorta) see clearly.

ah, you're all just jealous because Sonny Clark wouldn't record with you - yeah, I'm kidding - as I said before I think he's a fine, lyrical pianist but I wish instead they would reissue Twardzik or Elmo Hope, or a bunch of others - maybe weirdly and previously dispersed Bud Powell, the bits and pieces spread all over bootlegs and other sources. I still think Bud is the most illuminating and profound musician who ever decided to play jazz. Digression, I know. But I am at the age where I need to downsize, and if I bring another jazz box near the house my wife will change the locks.

this is very good and illuminating - though I will say that a lot of the word play you find in Hank Williams is probably related to black language; and I guess I should reiterate that it is not the blues per se that populates the music I tend to prefer, but a certain basis in black speech and rhythm, really (probably) a pre-blues sense of African American world play. I was helped to come to this conclusion by reading through certain collections of black lyrics like those of Talley and Newman White, Howard Odum and Dorothy Scarborough - much if not most of which pre-dates the blues but which had a great impact on its (the blues') sources. Also, early country music (pre-1935) is filled with an amazing mix of blues, proto-blues and minstrel songs with deep roots in black musical sources.

I spent a lot of my “youth” disagreeing with Wynton and with Stanley Crouch about the primacy of the blues in jazz; it seemed almost like an authoritarian dictate, that the music had to sound one way or another. And the more research I did into American music the more the blues seemed to be more effect then cause, meaning it was less a cause of black music and jazz etc then the end result of certain black musical practices, which did indeed have a powerful impact historically and continuously on just about every jazz musician, black and white. To support my beliefs I thought of players like Earl Hines, who was not, formally, a great blues player but whose phrasing was clearly from an African-American musical tradition. My ultimate rationale was that Hines reflected practices which were much older than the blues but were clearly black (and I would suggest that to understand them we need to look at the African American sanctified church, which was going through radical changes at the beginning of the 20th century). So, not to get too heavily into that argument, I was initially, in my disagreement, inspired by people like Paul Bley, a great improviser whose whole method of phraseology and tonality were clearly “Jazz” but not in the least, I thought, “blue”. And then some time passed, I got older and started playing a lot more, and became impatient with styles of performance that seemed to me bland and somewhat colorless - until it became clear to me that what I missed in such things was a certain kind of rhythm and cadence which was not only very much rooted in African-American style but also frequently had a Blues - or was it black?- origin to it. Was I just getting older and more conservative? I also should note that there were/are clearly such musical distinctions between the 60s Avent garde and today’s crop. I think of Ornette of course and also Albert Ayler, Roswell Rudd, the whole ESP crew like Noah Howard, or Marion Brown and Archie Shepp. There is/was clearly to my ears a “blackness” to Shepp’s playing, for one example, missing in much of today’s free jazz sonic world. And I don’t like it I have to admit, I have trouble listening to it for any length of time. Bley was different, possibly because his playing was so rooted in traditional triadic harmony, but even some of his later work set my mind to wandering. I want to hear that post African-American phraseology, the spacial relationship of what many people call, ideologically, blue or blues connotation. So I play that way myself, and tend to be a bit bored with players who don’t, and I tend to hire players who have that same feeling and orientation. And then I continuously worry that I am far out of touch, just another old guy slinking into the sunset. And so I was wondering about other people here, and how they react to these sounds and trends and what I consider to be a radical dichotomy in Jazz and the typical improviser’s musicianship.

Thank you for saying that. Yes it means we can disagree without throwing too much mud on each other. And though I disagree, I understand your position on Mary. This could end up like one of those 1950s arguments about structuralism and formalism, which though important tend to put everyone to sleep, as they would everybody else here. And for the record, I met her once probably 20 years ago and we’ve never discussed any collaboration.

I hope it doesn't merge my posts, though I suspect it will; these are from In the Dark. The first is Innuendo in Blue, a composed piece with free solos by me, Ken Peplowski, Aaron Johnson, Lewis Porter and Kellen Hannas. We are building an imaginative construct from an idea of Ellington. Peplowski in particular might surprise you here: This is our official video; a humorous fusion of stock footage with an astoundingly evocative solo by Aaron Johnson; no other horn player today could have taken this melody and embellished it in such a powerful and imaginative way (both these compositions are mine). Of course the reference is Johnny Hodges, the solo is completely free:

I don't have a goal, per se, except to clarify my own position as a saxophonist and composer; and I say immodestly that the work my group has done on our last 2 projects is a reasonable alternative to the prevailing modes of open playing, as a way of integrating composition and a good deal of freedom. I can post some of the things we have done a bit later, but the best compliments I have gotten were that I "had reinvented free jazz;" that my work was "a wakeup call from the avant garde" (Jonathan Lethem) and, according to Anthony Braxton, "Allen Lowe is one of the few musicians doing anything new....Allen Lowe IS the tradition." I think that what we are doing is important though it is an uphill struggle for recognition. this is high school level guitar; no better than what I do in those two pieces: or this; amateurism posing as anti-orthodoxy:

Give me a few hours and I will provide a musical example.

I hear a lot of open improvisation as just dull and formulaic gestures- and i define it as improvisation over unplanned tonal centers. It can sound good and coherent but it is no longer interesting to me unless it is part of a shaped, compositionally-based performance, a narrative in the broadest possible sense, one that draws upon ideas that have not only a sense of inevitability but also a coherent relationship to composition. But most of what I hear is taking the easy way out, substituting glib aesthetic philosophy for real imagination. It’s a formalist trap, as though formal rationale, intelligently stated, means the music is the same. It is lazy, like stringing together random sentences and calling it a novel because it shadows, philosophically, the literary form, meets some kind of broader intellectual rationale. It is a failure of imagination, and I see musicians over and over who are like little kids who have discovered a certain kind of freedom without accepting any responsibility for the conceptual implications of producing thd work. I find it, again, irresponsible, an abdication of self. The particular performance above is my example - though not sticking strictly to my criteria, the guitarist is me; I hadn’t played the instrument in years, all I did was play around with bits of chords, knowing enough about the instrument to imply certain harmonies. And the truth is that I did it as well as a certain McArthur Genius awardee whom I have heard play this way on many occasions. It was easy and simple. Honestly I could do this kind of thing when I was 15 on both guitar and saxophone but I wouldn’t, as I knew it was an artistic shortcut not worthy of the music.

oh that's fine, to each his own, but I do believe Ornette was a special kind of genius; the melodicism of his solos was something that I can tell you, as the horn player I am, is incredibly inventive; the proof, to me, is that no one has come close to duplicating his style. Another I should have mentioned is Julius Hemphill, who was such a powerful personality that he created his own inimitable frame of of reference. Same, I should add, with Eric Dolphy, as did the others I mentioned in my initial post. But today I just hear too much laziness, too much mannerism. empty improvisational gestures. And today there are players like Aaron Johnson, who is a master at all aspects of improvisation, as well as Ned Ferm, a tenor player living in Denmark.

I love his playing, but the comparison they make on the Mosaic site to Bud Powell is just....silly. To me Clark is part of a different side of that style, like Bobby Timmons and Barry Harris. And on the excerpted version of Bebop, also on the Mosaic site. he plays fine but there are clear moments of difficulty; I mean, how old was he? 20 something? It's not a big deal. But Bud Powell he wasn't, especially at that tempo. And anyway his touch/articulation was clearly different. Though I have to say that, in the big picture, I prefer Elmo Hope, Barry, Duke Jordan, Herbie Nichols, Dick Katz. I find that Clark is ripe with possibility, but something is missing, maybe the development was off due to personal stuff, I don't know.

I honestly think the style, which was liberating initially, has run its course. Here is a mystery guitarist with me on tenor: who is this guitar player? Though based on a blues, the guitarist is playing in an open style, implying the changes in a "free" style: featuring me and the same guitarist: this does not mean that there were not a few great "free" players - I think Ornette and Shepp are good examples; also Roswell Rudd and the Art Ensemble, Roscoe Mitchell, et al; but even Shepp, discussing a period when he was sick and playing poorly, said that "it was free jazz, so no one could tell." I have found ways, I think, to energize the form, to give it an advanced sense of narrative; but the basic format, with the cult following of the form, has become, I truly believe, something of a scam. ......an easy way to deal with performance and repertoire - lazy, formulaic. It is now a matter of being stuck in the kind of repetition that bored these same musicians with bebop.

that's pianist Noah Berman - he has a muscular condition - I don't remember what it's called - and those are to help his hands somehow.

I understand why people like it, but I don't quite agree on the "gospelized" aspect, especially as it represents a very middle class idea of that music - which, once again, is fine, but a little sedate for my tastes. Now if it was gospel of the sanctified church I would feel a bit differently; would love to see the smooth jazzers talking in tongues and rolling in the aisles, going crazy and having religious seizures. THAT would be something to see (or maybe Kenny G dovening and singing cantorial songs).

that's Fuzzy, Boots, Whiskers, Spots, and Frisky.

he was pretty crazy when I met him, but that was the '70s. He kept growling at me. I did hear him play with Duke Jordan around 1975. He played everything about a quarter-tone sharp. The lines were fine, but they were in a, well, different key, on another plane.

substance issues? IIRC he was still playing well in '63.

I love Elmo, but some of his 1960's playing is just not quite up to snuff (as on the Riker's Island session). But compositionally he was always together. I gather that there are no sound samples of this floating around? On the other hand, anything with Sonny Red is worth getting.

sorry, I should have been more clear - I know the book and its format well; it was one of the first jazz books I ever read. What I mean is that the sources of those quotes have no citations, no references to where they came from, and I do know (though I apologize as it has been almost 30 years since I read about it) that the Bird quote was discredited to both my satisfaction and that of PBS/Burns. Which makes me distrustful of the other quotes.

we should note that Jazz Masters of the '40s was actually, in large part, written by the pianist Dick Katz - who was quoted in it at such great length that I think he should have been given co-writer credit.

I would avoid that book - there are no, IIRC, citations and I know that one of its key quotes - Bird explaining how he came up with the idea of using upper chord intervals - was discredited years ago. I honestly don't remember where this was done, but I was able to convince the Burns people not to use it in the jazz series. After that, I would not trust the book in general.

I should probably go back and listen, but I saw this version of Mingus a fair amount in that time and two soloists who I cannot listen to are Ricky Ford (who I don't think is on this) and George Adams. I find Adams to be mannered and annoying, full of bombast with little substance; each solo is basically the same, with some slight harmonic variations. So I will probably avoid this.

Price increase: both cds shipped for $99.95. (this is only for the packaging; if you want the cds also, add $59) Also, there is no shipping. Everything has to picked up at my back door. You have to figure out the address, but be careful; my neighbors believe in open-carry.

I played guitar throughout my years in Maine, and even recorded on it. And I play guitar on two cuts on America: the Rough Cut (was trying to prove a point about how easy it is to play "free" on the instrument; I should win a McArthur for my impersonation). no, the review is here: https://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/2023/04/graded-on-a-curve-new-releases-from-esp-disk/#more-431415