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AllenLowe
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Posts posted by AllenLowe
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I've been worried about the same thing; will have to give him a call.
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I was lucky enough to hear Ware in person once, with Monk around 1969. Though it was a long time ago, I can really remember his sound; I would say he played a lot of roots and fifths (from what i remember) and his time and sound just gave him a presence, hard to describe, and I don't think the recordings are quite the same. He was a mess, tried to borrow money from me, which I didn't do (I had about 10 dollars in my pocket and had to get home).
As for Ron Carter, for some reason I have never liked his playing, his sound. Once Dick Katz said to me "I don't want to listen to Ron Carter and his booming bass," and at that I realized what I didn't like. The sound was just a thick mass to me the few times I saw him in person, and it lacked the more subtle soul of other bass players whom I liked better.
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I'm sorry, there's no way we can excuse this kind of abusive behavior by Jacquet, no matter how great he was. Obviously I am not of that stature but I've been leading good-sized bands in complex musical situations for about 35 years and I would never treat anyone like that, and I have had a few difficult - and more than difficult - sideman. You don't like 'em? You fire 'em. And there is even less excuse for Jacquet, who was a well-paid star; if I can handle low-pay and no-pay gigs with obnoxious club owners, Jacquet can act like a grown up (and honestly, he wasn't that great a tenor player anyway; I always preferred his alto). This is part of the dues you pay as a leader. Patience, you suck it up, and you handle multiple personalities with care and diplomacy.
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honestly I am not sure this is really such a significant find, being as there were many such figures in various places in the USA, and we have no documentation of what the music was like (and 1919 is really not that early in terms of our knowledge of pre-jazz, given the work that has been done on Jelly Roll Morton, Sweatman, Europe, others). I will re-read the story, though, since I've been rushing around.
One thing also - William Pierson has pointed out that the original Klan dress was modeled on African examples of tribal dress. I wonder if these hooded riders were similar in reference and intent.
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I will speak as someone who has written thousands of words of liner notes, some of which I might indeed reprint in a book some day. So yes, it would bug me if someone reproduced those notes without permission - and btw, Fair Use involves a very limited use of material, not complete reproduction.
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I honestly think this session is a major disappointment, though not a major surprise.
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my feeling is that Webster at this point was all breath.
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Roswell Rudd told me that Shepp is so famous in France that people were naming their babies after him.
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Muriel Winston is actually pretty good - and she sounds more than a little bit like Abbey Lincoln.
And that one track above by Hassan is extraordinary - and shows a very surprising Lenny Tristano influence.
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I have read it, very nice piece. The ONLY thing I would suggest is that, even after all of these years, there is a somewhat misguided sense of Armstrong's importance as a great innovator of melody and rhythm - which he was; but I think his innovations, especially in the early years - 1925-1940 - are much more radically modernist, as I have posted before. He was, accidentally or not, exactly in tune with the new modernism of Dada, of Joyce, of new theater like King Ubu. His was a radical restructuring of traditional and recognizable elements, ingenious reordered so that the effect was of something both strange and familiar at the same time -
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1 hour ago, Mark Stryker said:
Cover story in the latest issue of the Nation.
Ethan peruses this site regularly, and then gets mad when I don't defend him. So in case he is watching, let me say I intend to read this article and enjoy it, whether I like it or not.
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I have no problem saying that, based on this one recording, Sleet (a druggie who died of cancer in 1986) is one of the best trumpeters I have ever heard. I have no idea how I missed this guy:
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On 10/28/2023 at 6:12 PM, danasgoodstuff said:
Given that I love Sonny, it would be easy to overreact to this. Suffice to say I respect your opinion but don't agree. I find Rollins work to be both uneven throughout his career and all of a piece. He always struggled to get his mojo working in the moment and always tried many different approaches to get there. And I enjoy his later work more than many even as I acknowledge that it has issues but struggling with them can be an artistic statement of its own. He could be guarded and was not immune to getting hung up in any number of ways, but to me there is always something very human in his playing that I just love for that very reason. I even love his playing on the Stones' Tattoo You, certainly better than Miles' cameo with Scritti Politti.
I figured my opinion would be counter to the general sense of things here; but I will tell you, listen to his 1964 recording of the album Now's the Time, and think about whether anything he has done in the last 40 years even comes close to what he was doing back then. I think it's a huge loss for jazz; on the other hand, he wouldn't be the first artist who did unbelievably important work, and then stalled out. Think Ralph Ellison, for one. It doesn't alter Sonny's legacy, which is gargantuan.
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9 hours ago, Gheorghe said:
A wonderful record, is this the one that has Don Pullen´s "Double Arc Jane" ? And a blues with Adams´ vocal very similar to the "Devil Blues" on a Mingus album ?
I heard the band shortly after Mingus´ death. I was still so shocked from the news of Mingus ´ death . But the band was fantastic. But it´s terrible that with the exception of Cameron Brown all three died early, just in their 50´s .Recently I listened to his last Steeplechase album "Bitin´ the Apple" which is the greatest, due to the fantastic rhythm section of Barry Harris, Sam Jones and Al Foster. And I think Dexter´s playing on it is the most enthusiastic.
I think that decades ago I also bought two of his mid 70´s Steeplechase albums, one with Horace Parlan on piano, and one with Tete Montoliu on piano. What I remember about Tete is, that otherwise than his dozens of gigs with Dexter in the sixties (Dexter in Radioland) he has a very modal style here, completly different than 10 years earlier. I love modal style, but didn´t expect it from Tete.
Bud´s playing on this one, together with the "Blakey in Paris" , "Hawk in Germany" and "Mingus at Antibes" is in my opinion the greatest Bud of the decade, and maybe also among the greatest Bud ever.
It seems that if someone had forgotten to dope him with that psychopharmaca "Largathyl" , he felt free from the debilating effect of the medication and got back to his old great form. The only thing why I prefer the other mentioned top Bud performances is the better stuff from the drums. Bud with Blakey, Klook or Richmond just goes better for my ears. But he was such a genius and loner that he somehow went on his own and just burned at the piano. Like on "All God´s Chillun" which I think is the best version I ever heard played by him.Maybe "Evidence" would have needed more gettin inside the rhythmic aspect of the tune. I think, if Bud would have heard it more often on Monks record and would have had a drummer who KNOWS that tune would have done better. Though "Evidence" is based on "Just You Just Me", you just can´t use it as only a blowing vehicle on the "Just You Just Me" chords.....
It´s interesting that there is less ballad playing on those two swiss recordings. I think I remember a great version of "Midnight" , and the eternal "I Remember Clifford" which seems to be on each of the later Bud Powell albums.....
I have to confess, I remastered that for a Japanese label which then refused it, so I put it out myself. Interesting CD.
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we should note that Sonny Rollins himself fired Jim Hall for this same reason, as he was under pressure in the 1960s not to have whites in his band.
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1 hour ago, Mark Stryker said:
I am very interested but I have a feeling Sonny still holds almost everything back. The most insightful thing I have ever heard about him was about 30 years ago from Jamil Nasser who said that Sonny early eccentricities - the bridge, the mohawk, the sabbiticals - were expressed when Coltrane ascended and really usurped Sonny's tenor dominance. Jamil felt that all of this was just a way of his trying to reassert his popularity, that it was random, aimless, and somewhat pointless. I tend to agree, to whit: right after this time he did his best playing ever, some of the best playing in the history of jazz (say, 1962-1968) before turning to what I would call (and this is not a popular opinion) an over-ripe, neo-pop style with a newly-dominant (and noisy) rhythm section, culminating in years and years of good but unfocused playing. At this point (yes, in my personal opinion) he just decided he was going to be popular, and though there were real, live sparks of what he could do, his body of work just ended up as - a body of work, inconsistent, crowded with empty performances (of both his and the band's). There is almost a weirdly disturbing hint of distorted ego in all of this, and I remember being really disgusted with his interivews in that movie (G-Man?) where, along with Lucille, everything seems almost totally self directed. And the rest was a kind of sordid artistic journey from nowhere to nothing.
Sorry, that's how I feel. Sonny is one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, and genuinely nice guy to boot, and personally he has had a dominating effect on my own playing and musical approach; but he could still have been wildly popular and made plenty of money if he had learned how to be dispassionately self-critical (instead of doing so in a more radically self-rejecting way, as indicated by one passage I saw quoted). He has/had the right to do otherwise, and more power to him, but it doesn't mean we cannot evaluate his work realistically.
So....I guess what I am saying is that I would be interested in the notebooks if they reflect a real inside look instead of one that, under the guise of telling all, is really still very sanitized, even if in a way that is deep and very carefully encoded.
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32 minutes ago, jlhoots said:
For some reason this reminds me of (some of) Norman Mailer's writing.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1353950503Mailer_WhiteNegro.pdf
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38 minutes ago, tranemonk said:
What do you mean by "personal racial self-consciousness?" I think I understand but I want to make sure I'm not guessing wrong.
Pepper made frequent comments about his whiteness, many of them indicating a strong personal sensitivity at being considered less "authentic" because of his race.
28 minutes ago, JSngry said:People change.
Absolutely, but not necessarily for the better.
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I have gone through five stages with later Art Pepper:
1) I met and spent time with him when he came to Boston on his comeback tour, loved the guy, escorted him around town, and thought he was fantastic that night, though I noticed some oddness to his playing. He gave me a few copies of his current LPs which took me to
2) being frustrated with the recordings. He seemed to be working too hard to sound "contemporary" in a sort of post-early Coltrane way. A lot of stops and starts that just were dull in their ineffective tonal tangents. A "scream" here, a pounded note there, as though he was telling people "yes I have heard jazz in the last 20 years and here is my interpretation." But he was always best when he changed back to his linear style which, as with that night in Boston, had intensified and focused itself in profound ways. But it never lasted; I could not listen to these LPs, which bored and frustrated me; so
3) I stopped listening. There was just too much wrong with his current approach, which had substituted a kind of emotional self-expose while losing the true intensity of linear development. It was raw but it was not really revealing or indicative of any true artistic epiphany, but then....
4) Some years later I went back and started listening again, to the Vanguard CDs, another with Duke Jordan, and I heard moments of real personal revelation, so I started listening again, enjoying myself until....
5) His personal history and artistic mis-advantures just started to repeat themselves; blues cliches substituting for real expression (and I do wonder if some of his personal racial self consciousness was starting to act in artistically self destructive ways), the same retreat into false tonal and harmonic exploration, just a weird kind of near-narcissistic emotional self-abuse. And now listening to a clip from one of these sessions, I feel like I cannot listen any more.
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55 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:
I always appreciate your honest commentary
I was at a gig last night. 3 short sets by 3 groups. Mostly very young. Incredibly loud and very energetic. First trio was Chuck Roth on guitar, Ron Anderson on electric bass & James Paul Nadian on drums. Best and loudest of the groups despite that the older dude who played last night was the weakest. Anderson is a fine bassist but Chuck & James brought the heat. But hard to really know the depth of this or the other sets. But seeing these sets is invigorating. Will be great to see them grow. Key is allow silence & softer passages. Usually happens with dedication. Will see more experienced musicians Thursday.
Nadien is a terrific drummer; I will be recording with him in January.
Very curious as to who the weak link was (older dude). It wasn't me.
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sounds great. As this is Organissimo, I doubt a lot of members will show up (actually one showed up at our Kingston gig, which was really nice).
Would be there if I could.
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Sounds more like Shrinking Ears. With some exceptions, they are really stuck in a rut, as is most of what we used to call the "New Music" scene.
Jon Batiste? Is he going to do one of his awful pop things?
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1 hour ago, JSngry said:
I would think it possible that the sheer joy that Clifford Brown brought would be grounds for Max to keep a forward momentum as Bird went ahead to the exit lane.
I also think that there were those who had known him long enough for whom Bird's death was an inevitability, not an if but just a win.
As far as the film itself, my only real beef was the non-mention of the 70s quartets, especially the one with Billy Harper. There used to be live club footage of that band up on YouTube that was simply incendiary.
they don't discuss any of his groups in the '80s or '90s except M'Boom. And there are other errors, which didn't hurt my appreciation of the documentary, but which were significant and a bit shocking. The worst being that there is no real explanation of WHY his style was so revolutionary and important.
Dave Brubeck Quartet - Live from the Northwest, 1959
in New Releases
Posted
to me Brubeck's playing was the equivalent of a card dealer who just kept shuffling the deck, over and over again, and never actually dealt the cards. It drove me nuts.
Though it did inspire a new tune we just recorded for our Louis Armstrong project called:
"Shufflin' the Deck: Take Five (Please)"