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AllenLowe

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Posts posted by AllenLowe

  1. On 9/11/2023 at 2:48 PM, JSngry said:

    You're probably in the majority here actually...and I find that to be a bit (or more) of a gross oversimplification. Very 20th Century thinking, the rush to close the door and have a soundbite. 

    I think he was disenchanted with the state of the world in general more than anything about Coltrane. I don't think he was that myopic about his life. 

    After his last return, he played almost 50 years uninterrupted. That's hardly "adrift". And between the records and the bootlegs, there is more than a little great playing to be had. There's also plenty of unsatisfying work as well, but "adrift" is in no way accurate. 

    Time for a new narrative, one based on specifics instead of hasty, overly simplified generalizations.  

    well, ask Larry Kart what he thinks of late Sonny. Nothing "20th century" about my observation, or oversimplified - just the opposite. I probably saw him perform 5 times in that period (always hoping he would unload that awful rhythm section) and have listened to countless live videos. This was based on observation and hours of listening. Nothing "soundbite" about it. I find Sonny to be the most frustrating performer of my lifetime.

  2. 1 hour ago, JSngry said:

    East Broadway Rundown, the tune, is just a blues. 

    I think he was more uncomfortable with life in general. How long after this was it that he quit altogether? 

    probably around this time - but that sabbatical itself was probably related to post-Coltrane insecurity. And truthfully, after 1968 he was never the same. I am in a minority here, but to me he spent the rest of his musical career adrift; became very famous, but musically nothing was happening except in brief, disconnected spurts that showed the old flame, but always flickered out. 

  3. I just want to add a note about my complaint that Sonny, on some of those EBR cuts, sounds meandering. Sonny is particularly interesting in this way - most horn players, feeling uninspired, will just break through everything and do it - I mean, if I am having a bad night I will just start with what I know and see if I can add to it - and even if I don't, truthfully, audiences usually don't realize it. But I am on an entirely different level altogether.

    Sonny is different; if he is having trouble finding what he is looking for, he will pause as though waiting it out. One of the most interesting things about him at his best is that he - like Monk for example - always sounds like he is really working and thinking and composing in real time (as Paul Bley called improvisation). Sonny doesn't coast, he's either got it or he doesn't. And when he doesn't, you can usually tell. He doesn't put it out there unless he is really feeling it. and his greatness has to do with the fact that, at least until maybe 1966, he felt it more often than not. Jazz is a music that eats itself alive, so quickly does it consume its own ideas, new and old. So, we should be grateful that Sonny exists, but we should also be aware that he is often telling us, in his own private way, that he is figuratively on pause until something new comes to mind and allows him to move forward. I honestly think that he was not altogether comfortable playing in an "open" manner, and his hesitation in these solos shows this.

  4. much as I love Sonny, I find this record unsatisfying; years ago Jamil Nasser told me that in this period he thought Sonny was desperately trying to deal with that fact that Coltrane had overtaken him in terms of influence. Jamil told me he thought this is why Sonny started resorting to attention-getting gimmicks like playing on the bridge. Now, in other contexts, this was a time of prime Sonny (hence his live stuff on youtube from Denmark and the RCA stuff.) On most of the E.B. Rundown project he seems to me to be flailing around in search of relevance, working hard to restore his place in the modernist pantheon. The result is meandering solos that never really show anything other than a desire for "relevance." Or, as Paul Bley said to me once, "we didn't need Sonny to play free; we needed him to play standards." And even on We Kiss in a Shadow he never seems to really get started.

    I hesitate to give my above opinion, assuming someone will tell me I am just jealous or some such other nasty irrelevance. It's just the way I hear this album, which I bought near the time it came out and never really liked.

    (and by the way, my opinion is born out by the fact that Sonny did not really stick with this format; even Our Man in Jazz was mostly - maybe all - standards.)

  5. what's left:

    Ahmad Jamal  The Complete Collection  Part 1 1951-1959   8 Albums, 4 CDs, still sealed. $20 shipped media USA

    Anthony Braxton Live Montreaux 1975 BMG     $15 shipped media USA

    • Thelonius Monk Quartet Complete 1966 Geneva Concer
    • Bonus tracks: Live at the Bluenote with Ernie Henry (sound on these is so-so) Solar $23 shipped USA Media 

    Sonny Rollins The Complete RCA Victor Recordings 6 CDs $33 shipped USA media

    Wes Montgomery Back on Indiana Ave STILL SEALED Resonance $13 shipped USA Media

    Bill Evans in England In  STILL SEALED  Resonance $13 shipped USA Media

    Albert Ayler The Copenhagen Tapes  Ayler Records $13 shipped USA Media

    My paypal is allenlowe5@gmail.com

  6. Strangely, in my opinion, Kenton was no more inconsistent than Ellington was. At his best he was superb (remember the Graettinger recordings, which are epochal). Plus there is a Gene Roland piece, kind of like a country/train in the distance blues piece (I cannot remember the name) which is probably one of maybe 5 great jazz down-home blues performances, and I mean down home.

    Here it is:

     

  7. Age, near-death (recently had another cancer scare; biopsy showed no malignancy) have made me decide to take some big steps toward divesting my CD collection. Most of the jazz is going to the Los Angeles Jazz Institute, but I am also selling off various things, mostly (but not all) jazz.

    So I start with the following (all CDs)

    Ahmad Jamal  The Complete Collection  Part 1 1951-1959   8 Albums, 4 CDs, still sealed. $20 shipped media USA

    Anthony Braxton Live Montreaux 1975 BMG     $15 shipped media USA

    • Thelonius Monk Quartet Complete 1966 Geneva Concer
    • Bonus tracks: Live at the Bluenote with Ernie Henry (sound on these is so-so) Solar $23 shipped USA Media 

    Sonny Rollins The Complete RCA Victor Recordings 6 CDs $33 shipped USA media

    Hassan Ibn Ali Solo Recordings   2 CDs  Omnivore    $13 shipped USA Media

    Wes Montgomery Back on Indiana Ave STILL SEALED Resonance $13 shipped USA Media

    Bill Evans in England In  STILL SEALED  Resonance $13 shipped USA Media

    Albert Ayler The Copenhagen Tapes  Ayler Records $13 shipped USA Media

    My paypal is allenlowe5@gmail.com

     

     

  8. 29 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

    Are you referring to the "Band That Never Was" rehearsal sessions that were released on Spotlite?  I find them very interesting and indeed something where you wonder what this "could have been if only ... ". But I've always been curious about obscurities like these that fill the gaps of jazz history (like the recordings by Henry Jerome and others in that vein).
    As for the "Swingin' Friends" LP I mentioned (which was a pickup band for this one session), just listen in here and see for yourself: ;)

    FWIW, I just noticed some fairly "rave" reviews of it on the internet (on Allmusic and Jazzwax) so maybe this is one of those that need a couple of relistens to be fully appreciated? ;)

    But at any rate, this is OT here.

    FWIW I love that album; Gene Roland was a major talent. Dan Morgenstern originally told me about him.

  9. 5 hours ago, Niko said:

    this is her son, Doug DeMontmorency, apparently a skateboarder of note [I am completely clueless on this topic], he tells quite a bit about his youth with her in the 1960s

    http://www.endlesslines.free.fr/ghost/ghostpages/ghostdougdemont1vo.htm

    going by this page on familysearch which mentions a woman named variously Betty Stitt, Betty Staufenberg and Kalina de Montmorency... and his memories of his mom playing with Stan Getz and Charlie Parker in Greenwich Village... 

    If this identification is correct - which I am pretty sure it is - she lived from 29 April 1926 to 12 February 2007... (and on her 55th birthday, I was born). The name Staufenberg she took in 1951 - so this might the Chicago business man she married as remembered by Bill Crow, most likely one Charles W. Staufenberg Jr, born in 1926, one of their two joint children being Bruce V Staufenberg of Montecito CA

    thanks, and I am thrilled you found a recording where she takes a full piano solo. Obviously very talented, not quite fully developed musically, but getting there. She was a terrific singer, as on Gone With The Wind.

  10. 1 hour ago, chris said:

    A quick followup: I discovered that the Strong Songs podcast has focused on two songs, and I think the episodes are excellent at delving into some of the intricacies of the songs:

    I hope they do more!

    I don't know if it's what you are thinking about but my project, Turn Me Loose White Man, has two books and 30 CDs, and is a breakdown and analysis of over 800 songs from the history of American vernacular music, 1900-1960. It's got virtually every style of music in it.

  11. 8 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

    Carl Elmer aka Ziggy Elmer? (Not to be confused with the namesakish trumpet Elman) He was singled out in the liner notes of several of the LPs I mentioned and was praised on the Hep LP.
     

    that's the guy. Great player.

    42 minutes ago, JSngry said:

    Harry James found a way to have enough demand for his product to keep a working band together for several decades. He didn't do it by ignoring his past, but he also didn't do it by being trapped by it either.

    A bit of a difficult balancing act! 

     

    James's soloing is a very interesting, I think, amalgamation of Armstrong and Eldridge; a little florid at times, but really fine work.

    I want to post this, though it is slightly off topic - it does show how well Harry James played and was regarded by fellow musicians with less commercial cache even early on -

    Buck Clayton, t / Vernon Brown, tb / Earl Warren, as / Jack Washington, as, bar / Herschel Evans, ts / Jess Stacy, p / Walter Page, sb / Jo Jones, d. New York, January 5, 1938

     

  12. 2 hours ago, JSngry said:

    Seriously, start with the video up above for Harry James. The music is good and the visuals give a really full context for what that band was about.

    And keep in mind that Vegas was their home base for decades. 

    one thing I almost always note - I love that 1950s edition of the James band, and he had a trombonist, Carl Elmer, who I think may be, after Knepper, the best bebop trombonist I have ever heard. You have to search for his solos, but they are great.

  13. Plumb has some interesting sonics. My problem is, you've heard David Murray once, well, you've pretty much heard what he can do. And Questlove sounds like a drum machine.

  14. Paul  Oliver was a smart guy and a decent writer, but just lacked - a certain creative spark in his blues work.

    And I will say something self-serving; my blues collection Really the Blues? with accompanying book is a far better examination and explanation of the blues than anything else out there; the field is rife with fans who really cannot write.

    I plan, if I live that long, to put the CD set that goes with it on Bandcamp, and then just sell the book. But I think the book hangs pretty well by itself.

  15. 1 hour ago, Michael Weiss said:

     

    it's interesting to hear how musicians loosen up when playing "live" as opposed to recording. Particular Hardman here. And I don't know if anyone has mentioned it but I've always heard a similarity, tone-wise, between Cook and Booker Ervin.

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