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AllenLowe
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Posts posted by AllenLowe
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I know Grossman is a complicated figure, and the conventional wisdom, based, AFAIK, on recordings, is that after his early years he took up with the style of Sonny Rollins and lost his way. Mark in particular has written well about Grossman's stylistic wanderings, which jibed with what I had heard of his playing - and then - and then - I found a series of live footage on Youtube of him playing "Live on Tokyo" and I would venture to say that now, at least to me, all bets are off. Yes, he has backed off a lot from his Coltrane-ish attitude, and assumed more of a post-bop thing, but on these videos he has gathered it all together and turned it into some of the most comprehensively inventive sorta-bebop playing I have ever heard - but it's really much more. His sound, technique, harmonic grasp, makes these performances some of the best saxophone playing extant after, I would say, 1980 - gone is any real hint of Sonny Rollins mimicking, though of course that influence is still there. Listen to this, just one of several things floating around Youtube from this incredible performance:
where's that guy who said I never like anything? Out torturing flies?
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so when's the reveal? Perspiring minds want to know.
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I will relate a story that Paul Bley told me about when he was playing with this group. There were tunes in which Sonny's playing was so abstract that he seemed like he was trying to lose Hawkins. In these cases Hawkins asked Bley to cue him in for his solos. As for Sonny, I've always thought he was a lot more competitive than he let on in his basic kindness and graciousness. But I have heard a few stories of his attempts to wipe away tenor sax competitors at jam sessions in what I recall were the 1950s in New Jersey (related to me by Bill Triglia). He was not shy about showing other players up.
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16 hours ago, kh1958 said:
No. I just enjoy attending music festivals, and it's a good one in my opinion.
Based on your recent releases, they should have booked you. Dumb move on their part to not do so.
Thanks. I think we'd be good for them. But according to the web site you cannot apply. It's like that old tv show about the Millionaire.
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On 10/3/2023 at 11:10 AM, kh1958 said:
Next Tuesday, October 10th, Big Ears will unveil more than a dozen exciting additions to the 2024 festival lineup. Stay tuned via our newsletter, website, and social media channels for more details!
are you working for the Big Ears fest?
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and now listening to it in the original mix, all is well. I actually think Elvin's drumming is brilliant and brings out something really extra in Duke.
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weird thing is, hearing the balance like this, it feels like the time goes out of whack somewhere in the middle of his solo. I will have to listen to the original.
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6 hours ago, sonnymax said:
From what I gather from other members, no Allen, you are not alone. At the same time, you're probably the only one here who would create a thread to express your hatred of another artist. Certainly not the first time you've done this, and probably not the last. With your vast knowledge and experience, I'd much rather see a thread about musicians you really admire, artists you think I should check out. Larry K does this from time to time, and I appreciate his efforts. Then again, curmudgeons are gonna curmudge. Too bad.
1) I've written 5 books, at least, and mastered/restored about 2,000 songs that say otherwise. History of jazz, rock and roll, American music, and the blues. All with explanations, historical background, rationale, etc. You're not paying attention. All reasonably priced.
2) The curmudgeon label is really offensive. Also a-historical, showing a real lack of historical understanding of the place of criticism in music, literature, theater, etc. And it is horribly age-ist - dictionary definition: "a bad-tempered person, especially an old one." I am not bad tempered though I am definitely old. But when I dislike things I have reasons and I explain them. I refuse, as I do get older, to passively accept degrading stereotypes.
And truthfully, this is the kind of personal b.s. that has chased me away on this forum on more than one occasion.
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12 hours ago, dicky said:
GB was a monster guitarist. I have 3 CTI albums which I thoroughly enjoy. Also have him w/ McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Miles, Freddie, etc.. He chose to make money rather than continuing on the path of the albums I dig. Good for him.
In doing so (with his not so distinguished singing), he undoubtedly brought awareness to a mass audience of "purer" jazz recordings. Good on him. What's the problem?
it's been long shown that that kind of trickle down theory just does not indicate reality. And unless you can document it through personal reports, sales, audience response, I wouldn't suggest it as reality.
13 hours ago, JSngry said:Taste is subjective of course, but things like pitch and time are totally quantifiable. If you seriously think that's a "bad singer" then I question both your ears and your objective judgement. Seriously.
Bobby Bland shows were much like that, at least the ones with African-American audiences.
Good for him!
God forbid that people have both skill and ambition that find reward...
Seriously, please continue to question my ears and objective judgement. And I will question your taste. Somehow I don't think either of us will get too far.
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his singing is just awful, has a horrible, flaccid quality to it - also, I didn't say he had been on America's Got Talent, just that he always appears to be on the show when he is singing. But that Moody thing is just....well, if I heard it blind I would think of it as just another soft jazz thing.
Clearly I am fading into the minority here. He just sounds to me like the musical equivalent of processed food. And I think the Moody vocal sounds like the kind of bad singer who sits in at jam sessions and who you can't seem to get rid of.
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....he's always preening for the judges on America's Got Talent.
I ask because I just posted this on Facebook to a largely negative response.
Yes, I know he's a great guitarist, but the last clip I saw of him he played mostly stock phrases and cliches. This is the price a jazz musician often pays for that kind of popularity.
But his singing is slick and bland and shallow, to my ears.
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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)"
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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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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:
Two Top 10 Lists for In the Dark
in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...
Posted · Edited by AllenLowe
we made two top ten lists so far for 2023 recordings, both for In the Dark on ESP:
https://www.denverpost.com/2023/12/04/our-jazz-columnist-reveals-his-favorite-releases-from-2023/
https://geneseymour.com/?p=3733
get 'em while they're hot and before I'm cold.