johnblitweiler

Joy Bryan Happy Chandler Pete Jolly

never heard Darcy James Argue before I played "Brooklyn Babylon" (borrowed from the public library) yesterday. Wow! Sort of a dark mix of Gil Evans, Willem Breuker, and Benjamin Britten, and Ingrid Jensen definitely can play the trumpet. Are other Argue records this colorful?

Moe Bo T

Neil Gaiman's "American Gods": great characters and dialogue, he really conveys Wisconsin like nobody I've read since Glenway Westcott. I take back the mean thoughts I once thought about Gaiman. The story is long but momentum mostly works for me; the fantasy plot is now and then a mess; the basic idea, that the ancient gods are bums in modern America, is right on.

Dyer's "But Beautiful" emphasizes that he considers jazz a pathology and jazz musicians are people who make him feel comfortably superior. This Coltrane rubbish of his makes me want to take a bath.

Jelly James Dave Gelly Elly Ameling

Wow, I'm really trivial - guessed all the double-or-nothings right.

Yes.

Laurie Wright Buddy Bolden Alderman Story

A single, hit batter, sacrifice, fielder's choice and an error: 2 runs - now that's a rally! I love it. Those relief pitchers are heroes, too. Today someone told me that playoffs TV viewership has increased vastly this year because of KC and Baltimore fans. True?

A Big Bill Broonzy session from the late 1930s included a bassist identified as something like "probably Wilbur Ware" or "Wilbur Ware (?)" - even though Wilbur would have been only 14 or 15 at the time, he was precocious, so we shouldn't be surprised. Surely a lot of jazz musicians still play on R&B stage shows. Ike Rodgers isn't thought of as a jazz musician, but his soulful trombone playing on some records by obscure blues singers of 80+ years ago is what (for me) makes those records valuable. Completely off the subject: Charles Brown once told me he was raised to play classical piano, didn't play blues at all until adulthood.

Earlier today the radio played some really sweet medium-tempo Zoot Sims on alto sax. I thought it was Desmond until the disk jockey named the record.

I've been listening to Silver Cornet - heavens, it's lovely. Gjerstad is a very fine foil / wits matcher.

I love the way Kansas City wins games. This is the tension that baseball is supposed to offer.

The Kraken Orrie Cather Crazy Otto

R.I.P.

she is certainly one of the very best tenor saxophonists in jazz these days - she creates symphonies as she improviseds

While I and a lot other white kids of the '50s were growing up with Chicago blues and Louisiana blues on the radio, the black kids our age were avoiding that dreary old music." So I can sympathize with Lennox to some extent.

Are you sure he is the one who kissed it?

The Spaniels Mitty Collier Matty Groves

Don't be pessimistic. Oakland has been losing lately and they're afflicted with the three-ex-Cubs curse. OTOH your Royals came from behind to beat my White Sox today. I was there. Beautiful sunny day, too.

The Stepford Wives The Perfect Husband Sons and Lovers

Miss Julie Mr. Arkadin Childe Harold

Earlier this week I quit "the Waterfall" on about page 40. I lost all symnpathy with the childish heroine, she was too much like me.

I'd love to hear "Jimmy's Rocks" by Jimmy Yancey, from his 1943 recordings, again. All of Yancey's piano solos are perfect evolutions of themes into compact compositions. This one is a fast version of "Death Letter Blues." The great slow version of that theme is "At the Window," which is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever.