Lazaro Vega

Those Vogue sides with Martial Solal have led Anthony Wilson to inspiration (The Parisian Knight). Haven't heard the disc you're alluding to. Most folks know his "Walkin' " solo with Miles as a starting point. Lucky on soprano is also lovely ("When Sunny Gets Blue" on the Nessa LP 'Body and Soul' is a good example). Have dug those Kenny Clark quartet tracks as much for the tunes as the playing (The Squirrel is it? Now's The Time...). Lucky is still alive, living near Seattle, God Bless him.

Thanks Larry: that is what I meant, that maybe Eddie Harris was an influence on the straight ahead guys around Chicago because of the frequency of his playing there, and his inside/almost outside approach (do you think any of that method came out of Pharaoh?). So you're saying Harris trick bag, however hip, may have limited him from attaining the fullness of the freedom principle? Hey man, Ira started playing alto again just a year or two ago. After doing a week of alto around the Chicago Jazz Festival (was that just last August, or two years ago?) he played in Saugatuck for a concert produced by Jim Cooper (Terry Martin was there). Holy Son of Charlie Parker! He was about 30 years in front of the rhythm section talent level wise, and 60 years behind them -- that bop syntax in the right hands is still thrilling, or as Jim was implying, inspiring! Ira was thee bop guy in Chicago, but how that translates into not becoming homogeneous, who knows. Now he's the man in Miami. John Bailey, trumpeter in Ray Baretto's band, is, partially, one of his "progeny." The music reflects the times. Creativity is not at a premium right now: stardom and economic success are, and those are formulaic endeavors, or just dumb luck, whereas music as individual expression in an artistic continuum...As Monk said, "Work." As Cecil said, "Artists are workers."

I can't think of another more ensemble oriented saxophone/bass/drums trio ever recorded up to this point in jazz history. The high water mark of the instrumentation, of course, being the great Sonny Rollins trio, yet for all of Rollins group interactivity, this band at this (Air) time took it to another level, and perhaps documented themselves living the principals of the AACM as never again. Sure, soloistically there is Threadgill's tonal-timbre extension/phrase-distillation/rhythm-deconstruction of Rollins in the slowly building crescendo that is "Keep Right On Playing Through The Mirror Over the Water," but the South Side meets Elliot Carter's string quartets that is "Subtraction" is orchestrated to a balancing point of mobile like sounds; poetically, if I may, touched into motion by Michigan avenue exhausts and Lake Michigan breezes. (Smart ass thing to say, but maybe the influences played out in this number go even further than the totality of black music and the Eastern micro-tones found in Threadgill's flute or Hopkins zither/bass on "GvE": there is an awareness of contemporary classical music occurring as a series of scored/improvised events, and moreover, the sound world has the quality of a chamber dirge). The hubkaphone IS silly: no more so than Threadgill's selling DeWars whiskey, though. Threadgill's strange wit narrative -- "Salute to the Enema Bandit" et. al. -- is abstracted in music on this Air date, whereas the trickster emerges graphically/linguistically soon after, as Jim has pointed out, which begins to play wit yo head. On Air Time it's still in the ears. This, to me, is the most "serious" of Air's recordings (and the first documentation of the band by an American company). If you're going to start somewhere, you might as well start smart (fucking 'crossover' is a mentally sick concept). Maybe McCall's sonorous weight in this music is what keeps Threadgill's clowns in the car. Chuck took me to the bar at the Blackstone Hotel, not the Jazz Showcase, but the bar along Michigan avenue, and McCall was there, holding court at a table of friends and family, just having flew back from his life in Europe. Chuck introduced us, and McCall was gracious as royalty. I had the good fortune of seeing McCall play a festival set in duet with Fred Anderson and it is without a doubt one of the highlights of listening to him play that he saw me in the crowd, looking under a cymbal, and played a few phrases looking right at me, smiled, and went back into his dialogue. His performance on Air Time, again, shows the world of free jazz drummers, Sonny Murray, Rashid Ali and those investigating the most radical changes in drums set concept since Kenny Clarke, are a vital and important part of the evolution of jazz. Not a forgotten, unheard tangent: don't buy that shit. I heard McCall's importance and I'm from VanderGrandRapidsMa, the land of Gerald Ford and John Calvin: if that can get to me, then you're very wrong about this music being unknown or unknowable. It's a matter of exposure, and the way things are going, well, they're locking up Tommy Chong now, that's how far they'll take it for you to forget all about the '60's and 70's. Because this is not sanitized, genetically engineered music it doesn't fit the sophistication of commerce. Yet it hails American know how, it responds to the creativity of it's forebears with the most flattering form of music appreciation: creative extension, not mere imitation. Hopkins is the extension of bass legacy that includes Israel Crosby, Wilbur Ware, Malachi...Chicago. How can we say, like Kerouac, OLD Chicago and mean the 1960's and 70's? Old is Nelson Algren old, it's King Oliver old, black migration old, Chi-Fire old. Old Air? Can it be... I remember sitting in a telecommunications class at Michigan State (300 students in one room) reading one of Kim Heron's articles about Air in one of the Detroit papers, when the professor condescendingly challenged the class to identify Bix Biederbecke, but then skipped on to his next point before I could call him on it, talk about the bridge to Stardust or something, or then challenge him to id the ragtime playing free jazz trio of the present. An early 1980's "it's all good moment" that went by way of egos in a survey class. The point is, Bix Lives. Air Lives. So suddenly.

As someone on the periphery of Chicago, and Detroit, out here in Michigan, and about the same age as the guys you're talking about, maybe I can lend a perspective to your question, Jim, but certainly not a musicianly answer. There came a time where the notion of 'the tradition' changed. And I remember it well, the day it dawned on me that something wasn't the same any more. I was working at WKAR radio in East Lansing as a board operator (student job) around 1980, and Ken Beechler, the head honcho for cultural programming at the Wharton Center, and long before that the primary, go-to cultural programmer of performing arts at MSU, who knew I loved jazz, took a long pull on his cigarette, looked me in the eye and said, "So you support the "tradition" of jazz." The way he said it, obviously after having gotten wind of something in the air, was not what Arthur Blythe, or Bluiett, or the World Saxophone Quartet, or Muhal, or the Art Ensemble meant when they said the same thing. There was the 'spirit' of tradition, sanctified in recordings, and then there was this new thing, as it turns out, the codification of tradition for polemic reasons. I don't think the Chicago guys bought that. Von's example of the tradition was one incorporating Bird, Ammons AND Sun Ra, so it was mutable, not in the fickle sense, but just that is wasn't over yet. And the Chicagoans were living the echoes of their own revolutions in jazz, the 1920's and the 1960's, with the great consolidations of the swing era were a central part of the city. To say noting of the blues. So in a sense the mathematical implications of Trane's music were heard and felt in Chicago, it's just that they resulted in Anthony Braxton. Bebop was more of a New York based "movement," while Chicago wasn't as likely to get bogged down in harmonic labyrinths that bop eventually led to (which "caused" the whole hard bop reaction, etc.). Maybe it's the same with 'Trane: there are so many implications to 'Trane's ENTIRE output, why get stuck in a perpetual search for the tonic? It's almost as if the New York guys you're talking about are like the West Coast guys of the 1950's: that bop was something to revere and tinker with. I'm typing this was an 8 week old that's going to explode into crying any moment, and a two and a half year old that has me up from the computer 50 times in the last sentence. gotta go.

Didn't Iyer play on Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory recording on PI?

Larry -- I hear what you're saying, and that sort of leaping from harmonic center to harmonic center by over-blowing a "harmonic" on the saxophone gets old when there's no melodic substance to the over all arc of the solo. If this were a "sound" environment, maybe that effect would be different, but as it is within specific parameters of rhythm and time, within song form structure, this sort of playing doesn't relate to the overall design of some of the music. I would add Malaby's playing with Mark Helias' Open Loose, with Malaby, Helias, and Tom Rainey, seems to find the shifting structures -- when the horn goes out, the form of the ensemble reacts and everyone has a say, still, and the horn isn't free to run down it's own sound hole -- more suitable to meaningful communication. (Clause me). Have you heard any of that band?

"Rats skratching in the walls. There's Rats scratching in the WALLS!"

That composition "Full Deck" for Jack Montrose is killin'. Who says the post-Ayler continuum doesn't swing?

For what it is worth, Rollins had one of those levitating the bandstand moments during the Chicago Jazz Festival I think it was in the late 1980's or early 1990's when Marvin Smitty Smith was the drummer in his quintet: the audience turned into a writhing sea of screams as he hung his toes over the edge of the stage and let blow with ecstacy and intellectual abandon. It was one of the most exciting musical events I've ever heard. Standing next to Dan Morganstern in the Press section of festival, and he just looked out at what was happening and said, This is one of those nights. Larry, where you there? John Litweiler? I think Chuck was there. He came back a year or two later, but without the drummer: he had a hand percussionist, and it never got off the ground. Had moments of wonder, but that earlier one: trance-end-dant.

I've often wondered if Lincoln Center would ever consider a concert of Muhal Richard Abrams’ music, which spans the width and breadth of the jazz tradition in, at times, a professorial manner. It seems some of Abrams’ music is academic enough to get through the' cat can't play his horn' critics that have been around as long as Albert Ayler. Moreover it would be musically worthwhile to have some of these proficient young players exposed to some of Abrams' rehearsal methods, approach to ensemble interplay and 'improvisational compositions,' for lack of a better term.

Have fun with Ken: he is a road warrior!

Following concerts in Bloomington (11-5-03) and Chicago (11-06, at 3030 Club) pianist/composer Stephen Rush from the University of Michigan, with bassist Tim Flood of Ann Arbor, drummer Aaron Siegel and trombonist Jacob Garchik both from New York, played a special one hour radio program at the Sherman VanSolkema Recital Hall, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, that will air next Friday night at 10 p.m. on Jazz From Blue Lake. Transcription of the interview portions to follow, eventually, but let's just say this was an exploration of the post bop continuum beginning with Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman but equally influenced by Morton Feldman or late Beethoven. Highly recommended for the unobstructed flow of composition and improvisation. Performing 11-8, this Saturday, at Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor, 8 p.m. See www.kerrytown.com . B)

1953

A beautifully packaged 4 cd set recently came out on Saga records, too, which includes music from 1934-43 if memory serves. Not complete, and not enough of the Django and the Americans sessions, but interesting. His "St. Louis Blues" is astonishing.

The Billy Bang Quintet with Frank Lowe appeared in Grand Rapids in April and we had the performance recorded for broadcast on Blue Lake Public Radio. In the process of getting that issued commercially.

I'm thinking it's Paula Cole on the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Soundtrack that folks have it confused with, or Diana did the arranging for that. Dont' know...Thanks.

I know there are MP3 versions, but don't know personnnel, when it was recorded, where available...Lil' Help, please.

Anyone know where Diana Krall's version of "Autumn Leaves" might be found?

There's actually a bit of Vic Dickenson in his sound.

I formerly used "Soul Stirrin" for the theme to my radio program, but now have a version of Green's "hit" record "Blow Your Horn" to open the show. Love this guy. Have his Chess Record with Sonny Stitt, and a few sides with Earl Hines, too. He's also on an early 50's Miles Davis Prestige session, or Davis was on Green's.

The version of Rhapsody In Blue on the first disc of this recording, where Duke gives Harry Carney on bari the opening part usually played by clarinet, has my radio listeners going ape: I've had more calls on that one tune in the last week since I bought this set than I have on anything else on the air.

For what it's worth regarding Ken Burns Jazz, when the Roscoe Mitchell Quintet with Fred Anderson came to Grand Rapids about a year and a half ago, there was a nice looking middle aged couple sitting near the front. At intermission the woman spoke to me, said her husband dragged her to this concert, gave her permission to leave at half time should the music drive her away. And she's wide eyed explaining how she's never heard/seen anything like it, but managed to deal with the music by remembeing Gary Giddins description of John Coltrane's playing in the Ken Burns series. She went with that and made it into Roscoe, which was a break through as far as I'm concerned. It's interesting that a non-jazz loving woman with open ears realized Roscoe was an extension of Coltrane without having to be told. I mean, she got it. 2.5 million people saw Burns, and a majority of them didn't know the stories of jazz before seeing the documentary, but found an emotional reaction to what they were being exposed to. We can complain about how wrong the ending was (I thought Wynton did a much better job with that period in his NPR program with Berger many years ago, but the last 50 years were still bunched into one episode, it's just they covered more in the episode). But rather than disqualify their experience, maybe give them, 'Well, that's a great start, and there's much more to learn,' one of the things they didn't talk about that's really cool/important/unlike anything else in music is....I know how it went down with many, many musicians...all I'm saying is, give the public a little more credit: they took what they wanted and are, hopefully, using it.

Keep right on playing....

Bleckmann/Monder. This Saturday at The Urban Institute For Contemporary Arts, 41 Sheldon Blvd., Grand Rapids. Tickets at the door. Guitar/voice duet, as heard on their recent Songlines release. (616) 454 - 7000, or see www.UICA.org Also, Devil's Night at the Kraftbraw Brewery in Kalamazoo, the Ab Baars Trio. And in Grand Haven, Michigan, Thursday, October 30, Beat inspired poetry celebrating the blues by Detroit activist John Sinclair rants to the guitar of Jeff (?) Grand at The Dee-Lite Bar and Grill, on Washington Avenue. Showtime 8 p.m. or so.

McLean and Moncur played the Chicago Jazz Festival a few years ago and those chops problems were much in evidence which was too bad. There's also a recording Moncur issued on the Jazz Composers Orchestra Label that merits mention. Not up to the Blue Notes, but none the less the next chapter in his extended compositional development and writing for a broader range of instruments. "Echoes of Prayer," Grachan Moncur III, The Jazz Composer's Orchestra, presented at New York University's Leob Student Center, April 10, 1974, recorded Aprill 11, 1974. Including Pat Patrick, flutes; Perry Robinson, clarinet; Carlos Ward, alto sax, flute; Leroy Jenkins, violin; Ngoma, violin; Hannibal Marvin Peterson, Stafford Osborne, trumpets; Janice Robinson, trombone; Jack Jeffers, bass trombone; Mark Elf, guitar; Carla Bley, piano; Cecil McBee, Charlie Haden, basses; Beaver Harris, drums; plus the Tanawa Dance Ensemble; Jeanne Lee and Mervine Grady, voices....