Crouch on Percy Heath

[Big Al]

Maybe none of them knew the PROPER way to tie a tie! I speak from experience here; I can count on zero fingers the number of times I thought I'd had a perfectly centered tie, only to have the wind blow and show just how off-center it truly is!

Which is why I only wear Bugs Bunny & Veggie Tales ties. That way, it's SUPPOSED to look off-center! No matter wear I where them! B-)

[Jim Alfredson]

It must be such a drag to be so negative all the time.

[WD45]

Well hey - dig Percy. He's the only one who went for the longer lapels, even if it meant showing a little buttonhole.

It might have been how the fabric lays -- could be the same cut of suit, but repeated wear has allowed the fabric to fall in a natural plane.

Say what you will about Bag's tie, he and Percy are at least following the rules for a three-button jacket: sometimes, always, never [top-to-bottom, that is.] Can't tell for Lewis and Connie.

[Jazzmoose]

It must be such a drag to be so negative all the time.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I guess if you go in assuming something is stupid, it's pretty easy to find evidence to support your assumptions with a little digging...

[Lazaro Vega]

Jazz vs. Pop?

By Teresa Wiltz

THE WASHINGTON POST

Aug. 22 — This is how jazz flutist James Newton found out-eight years after the fact-that he was on a popular rap recording: A student strolled into his class and said hey, prof, I didn’t know you performed with the Beastie Boys.

NEWTON WASN’T happy. A six-second snippet of his song “Choir” was a featured attraction in the 1992 Beastie Boys hit “Pass the Mic.” He says that he’s never received any compensation for the band’s use of the recording and that the Beastie Boys never bothered to ask his permission.

‘UNORIGINAL’

Finding out that the song had made it onto a “Beavis & Butt-head” cartoon only fueled his ire. Newton, a professor at California State University, Los Angeles, says that if he’d been asked, he never would have granted his permission. So in 2000 he sued the Beastie Boys, charging the group with copyright infringement. And, to his surprise and rage in June, he learned he’d lost the case.

In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Nora M. Manella said that Newton’s sequence was basically a “recording,” for which Newton and his publisher had already been compensated, as opposed to a “composition,” and that it was “unoriginal as a matter of law.” (She also denied a motion filed by the Beastie Boys seeking reimbursement from Newton for almost $500,000 in legal fees.) Newton is appealing the decision, and has taken to the Internet in search of support.

The case in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California pits Newton, a critically acclaimed avant-garde jazz flutist and former Guggenheim fellow, against the Beastie Boys, a rap group known for both its innovation in sampling (the use of snippets of other artists’ recordings) and for its progressive politics.

Composers are nervously keeping an eye on the case, wondering what kind of precedent it will set if Manella’s ruling is upheld.

At issue are complicated questions of copyright law, and whether Newton’s permission was needed for the “Choir” sample. Licensing a sample is a two-part process: Permission is needed from both the record label and the composer. The Beastie Boys licensed the sample from Newton’s record label, Munich-based ECM, but neither the company nor the group got permission from Newton. Manella’s ruling in effect said that since the sample was a recording and not a composition, his permission wasn’t needed.

“The ruling in this case will have a chilling effect on musically creative artists,” says Richard Kessler, executive director of the American Music Center, a New York-based arts service organization with more than 3,000 composers in its membership. Kessler said his organization is considering joining an amicus brief with other musical organizations for the appeal.

As Kessler sees it, “the idea that the judge would take a look at these six notes and determine that they are not original and didn’t warrant protection, it’s something musical artists, composers will and should fear.”

‘LEGALLY AND FAIRLY’

Says Billy Taylor, jazz pianist, composer and Kennedy Center fixture: “If I create something, whether I create it in my head or on some electronic machine, it’s just as finite as if I write it on a sheet of paper. It doesn’t matter if it’s not written down if it’s something he created, whether he whistled it or hummed it.”

The sequence in question is a six-second sample of “Choir,” a 1982 recording during which Newton simultaneously sings notes while playing the flute using an overblowing technique, creating a “multiphonic” composition. The segment, which was inspired by Newton’s Southern Baptist roots, opens “Pass the Mic,” and then loops repeatedly throughout the piece. The Beastie Boys album “Check Your Head,” released in 1992, went multi-platinum. The Beastie Boys continue to perform the song in concert, and it appears on a DVD released in 2000.

The Beastie Boys’ attorney, Adam Streisand, did not return a phone call requesting comment. In a prepared statement, Mike D of the Beastie Boys said: “We have dealt with this entire matter legally and fairly from day one. It’s clear by the judge’s rulings that she agreed as well. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Newton wouldn’t reason with us earlier and that it had to come to this.”

Newton said that the Beastie Boys offered to compensate him for the use of his material but that the figure was “insulting.” Neither he nor his attorney, Alan Korn, would comment on the amount of the offer. A spokesperson for ECM said that the label tried to contact Newton, but the flutist had moved and the company did not have a current telephone number. The label mailed him a check, for a modest amount, the standard fee for licensing agreements, but it was returned for lack of a forwarding address.

This isn’t the first time the Beastie Boys were sued for copyright infringement related to sampling, nor is it the first time that a rapper has been sued for sampling. In a 1991 landmark ruling, Biz Markie lost a court case for sampling Gilbert O’Sullivan’s 1977 hit “Alone Again (Naturally)” in his song “Alone Again.” His record “I Need A Haircut” on which the single appeared, was subsequently pulled from the shelves.

“For my music to be dispelled by the court in this fashion was a very difficult pill for me to swallow,” Newton said.

“It sounds racist to me,” Taylor said. “Pure English. Here’s a [judge] who’s saying if it’s not written in the old European form that I may have heard about from someone who studied Mozart,” it’s not a legitimate composition.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company :sw

[slide_advantage_redoux]

Let's slam every single jazz writer there is!

No, just Crouch.

[Kalo]

Nice computer translation from the Esperanto.

Is that the way Crouch really writes, or is it an illiterate editor run amok?

Is that English?

Maybe Gilbert O'Sullivan and Crouch should woodshed at the McDowell colony or whichever before they try to publish again.

[Kalo]

Might as well be Heath on Percy Crouch, though.

Best wishes to all.

[Kalo]

Sorry Heathy Perch.

Or is it Creely Pouch?

Whatever, please don't bitch-slap me, please Mr. Cooch.

[maren]

Sorry Heathy Perch.

Or is it Creely Pouch?

Whatever, please don't bitch-slap me, please Mr. Cooch.

Tee-heath!!!

[mikeweil]

Or is it Creely Pouch?

Creepy Louch!!!

[JSngry]

Steamly the Stammer.

[Kalo]

Paging James Joyce: Finnegan has awakened.

I love it.

[Kalo]

Crouch: the position one assumes just before springing up and bitch-slapping someone.

[Kalo]

Looking over this thread I wondered if I had been a bit too harsh on Crouch when I wrote several posts back that his Heath article read like a computer translation from the Esperanto.

Well, I just read his piece again, and I can truly say that I was being kind.

"In our era of neo-sambo minstrelsy arriving in the worst of hip-hop, it is hard for many to realize that there was once a time when black musicians aspired to more than money and access to decadence."

"Their aspirations called for moving beyond the buffoon vulgarity that arrived from a racist time in the 19th century."

"All of the members of the Modern Jazz Quartet were there when the be-bop generation of the middle '40s came forward and, while caught up in some exotic trappings such as the occasional beret and leopard coat, the group turned its back on the entertainment tradition and tried to receive respect as serious artists."

"As we move to reinvent ourselves in the face of our ongoing troubles of commercial sludge in popular entertainment, we can always use as a symbol musicians like the Modern Jazz Quartet. They gave us all that they could."

These are some of the most awkward sentences I have ever read. This may be the worst-written piece I've ever seen in a major metropolitan newspaper. The question is, does he really write this way and is cleaned up by editors when he appears eleswhere, or was this particular piece edited to shreds?

I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but...

THIS PIECE SUCKS.

Not least as a tribute to the great Percy Heath.

(At least he didn't mention a Marsalis.)

[Jazz Kat]

"He pulled off something all musicians want to pull off," Crouch.

[Jazz Kat]

His hat!

[Christiern]

It's amazing how often bad writing escapes an editor's scrutiny--I speak from personal experience.

[Larry Kart]

Re: Copy editors and Crouch. I think it was mentioned by someone in passing on the thread about the Rollins piece in The New Yorker, but place that one alongside the Heath-MJQ piece and imagine the labor that was involved in turning the Rollins piece into the relatively lucid piece of prose that it is. Funny thing about all this -- and I've been there as a copy editor, believe me -- is that the prose of some bad writers is not that hard to fix (though it can take a lot of time). because it's fairly clear what they meant to say, even though they weren't able to say it. In the case of others, though -- and Crouch is good example -- you discover that the chaotic writing and the chaotic thinking are often inseperable. You can finally say to yourself, "OK, I'm not going to try to preserve any of the structure or wording of that goofy sentence or paragraph, I'll just rewrite it from scratch and try to preserve its meaning," and find that it just can't be done. In a way at those times I've felt as though I were in the presence of an essential, almost magical, principle of language, though here it was upside-down or inside-out. That is, because many or all of the various collaborative "agreements" that allow people to communicate in words were being violated in front of my eyes, it seemed that one might be able to proceed from this virulent, demented, worst case scenario to the very place where words and thought are or are not effectively knit together and, to repeat myself, divine language's general principles -- a la Freud's experience with his key early patients, when he discovered or was led to believe that what was going with these hysterics etc. gave him window into the human psyche in general.

[AmirBagachelles]

You go Stanley, if only you could have been their Colonel Tom. Reading that fine piece, I am reminded of Leggy Mountbatten's admiration of the Rutles' trousers.

[Christiern]

What "fine piece" is he talking about??

[Jazz Kat]

For Crouch?

Probaly a piece of pie, or cake!

[ghost of miles]

Jazz vs. Pop?

By Teresa Wiltz

THE WASHINGTON POST

Aug. 22 — This is how jazz flutist James Newton found out-eight years after the fact-that he was on a popular rap recording: A student strolled into his class and said hey, prof, I didn’t know you performed with the Beastie Boys.

NEWTON WASN’T happy. A six-second snippet of his song “Choir” was a featured attraction in the 1992 Beastie Boys hit “Pass the Mic.” He says that he’s never received any compensation for the band’s use of the recording and that the Beastie Boys never bothered to ask his permission.

‘UNORIGINAL’

Finding out that the song had made it onto a “Beavis & Butt-head” cartoon only fueled his ire. Newton, a professor at California State University, Los Angeles, says that if he’d been asked, he never would have granted his permission. So in 2000 he sued the Beastie Boys, charging the group with copyright infringement. And, to his surprise and rage in June, he learned he’d lost the case.

In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Nora M. Manella said that Newton’s sequence was basically a “recording,” for which Newton and his publisher had already been compensated, as opposed to a “composition,” and that it was “unoriginal as a matter of law.” (She also denied a motion filed by the Beastie Boys seeking reimbursement from Newton for almost $500,000 in legal fees.) Newton is appealing the decision, and has taken to the Internet in search of support.

The case in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California pits Newton, a critically acclaimed avant-garde jazz flutist and former Guggenheim fellow, against the Beastie Boys, a rap group known for both its innovation in sampling (the use of snippets of other artists’ recordings) and for its progressive politics.

Composers are nervously keeping an eye on the case, wondering what kind of precedent it will set if Manella’s ruling is upheld.

At issue are complicated questions of copyright law, and whether Newton’s permission was needed for the “Choir” sample. Licensing a sample is a two-part process: Permission is needed from both the record label and the composer. The Beastie Boys licensed the sample from Newton’s record label, Munich-based ECM, but neither the company nor the group got permission from Newton. Manella’s ruling in effect said that since the sample was a recording and not a composition, his permission wasn’t needed.

“The ruling in this case will have a chilling effect on musically creative artists,” says Richard Kessler, executive director of the American Music Center, a New York-based arts service organization with more than 3,000 composers in its membership. Kessler said his organization is considering joining an amicus brief with other musical organizations for the appeal.

As Kessler sees it, “the idea that the judge would take a look at these six notes and determine that they are not original and didn’t warrant protection, it’s something musical artists, composers will and should fear.”

‘LEGALLY AND FAIRLY’

Says Billy Taylor, jazz pianist, composer and Kennedy Center fixture: “If I create something, whether I create it in my head or on some electronic machine, it’s just as finite as if I write it on a sheet of paper. It doesn’t matter if it’s not written down if it’s something he created, whether he whistled it or hummed it.”

The sequence in question is a six-second sample of “Choir,” a 1982 recording during which Newton simultaneously sings notes while playing the flute using an overblowing technique, creating a “multiphonic” composition. The segment, which was inspired by Newton’s Southern Baptist roots, opens “Pass the Mic,” and then loops repeatedly throughout the piece. The Beastie Boys album “Check Your Head,” released in 1992, went multi-platinum. The Beastie Boys continue to perform the song in concert, and it appears on a DVD released in 2000.

The Beastie Boys’ attorney, Adam Streisand, did not return a phone call requesting comment. In a prepared statement, Mike D of the Beastie Boys said: “We have dealt with this entire matter legally and fairly from day one. It’s clear by the judge’s rulings that she agreed as well. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Newton wouldn’t reason with us earlier and that it had to come to this.”

Newton said that the Beastie Boys offered to compensate him for the use of his material but that the figure was “insulting.” Neither he nor his attorney, Alan Korn, would comment on the amount of the offer. A spokesperson for ECM said that the label tried to contact Newton, but the flutist had moved and the company did not have a current telephone number. The label mailed him a check, for a modest amount, the standard fee for licensing agreements, but it was returned for lack of a forwarding address.

This isn’t the first time the Beastie Boys were sued for copyright infringement related to sampling, nor is it the first time that a rapper has been sued for sampling. In a 1991 landmark ruling, Biz Markie lost a court case for sampling Gilbert O’Sullivan’s 1977 hit “Alone Again (Naturally)” in his song “Alone Again.” His record “I Need A Haircut” on which the single appeared, was subsequently pulled from the shelves.

“For my music to be dispelled by the court in this fashion was a very difficult pill for me to swallow,” Newton said.

“It sounds racist to me,” Taylor said. “Pure English. Here’s a [judge] who’s saying if it’s not written in the old European form that I may have heard about from someone who studied Mozart,” it’s not a legitimate composition.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company :sw

Some more discussion here. And I remember a great, Moby-Dick-sized whale of a debate on the old BNBB between Jsngry and GregM about this subject.

[Kalo]

(Larry Kart @ May 14 2005, 09:33 AM)

Re: Copy editors and Crouch. I think it was mentioned by someone in passing on the thread about the Rollins piece in The New Yorker, but place that one alongside the Heath-MJQ piece and imagine the labor that was involved in turning the Rollins piece into the relatively lucid piece of prose that it is. Funny thing about all this -- and I've been there as a copy editor, believe me -- is that the prose of some bad writers is not that hard to fix (though it can take a lot of time). because it's fairly clear what they meant to say, even though they weren't able to say it. In the case of others, though -- and Crouch is good example -- you discover that the chaotic writing and the chaotic thinking are often inseperable. You can finally say to yourself, "OK, I'm not going to try to preserve any of the structure or wording of that goofy sentence or paragraph, I'll just rewrite it from scratch and try to preserve its meaning," and find that it just can't be done. In a way at those times I've felt as though I were in the presence of an essential, almost magical, principle of language, though here it was upside-down or inside-out. That is, because many or all of the various collaborative "agreements" that allow people to communicate in words were being violated in front of my eyes, it seemed that one might be able to proceed from this virulent, demented, worst case scenario to the very place where words and thought are or are not effectively knit together and, to repeat myself, divine language's general principles -- a la Freud's experience with his key early patients, when he discovered or was led to believe that what was going with these hysterics etc. gave him window into the human psyche in general.

Some serious food for thought, Larry, that Crouch's disordered prose reveals some insights into the nature of written communication itself.

Edited May 15, 2005 by Kalo

[BruceH]

(At least he didn't mention a Marsalis.)

(Snicker)