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Or the thing about Pee Wee Russell's feet looking sad. I mean, I laughed out loud the first time I read that, but if I listen to Pee Wee Russell and hear the sound of a man with sad-looking feet, I'm kind of....uh...missing the point of Pee Wee Russell's playing, am I not? I would certainly hope so!

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what Braxton's talking about...

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.... no wonder jazz writing by far mostly sucks, tho' i DO, as a whole, give props to Morgenstern antho & when i say Dan's sorta not a real writer per se, that almost always to his credit cuz THEN he can be better w/THEE crucial issue of

TAXONOMY, BABY

which where chess hustlin' Queens Gambit Tony comes in.

(Dan's piece on the death of Roy Eldridge was esp. nice howev & gracefully written; not saying he's inarticulate just you ain't gonna get any language charge that even approaches the music there.)

which AIN'T to say I, Clementine of Gritsville condones the reams of "spontanous bop" bullshit that has flowed in the name of Zoot since Moms Mabley Was In Hotpants

smokin'!

...

Check out Dan's "Lester Leaps In" piece, p. 491. There's some deep writing and deep feeling there.

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Balliett was not a philosopher of jazz, but big deal. We have those, too, although few of them can write well. All Balliett did was chronicle jazz concerts and jazz musicians in New York, with style. That style, that talent, is worthy of respect.

"The sound of a man walking on eggshells" is a comment on Miles' music--for me it evokes its simultaneous delicacy and violence. When he described Pee Wee Russell's feet, he was describing the man himself--it makes no sense to complain that a journalist described what the subject of a profile looked like, and in a memorable way at that. The flair he had for getting across aural perceptions in visual imagery was no small thing. Many writers would kill to have that gift. Others may have to rely on would-be-creative punctuation, typeface and capitalization that express little more than an attitude, but crafting elegant sentences that capture something accurate about the music, grab the readers' attention, make them want to hear that music, and are fondly remembered decades later--now that's good writing, considerably more than simply neat turns of phrase. In my humblest of humble opinions.

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When he described Pee Wee Russell's feet, he was describing the man himself--it makes no sense to complain that a journalist described what the subject of a profile looked like, and in a memorable way at that.

Of course not. But do you ever think of sad feet when you hear Pee Wee Russell play? And if so, is that a good thing?

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do you ever think of sad feet when you hear Pee Wee Russell play? And if so, is that a good thing?

Having read the description of him, I think of sad feet when I think of Pee Wee Russell. And I think of Pee Wee Russell when I hear Pee Wee Russell play. So, in an indirect way, yes. Is that a good thing? Well, it's not a bad thing. Having seen Woody Shaw live on several occasions, when I hear his playing I think of the tai-chi exercises he would do on stage during other people's solos (if that's what those movements were). Is that a good thing or a bad thing? How to judge? I think more information about the physical human being doing the playing does help us hear the musical personality more fully on some level.

Edited by Tom Storer
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His stuff is GREAT!! Nor especially my cup of tea,but Great! To me only John Wilson was better. Gleason was full of shit a lot of times, did a lot of stuff, liner notes of musicians he didn't like just for the money, and it showed. Nat was in love with himself, Ira was good but too cut and dry.....

Joe Goldberg was also Terrific.

Joe worked as a script writer in Hollywood. One of the guys he worked with was Donald Westlake, who became famous novelist. Joe told me how one day Donald said to him 'I love to write for movies, because they pay a lot of money, and the pictures never get made, so no one sees your shitty work'.

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do you ever think of sad feet when you hear Pee Wee Russell play? And if so, is that a good thing?

Having seen Woody Shaw live on several occasions, when I hear his playing I think of the tai-chi exercises he would do on stage during other people's solos (if that's what those movements were). Is that a good thing or a bad thing? How to judge?

Depends on whether or not you've also seen Pee Wee Russell's feet... ;)

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His stuff is GREAT!! Nor especially my cup of tea,but Great! To me only John Wilson was better. Gleason was full of shit a lot of times, did a lot of stuff, liner notes of musicians he didn't like just for the money, and it showed. Nat was in love with himself, Ira was good but too cut and dry.....

Joe Goldberg was also Terrific.

Joe worked as a script writer in Hollywood. One of the guys he worked with was Donald Westlake, who became famous novelist. Joe told me how one day Donald said to him 'I love to write for movies, because they pay a lot of money, and the pictures never get made, so no one sees your shitty work'.

At least two of Westlake's screenplay credits are pretty impressive:

The Grifters (1990)

The Stepfather (1987) (screenplay) (story)

And several notable movies (with screenplays by others) are based on books that Westlake wrote under his own name or under one of his several pseudonyms, Richard Stark:

The Outfit (1973) (as Richard Stark)

The Hot Rock (1972)

Point Blank (1967) (novel The Hunter) (as Richard Stark)

Made in U.S.A. (1966) (novel The Jugger) (as Richard Stark)

That's right, the Godard "Made in U.S.A."

BTW, the Stark novels, all about a career criminal named Parker, may be the best hardboiled crime fiction there is.

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Depends on whether or not you've also seen Pee Wee Russell's feet... ;)

I'm willing to allow someone else's description of Pee Wee Russell's feet to enter my own constructed mental image of a man who died long before I had a chance to actually see him play with my own two eyes, without feeling that I'm running any terrible risk of corrupting my perception of the music with unverified information. The Real Truth of Russell's feet, sad or not sad, is forever inaccessible to me, and in its place I willingly accept what seems to me a useful hypothesis. So there!

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His stuff is GREAT!! Nor especially my cup of tea,but Great! To me only John Wilson was better. Gleason was full of shit a lot of times, did a lot of stuff, liner notes of musicians he didn't like just for the money, and it showed. Nat was in love with himself, Ira was good but too cut and dry.....

Joe Goldberg was also Terrific.

Joe worked as a script writer in Hollywood. One of the guys he worked with was Donald Westlake, who became famous novelist. Joe told me how one day Donald said to him 'I love to write for movies, because they pay a lot of money, and the pictures never get made, so no one sees your shitty work'.

At least two of Westlake's screenplay credits are pretty impressive:

The Grifters (1990)

The Stepfather (1987) (screenplay) (story)

And several notable movies (with screenplays by others) are based on books that Westlake wrote under his own name or under one of his several pseudonyms, Richard Stark:

The Outfit (1973) (as Richard Stark)

The Hot Rock (1972)

Point Blank (1967) (novel The Hunter) (as Richard Stark)

Made in U.S.A. (1966) (novel The Jugger) (as Richard Stark)

That's right, the Godard "Made in U.S.A."

BTW, the Stark novels, all about a career criminal named Parker, may be the best hardboiled crime fiction there is.

To relieve possible bewilderment, in Godard's "Made In U.S.A.," the Parker character is played by Anna Karina. Robert Duvall in "The Outfit" is a bit more like what one imagines Parker to be. Lee Marvin is great in "Point Blank," but he's angry to the point of being nuts as he seeks revenge, which makes for a great movie but is not true to Westlake-Stark's book. Parker seldom if ever gets angry, and when he does, he knows he's made a mistake; in one sense, he just a problem solver.

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Some of Westlake's recent books, like 'Money For Nothing' are excellent.

I don't deny Westlake's expertise when he writes under his own name; I just don't care for clever/wry, and in some cases outright comic, crime fiction. In the same way, I like Lawrence Bloch's Matt Scudder novels but don't have a taste for Bloch's clever/wry books about burglar Bernie Rhodenbahr. BTW, Westlake under another of his pseudonyms (abandoned since the mid-1970s) Tucker Coe, wrote very well in yet a third way about a deeply depressed (with good reason) ex-cop, Mitch ... somebody. Mitch was almost as tough as Parker (and/or he lived in a world that was almost as tough as Parker's), but the Coe novels are largely free from on-the-page violence, and Mitch tends to think things out in a near-Nero Wolfe manner. Haven't read all the Tucker Coes -- I believe there are five of them -- but I assume that at the end of the final one, Mitch more or less rejoins the human race, thus resolving the theme or preoccupation that led Westlake to create him. Also BTW, one strange thing about the Richard Stark-Parker novels is that Westlake wrote a whole bunch of them from the early '60s to I think the early '70s, and then stopped, only to return to Stark-Parker in the late '90s. About a 20-year gap. And the late Stark-Parkers are very good -- the later Parker being a logical continuation (in character and life circumstances) of the man of the early Stark-Parker books, though if you went back and tried to figure out how old Parker would have to be by now (he's said to have been a young WWII vet in one of the early books), the present-day Parker wouldn't make sense age-wise. Also, in the later Parkers especially, Westlake sets himself some plot puzzles that are quite bizarre if you step back from them a bit, though they feel perfectly natural and necessary in the reading and are resolved in the same manner. You could say that the "poetry" of the Stark-Parker novels is in the plotting -- i.e. the rhythms of what happens next -- which is a really unusual thing in modern fiction of any sort, at least in my experience. About those plot rhythms -- Westlake/Stark makes an interesting contrast with Michael Connelly, who is also a "'poetry' is in the plot" writer. In a Connelly/Harry Bosch novel, typically you feel about 60 or 80 pages from the end that the plot is just about wound up, but it certainly is not -- and that is where and how a lot of the poetic "whoosh" hits you (by "poetic" I mean that there's a sense here that a lyrical vision or image of the world is being conveyed to us by this plot shape, one that is beyond our ability, and that of the characters', to grasp rationally). In a Stark/Parker novel, typically you feel about 6 or 8 pages (!) from the end that the plot can't possibly be that close to being wound up, but it is. And that where and how a lot of the poetic "whoosh" hits you etc.

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Some of Westlake's recent books, like 'Money For Nothing' are excellent.

I don't deny Westlake's expertise when he writes under his own name; I just don't care for clever/wry, and in some cases outright comic, crime fiction. In the same way, I like Lawrence Bloch's Matt Scudder novels but don't have a taste for Bloch's clever/wry books about burglar Bernie Rhodenbahr. BTW, Westlake under another of his pseudonyms (abandoned since the mid-1970s) Tucker Coe, wrote very well in yet a third way about a deeply depressed (with good reason) ex-cop, Mitch ... somebody. Mitch was almost as tough as Parker (and/or he lived in a world that was almost as tough as Parker's), but the Coe novels are largely free from on-the-page violence, and Mitch tends to think things out in a near-Nero Wolfe manner. Haven't read all the Tucker Coes -- I believe there are five of them -- but I assume that at the end of the final one, Mitch more or less rejoins the human race, thus resolving the theme or preoccupation that led Westlake to create him. Also BTW, one strange thing about the Richard Stark-Parker novels is that Westlake wrote a whole bunch of them from the early '60s to I think the early '70s, and then stopped, only to return to Stark-Parker in the late '90s. About a 20-year gap. And the late Stark-Parkers are very good -- the later Parker being a logical continuation (in character and life circumstances) of the man of the early Stark-Parker books, though if you went back and tried to figure out how old Parker would have to be by now (he's said to have been a young WWII vet in one of the early books), the present-day Parker wouldn't make sense age-wise. Also, in the later Parkers especially, Westlake sets himself some plot puzzles that are quite bizarre if you step back from them a bit, though they feel perfectly natural and necessary in the reading and are resolved in the same manner. You could say that the "poetry" of the Stark-Parker novels is in the plotting -- i.e. the rhythms of what happens next -- which is a really unusual thing in modern fiction of any sort, at least in my experience. About those plot rhythms -- Westlake/Stark makes an interesting contrast with Michael Connelly, who is also a "'poetry' is in the plot" writer. In a Connelly/Harry Bosch novel, typically you feel about 60 or 80 pages from the end that the plot is just about wound up, but it certainly is not -- and that is where and how a lot of the poetic "whoosh" hits you (by "poetic" I mean that there's a sense here that a lyrical vision or image of the world is being conveyed to us by this plot shape, one that is beyond our ability, and that of the characters', to grasp rationally). In a Stark/Parker novel, typically you feel about 6 or 8 pages (!) from the end that the plot can't possibly be that close to being wound up, but it is. And that where and how a lot of the poetic "whoosh" hits you etc.

Taking the thread way off topic here, but I wonder how you rate Ross Macdonald's plotting, Larry. Poetic or just convoluted?

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Taking the thread way off topic here, but I wonder how you rate Ross Macdonald's plotting, Larry. Poetic or just convoluted?

Definitely poetic, at its best, but there's also a repetitiveness in that realm with RM that can make things a bit unreal at times if you think about it too much. You want to say to Lew Archer, "Don't you remember the shape of your last three cases? Everything goes back to Windsor, Ontario, or to what someone did in the Navy in WWII, or both." Also, I get the feeling that Kenneth Millar (i.e. RM) spent a fair amount of time on the couch; some of his themes, potent though they are, feel like they've been transferred too neatly from the analyst's office to the page. On the other hand, RM at his best is superb. I'm especially fond of "The Zebra-Striped Hearse" (the revelation of the key clue/piece of evidence in that one is a real "whoosh") and others of that era.

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Thanks, Larry.

On the whole I'm a big Macdonald fan, but I'd agree about the repetition in plot shapes. I like how you put it:

You want to say to Lew Archer, "Don't you remember the shape of your last three cases? Everything goes back to Windsor, Ontario, or to what someone did in the Navy in WWII, or both."

It was a doozy of a master-plot, though, if perhaps overly in debt to "Oedipus Rex" (another whiff of the analyst's office?).

I agree that "The Zebra Striped Hearse" is a stand-out. By the way, that's the one that one of my favorite authors quoted from in his brief piece about what made Millar/Macdonald so good.

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Ethan Iverson is a bit Westlake fan, and mentioned in Do The Math recently that Westlake came out for The Bad Plus's recent gig at the Vanguard. Surely someone has written a thesis on relationships between crime novels and jazz.

IIRC in one of Westlake's Richard Stark novels -- I think it was "The Score," where Parker and colleagues try to knock over an entire town in Wyoming -- a member of the criminal crew is a jazz fan who says a few things about the music early on that subtly and accurately place him. Again IIRC, he's a guy who's too edgy and talks too much, and his unnecessary interjection of whose music he likes to listen to is a sign of this flaw, if only because we know that no one else in the crew gives a damn about this. It's not that he's a snob; rather (to over-interpret a bit), he's a middle-aged guy whose favorite music is no longer in favor as much as it used to be, and this dovetails neatly with his own sense that life has unfairly passed him by, which leaves him perpetually pissed him off and thus potentially unstable. Yeah, I think he was talking about a JATP recording from the late '40s in a novel that takes place in the mid '60s.

Edited by Larry Kart
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Surely someone has written a thesis on relationships between crime novels and jazz.

It's a topic that's long fascinated me, and I'm hoping to do a show about it eventually. The references to jazz in crime novels are almost too numerous to mention... I once started a list, but I think it's on the computer at my office. And there's quite a lot of crime fiction that I haven't read, so I'm sure that I've missed plenty of allusions. In terms of relatively recent crime novels, some here are probably already familiar with Bill Moody's novels, in which a jazz pianist solves mysteries that are related to jazz and jazz narratives (the death of Wardell Gray, a Clifford Brown bootleg, etc.). I found them passably enjoyable, if a bit too thick with a kind of derivative jazz "attitude" that ended up being rather offputting.

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Bringing the conversation back to Balliett - I have always thought he was a really bright guy with "really" flawed musical insight. Not bad, not good, just very interesting prose.

Younger folks might find this difficult to understand but he was a beacon for us in the '50s and '60s, whether you agreed or not.

Thank you Mr. Balliett.

JHW always pissed me off and think his reputation outruns his "insight".

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been busy witht his subject on Jazz Research, as Larry can testify - will only add:

1) though I've been polite over there, Balliett really annoys me, though he has done some very good work; problem is that after a while, it's all the same, at least to me. And I am of the post- New Novel French school that agrees with Robbe Grillet, brilliant theorist, that the metaphor is to be avoided like the plague, because it is a method of re-enforcing old and outdated ideas and images, of putting a block between the reader and true experience. It can be done well, but probably has not been done well recently. I actually would propose a ban on the use of metaphor, possibly a small fine and the chopping off of several fingers.

2) I like Ross McDonald but I remember thinking, after reading a bunch of his books, of how he repeated himself; too many plot twists based on incest or uncertain parentage, as I recall.

3) None of these guys hold a candle to Dashiell Hammiett; inconsistent as he was, Red Harvest is the masterpiece of crime masterpieces.

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To relieve possible bewilderment, in Godard's "Made In U.S.A.," the Parker character is played by Anna Karina. Robert Duvall in "The Outfit" is a bit more like what one imagines Parker to be. Lee Marvin is great in "Point Blank," but he's angry to the point of being nuts as he seeks revenge, which makes for a great movie but is not true to Westlake-Stark's book. Parker seldom if ever gets angry, and when he does, he knows he's made a mistake; in one sense, he just a problem solver.

Just last night I saw the director's version Payback which is also based on The Hunter. Very different than Mel Gibson's cut of the film (Kris Kristofferson isn't even in it!). It' s much closer to the original novel than Point Blank. Many years ago I helped edit a magazine in which we had one of our writers interview Westlake via mail (this was before e-mail) because our writer was in prison. (He'd been on the FBI's 10 most wanted list.)

As you might expect it was a great interview.

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