Whitney Balliett

[Tom Storer]

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brilliant theorist, that the metaphor is to be avoided like the plague, because it is a method of re-enforcing old and outdated ideas and images, of putting a block between the reader and true experience.

Personally I'd say that that's true of hackneyed, unimaginative metaphors, but not of metaphors in general. And I'd be very skeptical of any writer's confidence that he or she assists a reader on the way to "true experience." "True" anything, for that matter.

[Larry Kart]

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.

An '80s reissue of one of the earlier Parker novels has an intro by a writer who once was an imprisoned bank robber. He says that Parker novels were very popular in prison.

[paul secor]

My feeling is that Whitney Balliett did something that no one else did. He was unique - whether you like his writing or not, you have to give him that.

edited for spelling

Edited February 5, 2007 by paul secor

[Brownian Motion]

Balliett's passing is very sad news!

I learned a lot from the articles he wrote in 'The New Yorker' after I started getting interested in jazz. Beautiful writing.

I have reread some of these articles in in Balliett's collected works recently. They stood up very well even if I was not in full agreement with some of his statements. He will be missed!

I've never been in full agreement with anyone's statements about anything, but Balliett's enthusiasms often became my enthusiasms as well. I'll miss him, too.

[Guest donald petersen]

all you writer guys hate on anyone who's successful.

i was not born yet or old enough to have been there myself, and reading balliett's writings i get a nice flavor of what was happening. i get who he is and i am ok seeing these things through his eyes. i don't have to agree with his tastes or even take him seriously...but i do enjoy reading his accounts. i think he had a nice way with the metaphor and if he wasn't a perfect writer, so what? he was a jazz critic, not fucking john hawkes.

[Guest youmustbe]

YUP!!!!

He wrote about an Era that had pretty much ended by the time I got into Jazz. Invaluable.

As for John Wilson, he did review Archie Shepp live, and it was his book of record reviews that got me to buy King Oliver as well as Sonny Stitt. Not bad.

[Randy Twizzle]

Here's Wilson's 12/31/1964 review of Archie Shepp

And for those nostalgic for the 60s here's an excerpt from a Feb 1965 article about a panel discussion held at the Village Vanguard involving Shepp.

[medjuck]

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.

An '80s reissue of one of the earlier Parker novels has an intro by a writer who once was an imprisoned bank robber. He says that Parker novels were very popular in prison.

Was it Albert Nussbaum? Do you remember which Parker book it was? Nussbaum also interviewd George Burns for us via the US Post Office.

[Hot Ptah]

For me, this has been one of the interesting aspects of beginning to read the organissimo forums. Before reading these forums, I had always approached writing about jazz as purely informational--did it help me decide which albums to buy next or which artists to see, or miss, in concert. I realized that some of the writers were somewhat better than the others, but the idea that any jazz writers could be high quality writers on some type of objective level had not occurred to me. I always imagined that much of the writing about jazz was done on a deadline, and that the writers deserved somewhat of a "pass" because of that.

I guess that there is no reason why jazz writing could not be at a high level of artistic quality. Up to now, that has never been one of my criteria in deciding what jazz writing to seek out. I am going to start thinking about it more now.

I found Whitney Balliett entertaining, and sometimes useful on an informational source. I found some of his metaphors funny, on a tongue in cheek level. I always imagined that he was chuckling to himself at how strange he could make some of the metaphors and still get them past the editor. I am beginning to get the idea that this was a private idea of mine, not shared by other readers.

[Larry Kart]

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.

An '80s reissue of one of the earlier Parker novels has an intro by a writer who once was an imprisoned bank robber. He says that Parker novels were very popular in prison.

Was it Albert Nussbaum? Do you remember which Parker book it was? Nussbaum also interviewd George Burns for us via the US Post Office.

I'm virtually certain it was Nussbaum. Don't recall which Parker it was, but it was one of a series of '70s or '80s hardback reissues of the early set of Parkers, put out by a mystery/crime specialty imprint like Otto Penzler. All of them had intros by Westlake friends and admirers -- Lawrence Bloch, Brian Garfield, etc.

BTW, the depressed ex-cop of the Westlake/ "Tucker Coe" books is Mitch Tobin.

[AllenLowe]

"all you writer guys hate on anyone who's successful. "

funny to put his in a thread that includes praising posts about writers who have made millions of dollars -

so it has nothing to do with success - and if you want to narrow it down to jazz writers, I would praise Gary Giddins, Francis Davis, Max Harrison, Larry Kart - all successful, authors of books, who have made their livings as writers (and that Kart guy is loaded with cash - though I think some of it may have come from his little stable, if you know what I mean; he doesn't wear those funny hats for nothing) -

[Ted O'Reilly]

Once more re: crime fiction and jazz, the usually-reliable Elmore Leonard faltered a bit with "The Hot Kid", set in the early-'30s southwest of Oklahoma and Kansas City, but there are many references to then current jazz in the area.

About half-way through the book, Leonard has his title character Carl Webster (a US marshal) share a drink and a conversation at the Reno Club with Jay McShann...

(And Donald Westlake's "The Dancing Aztecs" reminds me of one of Mozart's opera sextets -- he keeps so many plot lines going at once, unconfusingly, each memorable).

And as to Balliett, I preferred his profiles to his reviews, but all were done with singular style.

[Guest youmustbe]

I didn't know Larry Kart had a stable of horses that ran at Arlington Park???!!!!!!

BTW I love Cornell Woolrich's stuff and most of Jim Thompson....David Goodis is interesting to me too.

RE Ross McDonald... I love The Chill....it's hard not to be repetative when it's always the same character....after awhile you write the same book, whether Westlake, Leonard or whoever. That's why Hammett and Chandler are special, just a few.....

And yes, I was at BOTH the Judson Hall Shepp concert and at the Vanguard for 'town' meeting'....I remember LeRoi Jones saying....'We don't need you anymore'....meaning Liberal Jews, and Archie trying to intercede, 'No, no'....of course, they were both married and had children at the time with Jewish women....and so on and so on....I remember LeRoi, now Amiri, holding the door open for me at a bar, he was about to come in as I was going out, and I said to him...'I thought you didn't respect the White Man?"....he smiled sheepishly.....Hey, the guy still owes me 10 bucks for the Albert Ayler Lp I sent for from Nam which I never got!

When I saw him at Jackie Mac's funeral, he didn't give me the 10, but said he was gonna put it out on cd and gave me a flyer for his son Ras who was running for something,..... he won I believe, in Newark. Whatever, he loves Jazz...just did soemthing last week for French TV with Santi DeBriano, Andrew Cyrlille.....

[Larry Kart]

I didn't know Larry Kart had a stable of horses that ran at Arlington Park???!!!!!!

I don't know what Allen means there, but it sounds like fun.

Edited February 6, 2007 by Larry Kart

[AllenLowe]

well, I didn't want to say it, but I was thinking about a different kind of stable - in the tradition of Jelly Roll Morton, Willie the Pimp, and Huggie Bear -

[Larry Kart]

Oh -- you mean my girls. I'll say hello for you.

Edited February 6, 2007 by Larry Kart

[AllenLowe]

good - as long as I keep getting my "frequent flyer" discount -

[ghost of miles]

If you think jazz writers are livin' large, well, I have two words for you--jazz radio. I'd post more, but Lazaro says we're about to run out of "supplies" for the mid-day party down here in Bermuda, so I need to rustle up one of the staff for some errand-running. Dilemma: do I buy that third yacht or not?

[garthsj]

If you think jazz writers are livin' large, well, I have two words for you--jazz radio. I'd post more, but Lazaro says we're about to run out of "supplies" for the mid-day party down here in Bermuda, so I need to rustle up one of the staff for some errand-running. Dilemma: do I buy that third yacht or not?

I agree with you Ghost. It's only because I made so much money doing my jazz radio show here in Houston on public radio for 16 years, that I can afford to live the big life and dabble as a lowly paid academic author ...

... and as far a metaphors are concerned, as George Lakoff points out in his book, METAPHORS WE LIVE BY, almost everything we consider is essentially compared to something else within our archives of experience ... but that doesn't mean that we have to write them down. I must confess that I own every book that Whitney Balliet has written, and I still get great delight from his descriptions. Perhaps he was not the most insightful analyst of the music, but he could certainly "paint a great picture" ...

Edited February 7, 2007 by garthsj

[AllenLowe]

I actually have read and enjoyed Balliett's work for many years - but re-reading it now I just find much of it false and artificial. Just a gut reaction -

but what do you rich guys know?

[paul secor]

I actually have read and enjoyed Balliett's work for many years - but re-reading it now I just find much of it false and artificial. Just a gut reaction -

but what do you rich guys know?

Guess you were rich when you enjoyed his stuff.