Astonishing blather about Woody Shaw

[Larry Kart]

Just picked this up for reference purposes at a Half-Price Books sale as was astonished by this alternately tasteless and insane nonsense:

"Woody Shaw's career judgment was almost as clouded as his actual vision. A classic under-achiever, his relatively lowly critical standing is a result partly of his music purism (which was thoroughgoing and admirable) but more largely of his refusal or inability to get his long-term act together...."

OK, there's some truth there, but the errors ("lowly critical standing"?), the sneering, and the social-worker snottiness...

But the worst is yet to come:

"Like all imaginative Americans, Woody was violently stretched between opposites and inexorably drawn to the things and place that would destroy him."

Cook and Morton do write "all imaginative Americans" here, so I guess that I am among the many Americans who are not imaginative enough or haven't yet found the things and gotten to the places that will destroy us.

One suspects that Cook and Morton were themselves over-using controlled substances when they wrote this.

[marcello]

Thanks for exposing this crap, Larry.

The "Like all imaginative Americans" phrase is a example of a nasty side of Brit writers. The patronizing / superior tone is unfortunate and unnecessary.

Edited September 3, 2008 by marcello

[Man with the Golden Arm]

Yes, they always pissed me off in edition after edition with their line about Sonny Clark.

[AmirBagachelles]

relatively lowly...partly...largely. All fine adverbs, but not when (mis)used in the same sentence, or the same day. Teeing up some Blackstone Legacy now.

[jostber]

I see Woody Shaw more as a real jazz artist determined to communicate his musical vision regardless of a sometimes unreceptive music world.

[Tom Storer]

I guess when you're reviewing thousands and thousands of CDs with a deadline staring you in the face, you must run out of things to say. In that case, a little quick and dirty armchair psychoanalysis can fill entire paragraphs! Best thing about it is that you can say any old thing that comes to mind without needing anything to support your hasty conclusions.

[JSngry]

Is "astonishing blather" Latin for "ignunt-ass punkfuck bullshit"?

If I remember my studies correctly, I believe it is!

[jazzbo]

Good example of why I just don't read reviews any longer. . . except by peers in these pages.

[John L]

I haven't read the Penguin Guide in years, and due mostly to aggrevating passages like this one.

I vaguely recall what they wrote about Houston Person in one of the early editions of the book: "One either likes this musical version of soul food, or one doesn't." Hmmm, I wonder which camp Cook and Morton were in.

[Nate Dorward]

I don't remember the line about Sonny Clark--what was it?

Yeah, the Shaw entry is terrible. But I always thought the worst entry in the book was the first version of the Arthur Rhames entry, which (IIRC) had some tastelessly skeptical comments. They considerably revised it in later editions. There's also the notable revisionism about a few discs (compare older & newer editions' entries for Monk's Underground and Miles's Blackhawk records). & in one early edition they make a passing remark that "anything, even a rampaging elephant, would seem subtle next to Hank Mobley" (if memory serves).

[Big Al]

"thoroughgoing"??? Who the hell uses that word, besides critics grasping at credibility?

[sidewinder]

I like the Penguin guides, on the whole. Two things I just damn well hate about them though:

(1) They never include Mosaics (apart from the Dean Benedetti).

(2) The insulting and amazingly off-kilter text that's in there year after year concerning the great Woody Shaw.

For the next edition (apparently in the works) I hope they correct at least the latter.

[sidewinder]

"anything, even a rampaging elephant, would seem subtle next to Hank Mobley" (if memory serves).

It's probably something like 'raging pachyderm'

Edited September 2, 2008 by sidewinder

[Clunky]

I like the Penguin guide despite disagreeing with some of their assessments. They do often seem to refer to "vinyl gloom" which I believed for years until I tried a reasonable turntable and realised vinyl's benefits. That aside their tome remains the best and my knowledge would be all the poorer without it.

Edited September 2, 2008 by Clunky

[Quincy]

I guess when you're reviewing thousands and thousands of CDs with a deadline staring you in the face, you must run out of things to say.

Yeah, it's a 5 lb. 1700+ page book with a few paragraphs that would have better been left out or rewritten, but on the whole it's useful and at times there's wit along with the criticism. At least they dropped the snotty Moncur III entries altogether in the 7th edition.

Just think if they had let Allen Lowe write the Dexter Gordon section.

[Larry Kart]

I guess when you're reviewing thousands and thousands of CDs with a deadline staring you in the face, you must run out of things to say.

Yeah, it's a 5 lb. 1700+ page book with a few paragraphs that would have better been left out or rewritten...

We've all made errors -- e.g. assuming that we knew things what we did not in fact know them -- but this is a mistake of egregious, mean-spirited, I would even say poisonous, would-be-know-it-all commission. The question, then is how and why could the author(s) have made this mistake? -- or rather, because I believe that the passages I quoted are essentially their invention, why did they invent this stuff? It sure ain't misguided but received "wisdom" in any circles I've been around.

My guess is that the chief strain in writing a book like this, aside from the sheer typing, is to generate opinion after opinion after opinion after opinion, all presumably (but perhaps we know better) with the same degree of commitment and alertness. One suspects that the opinion-forming/emitting process gets a bit mechanical and exhausting at times, and further that it can generate little fits of virtually free-form, seemingly crazed pontificating excess -- the way, say, someone whose job it is to masturbate in private as much as possible might get confused and/or carried away, pull out John Thomas, and spray his fellow commuters on the morning bus.

[AndrewHill]

There's also the notable revisionism about a few discs (compare older & newer editions' entries for Monk's Underground and Miles's Blackhawk records).

Same with Getz's Sweet Rain.

Edited September 3, 2008 by Holy Ghost

[Quincy]

I guess when you're reviewing thousands and thousands of CDs with a deadline staring you in the face, you must run out of things to say.

Yeah, it's a 5 lb. 1700+ page book with a few paragraphs that would have better been left out or rewritten...

We've all made errors -- e.g. assuming that we knew things what we did not in fact know them -- but this is a mistake of egregious, mean-spirited, I would even say poisonous, would-be-know-it-all commission. The question, then is how and why could the author(s) have made this mistake? -- or rather, because I believe that the passages I quoted are essentially their invention, why did they invent this stuff? It sure ain't misguided but received "wisdom" in any circles I've been around.

My guess is that the chief strain in writing a book like this, aside from the sheer typing, is to generate opinion after opinion after opinion after opinion, all presumably (but perhaps we know better) with the same degree of commitment and alertness. One suspects that the opinion-forming/emitting process gets a bit mechanical and exhausting at times, and further that it can generate little fits of virtually free-form, seemingly crazed pontificating excess -- the way, say, someone whose job it is to masturbate in private as much as possible might get confused and/or carried away, pull out John Thomas, and spray his fellow commuters on the morning bus.

That's why I made the comment about the entry for Moncur which was in an older edition (before the 5th I think) but deleted. I no longer have the earlier book, but it was obvious that Moncur was an artist that possibly both authors detested (I have no idea how they divided the responsibilities.) There was a crack made somewhere along the lines of "but that would entail actually having to listen to his albums." I envisioned the author being beaten down & giddy from overwork & it being a late hour, facing an artist who he just couldn't stand. I think it was inappropriate to include it, although when faced with a review that is "off" in such a manner I figure that I should probably look elsewhere for other opinions for that artist. Is it better to fake interest and throw 2 or 3 stars at an album, leave out the artist altogether or find a 3rd person to review the artist when the 2 can't do it?

Cook is dead so I doubt there will another book, although I suppose Morton could be teamed with someone else or (gulp) go it alone.

[B. Clugston]

The Woody Shaw comment dates back to the 2nd edition (and possibly the 1st, which I don't have). I've always been baffled by it. How does recording a bunch of stellar albums for Muse and then getting picked up by a major label show clouded career judgment?

I used to love the Penguin guide and discovered a lot of European and Russian jazz because of it, but have become aggravated by slopping editing (references to CDs they dropped several editions ago) and misleading reviews (they make Mingus at Carnegie Hall sound like a Sibelius symphony and not the jam session that it is). The clincher was when they began listing a fictitious Braxton CD (due to garbled info on the AMG site) yet review the thing as if they have listened to it. The guide needs a really heavy editing.

Edited September 3, 2008 by B. Clugston

[B. Clugston]

Cook is dead so I doubt there will another book, although I suppose Morton could be teamed with someone else or (gulp) go it alone.

I've heard that another edition will be published this year.

[A Lark Ascending]

The examples quoted are clearly silly and deserve ridiculing. But, as a whole, I don't think Cook and Morton are anywhere close to the top of the tree when it comes over the top sounding-off against things that they are not keen on in jazz. Though they might seem that way if it is the music you treasure that is victim of the hatchet.

It's worth recalling the context of the original Penguins:

a) It originally came out for a UK audience at a time when it was very hard to get information on jazz. There had been a number of failed magazines, the rock weekly's had dropped jazz coverage, 'The Wire' had shifted towards a different focus. I know I used the Penguins enormously in the 90s when I was expanding my jazz listening because it was such broad source.

b) I doubt if this was their conscious intention, but it also appeared at a time when jazz in Europe was really starting to take off in a big way; and the Penguin provided avenues into that (I suspect Morton was the driving force there). It was refreshing to find a publication that did not tell the story as a largely American tale (I appreciate that to some it is the latter). In that sense it was almost part of that independence struggle - perhaps the Blue Note sniffiness needs seeing as the actions of an adolescent leaving home and wanting to establish his independence, indulging in some boorish behaviour in the act of breaking away.

I used Penguin as a major guide for about ten years; partly because there was little alternative, partly because it did the job and introduced me to music that I really came to enjoy (I'll forgive them the rosette for 'The Individualism of Eric Satie'). But since 2000 there have been so many other ways of getting a steer - largely due to the internet but also with a long running UK jazz magazine. If I want to find out about a recording I read about here, I go to Google rather than Penguin. I suspect its days are now past - aphysical, single volume survey of a topic as vast as jazz recordings just seems too big. Best left to the net, though I think there is still a place for well researched, enthusiastic surveys of narrower periods. I'm not in the market for a book on the whole of Classical Music on CD; I would like one to guide me through Medieval/Renaissance.

As for the arrogance and sneering...well I regularly see this applauded as 'strong opinion' when carried out by other critics with other targets. Cook and Morton just suffer from that affliction that benights so much jazz writing. The tendency to present subjective opinion as hard fact; I'm often reminded of:

A quick look back at threads on this site on musicians like Bill Frisell and Brad Mehldau will reveal commentary that make Cook and Morton's on Blue Note seem positively benign.

Jazz writing as a whole - especially jazz writing based on reactions to music rather than intensive research - needs to learn to be more tentative in its judgements.

[sidewinder]

At least they dropped the snotty Moncur III entries altogether in the 7th edition.

There was also the 'Hello Grachan Moncur' remark in the Richard Cook Blue Note bio. I don't think it was meant at all vindictively but it was a shame to see poor old Grachan treated in passing like that, instead of having a para or two of information about his great Blue Note sessions.

[sidewinder]

Cook is dead so I doubt there will another book, although I suppose Morton could be teamed with someone else or (gulp) go it alone.

I've heard that another edition will be published this year.

Yep.

[Cliff Englewood]

I'm not a huge fan of the Guide, but in fairness, they're sometimes fairly snotty about stuff they like.

[Clunky]

Where I find it still useful is getting relative rating on artists I'm already interested in exploring but aren't particularly familiar with. I've long since stopped getting "upset" about negative reviews of sessions I have and like. I just move on.

Can't agree with everyone. Some people here love Gene Harris, I don't , but that doesn't devalue the worth of their other opinions in my eyes.