Jump to content

An Interview with Ben Ratliff (NYT Jazz Critic)


Recommended Posts

Guest Bill Barton

Thanks for posting this. With the amount of flak Ratliff catches around here it's interesting to have some background on where he "came from."

The following passage in particular:

"Jazz for me started with a Louis Armstrong Hot Five record someone gave me when I was around 8. I really, really liked 'Cornet Chop Suey.' Someone else gave me a record by the Miles Davis quintet with Coltrane when I was about 14. I knew I was on to something. I played guitar in rock bands. I took one lesson with a jazz teacher. He pointed me toward Joe Pass, whom I didn’t like and still don’t. Meanwhile, live jazz was not available to me in Rockland County in the early 80s, but hardcore punk matinees at CBGBs, 90 minutes away, were. If you squinted really hard, it could lead you to jazz. I think the line of discovery went: Heart Attack, Flipper, Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Albert Ayler, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, etc. etc. I still see this kind of thing happening. It’s one way in, one of hundreds."

Edited by Bill Barton
Link to comment
Share on other sites

He still doesn't like Joe Pass and he listened to this junk:

Heart Attack, Flipper, Black Flag, Sonic Youth

So much for taste...

Oh please!

I don't dig Joe Pass, Heart Attack, Flipper, Black Flag, Sonic Youth AND Ben Ratliff.

But I'm not about to confuse my personal opinions on such with some sort of silly overall judgment on the matter of taste.

I'm no fan, but Sonic Youth "junk"? :tdown

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The following passage in particular:

"[...] Meanwhile, live jazz was not available to me in Rockland County in the early 80s, but hardcore punk matinees at CBGBs, 90 minutes away, were.

Ratliff was born in 1968. In 1984 he would have been 16. When I was 16, in Westchester, right next door to Rockland County, live jazz was certainly available to me. Me and my pals would go to jazz clubs in Manhattan and were never carded. But maybe things had changed in the ten years separating me from Ratliff, age-wise, or maybe his family moved away earlier than that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

... What's at stake is the idea some douche thinks he can comment on jazz history without working knowledge of western classical that many, if not all, of jazz's best musicians were themselves steeped in. ...

"Working knowledge?" OK. "... many if not all of jazz's best musicians were themselves steeped in?" A little fuzzy on that one. How steeped? And what's with the were? Is it over already?

You may be 100% correct. Or you may be 100% correct 50% of the time. Big difference, especially as you seem to be hanging your criticism of the guy in large part on this. ("what's at stake ...")

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chauncey (Like Clem) seems to dislike anyone with an actual paying gig writing about Jazz. However he may be right. I don't read the NY Times much but I was shocked to see Ratliff recommending a Miles bootleg that consisted of 3 cuts available on Prestige and one cut that doesn't even have Miles on it-- which Ratliff couldn't tell. (This is discussed in a thread under "Discography" but I don't know how to link to threads.) And in defense of Chris there's also a thread here about how influential he was on music people as a dj. (It's in this, the Jazz in Print forum.)

Edited by medjuck
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Bill Barton

Chauncey (Like Clem) seems to dislike anyone with an actual paying gig writing about Jazz...

<_< Clem doesn't seem to have much use for those with non-paying gigs either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, there are certain things that those writing about music 'professionally' (there's an archaic concept, soon to over, likewise 'positions of influence'), SHOULD KNOW...BUT that's neither necessary nor sufficient for them to be worthwhile as writers or human beings and CM & Clem are the living proof of that...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The following passage in particular:

"[...] Meanwhile, live jazz was not available to me in Rockland County in the early 80s, but hardcore punk matinees at CBGBs, 90 minutes away, were.

Ratliff was born in 1968. In 1984 he would have been 16. When I was 16, in Westchester, right next door to Rockland County, live jazz was certainly available to me. Me and my pals would go to jazz clubs in Manhattan and were never carded. But maybe things had changed in the ten years separating me from Ratliff, age-wise, or maybe his family moved away earlier than that.

Ben was DJing at KCR by the time he was a Columbia undergrad, so he was hip to jazz at a pretty young age, especially for a child of the eighties. I know he initially turned me onto Morton Feldman (specifically the For Bunita Marcus on Hat Art), which I'll be forever grateful for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the line of discovery went: Heart Attack, Flipper, Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Albert Ayler, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, etc. etc.

That's an interesting route. I can see getting from Sonic Youth to Ayler, but it seems like another step would be in there before getting to Bird...at least to me. But then WTF do I know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the line of discovery went: Heart Attack, Flipper, Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Albert Ayler, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, etc. etc.

That's an interesting route. I can see getting from Sonic Youth to Ayler, but it seems like another step would be in there before getting to Bird...at least to me. But then WTF do I know.

One of the first jazz records I got was Mingus's Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and it reminded me of nothing so much in my prior listening experience as Sonic Youth!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having been away from the initial discussion of Ratliff's bio, I think I came to some of the basic conclusions that lots of other folks here did. I think in all its reductiveness it managed to kill the beautiful leitmotif of the the Porter book (which was that Coltrane spent look periods honing his craft; that ascension to glory or whatnot had a lot to do with sitting down and dealing with the nuts and bolts of the art). Ratliff's focus on Coltrane-as-iconography makes the second half of the book useful, as it deals with musical and critical responses to Trane's music... the first half, though, teeters in the middle of reader's digest mini-bio, insubstantial musical analysis, and some misinformation that could have been easily avoided with an elaborating paragraph or simple fact-checking.

Digressing, but--in scholarly circles, actually, I've been told that many African-American scholars actually prefer the J.C. Thomas bio to the Porter. The Thomas bio is easily the most overtly poetic of the Coltrane books and for all its hagiography actually kind of pretty--and I think it complements the second half of the Ratliff bio nicely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...