West Coast Jazz Recommendations

[JSngry]

Point is not about music sounding or not sounding the same. Point is that more or less same dynamics of scene not presented marketed on equal terms. One group gets a whole coast of America (btw, SF, Portland, Seattle?) to itself for decades ahead, another gets a gimmicky RCA album starring many of the label's own roster, and then moves on.

To be expected in real time, but as an ongoing truth, we can do better than that. Marketing is not based on objectivity, neither is personal taste, necessarily. But something's got to be!

Who bought Les/The Jazz Modes records, anyway? Anybody? That seems like a potential "crossover" band that didn't(?) cross over.

I'll blame Charlie Rouse. Put Bob Cooper in that chair and Julius Watkins is rich before his time.

Not time to purge the infidels or anything stupid like that, just time to have a more...realistic discussion going forth.

Do we not like the Ted Gioia book, btw? That thing made impossible for me to take the WCJ "shorthand" term seriously, it just no longer made sense to me to do so.

[Larry Kart]

Point is not about music sounding or not sounding the same. Point is that more or less same dynamics of scene not presented marketed on equal terms. One group gets a whole coast of America (btw, SF, Portland, Seattle?) to itself for decades ahead, another gets a gimmicky RCA album starring many of the label's own roster, and then moves on.

To be expected in real time, but as an ongoing truth, we can do better than that. Marketing is not based on objectivity, neither is personal taste, necessarily. But something's got to be!

Who bought Les/The Jazz Modes records, anyway? Anybody? That seems like a potential "crossover" band that didn't(?) cross over.

I'll blame Charlie Rouse. Put Bob Cooper in that chair and Julius Watkins is rich before his time.

Not time to purge the infidels or anything stupid like that, just time to have a more...realistic discussion going forth.

Do we not like the Ted Gioia book, btw? That thing made impossible for me to take the WCJ "shorthand" term seriously, it just no longer made sense to me to do so.

No, I don't recall liking that Gioia book or any Gioia book. Nor any book by his brother "new formalist" poet Dana Gioia -- George Bush's choice to run the National Endowment for the Arts -- either.

[JSngry]

It's the only thing I've knowing read of his, but it made a lot of sense to me. Does that mean I'm going to vote for the next available Bush?

[ArtSalt]

Is this the right time to declare my appreciation of Jack Sheldon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhSBRF2Rm7I

[Big Beat Steve]

One swallow doesn't make a summer, as they say, but as it happens there is an album that nicely demonstrates that the '"scene" on the East Coast [that you feel was] identical to that of the "West Coast Jazz" -- players who worked the studio, played jazz as/when available, writers who wrote beyond the conventional conveniences, etc. etc," was not in fact so. The album is "East Coast -West Coast Scene" (RCA), from 1954, and it features Al Cohn and his 'Charlie's Tavern' Ensemble and Shorty Rogers and his Augmented Giants -- three longish tracks for each group. Cohn's group includes Joe Newman, Billy Byers, Eddie Bert, Hal McKusick, Gene Quill, Sol Schlinger, Sanford Gold, Billy Bauer, Milt Hinton, and Osie Johnson; Rogers group includes Milt Bernhart, Bob Enevoldsen, Lennie Niehaus, Bud Shank, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Guiffre, Pete Jolly, Barney Kessel, Curtis Counce, and Shelly Manne. I'm telling you that both back in the day and now, no one with much listening experience would have thought that just about any of the soloists (with the exception of Sims, who just happened to be L.A.-based at the time, and the rather faceless Gold) or any of the writing came from a coast other than the one from which they/it actually came. Maybe, that's because I was around at the time and (as a young but assiduous fan) was more or less immersed in the various musical/stylistic "cues" that were involved, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Note BTW that none of those East Coast players was part of the then just taking shape "Hard Bop" musical scene. If any of them had been, that of course would have made stylistic differentiation between players from the two "coasts" a good deal easier.

Why not take in the "West Coast vs East Coast" LP on MGM E3390 too, then? Yes I know the fact that this session (much like various preceding "Battle" 10-inchers) was masterminded by Leonard Feather will be grating enough to many to dismiss this outright and consider it unworthy of close listening, but hey (hey, there I said "hey" too! ), the Westcoasters have Enevoldsen and Fagerquist (a.o.) in their lineup!

Seriously, I doubt Jim at any time meant to say those East Coasters were carbon copies/duplicates of WCJ in their sound, arrangements, etc. but is Al Cohn (and his surroundings) such a far-fetched example of Eastern jazzmen who did their own (Eastern?) thing apart from Hard Bop that was different but not a million miles away from those WCJ segments that were NOT all "classically influenced" etc.?

Why all this insistence on narrowing down the many facets of WCJ to such a narrow excerpt that seems to qualify as the primary "typical" WCJ today?

Sorry again for taking this up but this IS puzzling to me, and all credentials aside, may I sum up what baffles me in the following remark just from one forumist to another? Is this really a matter of "Larry Kart's West Coast Jazz is what Larry Kart's West Coast Jazz is and just will not be all of what West Coast Jazz was and, by all recorded evidence, still is?" My sincere apologies if this sounds disrespectful - it really, really is not meant to be, it just baffles me no end coming from your corner of the jazz world.

Somehow what Peter Friedman said above both about the necessity of having categories (not to pigeonhole in the narrowest possible way but to establish overall, general references of what an artist works within or how a jazz style functions) but of reappraising the music at the same time within those terms sounds much more down-to-earth to me.

No, I don't recall liking that Gioia book or any Gioia book.

So you did not like the WCJ history by Ted Gioia? What is it that you did not like or what do you fault him for? Realy curious to find out ...

It's funny - among the many jazz books I have read and hang on to, this is one of not very many (Ira Gitler's " Swing to Bop" is another one) that I find myself pulling out time and again to start reading it again from any chapter that suits my mood and each time I feel like immediately being fully immersed in the subject and find it as fresh as the first time I read it. IMHO he strikes a very nice balance between the background, the overall setting/framework, the life and music of the artists to present the full picture and the whole scope. Gordon's book which focuses more on the recordings and has more of a "record review" slant complements it quite well and brings out the wide range of WCJ nuances too.

Not to forget the JWC book by Alain Tercinet published in 1986 or so that also has that "record review" angle but covers an incredibly wide range of artists and ties a lot of loose ends together, IMO (and it does dwell on East Coast-West Coast comparisons/evaluations, including from the "arranged" and "classically influenced" angle too, BTW).

Enough coverage of the subject available, then, that adds insights that became apparent "after the fact". And regardless of the fact that Tercinet's book was published in French, it does have its merits and adds to Gioia and Gordon and if it is off the radar of those who do not speak or read French then this does not invalidate the book or make it irrelevant but rather is the loss of those who don't read French.

Edited February 3, 2015 by Big Beat Steve

[Teasing the Korean]

Is this really a matter of "Larry Kart's West Coast Jazz is what Larry Kart's West Coast Jazz is and just will not be all of what West Coast Jazz was and, by all recorded evidence, still is?" My sincere apologies if this sounds disrespectful - it really, really is not meant to be, it just baffles me no end coming from your corner of the jazz world.

Not to speak for Larry, but I think he made his point very clear several pages back, in delineating what has stylistically become known as "West Coast Jazz" vs. any jazz recorded on the west coast and/or by musicians residing on the west coast. Not sure how all the confusion arose.

[Big Beat Steve]

I did notice and understand that but even if I go by what I have read about that in CONTEMPORARY sources (which may not even have given the full picture) I still feel that more than that WCJ "arranged from A to Z" and "classically tinged" or "emotionless" playing was promoted/marketed/sold under that tag.

Besides, some of what has been lumped in with WCJ (including in this thread, understandably) met with stern opposition from those concerned (cf. Gerry Mulligan). So do we concede that if Gerry Mulligan did not want to be seen as part of the WCJ "movement" then we should look elsewhere or do we treat this opposition as a mere footnote in history? I am unsure about this myself but to some degree I think I see his point, e.g. not all that was "cool" in jazz at that time was necessarily WCJ just because it was "cool".

It is a difficult subject but to me it is not a matter of confusion. My bottom line is that even what "has stylistically become known as West Coast Jazz" is a wider field than what the key criteria mentioned above would include (particularly if these criteria were to exclude everything else the way it seemed to be the case in some posts here). And this even if Harold Land, Teddy Edwards and others from that part of the spectrum were deliberately excluded (or, if you want, Shelly Manne at his Blackhawk period, too - as opposed to his earlier "Men" which to me are very much WCJ) .

[Larry Kart]

One swallow doesn't make a summer, as they say, but as it happens there is an album that nicely demonstrates that the '"scene" on the East Coast [that you feel was] identical to that of the "West Coast Jazz" -- players who worked the studio, played jazz as/when available, writers who wrote beyond the conventional conveniences, etc. etc," was not in fact so. The album is "East Coast -West Coast Scene" (RCA), from 1954, and it features Al Cohn and his 'Charlie's Tavern' Ensemble and Shorty Rogers and his Augmented Giants -- three longish tracks for each group. Cohn's group includes Joe Newman, Billy Byers, Eddie Bert, Hal McKusick, Gene Quill, Sol Schlinger, Sanford Gold, Billy Bauer, Milt Hinton, and Osie Johnson; Rogers group includes Milt Bernhart, Bob Enevoldsen, Lennie Niehaus, Bud Shank, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Guiffre, Pete Jolly, Barney Kessel, Curtis Counce, and Shelly Manne. I'm telling you that both back in the day and now, no one with much listening experience would have thought that just about any of the soloists (with the exception of Sims, who just happened to be L.A.-based at the time, and the rather faceless Gold) or any of the writing came from a coast other than the one from which they/it actually came. Maybe, that's because I was around at the time and (as a young but assiduous fan) was more or less immersed in the various musical/stylistic "cues" that were involved, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Note BTW that none of those East Coast players was part of the then just taking shape "Hard Bop" musical scene. If any of them had been, that of course would have made stylistic differentiation between players from the two "coasts" a good deal easier.

Why not take in the "West Coast vs East Coast" LP on MGM E3390 too, then? Yes I know the fact that this session (much like various preceding "Battle" 10-inchers) was masterminded by Leonard Feather will be grating enough to many to dismiss this outright and consider it unworthy of close listening, but hey (hey, there I said "hey" too! ), the Westcoasters have Enevoldsen and Fagerquist (a.o.) in their lineup!

Seriously, I doubt Jim at any time meant to say those East Coasters were carbon copies/duplicates of WCJ in their sound, arrangements, etc. but is Al Cohn (and his surroundings) such a far-fetched example of Eastern jazzmen who did their own (Eastern?) thing apart from Hard Bop that was different but not a million miles away from those WCJ segments that were NOT all "classically influenced" etc.?

Why all this insistence on narrowing down the many facets of WCJ to such a narrow excerpt that seems to qualify as the primary "typical" WCJ today?

Sorry again for taking this up but this IS puzzling to me, and all credentials aside, may I sum up what baffles me in the following remark just from one forumist to another? Is this really a matter of "Larry Kart's West Coast Jazz is what Larry Kart's West Coast Jazz is and just will not be all of what West Coast Jazz was and, by all recorded evidence, still is?" My sincere apologies if this sounds disrespectful - it really, really is not meant to be, it just baffles me no end coming from your corner of the jazz world.

Somehow what Peter Friedman said above both about the necessity of having categories (not to pigeonhole in the narrowest possible way but to establish overall, general references of what an artist works within or how a jazz style functions) but of reappraising the music at the same time within those terms sounds much more down-to-earth to me.

No, I don't recall liking that Gioia book or any Gioia book.

So you did not like the WCJ history by Ted Gioia? What is it that you did not like or what do you fault him for? Realy curious to find out ...

It's funny - among the many jazz books I have read and hang on to, this is one of not very many (Ira Gitler's " Swing to Bop" is another one) that I find myself pulling out time and again to start reading it again from any chapter that suits my mood and each time I feel like immediately being fully immersed in the subject and find it as fresh as the first time I read it. IMHO he strikes a very nice balance between the background, the overall setting/framework, the life and music of the artists to present the full picture and the whole scope. Gordon's book which focuses more on the recordings and has more of a "record review" slant complements it quite well and brings out the wide range of WCJ nuances too.

Not to forget the JWC book by Alain Tercinet published in 1986 or so that also has that "record review" angle but covers an incredibly wide range of artists and ties a lot of loose ends together, IMO (and it does dwell on East Coast-West Coast comparisons/evaluations, including from the "arranged" and "classically influenced" angle too, BTW).

Enough coverage of the subject available, then, that adds insights that became apparent "after the fact". And regardless of the fact that Tercinet's book was published in French, it does have its merits and adds to Gioia and Gordon and if it is off the radar of those who do not speak or read French then this does not invalidate the book or make it irrelevant but rather is the loss of those who don't read French.

Don't know the Feather album? What was the lineup?

As for "Seriously, I doubt Jim at any time meant to say those East Coasters were carbon copies/duplicates of WCJ in their sound, arrangements, etc. but is Al Cohn (and his surroundings) such a far-fetched example of Eastern jazzmen who did their own (Eastern?) thing apart from Hard Bop that was different but not a million miles away from those WCJ segments that were NOT all "classically influenced" etc.?" all I meant was that even though admittedly the players in these two groups on that album were not "a million miles away from each other" (even-surface neo-Basie rhythmic habits in particular were pervasive, little or no boppish breaking up of the time) it was still fairly easy, then and now, to tell them apart stylistically on a "Which Coast?" basis.

BTW, Jim did use the word "identical" to characterize those two scenes. I was just saying that the results sure didn't sound identical.

As for the Gioia book, I think I have it on the shelves and certainly would need to take a good look at it to answer your question in detail and in a way that's fair to the book. What I recall, though (risking unfairness and inaccuracy now), is that Gioia was so determined to do what Jim admires the book for doing -- give the, if you will, non-WCJ style aspects of the larger WCJ scene their due and thus redress the by then longstanding "imbalance" that I felt that the WCJ style (as I and many others saw it and felt it to be at the time) was being handled by Gioia with a certain suspicion and distaste (musical and moral). Obviously, from some of things I've said on this thread, I myself am far from a blanket enthusiast for the WCJ style (as I and others on this thread .e.g. John Litweiler, think of it), but it always has seemed to me to be a particular and relatively tight-knit musical-social phenomenon (and with the passage of time, a historical one), and in general I don't like to see accounts of actual detailed facets of the lived past (particularly the lived artistic past) that retrospectively reshape that lived past because one feels/sees that it was arguably inseparable from calculated or semi-incidental (but no less damaging) acts of injustice. I think we're better off if we try to live (or "live") with all of it and work from there and not turn would-be historical accounts into attempts to re-live the past in which, so to speak, the good guys, to use Jim's image, now go to the front of the line.

BTW, perhaps I need to say again that back in the heyday of the WCJ style, I was as aware of, and as much an admirer of, Carl Perkins, Teddy Edwards, Sonny Criss et al. as it was possible for a teen-aged non-resident of California to be, given of course the relative availability of their recorded work, that I certainly noticed the differences between their musical-emotional sensibilities and those of, say, Bob Cooper and Lennie Niehaus and pondered as best I could what those differences might mean about the world or worlds in which we all were living. Isn't that what people do, try to do, ought to try to do when they encounter art and its connections to the social context? But not, in my book, try to do by retrospectively engaging in something of a reparations project.

[Larry Kart]

P.S. A passage from Litweiler's "The Freedom Principle that, in its perhaps alarming succinctness, still seems to me to cut the Gordian knot:

"A more literally detached emotionality arrived with the West Coast jazz inspired both by Tristano and Miles Davis's 1949 Birth of the Cool nonet, a muted, scaled-down big band. The relaxed, subdued atmosphere of West Coast jazz had a healthy acceptance of stylistic diversity and innovation, but it also accepted the emotional world of pop music at face value; even original themes are treated like more hip, more grown-up kinds of pop music. In bop's freest flights it could not escape reality, but these Californians were not aware of the conflict of value that was the source of bop."

[Larry Kart]

The Feather album:

http://www.discogs.com/Leonard-Feathers-West-Coast-Stars-East-Coast-Stars-West-Coast-Vs-East-Coast-A-Battle-Of-Jazz/release/3568094\

I'd have to listen to be sure, but on the face of it, I don't think it would be as likely as the RCA album to show clear-cut "Coastal" stylistic differences. For one thing, who are the arrangers? Rugolo and Dick Hyman? Rugolo was Rugolo, no, in all his quirkiness? And Hyman was kind of faceless? For another, Fagerquist, while located in the L.A. area, was not to me a WCJ figure stylistically. A very personal player who came out of the late Swing Era, he was in his mellow and sometime heated lyricism somewhat analogous to Fats Navarro; or, if you prefer, he was an advanced and much superior Ray Linn.

[johnblitweiler]

Thanks, Larry. I see West Coast Jazz through the eyes / ears of a '50s kid, Steve and Sangry see it through the eyes / ears of older adults.

ArtSalt, any time is a good time to enjoy Jack Sheldon.

[JSngry]

BTW, Jim did use the word "identical" to characterize those two scenes. I was just saying that the results sure didn't sound identical.

As I hopefully clarified, by "identical", I was referring to the work dynamic, not the identical sounds of the results. That would be foolish, if only because of the dissimilarity in studio sounds. And playing a film score is not the same as playing a radio show or a jingle. But as far as a who was doing what in terms of what their 1040s would show, yeah, I'll take identical as an accurate assessment. More accurate than not, for sure.

As for the Gioia book, I think I have it on the shelves and certainly would need to take a good look at it to answer your question in detail and in a way that's fair to the book. What I recall, though (risking unfairness and inaccuracy now), is that Gioia was so determined to do what Jim admires the book for doing -- give the, if you will, non-WCJ style aspects of the larger WCJ scene their due and thus redress the by then longstanding "imbalance" that I felt that the WCJ style (as I and many others saw it and felt it to be at the time) was being handled by Gioia with a certain suspicion and distaste (musical and moral).

Suggest you go back and revisit the book. I got no such impression nor is that what I admire it for. There's no attempt that I can remember to diminish the music of the "West Coast Jazz" music at all. In fact, it is largely spoken of in quite admirable terms. Credit not only given, but quite often enhanced. If you're telling me that this book was written by a guy who was not a fan of, or harbored any beef/agenda against, "West Coast Jazz", I'd have to ask you if we were reading the same book. Seriously.

Obviously, from some of things I've said on this thread, I myself am far from a blanket enthusiast for the WCJ style (as I and others on this thread .e.g. John Litweiler, think of it), but it always has seemed to me to be a particular and relatively tight-knit musical-social phenomenon (and with the passage of time, a historical one), and in general I don't like to see accounts of actual detailed facets of the lived past (particularly the lived artistic past) that retrospectively reshape that lived past because one feels/sees that it was arguably inseparable from calculated or semi-incidental (but no less damaging) acts of injustice. I think we're better off if we try to live (or "live") with all of it and work from there and not turn would-be historical accounts into attempts to re-live the past in which, so to speak, the good guys, to use Jim's image, now go to the front of the line.

No, in my image, everybody's a good guy, nobody goes to the front of the line. But everybody who is deservedly in the line gets to the window, and the window is open.

And nobody here is trying to deny the existence or validity of the phenomenon. Quite the opposite, in fact. Just suggesting that the term "West Coast Jazz" is no longer sufficient to describe it at this time and going forth.

BTW, perhaps I need to say again that back in the heyday of the WCJ style, I was as aware of, and as much an admirer of, Carl Perkins, Teddy Edwards, Sonny Criss et al. as it was possible for a teen-aged non-resident of California to be, given of course the relative availability of their recorded work, that I certainly noticed the differences between their musical-emotional sensibilities and those of, say, Bob Cooper and Lennie Niehaus and pondered as best I could what those differences might mean about the world or worlds in which we all were living. Isn't that what people do, try to do, ought to try to do when they encounter art and its connections to the social context? But not, in my book, try to do by retrospectively engaging in something of a reparations project.

That sounds like a reactionary/extremist reaction to a simple broadening of scope of consideration. "Reparations project"" C'mon now, really?

I think what people "ought to do", no, correction - what I find myself doing, is first get a grip on the chrono-cultural specifics as best I can, and then look at what else there would be to consider. Not just "context", but context FOR the context. And then keep doing that for a long as possible. I'm looking for as close to a Unification Theory for music as I can find, and to get there, differences, similarities, proximity, and distance, all that stuff come into play on equal terms. Bud Shank on Mamas & Papas hit part of Bud Shank at Lighthouse part of Harold Land with Elmo Hope part of Neil LaVang with Frank Zappa, on and on and on she goes, etc. up the coast to Ray Charles starting Quincy Jones on his Evil Ways, keep on going until it all comes back around and put together, things that don't fit fitting precisely because they DON'T fit, etc. That's so much more interesting a route to take for me than getting my hackles up about fearing a perceived (and in this case, entirely imaginary) reparations project at the expense of Bob Cooper or some such.

[JSngry]

Thanks, Larry. I see West Coast Jazz through the eyes / ears of a '50s kid, Steve and Sangry see it through the eyes / ears of older adults.

ArtSalt, any time is a good time to enjoy Jack Sheldon.

Well, fwiw, I got a my first full-ish taste of it when I was 14. The difference, though, is that other things had already happened by then, and I was getting those as well. But it took me a while to figure out why I didn't think it was all that good, and then a while longer to realize that maybe it was after all. Two constants, though - Chico Hamilton & Bill Perkins. Always those two.

Fully agreed about Jack Sheldon, and will just add that if you don't have/haven't heard his stand-up album on Capitol, you're missing a rare treat.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2010/03/oooo-but-its-good-the-jack-sheldon-comedy-lp.html

[JSngry]

And one more thing...Brubeck/Desmond, Tjader, all the SF/Fantasy things..."West Coast Jazz" by any definition, chronologically, arguably there before the Lighthouse or Mulligan/Haig scene (Brubeck definitely), but not part of the LA-Equation at all, so how does that work, exactly?

If I'm to believe you guys, "West Coast Jazz" is the equivalent of what still often gets passed of as "Dallas Jazz" around here, highly competent, recreationally serious-ish music played by university (Kenton, for the old days) alumni/first-call studio players and their proteges that gets gigs and makes a certain audience happy and has no desires past that...why would I want to like that?

Thankfully, I hear that only sometimes out of what you are calling "West Coast Jazz". If that's all that was there to it, hey, I can get that right here, right now...and don't want to.

[Larry Kart]

Hey, Jim -- I think that on this one from now on (pending my re-reading the Gioia book, which I may or may not do), I'm going to hire Scott Dolan to post on my behalf. No doubt he'll make just as much sense and allow me to lower my blood pressure.

[JSngry]

Before outsourcing the gig, I'd go with re-reading the Gioia book first, and then see where that leads. What you took away from it and what I took away from it are so different that I have no idea what could have happened.

[Larry Kart]

Maybe I'll re-read Gioia but probably not soon enough to keep this ball rolling -- got too much other stuff beside the bed that I want to/feel I need to read right now.

[JSngry]

How much more rolling do you think this ball can take, anyway?

[Peter Friedman]

Ever since the early 1950's - over 60 years ago - West Coast Jazz has been a recognized and reasonably well understood term within the jazz community. it had a certain stylistic sensibility, though not all example of WCJ were completely the same. Some examples of WCJ were more highly arranged than others, some of the arranged music has more obvious classical music influences. There were also WCJ musicians playing gigs and making records with very meager, if any, formal arrangements.

That musical style was centered geographically in the Los Angeles area.

Within the same time period, jazz was being played in California by a variety of musicians in styles not generally considered to be part of the WCJ style.

It strikes me as an example of revisionist history to now, so many decades later, redefine the reality of what actually was a part of jazz history.

[JSngry]

I don't see anybody here trying to redefine the realities of the music/sociology that was (and many times still is) "West Coast Jazz".

If the label is that fragile, blame the label.

I'll make the same case against "Southern Rock". I'll call bullshit on that one too, and on my own dime.

Also, if you study sociology, you study "Beatlemania". If you look for marketing guidance, you look for "Merseybeat", or more likely, "British Invasion".

But if you want to seriously look at all of that in all the ways, you look at British Rock & Roll from 195x-196x.

And if you really want need to get it all as right as it can be, you look at Popular Music, and then take it from there, and that's kinda like "follow the money", no telling where that will end up leading!.

I don't get how "revisionist history" is a bad thing if it's aim/result is to take what is already looked at and add things that were also there but are not always considered. Such a thing should not blur the vision or erase it, it should simply give us more to look at, more to think about.

I get how it doesn't always work that way, but the entrenched sight lines ain't always so perfect either. Memory does not equal truth, nor does complacence = inevitability.

Keep in mind, I'm a guy who has been hearing a lifetime of bitching and moaning about "Northern" "revisionist history" regarding the Confederacy, so complaints of this nature do not easily fall on sympathetic ears here, too much confusion of personal feelings about actual events with the events themselves, just not in the mood to sidle up to that one for a beer, know what I mean?

This whole thing about "revising" history - how does history not get revised as details get added and perspectives change? Erasing history, changing facts, eliminating people and events, just lying by either adding the false or subtracting the real, that's what you fear. But just saying "once we saw on, now we cans see that there were two" - and it's true that waht is being seen was actually there", if you don't do that, that's where things go wrong, I think.

Apart from that, though, what I don't get, really do not get, is how thinking of "West Coast Jazz" and thinking of both Bud Shank and Sonny Criss is a bad thing? I still need it to be explained to me who gets hurt by that, and how, and why. And sorry, a simple "because that's not how I remember it" does not compute here. Lots of people remember lots of things, ok? Pieces of the puzzle, they are, all of them.

[Larry Kart]

Am trying to re-read Gioia. Not that it's that big a deal, but I notice that on p. 43 he refers to Chicago native Gene Ammons as a "Texas tenor." Well, Ammons did have a sound that was as big as all outdoors.

[JSngry]

Not just that, but ANOTHER Texas Tenor...not going to read back to find out who the previous one(s) might have been.

That should have been a big deal for the editor.

I did glimpse far enough back, though, to get the Dexter/Pops pot story. Now that's a part of Convention Jazz Lore that needs to be added, that Dexter Gordon shared his herb with Pops every night on the gig...for that matter, that Dexter Gordon even worked with Louis Armstrong and that it wasn't one of those drag-type "modern guy in square band" things either.

[Larry Kart]

The "other" Texas tenor, referred to a page or so earlier, is Illinois Jacquet, who had jousted with Dexter Gordon in 1940 on a Lionel Hampton recording "Po'k Chop." Ammons comes up when Gioia is talking about Dexter and Ammons battling on Eckstine's "Blowin' the Blues Away."

[Peter Friedman]

what I don't get, really do not get, is how thinking of "West Coast Jazz" and thinking of both Bud Shank and Sonny Criss is a bad thing? I still need it to be explained to me who gets hurt by that, and how, and why.

Your are right that nobody gets hurt. Just as nobody gets hurt by referring to Gene Ammons as a Texas Tenor. The point is that it is misleading to call Sonny Criss a WCJ alto player because the term WCJ refers to much more than location and Criss is not stylistically within that particular genre.

When the term Texas Tenors is used in jazz circles, it pretty much always refers to tenor players from Texas who also display a certain style in their playing such as what he hear from Illinois Jacquet, Buddy Tate, Arnett Cobb, Budd Johnson, Fathead Newman and many others . One can be born in Texas, play the tenor saxophone, but still not be regarded as part of that group jazz people think of as Texas Tenors.

[JSngry]

Calling Gene Ammons a "Texas Tenor" is a careless piece of writing/editing that doesn't take anything away from other "Texas Tenors" (and I can tell you also that there are guys around here who have proudly claimed to play "New York Tenor", which to them means Liebman/Grossman/Brecker/Etc. and...really? Is that how it works?)

"Texas Tenor" neither covers as narrow a spectrum as often perceived (hello, Ornette, Julius, Dewey, yes too John Carter..also Tony Campise) nor has any real truth as a signifier for anything other than a "regional accent" if you will - and a case is there to be made that Sonny Criss, for example, did indeed speak with a certain "West Coast" accent. A lot of LA area altoists carry that accent too, even to this day. So what will you call that then, a "Black California" accent? I guess that works, but then again...unless you're hung up on marketing as history, is that really an effective way to steer the conversation? If so, hello "King Of Swing", "King Of Jazz", etc., marketing leads to labels, labels lead to a disincentive to look past them. Or so it seems to me, long-term.

That stuff worked in its time, but out of its time, it continues to grow more and more silly, uncredible, and actually serves to create unnecessary preconceptions/barriers to objective appreciations towards music that have some very real merits. Benny Goodman as "King Of Swing", gimme a break. Benny Goodman as damn fine player, bandleader, enabler of fine players and arrangers both, socially significant figure, hell yeah to all of that. But "King Of Swing"? Nooooo....I'm gonna go into that thinking bullshit. With any luck, I shake it off, but these are not particularly lucky times.

Real-time/personal experiences are beautiful, but don't expect future generations to "get" them, because the can't. They weren't there, so at best, they can look back starting with what they've been told about (speaking from experience here). People with brains are going to hear "West Coast Jazz", look at a map, and either LOL about that or swallow it whole and think that Leroy Vinegar, how did HE get in there?, that type of simplistic stupidity. And what's really funny is that most of them will not even care about it, think of Henry Mancini & Peter Gunn, and that brings Plas Johnson into the equation, and...hello unpredictable New Orleans variable! If you're lucky, you'll get some a very few of them to think it through no realize that, no, NOT a territorial claim, just a marketing term, but these kids today, they're not gonna buy that as effortlessly as they used to, ya' know? There's enough distractions as it is, what with the battle now being for owner$hip of hi$tory. Why add another one to the list?

You want to know how stupid I was at one point about what all this "West Coast" "studio/players" etc stuff meant? I was actually shocked to find out that Joe Comfort was African-American. He played on Sinatra records, Buddy Collette was already there, so...I mean, this kind of shit poisons you, locks you into certain preconceptions that just don't hold up. It works both ways, too - if I'd have heard Jack Sheldon with Curtis Counce before I heard him with Stan Kenton, I'd very likely need photographic proof that he was Anglo-American. I mean, why would I even need to think about these things (I know why, btw)? Frank Rosolino - West Coast Jazz when playing with one type of player, NOT West Coast Jazz when playing with Lee Morgan? Again I ask - is that how it works?

I say that over the long haul, more people get more hurt by this narrow perspective than by a broadened one, as long as the broadening is based on sound criteria. Looking at the cover of Gioia's book right now, and the full title is West Coast Jazz - Modern Jazz In California 1945-1960. If that sounds like a premise, well, I suppose it is, and if it sounds like a challenge to traditional thinking, well, yeah, I suppose it is that too. But is it a faulty premise,? Hell, I just don't see that. None of those words are false or describe something that is not there to see - there was modern jazz on the "West Coast" between 1945-1960, so let's look at it. I really don't see an issue there, although again, last time I looked at my map, the West Coast of America DID stretch up to include Oregon & Washington, it's not just California. But one step at a time, almost literally.

Besides, it's got the Lighthouse All Stars on the cover.