Martin Williams near nightmare

[Larry Kart]

Don't know if this is the right forum, but last night I had a dream (it was close to a nightmare) in which Martin Williams (whom I knew fairly well in real life) was insisting that Cannonball Adderley was a key influence on Art Pepper. I knew that Martin's point of view here was batshit -- Art was who he was musically long before Cannonball emerged from Florida in 1955 -- but in the dream I felt at once constrained/unwilling to confront Martin with his error and eager to do so -- constrained because what Martin was insisting was the case was so impossible as to be potentially quite embarrassing to him if I pointed out how wrong he was (and I didn't feel like dealing with the fact of confronting and then embarrassing him), but eager to do so not only because I knew he was wrong but also because his underlying motive in making this goofy claim seemed to me like it might have sprung from an annoyingly smug attitude of reverse racism on Martin's part (as in, surely a figure like Art Pepper couldn't be that good on his own hook).

 

Before that, another nightmare.In this one my late friend Bob Wright (primarily a pianist and a brilliant one, though he also played drums and trombone) was getting ready to play trombone at a local jam session, and he wanted me to accompany him on piano. As he ran over the tunes he wanted to play (one of them was "Crazeology" -- in the dream Bob was a fluent J.J. Johnson disciple, in real life he wanted to play like George Brunis and did), I tried to tell him that I didn't know how to play piano, couldn't even read music, etc., but he insisted that if I acted like I knew something about jazz (which I do), then I had to be able to actually play "Crazeology," etc. We got to the club where the session was to take place, and thing went downhill from there."Crazeology," indeed.

Edited October 27, 2015 by Larry Kart

[AllenLowe]

ah, you can play Crazeology; IIRC it's close to rhythm changes (maybe, I'd have to go back and check; is it the same as Budo? Can't quite remember).

Funny thing about Williams, Dick Katz always complained to me that Williams would never admit his technical musical limitations, and tried to act like he know about harmony, etc (one big mistake I remember Martin making is to say that Woody 'n You is in a minor key; it's written, actually, in Db major).

[paul secor]

Don't know if this is the right forum, but last night I had a dream (it was close to a nightmare) in which Martin Williams (whom I knew fairly well in real life) was insisting that Cannonball Adderley was a key influence on Art Pepper. I knew that Martin's point of view here was batshit -- Art was who he was musically long before Cannonball emerged from Florida in 1955 -- but in the dream I felt at once constrained/unwilling to confront Martin with his error and eager to do so -- constrained because what Martin was insisting was the case was so impossible as to be potentially quite embarrassing to him if I pointed out how wrong he was (and I didn't feel like dealing with the fact of confronting and then embarrassing him), but eager to do so not only because I knew he was wrong but also because his underlying motive in making this goofy claim seemed to me like it might have sprung from an annoyingly smug attitude of reverse racism on Martin's part (as in, surely a figure like Art Pepper couldn't be that good on his own hook).

 

Before that, another nightmare.In this one my late friend Bob Wright (primarily a pianist and a brilliant one, though he also played drums and trombone) was getting ready to play trombone at a local jam session, and he wanted me to accompany him on piano. As he ran over the tunes he wanted to play (one of them was "Crazeology" -- in the dream Bob was a fluent J.J. Johnson disciple, in real life he wanted to play like George Brunis and did), I tried to tell him that I didn't know how to play piano, couldn't even read music, etc., but he insisted that if I acted like I knew something about jazz (which I do), then I had to be able to actually play "Crazeology," etc. We got to the club where the session was to take place, and thing went downhill from there."Crazeology," indeed.

Obviously a jazz critic's dreams. If I were doing dream analysis, I'd ask if you miss writing criticism (outside of what you do here, of course).

[Larry Kart]

@Paul -- Without doubt, a jazz critic's dream. Martin was a role model for me there early on, as he was for many of us on the ship of fools, but his feet, as Allen says, were not entirely clay-free (nor are mine, for that matter). OTOH, I try very hard and usually successfully to remain aware of what it is that I don't know and proceed or chose not to proceed accordingly. However, like Martin I'm at times drawn like a moth to technical issues (how could one not be, given their importance?) What I'll do then, if I feel I need to/want to, is run my bright ideas by a technically-versed-to-the-nth-degree longtime professional jazz musician and good friend to see if what I have in mind makes sense to him, or at least does not contain howlers. A no-bull guy, he pulls no punches. Further, I feel that it's in the nature of jazz that there is not at all times a perfect match between terms for what's happening and what actually is happening, nor is there also always a perfect match between terms for what's happening in jazz and terms for what's happening in music in general (and classical music in particular). See, for example, Ornette, Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Monk or, for that matter, Johnny Dodds. I like to think that this might make some of my putzing around/would-be-reframing of stuff useful.

[JSngry]

I don't get enough sleep. Sounds like you get too much!

[jlhoots]

FWIW, I always loved Martin's writing - but I don't have any technical expertise.

[Larry Kart]

@Paul, again -- No, I don't think I miss writing criticism; what I have to say in that vein here, and the conversations that result, is more than enough action, and action of the right kind. OTOH, fairly often I do get cranky/pissy when I see someone out there in the world at large who is operating in ways that seem fast and loose to me. When I have that kind of response, it often feels unhealthy to me, but maybe if I held my tongue that would feel worse.

[JSngry]

I'm guessing that you wanted to, but never actually told Martin Williams how full of shit he was about some things, probably out of the personal respect and admiration that a younger(?) person has for an older(?) role model of such stature.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have, although, not in person, having only seen him once live, on some panel discussion at some book store in NYC where Fred Hirsch was playing, discussing the merits (or from his POV, the lack of merit) in Scott Hamilton. This was, like, 1979(?), and at the time, I had no quarrel, and found him amusing in a vaguely John Cleese-like manner.

I've read a whole buttload of Martin Williams, books, collections of older essays, when I was checking out Saturday Review for the local library, it seems to me that he had a regularish column in there, late 60s? and you know, it's an impressive legacy, and a worthy one, all things considered. I don't see where he ever slipped to the level of pimpbitch that Leonard Feather did, nor did he get all touchyfeelymushy like Gleason, nor as fill in the blanks-y generic as Hentoff.

But he was wrong about some things, in technical things, very much so (fact, not opinion), and in matters of taste, at times alarmingly so (imo, of course). And the more I experienced the music first-hand, the less I really needed or really gave a shit about Martin Williams. No antagonism, its just that he became irrelevant.

So the next time he pops up in your dreams, tell him, hey man, love you, owe you much, but you are SO full of shit about this. And then let him sputter you off into another dream, or if that doesn't work, wake up, have a bowl of cereal or something, chew a stick of gum, whatever, watch a little tv, and then fuck it, go back to sleep. Odds are that you'll wake up again, right? Definitely your advantage in this one, not his.

[jlhoots]

Well, see - I agree with you re: Feather. However, I like(d) Gleason & Hentoff. Those old issues of the Jazz Review & the Jazz Casual TV show were looked forward to & brought me to a lot of great music.

[AllenLowe]

all jazz critics owe Williams a lot, for really showing the way toward serious intellectual jazz criticism.

[Larry Kart]

I'm guessing that you wanted to, but never actually told Martin Williams how full of shit he was about some things, probably out of the personal respect and admiration that a younger(?) person has for an older(?) role model of such stature.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have, although, not in person, having only seen him once live, on some panel discussion at some book store in NYC where Fred Hirsch was playing, discussing the merits (or from his POV, the lack of merit) in Scott Hamilton. This was, like, 1979(?), and at the time, I had no quarrel, and found him amusing in a vaguely John Cleese-like manner.

I've read a whole buttload of Martin Williams, books, collections of older essays, when I was checking out Saturday Review for the local library, it seems to me that he had a regularish column in there, late 60s? and you know, it's an impressive legacy, and a worthy one, all things considered. I don't see where he ever slipped to the level of pimpbitch that Leonard Feather did, nor did he get all touchyfeelymushy like Gleason, nor as fill in the blanks-y generic as Hentoff.

But he was wrong about some things, in technical things, very much so (fact, not opinion), and in matters of taste, at times alarmingly so (imo, of course). And the more I experienced the music first-hand, the less I really needed or really gave a shit about Martin Williams. No antagonism, its just that he became irrelevant.

So the next time he pops up in your dreams, tell him, hey man, love you, owe you much, but you are SO full of shit about this. And then let him sputter you off into another dream, or if that doesn't work, wake up, have a bowl of cereal or something, chew a stick of gum, whatever, watch a little tv, and then fuck it, go back to sleep. Odds are that you'll wake up again, right? Definitely your advantage in this one, not his.

Martin in his time, up to and including all the time he spent in Ornette's corner, was pretty darn important. Not the first serious (or "serious") jazz critic -- Martin was both -- but by bringing his style and attitudes to writing about jazz (he also was very good about TV shows, comic strips, and other forms of so-called popular art) he cleared away a lot of fan-boy sentiment, or at least made it harder for those who purveyed it to do so. The Ornette connection is important not only because Martin put all his chips down there when very few "established" guys did, but also because it placed him squarely in the flux of jazz's rapidly evolving present from the '60s on, which is not a place where he was temperamentally comfortable by and large, avant-garde/revolutionary trappings of most any sort being anathema to him. Thus the range of things that appealed to his taste became increasingly narrow, and barring Ornette's intermittent reappearances, there was little he could be genuinely enthusiastic about. When he did blow his horn about something newish in later days -- the World Saxophone Quartet? -- I usually went "oh?"

On a personal level he could be quirky, and I think I told my two favorite Martin stories here before. The second and better one took place at a Duke Ellington conference at the U. of Illinois at Chicago in the early '80s. Gunther Schuller was speaking, and Martin and I were sitting next to each other in the auditorium. Smoking was forbidden, and at the time I was a smoker. Getting antsy after about 45 minutes, I pulled out a pack of Dentyne and put a piece in my mouth. Martin looked over with an expression of bemused contempt on his face and said, "You chew gum?" Pretty much aware of the tone of this remark, I also was so startled by it that unintentionally I came up with what may have been the perfect retort -- "Sure, you want some?" (When and where Martin grew up -- in a neo-patrician setting in Northern Virginia in the late 1930s, IIRC the son of a retired military officer and a socially imperious mother -- gum-chewing was something that only teenage girls behind the counter at the five-and-dime engaged in.)

Edited October 28, 2015 by Larry Kart

[JSngry]

My personal feelings are that Gleason kinda deteriorated once he went the Rolling Stone route, but then again, time/place, that was perhaps unavoidable and perhaps even necessary. Celebrating the Duke... was a fine read, although there's a tendency towards "frankness" that just seems a little weird. Jazz Casual, though, yes, although, much like wearing a tie everywhere you go, how do you sit like that all the time and not develop some kind of condition?

Hentoff.., I think, went more or less on autopilot as far as jazz writing goes once he became more focused on political writing. Before that, though, he was prolific! And oh my, what a revelation it was to hear him MC-ing the 1952 Brubeck Storyville broadcasts..he was quite the precious one! But it seems he was also playing Brubeck records for Cecil Taylor there in Boston, so...always an active spirit, no doubt.

I never aspired to be a jazz critic, so all I "owe" Martin Williams is a thank you for naming names at a time when I was looking for some, and for starting some balls rolling, most all of which ran out of momentum, as rolling balls tend to do.

I can certainly see how he meant more to many at a certain juncture, but that juncture is not mine. Larry, yours and John Litweiler's writings appeared to me the same time Williams' did and remain infinitely more relevant. For that matter, Joe Goldberg's Jazz Masters Of the 1950s speak to that me about that particular music far more than does anything by Williams, or Hentoff, or Gleason, for that matter. So...I meant no disrespect to his influence and importance, but...appreciation is not need, and that which is not needed is generally jettisoned without, eventually, too much difficulty.

This looks like another one of those "generational" things too...I never (consciously) knew pre-free jazz (or for that matter, pre-rock music, of any kind) or the world(s) around it as present-day realities. Tried to reach back as far as possible as much as possible, but you can only pretend so much for so long, at least until the neo-con thing proved otherwise. But that has consequences...

[Larry Kart]

JSngry wrote: "I never (consciously) knew pre-free jazz (or for that matter, pre-rock music, of any kind) or the world(s) around it as present-day realities."

You're right, what a divide that is. To hear Coltrane's sheets-of-sound come along out of semi-nowhere (or so it almost seemed), and then to hear it evolve into "Chasin' the Trane," and to encounter Ornette and, if you were lucky, "get" him/it! As I once put it, "History is always happening, and it's happening to us." Very easy in the '50s to think that was not the case.

[JSngry]

In some ways, it's a blessing, to have heard all the post-___ musics and then going back and filling in the blanks, I mean, there's much less of a controversy as to whether or not it "makes sense", of course it does, you'd not be listening to "B" if not for "A" having made sense, or at least enough sense for "B" to continue on.

OTOH, less of a blessing having that shock of "initial-ness" be taken for granted more than personally experienced in real time. I had it with the Beatles, I had it with Hendrix, I even had it with the early wave of post-Miles fusion, all of those things really seemed to jump out of a place that hadn't yet existed, there was no reason for them not to have existed, and now, they did, had to be that way. Kinda had it with AACM & BAG in terms of records, but those things were already firmly in place before I heard to the records. Not by a whole lot, but enough to matter. I didn't have access to Nessa or Delamrk until, like, 1976 or so. READ about them a whole helluva lot, but the records weren't here, not that I knew about, anyway, and believe me, I looked. What I did have ready/happy access to was the things that followed. But still, the shockwaves were personal, not real-time societal. First copy of DB I ever had had Beefheart on the cover, and HIM I already new about, 1970, right, if you were "serious" about music, you checked out Zappa and all around it, right? Beefheart and Lee Konitz on that cover, and Lee I had just gotten to courtesy of a band director, but Lee of 1951, so at some point seeing a photo of Lee with a Varitone was very WTF?-ish. That was a Don Ellis thing (Eddie WHO?)

It gets figured out eventually, but it's all retroactive up until the point when it's not, and even then, some of it always is. The later you get born, the more of that part there is.

The last really "real time" jazz shockwave I can think of experiencing was, thinking offhand, Dancing In Your Head and its aftermaths (including Ornette's own). Interstellar Space too, thanks to its release date. The Max/Braxton, Max/Cecil things were all hard slaps, but not to me like they surely were to somebody who was actually buying Max records in 1957. I get that. Plenty of thrills and chills since then, but nothing that appeared without warning and fucked me up good, as the kids used to like to say, where you have to re-evaluate what and where "is" really is, ya' know?

However, this last thing of Roscoe's that Chuck's released, that feels like that all over again, but it's not like I heard Roscoe (and Lester...and all them) in 1966. To have a time machine...or to have been born earlier...but, that does not happen, does it.

Anyway, point just being that the only truly relevant and ongoing personal relevancy that I have to Martin Williams overall is through the Smithsonian stuff, and that is a pretty massive relevancy, but again, what used to be hard to find then and what is hard to find now...and believe me, if I had waited for Martin Williams to point me to Gene Ammons, I would still be waiting, right? So, thanks, but good bye.

[johnblitweiler]

Seeing that "Martin Williams near nightmare" title made me expect you'd tell about one of his nightmares. In real life 2 piano players threatened to kill him if he wrote another review of their albums. Also he said that one night he was to take a plane from Boston but while he was at that airport by the ocean, his flight was delayed than cancelled and he was moved to the next flight. Weather somewhere in the East. 2 hours later that next flight was cancelled and he was moved to the flight after that. Which was also cancelled. Martin got the fear that night and said he never took a plane anywhere again.

[AllenLowe]

that is true - he was supposed to appear at a seminar in New Haven in the '80s, missed his train, and couldn't make it. Offered him a plane ticket, which he refused.

[AllenLowe]

and, I should add, Martin Williams was one of the few who understood how awful Ahmad Jamal was.

[fasstrack]

and, I should add, Martin Williams was one of the few who understood how awful Ahmad Jamal was.

Uh oh.......

[AllenLowe]

of course, this was just his opinion.....

[fasstrack]

of course, this was just his opinion.....

To quote Sinatra regarding Jonathan Schwartz's negative view of Gordon Jenkins' work: 'That's just one man's opinion'.....

[AllenLowe]

the significance was that I had been listening to Jamal (I was about 15) and did not like him - while everyone was saying how great he was. Williams was the first person I read who actually said what I was thinking.

[fasstrack]

He got a lot of knocks from critics. Happens to a lot of popular jazz artists.

[Big Beat Steve]

He got a lot of knocks from critics. Happens to a lot of popular jazz artists.

It does. But if he gets programmed on radio in between Percy Faith, Hugo Winterhalter, Nelson Riddle, Mantovani and similar easy listening acts from way back (no kidding! Happened here over and over again on AFN FM which at that time - late 70s - went on for hours and hours on a strict background elevator music diet - "Music to soothe your drilll sergeant to??" ) and indeed he segues seamlessly in and out in between the other acts then you do get second thoughts about the jazz content.

[JSngry]

He got a lot of knocks from critics. Happens to a lot of popular jazz artists.

It does. But if he gets programmed on radio in between Percy Faith, Hugo Winterhalter, Nelson Riddle, Mantovani and similar easy listening acts from way back (no kidding! Happened here over and over again on AFN FM which at that time - late 70s - went on for hours and hours on a strict background elevator music diet - "Music to soothe your drilll sergeant to??" ) and indeed he segues seamlessly in and out in between the other acts then you do get second thoughts about the jazz content.

And that's why I used to love to listen to easy-listening stations - a great way to learn standards, and you'd get the jazz surprise once in a while to boot.

Seriously.

Flip side to that is that he got played on the jazz radio here a lot, and he caught the attention precisely because of the uniqueness of the quality of the jazz content. I'm not talking about the Genetic Walk type planned overt commercial stuff, I'm talking about the prime Argochess & Impulse! stuff.

"Poinciana", maybe a cliche, but dammit, that thing comes on in the middle of tastefulintrospective hipness, and look out now, push the tables back, it's DANCE TIME, thank you Vernell!

That happened when I lived in Tampa, the local community access jazz show was fund raising, and they had been playing all this "hip" stuff and I was like, well hell, this is where I am for the time being, I can give a few dollars, and then they put on Poinciana, and yes, I did push back the tables and danced all up in it, me and my son (then just 4) and my babygirl (then not yet even a toddler, she was in the arms all the way). And then the hip DJ comes on and says (and this is an almost exact quote), "well, I always wondered what all the fuss was about Ahmad Jamal, guess now I know. That'll be the last time I play any of THAT!", and yeah, I called him up and told him, respectfully, to go fuck himself if he was expecting to get any of MY money, asked him if he knew about Vernell, or Israel, just what the hell THIS type of jazz was up to, and he was all oh man, sorry, I had no idea, never heard of this guy until the other day, maybe he's got other records I'll like better than this one...would you like to make a pledge anyway?"

Seriously, people think it's that easy to get your money, that all they have to do is use the "jazz" word. Well, fuck them!

[HutchFan]

Great story, Jim.