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The Bill Savory Collection


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On 7/22/2016 at 2:11 PM, Larry Kart said:

Bow-tie contrarian is perfect. Hey, if he could get away with it, he might wear spats. And carry a cane,

You guys are a tough crowd!  I think he writes pretty well, and he's very good at obits, which, to be fair, are pretty hard to write well.  He does review modern and contemporary things, and he occasionally even likes them!

 

 

gregmo

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17 hours ago, JSngry said:

Well yeah, if you want to be objective about it. But I started reading him in the early 70s, and that Ellington/Mancini comparison (a negative one) was when I said, oh well, Objectivity Not Gonna Work Here.

And this is how George Frazier came into the picture, i.e. McDonough's liking for George Frazier now seen as another facet to confirm that he is way off base?

Maybe because there was a parallel? Frazier's merits being overshadowed by his latter-day controversional attitude?

The picture drawn of his earlier writing days in the "Boston Jazz Cronicles" (and in other sources) reads rather favorably, and then Bill Coss saw fit to call him to order in his column in the June, 1955 issue of "Metronome": "In his early Boston days, he was enormous fun, an uncompriomising enemy of the pompous, a perceptive observer of mores ..." But now (1955) "he is an anachronism in our field. He writes about jazz in a frame of reference long past. His writing is a specimen from the 1920s, singing a song of hedonism, however elegantly dressed ...sounding like a cocktail party hippy despite the dry vermouth of his style." Sounds familiar? I'd bet. "Bow-tie contrarian" meeeting "cocktail party hippy"? :D

Wonder what Coss would have said about Orkester Journalen's columnist Leif Anderson from the same period (who was firmly in the camp of Stanley Dance, Albert McCarthy and other mainstreamists) and was not afraid of calling the bluff of some of the hard bop "emperor's clothers" marketing hullaballoo of those days.
Maybe not what has since come to be the "accepted" (and almost mandatory) way of thinking ("terms of references"??) but though his points sometimes are debatable and need to be taken with a grain of salt here and there (like EVERY critic's), being interested in most styles of jazz from that era I find Anderson's thoughts often refreshing and thought-provoking in their "against the grain" stance, even after all these decades.

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

And this is how George Frazier came into the picture, i.e. McDonough's liking for George Frazier now seen as another facet to confirm that he is way off base?

Maybe because there was a parallel? Frazier's merits being overshadowed by his latter-day controversional attitude?

The picture drawn of his earlier writing days in the "Boston Jazz Cronicles" (and in other sources) reads rather favorably, and then Bill Coss saw fit to call him to order in his column in the June, 1955 issue of "Metronome": "In his early Boston days, he was enormous fun, an uncompriomising enemy of the pompous, a perceptive observer of mores ..." But now (1955) "he is an anachronism in our field. He writes about jazz in a frame of reference long past. His writing is a specimen from the 1920s, singing a song of hedonism, however elegantly dressed ...sounding like a cocktail party hippy despite the dry vermouth of his style." Sounds familiar? I'd bet. "Bow-tie contrarian" meeeting "cocktail party hippy"? :D

Wonder what Coss would have said about Orkester Journalen's columnist Leif Anderson from the same period (who was firmly in the camp of Stanley Dance, Albert McCarthy and other mainstreamists) and was not afraid of calling the bluff of some of the hard bop "emperor's clothers" marketing hullaballoo of those days.
Maybe not what has since come to be the "accepted" (and almost mandatory) way of thinking ("terms of references"??) but though his points sometimes are debatable and need to be taken with a grain of salt here and there (like EVERY critic's), being interested in most styles of jazz from that era I find Anderson's thoughts often refreshing and thought-provoking in their "against the grain" stance, even after all these decades.

 

 

 

 

The question is when and all why John fell in love with Frazier's work. Based on my fairly clear memories of John in his early days, I'm pretty sure it was because Frazier's dandiacal tone, image, and views evoked an aspect of the world just before John was born, as aspect of that world that he very much wanted to embrace and even return to, even though the latter act was impossible. Again -- as I think I said above -- it's one thing to love and be fascinated by the art of the past because of its artistic virtues and another thing to do so as a means of expressing your distaste for the present. Hey, I have a taste for Benny Goodman, but not because his music somehow stands opposed to that of Charlie Parker or, heaven forbid, Ornette Coleman. (Again, BTW and if memory serves, John's taste for the jazz past pretty much begins only at the advent of the Swing Era and its  social-musical paradise. For him, Jelly Roll Roll Morton, Johnny Dodds, et al. are just precursors or even primitives.)

An excerpt from John's bio in our 50th high school reunion book:

"One way or another, it would seem, we're all outcomes of our adolescent obsessions.... For me -- and this may sound silly -- it was a fascination with a period of American life that I had just missed by a generation: the '20s, '30s, and '40s."

Sounds harmless so far, and it's led to some genuine journalistic accomplishments on John's part, e.g. uncovering those Lester Young army documents. But when it extends to that Down Beat piece that claims that those who admire later Coltrane are mentally ill? If you think that was an aberration, you don't know your man.

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Of course I cannot claim having read as much as you have of all this but I still I think I see what you are getting at. I brought up Frazier's name just because when I read this Metronome piece of 1955 recently it struck me how Bill Coss accused him (certainly not without reason) of more or less the same things that are held against McDonough here - whose attitude I think I can imagine because I have encountered people like this elsewhere. Though I won't necessarily it hold it against him that he'd have preferred to live in some different era just in order to be closer to his other preferences in life (admttedly I feel like that a bit too - to a lesser degree and more in my preferences for the styles and everyday culture of those times but certainly not for life in those times as such). The world of today and of recent times provide you with enough reasons to want to escape. Yet this should NOT blind you to the drawbacks that come invariably with such wishes. Would he really have wanted to live through the Depression, the war and into McCarthyism or maybe have found himself on the "wrong side of the tracks"? If he forgot the overall realities beause he became too submerged in his dreams and failed therefore, then ... well ...

As for his assessment of latter-day Coltrane ... today this may sound like it came from a different decade (when the times were not yet rife for full appreciation) but what is the actual blame? Just missing the point? Much like what some of today's jazz writers seem to have to say about jazz from much earlier decades where they engage in much the same kind of dismissal of those who go out of their way in their enthusiasm for that (relatively) early jazz? Or is it "heresy" what McDonough is blamed for there?

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I have a George Frazier record, on Riverside(?), that I bought just because. I've yet to listen to it, just because.

and perhaps I've read wrong, but I think that Larry has done more than just read about McDonough, he went to high school with the guy and has lived in the same city as him for, what, a year or two?

I don't think McDonough's a goof because he thinks that people who like late Trane are mentally ill, hell, I'm not a doctor, I'm sure he is, so I'll defer to him on that one. I think he's a goof because he claimed that "The Queen's Suite" sounded like Henry Mancini. This at a time, remember, when Henry Mancini was still alive and putting out records, most of which were squarely aimed at the what is now called Adult Contemporary market (there would still be the odd neat cut stuck in there every so often, but...who cared?). So it was not any kind of post-modernist dicktickle like a lot of the kids today do when they listen to dead people all day long (and half of the night).

Objectively, no, he's not an idiot. But I can't take anything he writes seriously. Well, ok, not too seriously. Because that Ellington/Mancini thing...again, I'm not a doctor, but maybe that's a sign of a mental illness?

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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

 

I don't think McDonough's a goof because he thinks that people who like late Trane are mentally ill, hell, I'm not a doctor, I'm sure he is, so I'll defer to him on that one. I think he's a goof because he claimed that "The Queen's Suite" sounded like Henry Mancini....

Objectively, no, he's not an idiot. But I can't take anything he writes seriously. Well, ok, not too seriously. Because that Ellington/Mancini thing...again, I'm not a doctor, but maybe that's a sign of a mental illness?

We all write regrettable things now and then. The trick is in acquiring the sensitivity / education / experience to appropriately regret. McDonough is interesting to read and sometimes - his Pres research is a great example - he really gets it right.

John, sometime in the 1980s, did a sensitive (that word again) and thoughtful interview with a very elderly Natty Dominique. It's in the Jazz Institute of Chicago Archives. So whether or not he thinks pre-swing jazz is merely a precursor, he's shown sympathy.

The attitude that early jazz - New Orleans, 1920s black Chicago, territory bands - is of lesser value, primitive, has less integrity,  is an attitude that I don't appreciate. It's why I was disappointed in Ted Gioia's history. Nowadays among an awful lot of jazz lovers my age and younger, they're not even interested in any jazz before the LP era unless it's Charlie Parker. 

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1 hour ago, johnblitweiler said:

Nowadays among an awful lot of jazz lovers my age and younger, they're not even interested in any jazz before the LP era unless it's Charlie Parker. 

Yeah, I've noticed this too, John.  

And I bet many of those same people think that jazz ended sometime around 1970.

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3 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Of course I cannot claim having read as much as you have of all this but I still I think I see what you are getting at. I brought up Frazier's name just because when I read this Metronome piece of 1955 recently it struck me how Bill Coss accused him (certainly not without reason) of more or less the same things that are held against McDonough here - whose attitude I think I can imagine because I have encountered people like this elsewhere. Though I won't necessarily it hold it against him that he'd have preferred to live in some different era just in order to be closer to his other preferences in life (admttedly I feel like that a bit too - to a lesser degree and more in my preferences for the styles and everyday culture of those times but certainly not for life in those times as such). The world of today and of recent times provide you with enough reasons to want to escape. Yet this should NOT blind you to the drawbacks that come invariably with such wishes. Would he really have wanted to live through the Depression, the war and into McCarthyism or maybe have found himself on the "wrong side of the tracks"? If he forgot the overall realities beause he became too submerged in his dreams and failed therefore, then ... well ...

As for his assessment of latter-day Coltrane ... today this may sound like it came from a different decade (when the times were not yet rife for full appreciation) but what is the actual blame? Just missing the point? Much like what some of today's jazz writers seem to have to say about jazz from much earlier decades where they engage in much the same kind of dismissal of those who go out of their way in their enthusiasm for that (relatively) early jazz? Or is it "heresy" what McDonough is blamed for there?

The Coltrane thing is both revealing and well nigh unforgivable IMO  -- and BTW the piece didn't come from the '60s, when Trane was being labled "anti-jazz" by John Tynan and all sorts of other alarmed defenders of the status quo in jazz  but from the '90s, long after Trane was dead. Revealing and unforgivable because it was not so much, if at all, an expression of taste on John's  part (lots of reasonable people of various ages don't like post-"Chasin' the Trane" Coltrane) but a solemn insistence that there could be NO rational reason to like late Trane and that those who said they did were either lying or that their belief that they did find value in this music was a sign of mental illness. If you don't see how morally ugly that is... Also, though I don't have the piece in front of me, my recollection was that it wasn't even a genuine piece of bitchery but essentially an act of provocation, an attempt to kick up a fuss in order to further John's profile as a  Truth-Telling Noble Traditionalist.

 

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i don´t want to Interrupt you guys in your conversation (in fact: i don´t understand what you´re are talking about-don´t know all this People and don´t understand the theme) but has this something to do with the bill savory collection??????

Keep boppin´

marcel

  

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Marcel, let's put it this way: One thing (post) led to another and there you are in the middle of an exchange on who worte what about whom and how relevant or of lasting value it is. And as for what this has got to do with the Bill Savory colection, remember one of the starting points was that apparently the Bill Savory recordings contain an inordinately high proportion of Benny Goodman recordings. So Savory seemed to have been extremely fond of his music. Which cannot even be said of all those who embrace swing-era jazz wholeheartedly. And doesn't this make for an all too easy starting point for discussions of the relative merits of this or that musician (and eventually of this or that critic who writes about these msucians or others)? ;) Just one of those things you know ... it wouldn't be the first topic to take a detour before getting back on track eventually ...

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1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Just one of those things you know ... it wouldn't be the first topic to take a detour before getting back on track eventually ...

I dunno. Often, it's the detours where the really interesting stuff seems to happen. Sometimes, it's the "rabbit hole" conversations where I learn the most from the knowledgeable people 'round these parts. 

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3 hours ago, bichos said:

i don´t want to Interrupt you guys in your conversation (in fact: i don´t understand what you´re are talking about-don´t know all this People and don´t understand the theme) but has this something to do with the bill savory collection??????

Keep boppin´

marcel

  

This detour came up when JSngry posted this re: the Savory collections focus on Benny Goodman:


"Chicago's own...what's the guy's name, John McDonough? he used to be one of those staunch Goodman advocates back when I read the mag, going back to the 70s. Didn't have a problem with that per se, b/c BG did have some really excellent bands, but I was troubled that he was quite often dismissive of Ellington, and there's always something weird to me when somebody has that extreme of a divide."


I then responded with further details because I've known McDonough since high school, and down the rabbit hole we went.

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The rabbit hole is where the rabbits live. We all like rabbits, right? As pets, as dinner, as valiant foes in the chess game of our garden, we all like rabbits. Who amongst us is not sad when our dog comes back with a rabbit in its mouth, face beaming with pride and anticipating a nice hearty loving in appreciation of this, one of the more visceral of gifts a dog can give to its loved ones? How conflicted we are when feeling the simultaneous emotions of love for the dog, pity for therabbit, and the righteous sense of goddamitness that occur whenever lives collide in an eternally exploding triangle of boss, employee, and innocent walk-in customer. It rips us apart and the wounds only heal, they never disappear.

Make no mistake, the rabbit hole is where the rabbits live.

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6 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

 Revealing and unforgivable because it was not so much, if at all, an expression of taste on John's  part (lots of reasonable people of various ages don't like post-"Chasin' the Trane" Coltrane) but a solemn insistence that there could be NO rational reason to like late Trane and that those who said they did were either lying or that their belief that they did find value in this music was a sign of mental illness. If you don't see how morally ugly that is... 

 

"Morally ugly" or even immoral - I've been seeing this forever from 2nd-rate pundits, usually political, who claim if you disagree with them, you are either ignorant or else have your secret sinister agenda.

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2 hours ago, johnblitweiler said:

"Morally ugly" or even immoral - I've been seeing this forever from 2nd-rate pundits, usually political, who claim if you disagree with them, you are either ignorant or else have your secret sinister agenda.

You don't think it's immoral to say that if you admire late Coltrane, you're mentally ill? What claim that a group of people who are not mentally ill ARE mentally ill do you find morally acceptable? Also, FWIW, that piece was quite calculated/written in cold blood. It was not a mistake or an aberration but, as I said above, "essentially an act of provocation, an attempt to kick up a fuss in order to further John's profile as a Truth-Telling Noble Traditionalist."

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1 hour ago, jlhoots said:

Not sure what I'm missing, but I don't think Mr. Litweiler disagrees with you.

Hope you're right; John is a good friend and a brilliant writer. I thought he was saying that my use of the phrase "morally ugly" was akin to what 2nd-rate pundits say.

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5 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

You don't think it's immoral to say that if you admire late Coltrane, you're mentally ill? What claim that a group of people who are not mentally ill ARE mentally ill do you find morally acceptable? Also, FWIW, that piece was quite calculated/written in cold blood. It was not a mistake or an aberration but, as I said above, "essentially an act of provocation, an attempt to kick up a fuss in order to further John's profile as a Truth-Telling Noble Traditionalist."

IMHO the point is is that of course this is a judgment that is way off base because it postulates an absolute truth - i.e. people just HAVING to be mentally ill if they like music such as late Coltrane. This of course isn't so. Statements like that just are an insult - that's evident and bad enough. But making this a "moral" issue? Ho hum ... You are really getting on slippery ground there. Opinions on music are largely a matter of taste and of what one expects to hear in this or that music, and "absolute truths" will have  to stand scrutiny of whether they can be "truths" at all.  OTOH just look around among your fellow critic scribes (including self-professed ones) and see how many there are out there who, for example, have found this or that style of rock just "kids stuff" or worse, "music for the mentally retarded" (by YOUR yardstick this is bound to be just as morally inacceptable). Or those who see only the abstract, avantgarde, "high art", "far out" (to use a colloquial term) jazz as really the only jazz remaining today worthy of "serious" (double entendre of that word intended ;)) consideration and find any more immediately accessible (and, in a certain way, technically more simple) styles of jazz to be musically secondary or even worthless, particularly if played today (and therefore - in the opinion of those critics - reeking of nothing but "reproduction", "copyism" instead of "creativity" - whatever that means, actually ...). "WORTHLESS"? Comes not far below the inacceptability ranking of what McDonough said IMHO. Because it passes judgment in a way that just goes beyond what amounts to different tastes and into what sounds - again - like an absolute truth. Which it cannot be.  The same battle, BTW, that for decades has been waged by critics from the field of classical music against jazz. Much to the outrage of jazz partisans (not least of all because it was matter of apples and oranges). So jazz critics of today ought to know much better (no, I am not adressing you personally but rather "your profession"). Say you don't like it, say it doesn't strike a chord with you, say you fault it for this or that technical ("craftsmanly" ;)) reason (difficult again ...), but don't say - EVER - it's "worthless" or similarly un"worthy" of appreciation.

 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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19 hours ago, JSngry said:

I have a George Frazier record, on Riverside(?), that I bought just because. I've yet to listen to it, just because.

and perhaps I've read wrong, but I think that Larry has done more than just read about McDonough, he went to high school with the guy and has lived in the same city as him for, what, a year or two?

I don't think McDonough's a goof because he thinks that people who like late Trane are mentally ill, hell, I'm not a doctor, I'm sure he is, so I'll defer to him on that one. I think he's a goof because he claimed that "The Queen's Suite" sounded like Henry Mancini. This at a time, remember, when Henry Mancini was still alive and putting out records, most of which were squarely aimed at the what is now called Adult Contemporary market (there would still be the odd neat cut stuck in there every so often, but...who cared?). So it was not any kind of post-modernist dicktickle like a lot of the kids today do when they listen to dead people all day long (and half of the night).

Objectively, no, he's not an idiot. But I can't take anything he writes seriously. Well, ok, not too seriously. Because that Ellington/Mancini thing...again, I'm not a doctor, but maybe that's a sign of a mental illness?

"George Frazier record, on Riverside (?)" - Never heard of that one. Do you mean George Crater (Ed Sherman)? He wrote some amusing columns (at least I remember them as amusing) for Down Beat in the early 60's and did a record for Riverside where he comes off as a sort of minor league Lenny Bruce doing jazz based humor.

Is this the record you're talking about?:

 

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Yeah, that's it, George Crater! The phonetics between "Crater" and "Frazier" overlap more than not, at least in my increasingly addled mind, the liking of late Trane indeed accurately predicting mental illness, check your record collection and prepare accordingly.

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9 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

IMHO the point is is that of course this is a judgment that is way off base because it postulates an absolute truth - i.e. people just HAVING to be mentally ill if they like music such as late Coltrane. This of course isn't so. Statements like that just are an insult - that's evident and bad enough. But making this a "moral" issue? Ho hum ... You are really getting on slippery ground there. Opinions on music are largely a matter of taste and of what one expects to hear in this or that music, and "absolute truths" will have  to stand scrutiny of whether they can be "truths" at all.  OTOH just look around among your fellow critic scribes (including self-professed ones) and see how many there are out there who, for example, have found this or that style of rock just "kids stuff" or worse, "music for the mentally retarded" (by YOUR yardstick this is bound to be just as morally inacceptable). Or those who see only the abstract, avantgarde, "high art", "far out" (to use a colloquial term) jazz as really the only jazz remaining today worthy of "serious" (double entendre of that word intended ;)) consideration and find any more immediately accessible (and, in a certain way, technically more simple) styles of jazz to be musically secondary or even worthless, particularly if played today (and therefore - in the opinion of those critics - reeking of nothing but "reproduction", "copyism" instead of "creativity" - whatever that means, actually ...). "WORTHLESS"? Comes not far below the inacceptability ranking of what McDonough said IMHO. Because it passes judgment in a way that just goes beyond what amounts to different tastes and into what sounds - again - like an absolute truth. Which it cannot be.  The same battle, BTW, that for decades has been waged by critics from the field of classical music against jazz. Much to the outrage of jazz partisans (not least of all because it was matter of apples and oranges). So jazz critics of today ought to know much better (no, I am not adressing you personally but rather "your profession"). Say you don't like it, say it doesn't strike a chord with you, say you fault it for this or that technical ("craftsmanly" ;)) reason (difficult again ...), but don't say - EVER - it's "worthless" or similarly un"worthy" of appreciation.

 

I think you've made my point for me. If "statements like that are just an insult," then they are not really "opinions on music [that] are largely a matter of taste and of what one expects to hear in this or that music," let alone "the impossible to reach "absolute truth" -- they are, in intent and effect, insults. And in the case of this piece, IIRC, the insult was not even made in anger (which might be a partial excuse) but was a calculated act of provocation that was aimed at stirring a journalistic uproar that would serve to puff up the name and standing (in some quarters) of the hurler of the insult.

The rest of what you say above is to me a mixture of disparate issues. There is, in my world, (virtually) no current or past musical style in jazz that is inherently more or less valid, with the possible exception of straw hat/red garters Dixieland (which IMO has little to do with any actual traditional jazz).  OTOH, as far as what you refer to as " "reproduction" and "copyism" in jazz, I think one needs to look at the historical context of that approach or alleged approach, which in recent times has been to some significant degree, albeit not exclusively, linked to the itself by now quite historical advent of Marsalis-ism, with all its ideological baggage as to how jazz should be played and its strictures as to what ways of playing are, by contrast, not jazz -- these claims of course resting on claims of "absolute" aesthetic and social "truth."

Beyond that, when one gets to young or by now well-into-middle-age figures who more or less consciously work within "the tradition, " I admit that it comes down both to personal taste and also personal life experience on the part of the listener. If one was, as in my case, age 14 in 1956 and heard, say, Rollins' "Saxophone Colossus" when it was brand new, one's reaction to a young player whose style is steeped in c. 1956 Rollins is bound to be affected by both the fact that one has heard this before and heard it when it was a personal novel utterance on Rollins' part.

BTW, let me emphasize "personal utterance," because there are many styles of jazz where "personal utterance" is not or not as much the case, and these styles do lend themselves to re-creation, if the re-creation is done with insight and care -- witness the music of France's Les Petit Jazz Band or all the glories of Trad-based music that have come out of Australia, beginning in the late '40s and for many decades thereafter. OTOH, to take only example, it's not impossible that a young or by now well-into-middle-age figure who is (to stick with Rollins-inspired players) can also come up with striking personal utterances. I hear that, for example, in tenorman Grant Stewart; and while I can explain or claim in some detail why I feel that is the case, this is only my "truth," and I know that others disagree on the value and individuality of Stewart's music or do value it but then see no particular difference between him and other players who seem to them to be in a similar stylistic bag but who seem to me to be lacking in inventiveness and individuality. So it goes.

But then again, having been a jazz fan since 1954, I don't recall an era when the questions or issues I've just touched upon have been on or near the front burner as much as they seem to be now. Did, say, anyone demure in 1954 at the rooted-in-tradition music of Ruby Braff? Well, yes, IIRC, some critics did (some British critics with Leftist inclinations in particular, pretty much along open or covert racial lines -- the claim was that it was somehow wrong for a then fairly young Jewish kid from the Boston area to play the cornet in a manner that owed such a debt to Louis Armstrong). But the beauty and quite evident "personal utterance" factor in Braff's music pretty much carried the day, thanks be.

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