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Oscar Peterson -- further thoughts


Larry Kart

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thanks, Cliff.

42 minutes ago, Hot Ptah said:

 

 

There is an orthodoxy here that verges on religious doctrine, about these artists which have gone on the bad list. To belong to the board, you cannot voice a heretical viewpoint and be taken seriously.

I find it quite odd.

well, maybe it's because they are............bad.

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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Please mom and dad, let's not fuss, let's find some common ground and build on that, please.

 

I keep forgetting that when you are a Catholic and live in Salt Lake City, you can't talk about the Mormon church. Don't worry about me. I'm going inside and pulling down the blinds.

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43 minutes ago, Milestones said:

Who would be the third-most controversial "popular" jazz musician, following OP and Wynton?  We never seem to get into such debates on more low-profile players.

    

Some of them are Phil Woods, Pat Metheny and Gary Burton. All are bad musicians.

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46 minutes ago, Milestones said:

Who would be the third-most controversial "popular" jazz musician, following OP and Wynton?  We never seem to get into such debates on more low-profile players.

    

Brubeck? But not really, not these days. Phil Woods -- at least to me and and a few like-minded souls, but I think we're very much in the minority. (BTW, I very much like Woods up through '56-'57.) At one point I really didn't get Benny Goodman as a player, but those days are long past. Likewise with Gerry Mulligan as a player; in his case, I think he just got better over time; my change of mind on Goodman took place entirely in my mind. I used to not care for Billy Taylor; now when I'm in the mood I find him clever and charming. If Jon Faddis qualifies, he never did anything for me, not that anyone cares.

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3 hours ago, AllenLowe said:

Joe, I see it, really, as no different than trying to convince someone to NOT vote for a particular political candidate. Sometimes people respond to new perspectives. And I find it to be as important as politics. Personally I have, more than once, been converted by persuasive artistic arguments. Sometimes it feels like a mission.

False analogy.   If someone gets pleasure from something why do you want to take that pleasure away? Saying you disagree is fine  but why do you have to convince them your taste is better than theirs. 

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10 hours ago, Milestones said:

Just to show there is an exception to every rule.  However, Shaq will always be infamous for that.

I was being facetious, of course :)  In general I think being a great ballad player is pretty important to being a great jazz musician.  But I'm sure we can come up with examples of some great jazz musicians who were merely decent or mediocre balladeers.

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Joe -- How about this? In an artist's work that is in one's opinion not that successful at times (and I do like some OP) there are almost certainly certain underlying principles at work (or not at work). And it then can be worthwhile/interesting/etc. to talk about what those principles are/might be and about why  one feels that in this artist's case there are problems with the way they function or don't function. For instance, there's OP's tendency to fill up most if not all of the space that's available to him or his sometime reliance on a stock of familiar bluesy licks. The point would not be to take away anyone's pleasure in OP but by suggesting that there are higher levels of musical mastery in, say, in the two areas I just mentioned (use of space and blues feeling) and by making relevant comparison to other players (e.g. Monk for use of space, Horace Silver or Sonny Clark for blues feeling)  to thus sharpen one's awareness of what those higher levels of mastery might be. That's a bad thing?

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Joe, I never said my taste was better than theirs. But if I think I am right, I say so.

I mean, would you be bothered if someone said Russ Meyer was the equal as a director to Orson Wells? You wouldn't question their taste? If you are casting a movie, would you cast someone who you thought was the worst for the job, if that actor was popular? more likely you would let your own taste supersede popular opinion, if you thought it was best for the film.

as for the analogy.....millions of people got great pleasure from being able to vote for a candidate whom they thought was revolutionary....who just happened to be a guy with orange hair. Should we just let them enjoy his presidency?

as for OP; I do think he is destructive for jazz. He creates a false and dangerously corrupt sense of what is art in the music. If his sound is heard as the ideal, deeper musicians suffer.

 

Edited by AllenLowe
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1 hour ago, AllenLowe said:

I mean, would you be bothered if someone said Russ Meyer was the equal as a director to Orson Wells? You wouldn't question their taste?

In breasts or in camera angles?

Or in camera angles for breasts?

 

2 hours ago, Milestones said:

Who would be the third-most controversial "popular" jazz musician, following OP and Wynton?     

Stan Kenton if you're old enough. Maybe even the most controversial.

Can't we all just get along?

 

Uniter, not a divider!

 

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He's no longer considered verboten, but I recall a time when admitting that you liked Ahmad Jamal was considered questionable. IIRC, the first time that I'd ever read about Jamal, it was in relation to his influence on Miles, and the author was talking about Miles' open admiration for Jamal's music.  Whoever the writer was -- don't recall who -- almost seemed embarassed that Miles would have enjoyed Jamal's music and incorporated some aspects of it into his own playing.  The writer seemed to go out of his way to point out that the "lesser" artist had somehow, oddly enough, influenced the "greater" one. Even as a young person, just dipping my toe into jazz, it seemed odd to me that the author felt like he had to defend Miles' tastes!  ...Of course, Jamal is fully rehabilitated now. ;) 

I think certain sets felt the same way about Erroll Garner too. For some reason, these folks didn't find his music "legit." Too florid, I guess. Too many pop tunes.  ...But now, like Jamal, Garner has been admitted into the pantheon, his rehabilitation complete.

Only poor ol' Oscar Peterson remains in purgatory. Loved by some, excoriated by others.... The polarizing jazz musician par excellence. ;)  To my way of thinking, Oscar easily wins the Top/Bottom Prize for these sorts of strongly-voiced arguments, both loudly pro and vehemently con -- because dislike for figures like Wynton and Kenton has as much to do with their personalities as it does with their music. With OP, on the other hand, it's entirely about his music.

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42 minutes ago, JSngry said:

How does anybody not like Errol Garner?

I've been debating whether to get that ultra-cheap 3-CD Garner set on Sony (current price is $3.61 + shipping).  Do I really need it/him?  I remember borrowing some CDs from the library on Telarc (originally on his own label?) that I found too superficial and pleasant.  So I think we all find some artists who "speak to me" and others that we just don't get.  This is something aside from technique.  There were some debates about whether some ESP artists could really play their instruments; such is the trap laid by the avant-garde.  But artists who demonstrably can play, like OP, have drawn ridicule because what they play isn't "deep" enough, or complex, or doesn't challenge the status quo (which seems to be the only rationale for Archie Shepp's career).  OP regularly bitched about the critics who overwhelmingly favored Cecil Taylor over him, even though OP regularly won the reader's poll in Down Beat.  Perhaps some of the furor over OP has died down here because, as we get older, we derive more satisfaction from pleasant form.  Seems natural to me.

As for artists who cannot be praised here, or even dispassionately discussed, top of the list is still Keith Jarrett.  And an artist who cannot be criticized here is Ornette Coleman, despite (to my ears at least) his music's obvious shortcomings.  It really reaches hero worship here.

I confess to being pleasantly surprised by the comments in this thread.  It's a great discussion about different facets of OP's art.  I can find him overbearing at times, but then I'll hear a date such as his backing Lockjaw Davis at Montreux '77 and find that he adds so much to the music.  Reading the comments here allows me to learn a little more about the "how."

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