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Question for JSngry


Larry Kart

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Do you know the 1995 album "The Dallas Jazz Orchestra Plays Dee Barton"? I'm halfway through it right now, and aside from Barton's at best quite striking writing, I'm impressed by the loose and hairy solo work of altoist Karolyn Kafer -- not unlike James Spaulding, perhaps. Do you know of her? Also, on one track there's what may be the most bats--t solo Don Menza ever recorded. Don't care, though, for the rather slam-bang drummer Rich Redmond, Otherwise, I'm particularly impressed by two slowish mood pieces of Barton's, "Listen" and "Rapture" -- not a vein I would have expected from him, but he's got something individual to say in it.

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Funny enough...my last New Year's Eve gig was a few years ago, and Galen Jeter was on it. I got to taking to him about Dee Barton, then being in the middle of my re-examination of all things Kenton. I asked Galen about that record, and he just happened to have a copy in his truck that he sold me at a discount. :g

It is a striking album, and all I can tell you is what Jeter told me - that Dee Barton was a screaming maniac who drank a lot (and this was presented as a virtue) and that Don Menza flew in for a couple of hours to do his tunes, was kinda rage-y the whole time, took the check, and flew right back out.

As for the rest of the DJO....that whole orb was full of players, personalities, and intents that were almost scientifically designed to keep me away. But I wanted to hear this abloom with Dee Barton, because Dee Barton for sure had a "thing" and it seemed to me that a "higherfasterlouder" band like the DJO might be just the band to give that thing a full realization, and I believe they did. I do like that record quite a bit.

About Barton and slow charts, though, remember that Kenton's "Here's That Rainy Day" was his, and it's a beaut, a clssic.

Now, here's a good glimpse at a whole lot of things.

 

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I first became aware of Barton as more than a name through Mort Sahl, when I was out in LA interviewing Mort at some point in the early '80s. We kind of bonded -- Mort in many ways was a great guy -- and he took me to a club (the one whose name everyone knows -- Donte's?) on a Monday night to hear Bob Florence's band play some of Dee's charts on a night where, thanks to some confusion in the "who can and can't make it?") communications department, no less than eight top-drawer studio trumpeters showed up, and they all played -- visually, what a lineup; IIRC no one had a neck, and sonically, good grief. Mort's attitude toward Barton was very worshipful -- like Dee was the son of God (i.e. Stan). Very strange and kind of moving to feel so directly what Kenton meant to Sahl. If only Clint Eastwood could have played Stan in a bio pic at the right time. BTW, as you probably know, both Mort and Clint were far-gone Kenton fans when they were college friends out in LA back in that day. As Mort put it, emphasizing the phallic/rebellious element of Kentonia: "Brass out to here!"

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Don't know how true it is, but the story on Barton that I've heard was that he ended up back home somewhere (Alabama, Mississippi? where?) in a more or less constant stage of alcohol-fueled "Crow Jim" resentments.

Apart from that, Jeter repeatedly mention how Barton would sit in the control room screaming at the band during all the takes. He wanted to come out into the studio, but cooler head prevailed, because, you know, you can have all the moaning/grunting in the world, but a screaming big band leader is one of those things where a little goes a long way before people really start getting scared.

But I do like Barton's subset-of-a-subset contributions. And I do very much love the way he drummed with Kenton.

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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Don't know how true it is, but the story on Barton that I've heard was that he ended up back home somewhere (Alabama, Mississippi? where?) in a more or less constant stage of alcohol-fueled "Crow Jim" resentments.

Apart from that, Jeter repeatedly mention how Barton would sit in the control room screaming at the band during all the takes. He wanted to come out into the studio, but cooler head prevailed, because, you know, you can have all the moaning/grunting in the world, but a screaming big band leader is one of those things where a little goes a long way before people really start getting scared.

But I do like Barton's subset-of-a-subset contributions. And I do very much love the way he drummed with Kenton.

Whew! I'm getting scared in retrospect.

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Oh yeah, never underestimate the amount of rage to be found in the best of Kentonmusic. That's actually what turned me around on a lot of, it's not anger, it's rage, people who get put off by it because it's so..."lound" and "aggressive" are not wrong. It is. And it's coming from a lot of the "left behind" vibe not just of race, but of popularity, lack of appreciation for skill sets, etc. That band...the right band, the right chat...yeah, get scared, but don't stay scared, try to understand without embracing, that worked really go for me and Kenton.

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