John Swana's "Philly Gumbo"

[HutchFan]

2 hours ago, Peter Friedman said:

Hutchfan, you should have bet a lot more than a dollar because you were correct. I much prefer the early Harold Land. These recordings on Contemporary are examples of some of my favorite playing by Land.

The Curtis Counce Group Vol.1 - Landslide

You Get More Bounce With Curtis Counce

Harold In The Land of Jazz

Hampton Hawes - - For Real

Ha! I knew it!  

I love those records you've listed too, by the way.  I just like Land's latter-day sound a bit more.  

[Larry Kart]

5 hours ago, JSngry said:

Well then, somewhere on latter-day Contemporary there's Bill Perkins playing in his "latter day" style that is a stone gas! Maybe it was a Bud Shank record.

I think he's a hoot, because he still sounds like bill Perkins, just like a bill Perkins who had went around the world a few times and came back with a braoder perspective than he had when he left.

And then...there's some totally off0-the-wall obscure indie-produced record by some dummer(?)  htat's all Mingus compositions only played like in an extreme Giuffre chill-chamber style, Perkins is all up in htat, playing very, VERY deeply, but not at all like his 50s style.

I think Bill Perkins was probably a pretty deep guy from jump and no doubt went therough some changes along the way. but I dig the guy's tenor playing, always.

The Cadence interview made it clear that he was a deep guy; it also made it clear that c. 1959-60 he had some anxiety about being outmoded as a white guy tenorman and wanted to get "tougher."

I don't quite follow you there, Jim. A whole lot of wholly Perkins-like Perkins also was very Pres-like in a very personal, quite recognizable manner, and then another Perkins-like Perkins emerged from the Perkins  chrysalis -- a Perkins that sometimes had the arguable drawbacks I mentioned in a previous post. All those different Perkins were Perkins-like, of. course -- how could they not be? --but not all of them were as musically successful as some of the others. And this becomes a matter worth pondering because there is little doubt that Perkins' changes were consciously made/willful  and to some extent, at least at some time, driven by some anxieties.

[JSngry]

Anxieties? A guy who sat on the bus with a raincoat pulled up over his head? I just don't see THAT, LOL!

You make it sound like pondering one's place in the world is some kind of a drawback when it takes their music someplace that you like less than what you liked before. Well, that's your issue, not somebody else's.

As a person, we all have our right to like what we like. But if we don't like it, that's as far as it goes, period. Anything past that...too creepy, like Bill Perkins had something weird about him becuase he has thoughts about how much uit would matter to be a coollschooltenor player, which was actually a VERY good question, because unless you wanted to be Brew Moore (and unless you WERE Brew Moore, why would you want to be Brew Moore, especially if you were Bill Perkins., the factual answer was not very fucking much.

The world was/is changing, and Bill Perkins was not the only person who wondered about what it all meant and what do I going to do about it? So he got busy thinking about shit and figuring out what it meant to him. Oh well, sorry about that if you don't like it, he was still Bill Perkins and for all the easycheap talk about Rollins/Trane where he ended up for quite un-Rollins/Trane because, you know, if you live long enough and keep yourself open until the very end, hey, you might be surprised who you run into as it leads where it leads, especially if you're lucky enough to run into some of your other selfs and they start coming along, the more the merrier!

I don't hear any whiteangst shit here, I just here a guy who thought about a lot of shit, thought it through, and landed here pretty comfortably actuallu. Bill Perkins, one HELLUVA tenor player, one HELLUVA self-challenger!

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

All those different Perkins were Perkins-like, of. course -- how could they not be? --but not all of them were as musically successful as some of the others.

I laugh at that sentence, sorry.

Like, every day is a day, of course - how could it not be? But some days are more life-successful than others.

Uh, yeah, ok, so...forget the bad ones? Figure out how to not wake up for the bad ones? Maybe just forget about having or letting any of them be different?

Seriously dude, it that was the best thought you could have about Bill Perkins,...well, I hope it's not, because I bought your book, ya' know, and not on a whim either.

[JSngry]

and to bring this all back on point - you may HATE the Perkins solo, but one thing you can NOT say is that is the the sound of a man who just learned how to play one way really well and let that be what he did all his life, ALL of his motherfucking life. That one way, that one way.

You can certainly NOT say that about Bill Perkins.

But you can say that about Eric Alexander.

So...here's to the people who go where they go instead of staying where they are.

 

[Larry Kart]

I still believe my guess as to what Perkins was trying to do -- get more angular harmonically in order to generate a degree of more meaningful "tough"  rhythmic angularity that he very much desired and that might not have been going to come to him otherwise and/or through more "direct" means --was a good one, and that this approach in latter-day Perkins lead at times to "these parts don't quite fit together with these other parts" effect. But with all that, the solo you linked is a gem and one piece of evidence that on the right day Perkins could nail exactly what I think he was trying for.. So it's a gem of a solo but (he ducks) I still think it kind of proves my point about the nature and texture of Bill's quest.. BTW, what is the vintage of that Danny Pucciilo album? I couldn't find a link to it on the 'Net.

As  for your "Like, every day is a day, of course - how could it not be? But some days are more life-successful than others.

"Uh, yeah, ok, so...forget the bad ones? Figure out how to not wake up for the bad ones? Maybe just forget about having or letting any of them be different." particularly your "Maybe just forget about having or letting any of them be different?" (Did I ever say or even imply that Perkins or anyone else should forget about having or letting any of one's days be different?" I'll confess to many crimes, but not that one.)

I still believe that Perkins embarked on a fairly specific, perhaps unusually specific musical quest c. 1959-60. For this I have the evidence of my ears plus that Cadence interview, from which if I can find my copy I'd be happy to cite passages. Can you think of another fine player who tried to remake himself that much and left behind statements that pretty much said that this is what he was going to try to do? I can't. One that kind of comes to mind is pre- and post-"New Soil" Jackie McLean -- that was to some degree a "willed" musical shift, albeit with IIRC a not unsubstantial gap in time between between "pre" and "post" and I believe some significant personal turbulence during that gap time. I myself love Jackie both "pre" and "post."

BTW, speaking of Harold Land, another of the many players of his general background and vintage who similarly cleaved fairly hard toward Trane was Frank Foster. Not Frank Wess though -- blessings on both of them.

[Peter Friedman]

In line with my personal preference for the earlier playing of Bill Perkins and Harold Land, I hold the same view on Frank Foster.. My favorite of his recordings is a Prestige date called - Elmo Hope Quintet and Quartet - Hope Meets Foster - recorded in 1955.

On the other hand, Frank Wess who did not get bitten by the Coltrane bug, became (in my opinion) a more interesting tenor player over time. I found more depth and creativity in his playing in his later period. 

[Dan Gould]

On 8/30/2020 at 2:08 PM, Dan Gould said:

What was the point then of bringing up these two artists in this context, then to be comparing EA to the forger? No you didn't say it explicitly but that's the only way to read that second post.

Years ago we had a conversation about Scott Hamilton and his influences. I am legitimately curious about how you would react to Scott as he performs now but that is another tangent.  Actually - this was a tangent from Swana's CD to a different CD with EA so what the hell. Here's a brand new Scott Hamilton performance:

Do you hear someone with a personal expression yet? 

 

On 8/30/2020 at 5:17 PM, Larry Kart said:

About the Scott Hamilton clip, it doesn't strike me as particularly emulative but I didn't find it very interesting -- warm, amiable, but rather too low key for my taste. BTW, by low-key I don't mean choice of tempo or mood but rate and force/flow of ideas.

I shouldn't have let this pass Larry but can you elaborate on "rate and force/flow of ideas"?

Does "rate" mean that he has a few moments of enjoyable spontaneous creation but otherwise is back to the lick factory or amiable noodling? Can you identify these moments with some specificity? I'm sure  you don't want to spend too much time on something you didn't find very interesting but if you can provide a little more specificity on one track I'd be appreciative.

[Larry Kart]

No, I'm not going to get as specific as  you understandably want me to about that SH  video-- I don't have the time or the inclination to do that. What I will say is that when SH "relaxes" there, in ways that are quite appropriate to the style in which he's working, it sounds (invoking the "rate and force/flow of ideas" factor) like he's, if you will, "merely" relaxing, --  as though he were donning a pair of slippers, That is, the places where he relaxes, feels comfortable in, are pretty much a given, musically and emotionally, to both SH and the listener. Thus while the effect is certainly amiable, it is just amiable, or it seems so to me. By contrast, I think of, in a typical vintage Ben Webster medium-tempo solo, of the byplay between such moments of relaxation and ease, often signaled by a momentary timbral and rhythmic softening of the musical discourse on Ben's part, and of the the relation ship of those moments to the musical discourse as a whole. At work there in such a  Big Ben solo is a sense of dialogue (or even a kind of joust)  between relaxation and an underlying or ongoing intensity. With SH, I basically hear., again., warm amiable figures that in some respects allude to such a dialogue, but either the dialogue really isn't present or it has no particular musical/emotional spine to it.

 

An example of what I mean, one of the most striking dialogs of relaxation vs/ intensity I know:
 

And another such:
 

 

[JSngry]

That Danny Pucillo record is from 2003 and had limited (probably no) distribution. I got it from Pete Gallio, who got it from Perkins himself when Pete met and got friendly with him while spending some time in LA working with either a Kim Richmond or Mike Vax project. He was totally blown away by Perkins' humility, honesty, and depth of insight about all things. A really thoughtful person who understood that decisions had implications and was careful about the decisions he made. Pete said that Perkins took whatever gigs he got because, obviously, to get paid, but also because he simply loved playing, period. It sounded like gigs were not always profusely available because Bill Perkins always brought Bill Perkins to the gig, and you know some people don't get it, they don't want you, they only want "you", and that was not how this guy rolled. Sounded like a really, REALLY together guy, comfortable with his choices and comfortable just being him.

That Pucillo record's a gem of a different sort altogether, but suffice it to say that if you consider that Perkins solo a gem (and it is,) then look around for that Perkins/Clay record. $50.00 is WAY higher than it ought to be, although it's won't come at a bargain either. Perkins is DELIGHTFUL on that record, all of it, and Clay is Clay. Sometimes, Clay sounds like the "old guy", Perkins is so spry and fresh-thinking. But JAmes clay wasn't fucking around, so....damn good record.

I really don't know what Perkins that is being referred to when it is talked about that it "doesn't fit" or whatever. I get that he decided that he had a need for something different and went about getting it. "Growing pains", yeah, but Bill Perkins was too sharp a mind and too honest a player to get all trifling about shit or to settle for the okie-doke of grafting some "modern" touches on and letting that be that. I take his playing at all stages very seriously, and in a way I don't for most of his "peers", not the least reason being that this guy was deep in the belly of that particular beast (so to speak) and to question it's meaningfulness to him also implies that he did not really feel comfortable continuing to be simply "one of them".

And, you know, good for him, because I TOTALLY get that. Good call, Bill Perkins!