Michael Fitzgerald

OK - here's a big list: Richard Wyands, Illinois Jacquet, Gary Sargent, Dan Frank, Randy Eckert, Dan Morgenstern, Dizzy Gillespie, Tom Olin, Al Hibbler, Bernard Purdie, Dick Griffin, Irwin Stokes, Pat O'Leary, Kenneth Bolds, Dorothy Donegan, Matt Haviland, John Gordon, Emilio Lyons, Arnett Cobb, Clark Terry, Larry Ham, Milt Hinton, Bob Porter, Cecil Payne, Joshua Roseman, Mona Hinton, Sonny Rollins, Arthur Daniels, John Grimes, Walter Blanding, Jr., Jonah Jones, Aubrey Tucker, Matthew Hong, David C. Glasser, Bob Cunningham, Ron Della Chiesa, Edward Preston, Harry Edison, "Wild" Bill Davis, Buddy Tate Rudy Rutherford, Javon Jackson, Marik Vos-Lundh, Hugh Brodie, Lionel Hampton, John Simon, Jim Leff Mike P.S. - pretty sure Gary Sargent s/b Gray Sargent

Perhaps: Neben Altmeister Jacquet spielen u.a. Hugh Brodie (ts), Cecil Payne (bs), Larry Ham (as), Dick Griffin (tb), Frank Gordon, John Gordon (tps), Pat O'Leary und Richard Wyands (p), Bob Cunningham (b) und Bernard Purdie (dm). http://www.freiburger-medienforum.de/kino/...frischluft.html Mike

Watching this now - magnificent. Getz looks wonderful, not old and frail at all. We lost him much too soon. This is a good band - though not as perfect as the Reid/Lewis one. Alex Blake is a bit more extroverted as a soloist, maybe not saying quite so much. Camera work is maybe a bit heavy on the filters - everything glitters and shines. And I would have appreciated some lingering wide shots rather than so many close-ups. But very professional and excellent quality on the DVD. That thirds lick of Kenny's does wear on me - twice in the first tune. Mike

Isn't the 2nd volume the Modern one? First volume is Ragtime to Swing. Or are you saying there is a 3rd? Mike

Separated at birth?! But I'd say Payne is correct - look at the front edge of the hair: straight not pointed. Photo #2 and #3 seem to be from the same place - same date as well? Woody Shaw was my thought for the other fellow - I note that Payne and Shaw recorded together in 1969 with Archie Shepp. (Shaw and McShann - never). Mike

The larch Mike

The owner of the copyright does NOT necessarily mean the composer, so just because Don Cherry or Duke Ellington or whoevever is bleedin' demised doesn't mean that there isn't someone who owns the copyrights and can take any appropriate legal action. Mike

I don't think there is any additional material. It was specifically intended to have each writer do just two pieces. Four tunes per session was standard. There are no gaps in the master numbers. The Russo and Charles were done on April 30, 1959 and the Albam and Macero on May 15, 1959. The Macero pieces are included on his own album, issued on Stash as "The Best Of Teo Macero" and now available through cdbaby. Mike

Excellent news - When you receive, could you post detailed discographical information? This item is not included in the standard sources. If the label is handwritten, it sounds like a demo disc kind of thing, not a commercial issue. Do we think this is 1956? Any ideas on composers? Mike

I imagine that Brubeck has a very different perspective from Bley. I like them both, though neither is my favorite pianist. It seems to me that Brubeck has always worked more towards the "popular" side of jazz, so his experiments were maybe lightweight compared to how others dealt with similar things. But he did get certain things into the public consciousness and I think the reception that he got in the 1950s and 1960s was good for music and creativity: I don't think the college crowd would have got behind someone else who wasn't as audience-minded. Post-Desmond, Brubeck continued to experiment in his own (sweet) way, doing the orchestral/religious things, the Two Generations, the album with Braxton & Konitz, and the group he had with Jack Six, Alan Dawson, and Gerry Mulligan was a good one. For the last 25 years it seems to be coasting, though. But he does put on a nice show - last saw him maybe 12 years ago - and the group (Jack Six, Randy Jones, Bob Militello) was adept - handling spontaneous meter changes wonderfully. I don't have all his records, don't need them mainly because I don't find all that much variety - but just last week I listened to Tritonis from 1980 - Chris Brubeck is a very good trombonist, wish he'd play more. Mike

Thank you Jim - every day I teach students tone production, reading notation, compositional/improvisational skills, etc. These kids are then better equipped to deal with music, not only as players, but as listeners. If my fourth graders can learn notation, it should not be feared by adults. As Lewis Porter explains, music notation is just a graph - and we see graphs in newspapers and on TV every day. Now, as for "soiritual/emotiional" - I wish you would stop using these technical terms. I tried looking them up and couldn't find them in the Harvard Brief Dictionary, nor in the Webster's Collegiate. Mike

Heavens, Allen - what am I doing on that list? I think there is a big difference between people who know music and who write non-technical things (most of my writing) and those who don't know music. Of course, the worst case is when the latter try to write about technical things (many times even the simplest concepts elude them). Obviously, having a background as a musician informs all of what one does as a music writer. Apart from Katz and the undersigned (and I don't put myself in his class), are any of the others musicians? Part of what makes Morgenstern so good is that he keeps within his limits (but even as a "mere listener", he can identify sets of chord changes, etc.) and builds everything off his huge body of experience. Mike

Good riddance to bad rubbish. No redeeming qualities. As far as I can tell, knowledge of jazz (or anything else) cannot be proclaimed unilaterally - I KNOW MORE ABOUT JAZZ THAN YOU DO SO THERE - which is exactly what I saw time and again. Nothing more. Those who did find any marginal benefit in laughing at him can rest easy knowing that there are plenty of people here who can mimic his inanities - and those people don't bring along any of the bad side. The need for the ignore function has decreased greatly. Thank you Jim for finally ridding the board of this pest. Mike

Pretty sure I have not read any in that series, so I cannot comment. I do take issue with the term "readable" - Lewis Porter's Coltrane book is absolutely readable, eminently readable, to me, and to many others. I would place Porter (who I note, is a friend) as one of the clearest writers working on jazz today. So we do need a better term than "readable". And heavens! The Porter book is NOT like a doctoral thesis - man oh man - there are people out there who are writing stuff that is unbelievably detailed and complex: the folks who deal with Schenkerian reduction, etc. Can there be books that are designed to be "introductory"? Sure. At this point, the classical field has an immense head start. Firstly, the score (not the recording) is the prime document - one can see all the relationships laid out. In jazz, one would need to transcribe all the solos, all the accompaniment in order to speak in the same level of detail. An introductory book would probably deal with shallower levels of analysis. I do this all the time when working with students. In the classical field, the "serious" biographies have been written and the "introductory" biographies are probably based largely on them, without new research - the "reader's digest condensed" versions. In jazz, the research hasn't been done. Not even for Duke Ellington - there is still a huge amount to be studied and digested and presented. Jazz musicology is a very young area. Classical musicology has been around for centuries. Anyway, the big problem I see is where the "blame" is transferred: "the pages he spent trying to analyze Coltrane's music, as a non-musician made it difficult to read and follow" I would say the following is more accurate: "as a non-musician I had difficulty reading and following the pages he spent analyzing Coltrane's music". It's not the writer's fault, it's the reader's fault. And "trying to analyze" implies to me that the analysis was perhaps unsuccessful and since the reviewer is a non-musician, how on earth could he make that assessment? Books that purport to deal with musical analysis need to do so. And musical analysis demands musical notation. Most publishers are scared of this (and it helps perpetuate the viscious cycle - readers don't see notation, they think they don't need it, then they run into it and get scared because they haven't bothered to learn it because they have gone so long without seeing it). As a music educator, I try my best every day to help create a population that is not musically ignorant, nor musically illiterate. Mike

I don't happen to see what is aggressive in pointing out that people who have deficiencies in their musical knowledge should work on improving this area before reading a detailed musical biography addressing the style and innovations of a major figure written by someone who is a performer and a college professor (with a Ph.D. - earned for a dissertation on Coltrane's A Love Supreme). Obviously (well, to me it's obvious), those lines and dots are there for a reason and the words and symbols on the facing pages probably are as well. Until you can *decipher* what is there on the page, how can you expect to come to any kind of educated opinion on whether the analysis is accurate, convincing, etc.? It's like reading a book that contains a lot of vocabulary you have never encountered before. If, once you understand what has been written, you then have issues with it - great. Those should be addressed. Or was it my pointing out that the Rollins book is a piece of trash? You are under no obligation to agree with me on this matter either. I'm not running for office and trying to collect votes. I do not express my opinions in hopes to "bring many more people into this discussion" - I express them to express my opinions. In any event, I really have no interest in debating you, so please don't worry yourself. Apparently there are some who do find my comments in this thread of value. I'm not looking for their votes either. Mike

Sorry - apparently I touched a nerve there. Perhaps you would like it better if I dumbed down my response. How about something like "Gee, you're absolutely right." If it makes you feel better, you can assume that's what I said. I guess you know all you need to know from reading those books on jazz and if you didn't understand what Lewis Porter is writing about in his Coltrane book, then it must have been HIS fault and not yours. I apologize for presenting a dissenting view. Sure, "easy reading" books on jazz are out there - http://www.jazzhouse.org/library/index.php3?read=gourse1 but let's not confuse them with serious books by qualified authors. Mike

The Rollins book is another piece of trash - the contributions that Rollins himself made are of some value but forget everything else. Paraphrases straight from the Grove Dictionary of Jazz, huge omissions, faulty assumptions, etc. - this is NOT quality writing. I don't really get the idea that people should find something "easy to read". These are books about music. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that music will be discussed. If you need to improve *your* background knowledge of the subject, do it - don't complain about it or expect someone to dumb things down. Things that are "easy to read" don't teach you much. Please see also "easy listening". Mike

And there is some tough competition for that title! Mike

I am volunteering my services as an "off-site storage facility" - please send your duplicate safety copy Mosaic sets here and I will hold on to them for you. Should your main copy become damaged in any way, I will immediately send you the copy you placed with me for safekeeping. Mike

Bailey was only a pilot for five years (he had previously flown in WWII). He's now the head of Jazzmobile. Benny Golson was never away from music - he was scoring for film and TV in Hollywood. Mike

Folks - the educational assessment thing is a BUSINESS. ETS and others make huge amounts of money on this stuff. Let's not kid ourselves that this is not a factor. Unlike the school systems, the ETS people aren't held responsible for the results. They just care whether every single college-bound kid takes it. If enough colleges stopped requiring SAT scores, ETS would be in deep trouble. So ETS dances around every so often changing things - "New!" "Improved!" "Essay!" "Recalibrated!" The initial intent of the SAT was to predict success in the college freshman year. It has now been bent and twisted to try to do a helluva lot more. It probably doesn't even do a good job on its original intent now. Mike

Pity Bob Brookmeyer isn't playing on the tribute to KC. Why is Duke Pearson lumped in with Los Angeles and cool? He's from Georgia, largely known as a NYC player/writer - never got much notoriety in California as far as I know. I wouldn't have put in him in the "cool" grouping either. But that's just me. Mike

Yes, same in the US with the experts. My feeling is that one can't rely on the school for everything. I learned a huge amount outside of school - both from my parents and from reading on my own. I don't think that a lot of the kids I have worked with (high school and now elementary school) are doing the kind and amount of reading that I was doing at their age. Poor readers make poor writers - and the Internet is largely useless because so much of the writing is unedited. It would never have been published and available twenty (or more) years ago, so a kid would never have seen it, but now it's immediately available. It's quicker and easier for a kid to look something up on the Internet than to go to the local library - and guess which option gets chosen. Mike

Grimes did not have a bass for over 30 years. He was playing in 1970, probably not in 1971. He received his current bass from William Parker on December 16, 2002. His first "public" performance was the jam session of February 9, 2003. Mike

Well, please remember that Art Blakey never issued an album of just his drum solos from different tunes pieced together. If you take it upon yourself to remove things from their original context you may find they don't work as well as when left alone. Absolutely there are lots of things that he did which came back again and again, but there are also things that were different. Even the last time I saw him (1989) he was doing things that I had never heard him do. Mike