Michael Fitzgerald

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

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

Bruyninckx (& Lord) show only these versions: Hutcherson: Now (1969) Shaw: Berlin (1976) Hutcherson: LA Phil (1977) Chambers: Double Exposure (1977) Mike

Maria Schneider Orchestra - Jazz Standard - March 24-27, 2005. Mike

Here is the entry from Carlos Kase & Ben Young's discography of Izenzon: Informal Session: prob. Don Cherry Apparently 6 January 1964. Stereo Sound Studios, NYC. Don Cherry (cornet); Pharoah Sanders (ts); Joseph Scianni (pno); DI (b); J. C. Moses (dr). Unknown titles Note: There are about 30 fragments of music here, including numerous false starts and rehearsal takes of a Cherry composition. There exist about 20 minutes of complete, fully realized takes and some fragments of Cherry playing Monk tunes from the piano (with bass and drums). Donn Cherry's comments in a 1966 Jazz Monthly interview support the impression given by the tape box ledger, that the date above is correct. However, Jo Scianni suggests that he played with J. C. Moses before 2/ above [30 January 1963], and this may have been that occasion. ======== FWIW, Cherry was in Europe (Milan) with Sonny Rollins on January 13, 1963. I don't have any earlier date for that tour. Mike

The information is accurate. The session has circulated. I have seen this tracklist: 1. untitled 2. studio chatter 3. untitled 4. studio chatter 5. untitled 6. untitled Mike

Todd Poynor is compiler of this and he updates it infrequently. I will have to check with him if he's done any revisions. I'm pretty sure I sent him some date fixes since the version went up. Since my own research includes non-commercial stuff, I know there are things that I list elsewhere that include Woody which are not in Todd's listings. But as for commercial issues, I think it's pretty good. Mike

Mercury, RCA, Roulette, Cameo, Mainstream, Enterprise label stuff by Maynard; if you can deal with Kenton, then that stuff (1950-53 is my preference - I'm a fan of third stream things, so Innovations Orchestra is nice). Nice work with Shorty Rogers (RCA) and some other sideman gigs too. Find the stuff with the best soloists and the best arrangers. I don't like things where Maynard is the primary soloist. I prefer him in smaller quantities - but when you need it, he comes through. When he had his working band (Roulette era), he hired some amazing people. Mike

Well, yes, to be sure. But I wonder what your Ferguson listening experience is - if all that you know is MacArthur Park and later, you're missing the good stuff. He's made a lot of horrendous records that lack any semblence of taste. There are plenty of Maynard freaks who believe he can do no wrong, but I'm certainly not one of them. Mike

Faddis can't play changes. He is a repository of licks. His tone is thin and piercing, not full-bodied. Sure I have heard people hit higher notes (I helped prepare a presentation on high note guys that was presented at the recent Maynard Ferguson extravaganza in Los Angeles), but "hitting" a note is not the object. Making music is. Ferguson is an exceedingly rare example of someone who can play altissimo with good tone. Though he's not such a good improviser - he's still more capable than Faddis in that area. The presence of Faddis on a gig or record is sure to drop the musical level several notches. Legacy doesn't do it for me, despite the nice accompaniment. Mike

Sandoval plays Faddis - the lame leading the lame? Sandoval fancies himself a part-time classical player, so I assume that's why those soloists are on the list. He has an album out where he plays, among other things, the Arutunian concerto (a piece composed for Dokschitzer). Mike

I had forgotten about those two NYT pieces - but they were, like so much of the NYT jazz writing, forgettable: I view them as intended for a more general interest audience as opposed to serious fans and I was happy to ignore them rather than get worked up over them. I am not much interested in the jazz-as-sociopolitics side of things, though if that's someone's cup of tea - great for them. I have attended enough of those lectures that when I hear the phrase "the African-American tradition of signifying" I break out in a rash. Based only on the 2 hour roundtable I attended at Rutgers IJS, I take his Monk work a bit more seriously. However, I can see the concern - although I don't recall much if anything that evening being in that "Columbia U" bag, the final product might indeed end up in such a wrapping. Or I could have been temporarily blinded by the rare recordings. I wish Rutgers would get their act together and have those roundtables online in streaming audio like they've been talking for years now. As for the Kelley Monk book (sounds like a used car price guide), I think at worst we will get a huge quantity of previously unknown information published - perhaps not the "warts and all" but we'll have a much better idea about Monk from a particular perspective. Being close with the family is probably both a blessing and a curse. I am just hoping that the blessings will win out. It's a book I am looking forward to reading. Mike

Um - yeah, but Brad loves whom is the question. Does your other car say JAnistn? Mike

That mural Garth posted is missing the Sketches of Spain figure of Miles. Mike