AllenLowe

that's the guy. Great player. James's soloing is a very interesting, I think, amalgamation of Armstrong and Eldridge; a little florid at times, but really fine work. I want to post this, though it is slightly off topic - it does show how well Harry James played and was regarded by fellow musicians with less commercial cache even early on - Buck Clayton, t / Vernon Brown, tb / Earl Warren, as / Jack Washington, as, bar / Herschel Evans, ts / Jess Stacy, p / Walter Page, sb / Jo Jones, d. New York, January 5, 1938

one thing I almost always note - I love that 1950s edition of the James band, and he had a trombonist, Carl Elmer, who I think may be, after Knepper, the best bebop trombonist I have ever heard. You have to search for his solos, but they are great.

he's still alive? Wow, I thought otherwise. I always try to keep track of Jewish jazz musicians.

Plumb has some interesting sonics. My problem is, you've heard David Murray once, well, you've pretty much heard what he can do. And Questlove sounds like a drum machine.

Paul Oliver was a smart guy and a decent writer, but just lacked - a certain creative spark in his blues work. And I will say something self-serving; my blues collection Really the Blues? with accompanying book is a far better examination and explanation of the blues than anything else out there; the field is rife with fans who really cannot write. I plan, if I live that long, to put the CD set that goes with it on Bandcamp, and then just sell the book. But I think the book hangs pretty well by itself.

it's interesting to hear how musicians loosen up when playing "live" as opposed to recording. Particular Hardman here. And I don't know if anyone has mentioned it but I've always heard a similarity, tone-wise, between Cook and Booker Ervin.

I really like all of Ammons' later work. It's always interesting to hear when a musician from that generation gets a little restless, artistically-speaking. Very few of them really changed.

heres the whole Sweden thing: sorry - it wasn't the Dexter/Ammons, but the Moody Ammons I was thinking of (in addition to the Swedish concert, above): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Concert

Ammons In Sweden, and a very interesting recording he made with Dexter Gordon (possibly live in Chicago): https://www.amazon.com/Chase-Gene-Ammons/dp/B000000ZF1 https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Ammons-Sweden/dp/B005D2ST9E/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1NKJ8044MBYKI&keywords=gene+ammons+in+sweden&qid=1692128402&s=music&sprefix=gene+ammons+in+sweden%2Cpopular%2C101&sr=1-1 neither is a radical departure, but there is, to my ears, a sense of impatience with the more orthodox lines of bebop.

that's what I like about it - it violates the Sacred Order of the Jazz Solo; and I will say, though this is not necessarily a recommendation, that from a technical standpoint it is masterful. I am going to add something that strikes me here as relevant, as a player myself - bebop and its parameters can be quite oppressing, as a schematic requirement for musicians to design their playing in specific and "correct" ways. Truthfully, though I loved the man, this is the reason I had to finally detach myself from Barry Harris when I hit my 30s (we had been very close) as I decided to get serious about music. And since then I have noticed a number of players whose work reflected the outlines of bebop but whose playing reflected a fascinating impatience with the music's contours - late Gene Ammons, Von Freeman, Ira Sullivan are just three, Aaron Johnson is a great contemporary example - and I very much, after frustration with the free-jazz cult of today, decided to construct a way of playing that encompassed certain spiritual ties to bebop and swing, but which allowed me to discard all of the so-called lessons learned and abandon the rules in the interest of creative freedom. THAT is what I find so interesting here about Wynton, that for a brief moment or so he had a similar revelation and applied it in a brilliant way - though as we can see, the lesson didn't really take, as middle-class precepts of art as a form of lesson-learned gratification and personal nourishment took over from the idea of art as revelation and risk.

exactly. I find this disturbing. Like a violation of certain sacred principles.

Larry Kart pointed out to me once that Wynton Marsalis has changed his style from his early years, when he was a much more creative and exploratory player. I just found this on Youtube - an amazing solo with VSOP - from the '80s? I don't know, but I do know that it is one of the more amazing trumpet solos I have ever heard, free, inventive, playful, intense:

I blame myself - they finally did an article about me and then they died.

Roswell Rudd told me that Shepp was so popular in France that people were naming babies after him,

these are difficult questions - but I think the essence of what Armstrong did was to destroy the concept of vocal realism in a Dadaesque way, to put an end to heart-on-sleeve emotionalism, creating a distance that actually made it more realistic, in the way it represented a kind of free-associating consciousness of melody and lyric; all while detaching melody from lyric in the same way that a modern artist might draw a human body that was both there and absent, in a type of free-floating spirit world of melody molded to lyric. Like with Joyce this was a much more compelling portrait of life as it is really experienced, of the way in which the mind freely associates experience with the consciousness of experience. Even though now we have a certain awareness of artistic and aesthetic rationale of the type that I am reasonably certain Armstrong did not employ, in his way he knew all of it, it was ingrained in his soul and he drew, wittingly, upon a deep oral heritage that perceived of improvisation as a natural extension of life and hence consciousness. So it was being done elsewhere in black music, but not in the service of these kind of pop-conscious objects.

I would check out the 1920s work like Tain't So; also I'm Comin' VIrginia with Whiteman.

I just want to mention - and maybe somebody else has - that Louis Armstrong was mentioned in only a passing way on the first page of this thread - and he INVENTED jazz singing. I exaggerate not. The whole concept, phrasing, time, treatment of lyrics, comes from Armstrong. And I should mention that early Bing is to my ears a great jazz singer, though I think in later years he compromised his style to hit the mainstream. Also, no one has mentioned Al Bernard, of New Orleans, who had it all - time, phrasing. And Marion Harris, who many early listeners mistook for black. She was wonderful, had a terrific, firm approach that swung.

I haven't been there in years but it was a great place, and I know Ricky Riccardi says it's still great. IIRC parking is easy. I would just stay and forget about Maine.

Junkies are an adventure and a chore. I spent a weird day with Art Pepper in the '70s, basically driving him around looking for drugs. Helluva nice guy.

thanks - also, actually some years ago, someone (might have been Mike Fitzgerald) posted an actual picture of the Buddy Rich band with Dave in the sax section. Sadly, I seem to have lost it.

Rich is best listened to in a small group setting, where he seems to have been able to channel his inner Dave Tough and play brilliantly. To my ears, after he became a star and started leading that later big band his work always sounds like "hey look at me."

there's a young trumpet player in Baltimore, Brandon Woody, who is worth watching.

for that kind of money you could have put these guys on a retainer and had them come over to the house and play every week.

it's a little more complicated; he stopped playing music because, he said, he wanted to be with his family more. So he got a day job with the city of New York which was pretty menial. Then his daughter was killed in a car accident, which sent his wife to bed for about 10 years; she finally died of cancer. Beautiful, sweet lady, she just never got over it. As for Dave, he would have made some real money as a musician; Norman Granz was offering a tour, Dizzy offered several recording dates, all of which he turned down. But that was Dave.

nothing wrong with banging on a piano. One night back in the '70s I was at the Red Blazer in NYC watching Sol Yaged (a friend of mine, Bill Triglia, was playing piano). The band was awful; finally Bill took off his shoe and starting banging the keyboard with it. And here was a guy who had worked with Bird, with Lester Young, with Sonny Rollins - if he could do it anyone could.