AllenLowe

I assume it was an old-fashioned plate reverb, literally a plate. They used the real thing in those days; though plate reverbs can be a bit too lush. I may be wrong, but I don't think with those kind of things that they could control the amount on the recording, as you can with digital verbs (which I love). And I will say that I love those old-style rooms; I only had the opportunity to record twice at a similar place, Systems Two in Brooklyn (which is now closed). People can argue all day about the different between digital and analogue, but I feel certain that so much of what we complain about in the sonic differences between old and new jazz recordings is due to the old rooms, which in the old days were specifically designed for live recordings. The two CDs I made at Systems Two just sound....real, no isolation, musicians who could hear each other, no headphones, just a beautiful sound. Recording studios today tend to be designed to deaden the sound, to fight leakage, and to create the true acoustics in the board.

It's quite all right - if I had posted something like that Justin V would pipe in to say that Coltrane had probably refused to collaborate with me; but the truth is it is quite possible to disagree with the majority.

not a big fan of Henderson - there is something emotionally incomplete about his playing to my ears, it's like something that looks good on paper, but in reality doesn't have enough impact - but that's just me, however I do find him interesting at times and I respect his playing - but more important since there was some discussion about his development as a player, above, is what he told Dave Schildkraut and which Dave told me. Henderson told Dave that as long as bebop was the prevailing style he didn't feel he had what it takes, was not comfortable as a player; and that it was Coltrane who freed him up to be himself, who showed him that he didn't have to play the way the beboppers played in order to to a real player. I think this is quite illuminating and I, as a much lesser player, identify. One of the reasons I had to leave the Barry Harris orbit is that I just didn't fit into that system, much as I loved Barry personally and musically, and I finally realized there was a whole other way of musical life out there. Clearly this was what Henderson was talking about. also, I don't think anyone has mentioned this, but I have always heard a stylistic resemblance between Cook and Booker Ervin. A sound, a certain hard dynamic.

Invisible Man is an astounding novel, and doubly amazing is that it was really Ellison's only successful fiction. I have a theory - there were all kinds of stories of why he never produced another great novel, that he had lost a book on the subway, this had happened, that had happened - but I have read every other piece of fiction of his that I can find, some WPA stories, Juneteenth - and everything I have seen is just lifeless (his essays, which are brilliant, are another story). My theory is that this is the one great book he had in him, and we should stop worrying about what else he might have written. It doesn't matter. Invisible Man is epochal, really one of the great books of the modern era. We should all produce one solitary work with this kind of power and vision.

thanks - the horns do sound a little distant on my meager laptop speakers. Gotta get it on a full system.

someone may have answered this - but I am curious, is this a mono or a stereo recording?

she is indeed extremely good, and she sticks out in a place where most singers, good and bad, have become, to my ears, somewhat generic. But I find that no matter how good they are I cannot listen for very long. Not sure I can put my finger on it but it is as though the whole genre - of jazz singing - lacks for a compelling alternative to the older styles. I used to think of Patty Waters as showing the way out, but that's been years since. I feel like there is some middle ground, some good use of lyric texts that might be possible (never did like late Betty Carter), but I just don't hear it anywhere. Maybe because I just don't find current songwriting compelling, lyrically or melodically. But there must be something somewhere.

But all seriousness aside, I want a critic to tell me something I don't know, to show me something in the music that I have not already seen/heard. And there are a few who have done this, whom I think have made real contributions to American culture. In no special order I would mention: 1) Greg Tate in his earlier days. Greg was a wonderful person, though his later work was a bit captive of trendiness and what almost sounded like promotional writing. But his work in his first collection (Flyboy) is brilliant and insightful and indispensable. 2) Gary Giddins - Gary was a real jerk to me (he basically libeled me in print, a long story) but did some terrific writing. Read, for one example, his essay on Ethel Waters, one of the best things I have ever read. His weakness was pretending at times to have technical musical knowledge (and btw this proves that Justin V, or whatever his name is, unfairly attributed my negativity toward a musician to rejection; Gary's remarks about me were unforgivable, but I am able to separate the personal from the objective). 3) Larry Kart - Larry is also a friend, so there is something of a conflict of interest here, but he is a brilliant writer whose constant insight into a variety of jazz topics is one of the highlights of jazz writing. His work is like little explosions of light, and he is great, also, purely as a writer. 4) Francis Davis - another who has become a friend, but I think he is brilliant and a great writer, full of illuminating perspectives and smart cultural insight. I also love the guy and am personally saddened at his current sickness. thank you.

In my experience the American Automobile Association does exquisite sound work.

I am told that is about the highest rating one will ever get from Christgau so I am happy with it. Plus he rarely if ever reviews jazz. Promotionally this is very good. 1) Some of the best critics I have read were not actual musicians (Larry Kart on this forum, is actually one of the best critics ever; he needs to be appreciated). 2) I think polls mean nothing until I win one myself. Then they are an affirmation of all that is good in music, a precise and accurate reflection of musical quality and accomplishment. 3) I think reviews mean nothing, until I get a good one. Then they indicate the amazing discretion and insight of the person doing the reviewing. 4) If I ever get a single vote in a Jazz Journalist Association poll I will search the sky for the sight of a pig flying. Especially as I have spent a bit of time of late ridiculing them.

Robert Christgau: "Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra: America: The Rough Cut (ESP-Disc) Jazz loyalist, music historian, saxophonist, guitarist, and major cancer survivor Lowe declares that he doesn’t much like today’s music, which he claims lacks “funk” without indicating any familiarity with James Brown, who I assume he knows, or hip-hop, where I assume his education is spotty if that. But this hour of sax-guitar-bass-drums jazz got my attention from spin one. Lowe believes various of its tracks evoke “pre-blues ruminations” or “a post-rational burst of tongues,” “medicine-show irony” or “old-time hillbilly rag.” If so, it does so a little too abstractly or allusively for somebody who continues to find serious as well as pleasurable sustenance in a broad array of today’s musics. But as mere jazz it generates a surprisingly compact, uncommonly straightforward, and dare I say pop-friendly sense of identity and purpose. A MINUS" https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/consumer-guide-july-2023?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR1RBNMy7cTtvhWYNE2WQ02GwkcfI0qSo-XWwxA8P85GC00qXBcslK8-W6c my only slight quibble - because Christgau reviews so little jazz and I can't really complain - and, I shouldn't bite a hand that is feeding me - is that James Brown is dead. I probably should have made clearer that I was talking more about jazz and the whitened pop that seems to so dominate the charts, plus the very bland music all over that passes for Americana. But jazz in particular, which talks a lot about the blues but has a very fixed, conservative, narrow and over-qualified sense of what blues and funk is (and funk itself has become pretty formulaic, a repetition of fixed gestures, IMHO).

I get your point but we will have to, as the cliche goes, agree yo disagree. I received the best reviews of my life on the Shipp/Cleaver/Ray thing and I know it was half as good as the esp things I just put out. I know that a lot of players secretly agree with me. I don’t think it’s the same as the Bird question but the SOTW guys are a weird bunch, great on equipment, weak on music. But I have a few projects coming up that will mix both styles so we shall see. As for guitarists I work with a guy -Ray Suhy - who can do it all with greater substance and feeling.

did the Shirelle's write it? Did Sinatra write Night and Day? Whoever did it, it was their song. having been molested as a child, I take this sh*t seriously. We had a well-liked board member who ended up in prison for life for this kind of offense, and it threw us all. I actually knew people from this era of jazz and I believe these charges were truthful.

fine, whatever, but the "old lady" knew people involved, and it was true, as confirmed by other sources. Yes, still a fine trumpeter, but truth is truth. Don't blame the messenger.

agree completely; I have to admit I was somewhat relieved.

I wrote a whole book on the blues, inspired by a nasty little argument I had, in person, with Wynton. It's a large and wondrous subject, long on detail, short on insight. I am thinking I will go back and revisit the manuscript now that I can (sorta) see clearly.

ah, you're all just jealous because Sonny Clark wouldn't record with you - yeah, I'm kidding - as I said before I think he's a fine, lyrical pianist but I wish instead they would reissue Twardzik or Elmo Hope, or a bunch of others - maybe weirdly and previously dispersed Bud Powell, the bits and pieces spread all over bootlegs and other sources. I still think Bud is the most illuminating and profound musician who ever decided to play jazz. Digression, I know. But I am at the age where I need to downsize, and if I bring another jazz box near the house my wife will change the locks.

this is very good and illuminating - though I will say that a lot of the word play you find in Hank Williams is probably related to black language; and I guess I should reiterate that it is not the blues per se that populates the music I tend to prefer, but a certain basis in black speech and rhythm, really (probably) a pre-blues sense of African American world play. I was helped to come to this conclusion by reading through certain collections of black lyrics like those of Talley and Newman White, Howard Odum and Dorothy Scarborough - much if not most of which pre-dates the blues but which had a great impact on its (the blues') sources. Also, early country music (pre-1935) is filled with an amazing mix of blues, proto-blues and minstrel songs with deep roots in black musical sources.

I spent a lot of my “youth” disagreeing with Wynton and with Stanley Crouch about the primacy of the blues in jazz; it seemed almost like an authoritarian dictate, that the music had to sound one way or another. And the more research I did into American music the more the blues seemed to be more effect then cause, meaning it was less a cause of black music and jazz etc then the end result of certain black musical practices, which did indeed have a powerful impact historically and continuously on just about every jazz musician, black and white. To support my beliefs I thought of players like Earl Hines, who was not, formally, a great blues player but whose phrasing was clearly from an African-American musical tradition. My ultimate rationale was that Hines reflected practices which were much older than the blues but were clearly black (and I would suggest that to understand them we need to look at the African American sanctified church, which was going through radical changes at the beginning of the 20th century). So, not to get too heavily into that argument, I was initially, in my disagreement, inspired by people like Paul Bley, a great improviser whose whole method of phraseology and tonality were clearly “Jazz” but not in the least, I thought, “blue”. And then some time passed, I got older and started playing a lot more, and became impatient with styles of performance that seemed to me bland and somewhat colorless - until it became clear to me that what I missed in such things was a certain kind of rhythm and cadence which was not only very much rooted in African-American style but also frequently had a Blues - or was it black?- origin to it. Was I just getting older and more conservative? I also should note that there were/are clearly such musical distinctions between the 60s Avent garde and today’s crop. I think of Ornette of course and also Albert Ayler, Roswell Rudd, the whole ESP crew like Noah Howard, or Marion Brown and Archie Shepp. There is/was clearly to my ears a “blackness” to Shepp’s playing, for one example, missing in much of today’s free jazz sonic world. And I don’t like it I have to admit, I have trouble listening to it for any length of time. Bley was different, possibly because his playing was so rooted in traditional triadic harmony, but even some of his later work set my mind to wandering. I want to hear that post African-American phraseology, the spacial relationship of what many people call, ideologically, blue or blues connotation. So I play that way myself, and tend to be a bit bored with players who don’t, and I tend to hire players who have that same feeling and orientation. And then I continuously worry that I am far out of touch, just another old guy slinking into the sunset. And so I was wondering about other people here, and how they react to these sounds and trends and what I consider to be a radical dichotomy in Jazz and the typical improviser’s musicianship.

Thank you for saying that. Yes it means we can disagree without throwing too much mud on each other. And though I disagree, I understand your position on Mary. This could end up like one of those 1950s arguments about structuralism and formalism, which though important tend to put everyone to sleep, as they would everybody else here. And for the record, I met her once probably 20 years ago and we’ve never discussed any collaboration.

I hope it doesn't merge my posts, though I suspect it will; these are from In the Dark. The first is Innuendo in Blue, a composed piece with free solos by me, Ken Peplowski, Aaron Johnson, Lewis Porter and Kellen Hannas. We are building an imaginative construct from an idea of Ellington. Peplowski in particular might surprise you here: This is our official video; a humorous fusion of stock footage with an astoundingly evocative solo by Aaron Johnson; no other horn player today could have taken this melody and embellished it in such a powerful and imaginative way (both these compositions are mine). Of course the reference is Johnny Hodges, the solo is completely free:

I don't have a goal, per se, except to clarify my own position as a saxophonist and composer; and I say immodestly that the work my group has done on our last 2 projects is a reasonable alternative to the prevailing modes of open playing, as a way of integrating composition and a good deal of freedom. I can post some of the things we have done a bit later, but the best compliments I have gotten were that I "had reinvented free jazz;" that my work was "a wakeup call from the avant garde" (Jonathan Lethem) and, according to Anthony Braxton, "Allen Lowe is one of the few musicians doing anything new....Allen Lowe IS the tradition." I think that what we are doing is important though it is an uphill struggle for recognition. this is high school level guitar; no better than what I do in those two pieces: or this; amateurism posing as anti-orthodoxy:

Give me a few hours and I will provide a musical example.

I hear a lot of open improvisation as just dull and formulaic gestures- and i define it as improvisation over unplanned tonal centers. It can sound good and coherent but it is no longer interesting to me unless it is part of a shaped, compositionally-based performance, a narrative in the broadest possible sense, one that draws upon ideas that have not only a sense of inevitability but also a coherent relationship to composition. But most of what I hear is taking the easy way out, substituting glib aesthetic philosophy for real imagination. It’s a formalist trap, as though formal rationale, intelligently stated, means the music is the same. It is lazy, like stringing together random sentences and calling it a novel because it shadows, philosophically, the literary form, meets some kind of broader intellectual rationale. It is a failure of imagination, and I see musicians over and over who are like little kids who have discovered a certain kind of freedom without accepting any responsibility for the conceptual implications of producing thd work. I find it, again, irresponsible, an abdication of self. The particular performance above is my example - though not sticking strictly to my criteria, the guitarist is me; I hadn’t played the instrument in years, all I did was play around with bits of chords, knowing enough about the instrument to imply certain harmonies. And the truth is that I did it as well as a certain McArthur Genius awardee whom I have heard play this way on many occasions. It was easy and simple. Honestly I could do this kind of thing when I was 15 on both guitar and saxophone but I wouldn’t, as I knew it was an artistic shortcut not worthy of the music.

oh that's fine, to each his own, but I do believe Ornette was a special kind of genius; the melodicism of his solos was something that I can tell you, as the horn player I am, is incredibly inventive; the proof, to me, is that no one has come close to duplicating his style. Another I should have mentioned is Julius Hemphill, who was such a powerful personality that he created his own inimitable frame of of reference. Same, I should add, with Eric Dolphy, as did the others I mentioned in my initial post. But today I just hear too much laziness, too much mannerism. empty improvisational gestures. And today there are players like Aaron Johnson, who is a master at all aspects of improvisation, as well as Ned Ferm, a tenor player living in Denmark.