AllenLowe

well, coincidentally or not, I am currently working on a new "roots of the roots" project, as I said - and here's the opening manifesto (and I will still claim my own multi-cultural place n the music because, on most of the stuff below, Wynton et al have not a clue; so I might as well run with it): "Another thing that has got me going in the last few months has been my own personal research into the 'roots of roots' music, so to speak, relative to the pointed emphasis in some academic writing on the African and African-Caribbean sources of American song. While I generally concur on the importance of these lineages, more and more I have come to the conclusion that the academic obsession with such is a form of avoidance of the more complexly layered (and often extremely disreputable) sources of the American vernacular. Meaning: if one looks at the direct autobiographical testimony of those who witnessed American song at early and crucial stages of its development- (like: Lafcadio Hearn, Kid Ory, Mance Lipscomb, the Kansas City oral histories, Louis Armstrong, Willie the Lion Smith, Baby Dodds, Cousin Joe, Jelly Roll Morton) one realizes that at a key time of the music's early development and documentation – the late 19th and early 20th century - cultural forces of great power (and of both bluntly religious virtue and deeply personal vice) are in play which, essentially, bury the African and African Caribbean influence under other not only methods of survival and pleasure, but also new ideas of rhythm and swing – not so much as to make those influences unrecognizable (the clave is a peripheral aspect of New Orleans' first jazz stirrings, and central to the rise of rock and roll; and the African-Caribbean triplet is central to jazz swing); but so as to change them into something very specifically American and radically different from the song forms we see in other parts of the post-African Diaspora. American music exists in the 19th century as a series of interlocking hybrid forms related most directly to Southern music but also to the rise of a class of professional songwriters and the marketing of sheet music. Also essential to our understanding of the spread of new American music is early African American migration North and West, the rise of music education, and the resultant training of musicians(both black and white) for public brass bands in the North and South. In the late 19th through early 20th century various strains of American music come together and then separate through vehicles of public entertainments: minstrel, circus and tent shows, brass band concerts, vaudeville and other mobile/travelling forms. As recording technology develops, these styles divide themselves into distinctly different forms of indigenous popular music – into ragtime and professional pop song (which overlap and include things like "coon" and ragtime songs a la Ernest Hogan, Al Bernard, Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, Sophie Tucker, Arthur Collins, Bert Williams, Chris Smith, Shelton Brooks), the blues, jazz, and even pop/gospel. Into the 20th century the music continues to change, and divide itself racially and stylistically. So we get hillbilly music (and there were black hillbillies) more generalized country forms (think breakdowns, shouts, early African American pre-bluegrass and then white bluegrass; and then essentially white forms like Western swing, country and western, honky tonk, et al); and African American songster forms that are closely related to both minstrel composition and folk sources, as well as to professionally published sheet music (as in the work of African American songwriters like Alec Rogers). Jazz and the blues transform themselves from country forms into urban music, though of course their players co-exist with their country brethren, some of whom work hard (particularly in blues and songster forms) to maintain certain musical and social traditions (see John and Alan Lomax's incredible body of field recordings). White country music, indebted to its own religious and mountain aesthetic, absorbs, in its early years, both the blues and minstrel song traditions and splits itself into its own versions of sinner and saint. In all of this and in these years of incredible musical ferment the African and African-Caribbean element is not so much discarded as it is buried under a tidal wave of American culture. What some see as a "watering down" of black music I see as a natural progression, the development of a pop aesthetic that is truly multicultural in the American way, and which leads to a complicated layering of black and white influences and performance practices. All of which is informed, in its rhythms, tonality, social applications, and textual meaning (and in a way that is both close to yet psychologically distant from its African roots), by an essentially and pervasively African American aesthetic. "

I disagree. I have won. Just like that guy at the end of Dr. Strangelove -

Joplin's too easy - http://soundcloud.com/allenlowe-1/emancipation-rag

I know what you mean - like a fungus.......

1) I should mention that the piece I was hearing on the radio that fateful night was not a JALC rendition of Ellington, but a Wynton piece in which he was attempting to use Ellingtonian techniques for his own work. The piece I heard makes that afformention JALC performance of Dimuendo and Crescndo look like a masterpiece - at least it has some semblance of Duke, if not much 2) this whole question - of whose cultural heritage is it - is one I deal with on a daily basis; my whole current 4 cd recording project is based on a belief that, black and white, it is also my cultural heritage, and as a matter of fact I wrote a whole essay on this topic. 3) but ultimately the question is how to do it - one of my favorite lines is that of Bob Dylan, at one of those Columbia sessions (Highway 61? maybe) saying to Mike Bloomfield - "don't give me any of that BB King shit" - because Dylan was not a "revivalist." I just went through 3-4 sessions telling the drummer not to swing; I like, for example, Vince Giordano, but I have no desire to do that sorta thing. There is a Brechtian principle called copien, in which he talks about using prior texts in oorder to re-do their meaning and form to create them new; for me THAT"s the way you do it -

very compelling player, very individual. And I don't really think this is Cliff's fault......

it is true that Wynton's composing is maddeningly bad, IMHO; he is a good trumpeter, I'd put him in my band in a minute (well, a minute and a half; only if Randy Sandke is unavailable). A few years ago I was driving somewhere and a big band thing came on the radio; I was completely blank on who it might be, but I found the piece repulsive - it was ersatz Ellington, vulgar, really, sounded like a parody - now I swear I had NO idea who it was - well, as you can guess, it was one of Wynton's things; and music rarely offends me, unless it has some level of dishonesty or some perversion of ideas; and this was exactly that.

Joel. don't go away, we're having a good discussion here. Because if you think about it, Wynton has overseen JALC, with it's enormous tentacles, during the biggest market decline in the history of jazz - this does not mean it's his fault - but that he has had no real impact. So something is wrong with this picture - JALC. the most highly funded jazz program in the history of the universe, benefits only a narrow circle and has had virtually no wider cultural impact,. It has NOT helped the tired, huddled masses of jazz musicians, and has not, with all its zillions of dollars, been able to increase jazz's market share by even a piddling amount. That is really strange - or, really, it isn't. It's the inevitable result of a program that is so personality-centric.

Jeff Crompton - if you are reading this - I think you vastly underestimate those Sonny Clay recordings - as a matter of fact, there is a trumpeter on there whom people like Larry Gushee consider to be one of the closest links to Buddy Bolden, no kidding.

he's another Haig alumnus; used to see him all the time,

those are extremely important recordings. Gotta get me some. Who's doing their mastering these days?

or as Yogi Berra might say, no one listens to him anymore; he's too popular.

because he's a not-so-good player making 1.5 million per year helping to make jazz irrelevant in both a market and artistic sense. Let's face it, Valerie is his only fan.

I will say that I have some other Benny from that time and tour, and that Jack Sheldon's playing is astounding - the guy is really one of the greatest trumpeters ever.

I like Jimmy.

you've become a medium.

actually, most Marxists I've known - those with any real understanding of the theory - distance themselves significantly from Lenin, Stalin, et al. We (meaning me and friends of mind on the Left who cite Marx) argue over certain material interpretations of history - and I do think, btw, that they have been too slow to deal with totalitarian manifestations of the system - but in my post-60s NYC experience there is a distinct difference between the old un-changing Stalinists and the newer Left. Though certainly I encountered plenty of stupidity in the New Left's somtimes naively charitable attitudes toward both Fidel and Ho Chi Minh. But even Marxism can be a more nuanced theory, accepted in part by sharp politicos like Irving Howe and Michael Harrington, who were committed and actively anti-communists (unlike, say, Lillian Hellman, a complete and utter hypocrite who went to the grave without ever disavowing her old Stalinist leanings. Or ex-Communists like Elia Kazan or Max Easton or Irving Kristol, who just took their old left-fascist-anti-democratic leanings and brought them into alignment with the Republican party).

Rollins has an intricate, brilliant musical mind - not necessarily quickest. I find him very deliberative. Django, by a mile.

she's good.

you gotta bring Moholo to the USA. I want to record with him.

I don't pray, I demand.

0 to minus 4.

Like Cool has, as well, a very Rolllins-ish Schildkraut on tenor. I didn't know Eddie well, but he was one of the real mensches in jazz. Sweetheart of a guy,

"Take Another Little Piece of My Heart" ?

I don't know if this is true, but I was told that Robert Glasper said, recently, that what jazz needs is more shootings.