AllenLowe

I think it starts appearing in the '60s.

from people who knew her, the Bentley parklng thing (which I witnessed once or twice) was just her spaciness. Baraka is full of shit; she was obviously a fine and sincere lady.

well, that's not really why we don't like him - he's just gotten, for my tastes, too machine-like. Larry and I went back and forth on this at one point, as we both prefer the earlier Phil (though I am personally convinced that his playing deteriorated once he started wearing that silly hat).

well, Werner Von Braun aimed for the stars - but he hit London.

I don't think vocally that he can touch Little Richard. And for that circuit, the voice is the key.

"Redemption is too associated with guilt, and suggests that 'art' is the product of some kind of 'immanent failure' - that can be transcended by the 'beauty' of the art. In regard to Jazz at least, it strikes me as very much a White way of looking at things, and a typical Existentialist one, overlooking the collective pain of social and economic hardship - and how a music helped transcend and alleviate that " sounds pretty much the same to me -

who's jerking off and who's 50 (I have trouble keeping up with the local feuds)?

I hardly consider Chuck B. chitlin circuit quality - great composer, mediocre performer.

what I see is a strange but smart guy who has Aspergers. Hardly self-immolation.

Larry - the truth is that the best jazz critics I've read - yourself, Francis Davis, Max Harrison (well, Harrison seems to have some tech, background), Bob Blumenthal, Dan Morgenstern. Martin Williams, John Fordham - and probably others, but I'm tired - were not overly involved in technical anaylysis, but had a knack for getting at the truth in other, more impressionistic/descriptive ways. Or, really, coming up with philosphical parallels to the expression of the music. Even Randy Sandke's book, Where the Light Folks and the Dark Folks Meet, though written by a guy who knows more about music than anyone I know, is light on technical analysis. and if you read George Russell's book on Lydian theory, you find, after a lot of the technical stuff. that his portrayal of the system is really almost mystical and beyond technical description. So even musicians know that there's more to it than modes and substitute chords.

1) Berigan - I saw the Happenings perform that version of I Got Rhythm, maybe in 1968. I like it, and it was a hit, IIRC. 2) Re Facebook: my current recording project is almost bizarrely complicated, and I would not have been able to do it without Facebook, where I met Ras Moshe, Noah Preminger, Jon-Erik Kelso, Kevin Ray, Dean Bowman, and others who will be recording with me. 3) I also actually got a JOB through Facebook, which is why I am now a Visiting Professor at the Berklee School of Music. No kidding, I became friends with the guy who later hired me.

just to go back a bit - to give him his due, Giddins has written some great things; problem is, he fell asleep around 1988 and missed the whole NYC downtown/Knitting Factory scene, which upset a lot of people, and rightly so, as he dominated the Voice's jazz coverage in those years. as for Larry's quotes, I know the musician in question and will protect his ID. Though it points out another problem - it's prefectly fine for a crtiic to lack technical knwoledge, but Giddins (somewhat like Martin Williams on occassion) frequently tries to show off what he knows technically, which is often askew - hence he will say that I'll Keep Loving You has the same changes as You Are Too Beautiful (it does not), or he'll try to deal with the concept of enharmonicism (in which one man's D sharp is another's E flat) in relation to All the Things You Are, and will get it all wrong. it's somewhat ironic because, as a self-taught guy I have many gaps in my musical knowledge - and have been known to call that particular musician (who is an old friend) to ask these very kinds of questions (though I know that Rhythm ain't the blues, thank goodness).

I think that's way to high - the Bundy 1 is the desirable one - I may be wrong, but I think you're in the 200-300 range. a quick perusal of ebay - which is really the market determinant these days - tells me I'm right. For $700 they can get better horns. The Bundy's are ok, but the 1 is better - and Zephyrs are going for about $700.

I'm glad you said that about Sonny and so-called "thematic" development - I hear it (and remember Monk and that great French pianist, what the hell's his name?) describing it as continuous composition - and hence Rollins' vast superiority to Rouse - it's a matter of imaginative thought, some "melodic," some "harmonic." This is what makes him, like Trane, a great performer of Monk tunes - the changes are there but he has incredible rhythmic imagination to go with it, not to mention a knack for harmonic density that Rouse cannot touch. And it's incredibly coherent - which is what makes, I think, people sometimes mistake it as thematic variation.

well, I could probably prove malice, since his original review said nothing about my "copying"- and he was pissed at being corrected. Don't know. But I would think that, as someone who does a lot of writing, to have a nationally visible critic called me a plagiarist would be damaging (so THAT"s why I've never written a best seller).

that is the way Barry comps, very surprised he would go to the bridge early, probably reading the tune - Lee Konitz actually said once that, in the 50s (I think it was) Barry was the guy that all the visiting musicians wanted to hire. I also heard Barry say, just before Sonny Red died, that Red had won some kind grant (maybe an NEA thing, I don't remember) and how sad it was that he was terminal.

it was slighlty different - basically, Giddins reviewed "the book" (American Pop) and complained because he said I did not credit a source, as well as a few other omissions - what I realized from his review was that what he had actually done was read the liner notes, which were approximately 60 percent of the book without footnotes and a lot of other things. So I wrote a letter to the Voice correcting him, and making the point that he had apparently only read the excerpt, and pointing out that I had credited the source in the footnotes, which he had not seen because he had not actually read the book. Gary's response (I'm guessing because he was embarassed) in the Voice was that "this is typical of Lowe, to take the work of others and claim it as his own." I felt like he was calling me a plagiarist, which is a pretty serious thing to say in a public forum. What I should have done was get some lawyer to send a threatening letter., There was some other nastiness, per Larry, above, but that was the essence of what I thought might have been actionable.

well, they do buy their own computers and paper -

Taylor was good, I remember his Smithsonian stuff - John - I knew you were talking about something else. Just having fun (though Giddins was really nasty; I came THIS close to filing a law suit against him, and I now think I should have).

Barry rarely, to me, sounds as good in recordings as he has in person. He's also a difficult pianist to record - has a light touch and plays in the middle of the keyboard - as opposed to, say, a Hank Jones, who soloed higher up more often. But there were some nights, at Bradleys, also the old Jimmy's, and the Angry Squire, where he just was amazing, the most melodic player. On records, however....there is Preminado, on an out-of-tune piano, and the Riverside at the Jazz Workshop. Also, some of his best playing is on a late Sonny Criss Xanadu, glad everybody liked the Quill. I've been obsessing lately over mouthpieces and reeds and trying to get more of that kind of sound (Quill did use tenor reeds on some of this records, but they're very hard to control on alto). Gotta check out the Sonny Red.

that's the one.

perfect timing - I've written a piece for my next CD called "The Last Words of Arizona Dranes."

it's ok, I've gotten over it.

such a complicated subject - I always thought critics would be more honest if they had to pay for CDs; also, there really is payola, but it's called advertising. it's also very hard to be truly critical any more. Pisses people off; not to mention that everybody knows each other, so it's hard to be honest. on the other hand, except from Gary Giddins, I haven't had a bad review in 20 years.

"other people do the killing" is a band name that matches their music - fake clever.