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AllenLowe

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Posts posted by AllenLowe

  2. Coltrane's curiosity

    in Artists

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    I go in the other direction music wise. Religious music, yes, but the key to the fire and cry in Trane's sound (and Bird, and Ornette and Julius Hemphill and Albert Ayler) is black Pentocostal music. Eastern music my butt. Listen to classic storefront gospel, like Bessie Johnson, and tons of other 1920s gospel, or any COGIC recording or the (white) Old Regular Baptists, or the Holy Rollers, and you have all you need. It is visionary, delirious, rolling in the aisles, speaking in tongues (and there is, interestingly enough, also lots of white religious music of this stripe, on YouTube). This to me is the soul of American sound, deeper than the blues.  Even if you are not a believer, well, it doesn't matter. This is the music that I hear in my head when I play.

  3. Jazz Times: Stryker on the Ellington Drummers -- Greer and Woodyard

    in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...

    Posted

    20 hours ago, JSngry said:

    I've heard some over the years say that Greer didn't REALLY swing, not like Jo Jones or Chick Webb or any of those guys, and I guess, sure, ok, whatever.

    Me, I call bullshit on that, because ultimately swing, even/especially in its more "abstract" forms, is about pocket. And jesuscrisco, Sonny Greer had pocket.

    My Exhibit A will be the almost universally disdained "Kitty" one of the supposedly "desperate" Ellington singles from the last days of the 40s band. It's so universally unloved that there's no YouTube video of it now (and the one that used to be there was buried deep in the bowels of that beast). Maybe it's still there?

    Anyway, it's Ray Nance all the way, and Ray Nance at his Floorshow BEST. And Sonny Greer is locking into it HARD. Especially when Johnny Hodges gets a solo on a bridge, with band punctuation. Oh my GOD, Sonny Greer is hitting a backbeat so deep in the pocket that it gives even the fattest asses room to move with glory, gaiety, and GROOVE.

    Sonny Greer didn't REALLY swing?

    Bullshit.

    well, here's the proof that you are right; not only is Greer on drums, but he swings and has a great solo:

     

  4. Jazz Times: Stryker on the Ellington Drummers -- Greer and Woodyard

    in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...

    Posted

    Many years ago, probably Mid 1970s, I wandered into Gregory's, a piano bar on the East Side of NYC. Brooks Kerr was scheduled to play, and when I walked in I saw that Scott Hamilton was also there, plus a bass player whose name I can not remember, and Sonny Greer! I almost fell over; even back then he was kind of a mythical figure. He set up a very small drum set, and played very nicely.

    I mentioned this to Scott not long ago, to see if I was hallucinating, and he confirmed it actually happened.

  5. Institute of Jazz Studies , interesting new articles

    in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...

    Posted

    12 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

    I will probably skip the Iverson, but the others look interesting (though until a surgery I am having next week, my sight will remain unable to navigate these very well).

    The standards article interests me because I remember Dick Katz discussing how the jazz repertoire radically expanded post- bebop, from the relatively limited harmonies used by swing era (and earlier) musicians (with exceptions of course). A lot of this was the function of bebop's broadening of tempos and intervals.  I also recall a conversation I had with Bill Crow years ago. We were discussing, for some reason, how the standard repertoire inserted itself into jazz. He knew I had been friends with Al Haig, and he said something which I have never heard anyone else mention. which was that in his experience  Haig was one of the prime players who helped to codify the changes in the growing standard repertoire, meaning re-harmonization and chord substitutions. I wish I had heard this when Haig was alive; it would have been interesting to ask him about it

  6. Birth of the Cool ... AGAIN

    in New Releases

    Posted

    just ordered. If it is a sonic upgrade on the studio stuff, it is worth it. Haig always complained about this session (he was on a few cuts) because he said Max was in a separate booth (interesting that this was a mono session with concerns about leakage). But it is such an amazing recording and historically important. As for Mulligan - I always found his work to be a little precious, but it is worth another close listen.

  8. Lena Horne

    in Artists

    Posted

    5 hours ago, gvopedz said:

    If you wish to make a comparison, here is Lena Horne singing My Funny Valentine in the mid 1970s:

     

    I like that one. Not mannered liked she tended in those days.

    something like this; in those later years she seemed to pick up a faux Southern accent, as well as other annoying mannerisms:

     

    she was from Bed Stuy, so acquiring the accent is a bit of a mystery. I have a feeling that, in those racially charged years of the 1960s and after, she was affected by issues of skin color and speech, and maybe wary of being considered not black enough. Just a theory, but her whole manner of presentation changes, as in her 1981 show.

  9. Lena Horne

    in Artists

    Posted

    I think we should note that, as a singer, there were two Lena Hornes, in essence. The early one, of RCA and then the Black and White recordings, was a very nice, pure-voiced singer. The later one (not sure when the dividing line was) was very mannered and, to my ears, quite annoying.

  15. Jerry Lee Lewis has died

    in Artists

    Posted

    it is, apparently, an unpopular opinion, but I never particularly liked his rock and roll singing.

    However I think he is one of the greatest country/country and western singers ever. He just squeezed the sentimentality out of every one of these songs that he sang. Miraculous (and the son of a bitch is burning in hell even as I write this).

  19. Ken Peplowski plays Free Jazz - That's Right - Innuendo in Blue

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    On 10/22/2022 at 9:05 AM, CJ Shearn said:

    Interesting. None of the Concord stuff hints at that!

    Years ago when I firsr met Ken he said "you know, everybody thinks all I can do is Benny Goodman and Arties Shaw tributes. I have a lot more I can play - call me when you want to record."

    So I did. I even have some things he did with Matt Shipp.

  21. Ken Peplowski plays Free Jazz - That's Right - Innuendo in Blue

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    I am very proud of this one - it is from one of our recording sessions last spring - featuring the incredible Ken Peplowski on clarinet playing free, yes free. The only parameters are the feeling of the tune - Ken floats through the head, then plays a wonderful solo, though of course he is not the only one - this has Aaron Johnson alto sax; Lewis Porter piano; Brian Simontacchi on trombone; Kellin Hannas trumpet; Alex Tremblay bass; Rob Landis drums, and me on tenor sax. I was making an Ellington reference, of course, but the idea was to expand upon the idea of passing themes, and the master's ability to write melodies which seem, as I once wrote, like one long sentence. We call it Innuendo in Blue.

     

     

  25. Stéphane Grappelli at the piano

    in New Releases

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    I am intrigued but I find his intros....tedious. In terms of sheer pianism, if you had played this for me in a blindfold test, I would say it sounds exactly like Hank Jones in the '70s.

    But the most annoying thing is that the samples are almost entirely the intros, and fade as soon as he gets to the point.

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