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AllenLowe
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Posts posted by AllenLowe
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this will be out on ESP in 2023 as part of a CD of Americana performances called America: The Rough Cut.
This is my sense of the best way to deal with the heavy black roots of American music. Some of you have gotten bugged in the
past when I've complained about the sad way in which most jazz bands try to be funky and deep blue. I think this is the way to do it.
The band is me on tenor, Ray Suhy guitar; Krestin Osgood drums; Alex Tremblay bass.
Enough fake funk; the actual name of the piece is Damned Nation, a lament for the USA:
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20 hours ago, CJ Shearn said:
It is awful he got shot... for no reason other than the stuff IG and TikTok peddles as hip hop culture. My former aide exposed me to more hood culture than I was comfortable with and theres a heavy dose of it several blocks from me, not only do I find the constant posturing and constant emphasis on "stuff" as a measure of self worth silly, I view it as a survival mechanism from the outside looking in. I'm glad that world is not a part of mine but if you can straddle the two worlds? Cool.
glad you think it's so funny (that kind of nastiness is one of the reasons I don't spend much time around here any more) but it's absolutely true in terms of timing. Find me another station that was doing AOR in '66 or '67. (and for anyone just reading this that laugh emoji referred to my prior statement)
But truly I find that using the laugh emoji when someone is not actually joking is about the lowest form of commentary.
In other words, fuck you. This kind of casual disrespect is something I don't find anywhere else that I post. I haven't spent 50 years, sacrificing so much of my life and energy to the music biz, or lived through three years of hell, to sit passively by while this kind of crap happens. And I know it's only a few here, but I don't make up shit or take credit for things I have not done.
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not to digress, but I actually invented AOR (Album oriented rock). When I first started listening to WOR, the first progressive rock station, in about 1966 or 1967, they still played only singles. I (either 12 or 13 at the time) wrote a letter suggesting they play all cuts from albums. I never got a response, but about a month later they started doing exactly that. No station had ever done that. I believe they got the idea from me.
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3 hours ago, Milestones said:
If you have not heard pieces where Peterson plays with delicacy and subtlety, then you have not heard a lot of Peterson. Those pieces are out there, and it's not like they are 1% of his output.
I have but they are almost always spoiled by his vulgarisms - read my prior description of his version of Waltz for Debbie.
1 hour ago, danasgoodstuff said:I was listening to OP with Lester Young last night, and he was fine. Just not as fine as Teddy Wilson is with Lester. There are other folks I'd rather hear leading a trio too, but the only way I can see getting worked up about it is if someone's trying to tell you he's the greatest thing ever....
everybody tells me he's the greatest thing ever - maybe not here, but other places I frequent.
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23 minutes ago, John Tapscott said:
If you like a particular musician listen to him/her, if not then don't waste your time. Life is too short. I generally like Peterson, though I wouldn't call him my favorite jazz pianist. FWIW, people like Hank Jones and Andre Previn have called him the best.
ironically or not, I have heard Andre Previn play in a manner that sounds EXACTLY like OP. Which says a lot.
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OP drives me nuts, as I have said many times before. His playing actually offends me; it's almost all patterns, and he drives the blue thing into the ground (online there's a version he plays of Waltz for Debbie in which he ruins this delicate melody with a string of idiotic blues phrases). And btw Barry Harris, as he told me years ago, disliked his playing. But the main reason I know what a horrible pianist OP was is that, before I had dual carpal tunnel, I could do a passable imitation of OP playing a blues. Just repeat the same basic blue runs ad-nauseum in slightly different positions. But as a jazz critic (I think Francis Davis) once said:
"It's not that Peterson makes everything sound so easy, but that he makes everything sound equally difficult."
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thanks guys. Will keep you advised. Hopefully all will be ready next spring.
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"Every tour with Benny was like going to Russia" - Zoot Sims
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I have about 5 cds coming out next spring, including one with the incredible guitarist Ray Suhy (if you don't know who he is you should check him out. I have never heard a better guitarist in any musical realm, from jazz to rock and roll). This is one cut out for preview, something I call Cold Was the Night Dark Was the Ground. I present it as my own idea of why jazz musicians usually fall on their faces when trying to dip into the deeper aspects of vernacular music, failing as they inevitably do to capture the roughness and edge of the old music. I think we succeed here in ways that others rarely do, plus I try to show how the idea of "free" playing can be focused to show how liberating those old forms are (and this particular cut is actually me on both guitar and tenor):
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20 hours ago, JSngry said:
Girl Talk
Odd Couple
Beaucoup movie and TV gigs
What happened to him is that he probably died rich.
funny and odd story - and true - I was walking around Brookline, Mass., where I then lived - circa1977 - with my then girlfriend, and we walked past a man walking the other way on the sidewalk. I said to my girlfriend - "is that Neal Hefti?" She said, "who?" I didn't have time to explain, I turned around and went up to the guy (I was about 23 and had seen pictures of him) and asked "Are you Neal Hefti?" And it was, and he was quite shocked that someone recognized him. We talked a bit and I asked if I could interview him for a jazz mag I was working for. He was very pleased, and invited me over to his apartment in Brookline, where he was now living. I went there a few nights later. He introduced me to Francis Wayne, his wife, who was movie-star gorgeous. We had a nice interview (which never got published) and he told me that Francis Wayne had hated Hollywood, and had finally gotten him to agree to move East. They did so, and just a few months later she was sadly diagnosed with lung cancer. We talked, I left, and never saw him again, and was very upset to hear that she died just some months afterward.
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if it's from the original tapes and mastered in highest resolution, that is significant. The prior Bethlehem reissues are not bad, but this would be indispensable.
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7 hours ago, JSngry said:
Didn't discover the farting until I put "What A Little Moonlight Can Do" on one of my BFTs and was reviewing every thing for sequencing, flow, just hyperlistening, and there it was. I tried to make be something else, anything else. But nope. It's a fart.
well, as someone said above about Person, "he's taking the load."
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8 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:
Thank you for mentioning the great Kenyon Hopkins, whose score for The Hustler is one of the greatest jazz motion picture scores of all time!
if you like Kenyon Hopkins, I recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Rooms-New-York-Kenyon-Hopkins/dp/B002XMGJGC
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were these tracks ever Id'd?
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just to note what Curley Russell told me about the recording ban - that many labels continued to record but back-dated the recording date so they would not seem to be violating the ban.
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9 hours ago, Gheorghe said:
Yes, that may be the reason. Sure, I´m not stuck to "old school" bass players from the be bop days , though when listening to bop, I really love all of them , Gene Ramey, Tommy Potter, Curley Russell, Al McKibbon, and I think the first great bop solo on bass could be Ray Brown on "One Bass Hit", which is really great.
And I grew up while Ron Carter and Buster Williams where top and I love them both, and many many others who play today.So I think it must have been painful to have such a great recording history and then it´s over.
I´ve heard that Gene Ramey became some clerk at a bank office , but still played occasionally.
Did Curley Russell also take a day job, because I think otherwise he couldn´t have survived ....?
Great you did know him personally. Especially when I was a youngster and just had discovered bop because I had heard Mingus´ Parkeriana with Dolphy and wanted to know who is "this Charlie Parker" who had inspired Mingus.....sure....,.......I would have whished to get to talk about people who lived and worked during that time. And as busy as Curley Russell was, he might have had a lot to tell about all those nights at Birdland, at Royal Roost , about Bird, Bud, Fats, Dameron and all those who were dead when I started to listen to jazz. Thanks God other key figures like Diz, J.J. Johnson, Sonny Stitt, Dex, Max Roach, Klook were alive, recording and performing at that time
when I knew him he was living with his daughter and driving a cab occasionally.
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9 hours ago, Gheorghe said:
I just read it. I always did like his bass-playing, he was really strong and is great even on the ultra-rapid speeds of Dizzy Atmosphere and Little Willie Leaps on that Night at Birdland 1950 with Bird-Fats-Bud-Blakey, or on the Blakey´s "A Night at Birdland" where he is very fine. Though he was not known for soloing much, his short solo-spots on Night in Tunisia, or on a minor blues on maybe his last recording 1957 with Cliff Jordan-John Gilmore are very nice and making the point.
In Ira Gitler´s "Jazz Masters of the 40´s" Gitler writes, that in the sixties he played with hotel bands in those resorts of the borș-district in Upstate NY.
Why had he stopped playing in jazz surroundings, was it the maybe better paid and safe jobs in hotel-bands ? Did he play until the end of his life, or what was his life about in later years ? I had heard that he was from the Bronx.....
Curley was sorta phased out in lieu of a more modern generation of bass players, post-Ray Brown. Unfortunately. He had great time but it wasn't enough. He just wasn't that nimble harmonically. He was also one of the nicest people I've ever known.
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That Sunny Side violin solo is beautiful. Somebody thinks that's sloppy? Clean out your ears. And it has a wonderful pizzicato section. I haven't a clue, the only other jazz violinist I ever heard play pizzicato like that was Nance, who I don't believe this is. It's also much better than Grapelli, who I find too slick.
I really like track 11 the big band. Reminded me of '50s Sun Ra.
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Just to announce a few things -
late this Fall I will have a 2 cd set out on ESP called A Love Supine: Ascent into the Maelstrom
And next Spring, hopefully to coincide with a May 3, 2023 appearance at Dizzy's I will have 5 CDs (a 2 set set and a 3 cd set) out, also on ESP.
The 5 cd project is called
In the Dark: A History of American Song (or: All the Blues You Could Play By Now if Nicholas Payton was Your Third Cousin Twice Removed)
The first 2 cds are basically blues re-done; some of it is from a concert with Marc Ribot at Roulette.
The second set, of 3 CDs, is something of a milestone for me, based on various odd song forms. I started composing last Fall when I could barely see the music or the piano, and I was sleeping about 2-3 hours a night. These recordings were done in several sessions featuring Ken Peplowski, Lewis Porter, and Aaron Johnson (and others of course). I play tenor on these and I am just amazed we were able to pull it off (about 40 songs). Peplowski will shock you; he plays free, he plays bebop and he is translucent (Ken is not doing well physically these days but still playing perfectly). Aaron is an alto saxophonist and I think he just may be the best saxophonist alive, stylistically nimble and fantastically creative (he is also a great clarinetist). Lewis has bloomed more and more on keyboards, and his solos are a constant delight. The rest of the rhythm section, bassists Kyle Colina and Alex Tremblay and drummer Rob Landis, is like a clean but warped machine; Rob in particular (he is a close friend and pediatrician) swings and is musically changeable, in the best possible way.
All of this will hopefully coincide with a new book I am trying to finish, which is a collection of essays, notes, and commentary. I am unsure of the title, but currently leaning toward Letter to Esperanza.
I'm not dead yet.
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2 hours ago, mikeweil said:
Same here.
Wikipedia is pretty damn good I think. I got a lot of useful info there when I was working on Turn Me Loose White Man.
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I went in to the Curley Russell entry and corrected something; I had given Phil Schaap some info on Curley that only I knew, and Phil, as was his wont, took credit for providing it. I know it seems petty, but, with due respect, this was typical of the way Phil bullshitted his way through jazz history,
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I stopped mourning about 5 years ago.
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21 hours ago, Larry Kart said:
I like all of Melle's Blue Note and Prestige recordings. And don't forget Louis Mecca. Melle's pieces had an atttractive "crunch" to them. One of them, "Threadneedle St." has a coy ambling melody that I can't get it out of my head. His solo work was quite distinctive, like Stan Getz translated to bassoon.
This is one of those rare occasions, Larry, when I will disagree with you. His tone is so weak, he can barely intonate in the upper register, and the solo is just so bland.
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Cinderella was a great guitarist; I had a few conversations with him at one point and he was a very nice man. Melle's jazz work, on the other hand, doesn't, in my opinion, hold up so well. He was not a very good soloist, to my ears. Compositionally he had more going on, and when I talked to him a few years before he died (I think he was working as an artist at this point) he was very proud of his pioneering electronic compositions. I don't know, I'd have to go back and listen. He was also an unpleasant guy, so I have to admit that that also had a negative impact on my attitude toward him. But I recently listened to some of his '50s work and I found it uninspired.
Another Preview Piece, from New CD: Damned Nation
in Miscellaneous Music
Posted
thanks everyone. Just had what will probably be my last major surgery and my face looks like it's been crushed in a vise, but things are on the mend and hopefully I will be fully functional in 2023 (have a Dizzy's gig on May 3).