AllenLowe

I am disturbed by the fact that a day is actually only 23 hours and 56 minutes long - I did a quick calc - by these measures I have lived for 20,706 days - if you figure in the fact that I've been over-charged 4 minutes per day - that equals 82,824 minutes or 1380.4 hours - or approximately 57 days. So I am actually 57 days YOUNGER than society considers me to be - next thing I intend to do is change my slave name to something more liberated.

wait, Chris, you stayed in the same room as King Oliver? Whoa, I find this somehow cosmic. any pictures? was it the same bed?

I worked in a record store at the time, and they played those damned CTIs all day. Drove me up the wall - Benson, Laws, crap, crap, and more crap. The precursor of Smooth Jazz.

one of the comments: "A big Obummer supporter no doubt. That is the type of person who is ruining the nation and voted for the socialist" for once I agree.

it's funny how time conveys revisionist respectability - because those of us who really liked jazz in those days considered those CTIs to be absolute and total crap, with a few exceptions.

I'm thinking about that - also, since my web site is getting revamped I may try it that way. I've also decided to do a few revisions, so it may be a another month or two before it's ready.

I want to take this opportuinity to announce that I have developed what I call "The Keith Jarrett Filter." It's an audio attachment involving 17 wires that you connect to both your HIFI set and your body and allows you to filter out his grunts and groans. One wire goes from the rca out jacks on your amp, 3 more to your left testicle, 8 more to your right ear, 4 to your left ear and one needs to be surgically attached to your left lung - this was all very scientifically developed and based on the frequencies reflected in Jarretts odd and gutteral gruntings - this filter can also be used for certain Bud Powell recordings, but at your own risk. price: $199.95 All major credit cards accepted we supply the nurse and doctor to wire you personally. Act now. Operators are standing by: 1-800-555-GNAD

I haven't listened to the Rushing RCA date in a long time, but will try to pull it this weekend. I honestly don't recall having any problems with Mel or Frishberg, but will have to report back.

hmmm - re: Larry's comments - I like Frishberg on that LP - a rare moment, for me, of musical disagreement with Mr. Kart. I find his playing very nicely Hines-ian.

unfortunately, in my experience, most of the U Press people are like that

I only met him once, and I had certain preconceived notions - and he turned out to be one of the nicest, most genuine, sincere, and open people I've met in the jazz biz. Good guy.

funny thing is that I met that editor at a conference last April and, though he clearly had no recollection of our conversation, he was a real academic snob - but I'll tell you the best part of this - a few months after our conversation I was reading an interview with George Clinton - and what does he say - something to the effect of "and you know who we have to thank for our success? All those white kids who were more open to the new music." And GUESS WHO PUBLISHED THE BOOK that had this quote in it? Duke University. I almost fell over laughing. Joe - I've just started to think about the self-publishing thing - another way that I may go, as I revamp my web site, is a pay-per-download thing. We'll see.

so far I've had no one willing to publish the history - part of the problem is that it's too "complex" fpr the trade presses, but not "scholarly" enough for the academics - and it was turned down rather nastily by U of Illinois (courtesy of Burton Peretti, but that's anoother story). The U of California Press editor told me she liked it but it would not pass "political muster" with her board (not enough allegations of white musical thievery); and I managed to convince the editor of Duke U Press, in a conversation, to not even look at it (he did not like the way I flipped the script on black/white influence when I cited, in re: Jimi Hendrix, an ironic reversal of the usual scheme in which white musicians are liberated by black music; I maintained that with Jimi there was an element of "black musician liberated by white music and audiences," hence his love of the Beatles and Dylan, and his first major success with the young British rocker audiences, after being rejected on the black bar circuit as too flamboyant). As for what Elvis and Armstrong might have done outside of market forces.....extremely difficult to even ask, as they were both so determinedly a (willing) part of that system. Certainly gospel often served as a (death) insurance policy for Country sinners; as for Armstrong, problem is that he lived so long and so far past the era of his real musical formation (as in the whole blues/whore/funky butt world, followed by that of great pop songs). and to further answer your question, I may, ultimately, self-publish the rock book. I have a few revisions I still want to make.

you know, if it's ok, I have an entire (short) chapter in my (unpublished) rock and roll history which is a parallel between Louis Armstrong and Elvis. I think I'll post it; if there's a mighty objection, I'll delete the post. ok here goes; I'm not sure how the formatting will translate: 2. A Critical Digression: Bolder Than Love: Armstrong as Post-Modernist Presley Or: What's Louis Got to Do With It? By now it's a given that Louis Armstrong created something of a revolution in American popular music, changing the way we, as a musical country, hear rhythm in its very direct relationship to both composed and extemporized melody. Less well understood, by not just pop people but by the jazz world itself, is how closely connected Armstrong was to the spirit of not just rock and roll but to one of rock's founders, the late, lamented King of rock and roll, Elvis Presley. The unfortunate truth is that, in the mainstream, post-modern jazz world, there is general agreement on two things: 1) Louis Armstrong is a God, an icon of icons who stands (or, maybe, sits) at the summit overlooking the kingdom of music; and 2) Elvis Presley is (was) a peanut butter and banana sandwich eating gag, a hip-swiveling - but not hip - ephemeral teen fad, a running joke, really, among those who value quality in music. To jazz people he's also much more, and much worse, because he almost single-handedly brought down the House of Good Music, he brought, to carry the metaphor just a little further, the money lenders into the temple of good music in a way which changed the way we do musical business. After his arrival, according to this line of reasoning, immaturity was popular music's continual frame of reference, pandering to the lowest or simplest common denominator. If we are to believe the jazz press from the 1950s to the present, Elvis Presley's greatest crime was to ensure the growing and continued commercial hegemony of rock and roll, a music that has, particularly since his recorded debut in 1954, been the dominant strain of American pop. Before Elvis there was Swing and bop and there was pop balladry, not to mention rhythm and blues, a respectable African American form if, to the jazz way of thinking, sometimes a bit repetitious and frivolous. There was also, and most important of all, Louis Armstrong, who represented the golden age of American jazz and American popular music, with the shining beauty of his golden horn and the great transformative power of his singing voice. After Elvis there was only, essentially and unfortunately, Elvis, and than, later, the Beatles; and though Louis carried on past the fall of the House of Good Music, jazz after Elvis was never the same, its audience share fatally reduced to permanent marginality. (And if Elvis was jazz's 1950s whipping boy, the Beatles served this purpose for the 1960s. Read, for example, the jazz drummer Arthur Taylor's book of interviews with other jazz musicians, Notes and Tones. One of its most important and recurring themes is how the Beatles, with their masturbatory three chord abominations, completed the youth-dominated ruination of the business.) Now it's true that not everyone in jazz feels this way; many of jazz's first generation of retro modernists (thinking of the likes of Bill Frisell, Don Byron, Brandon Ross, Marc Ribot, Wayne Horvitz, and John Zorn), are of the generation that grew up with rock and roll as their main point of reference, and they understand and respect not only rock but country music. But someone like Wynton Marsalis has made sure to re-enforce at every turn, among his followers, the point that nearly anything short of jazz is just that, short of jazz, historically transient and shallow, fun to listen to, perhaps, but just the kind of passing fancy that a mature person outgrows. Pop, rock, and country music, in this view, instead of being part of a great continuum which does, indeed, also encompass jazz, are historical aberrations, unfortunate musical digressions and cultural dead ends. They are the illegitimate and misguided children of the American vernacular, worth a quick historical glance, perhaps, and even, on occasion, some sociological consideration, but never a real or serious listen. Louis Armstrong is the source of all virtue, we are told, because he is not just jazz, he is American music, hillbillies, big-haired rockabillies, and make out-obsessed teenyboppers be damned. Now just what is wrong with this worldview? A lot of things are wrong, and they're not all the fault of jazz critics and musicians. The world of rock and roll has its share of blind spots as well, many of its writers afflicted with historical tunnel vision. There is a pervasive sense in the literature of rock that every musical expression in the world is merely a function of rock and roll history, not to mention a belief (in academic circles) that convoluted notions of sociology will rescue the music intellectually, as though, lacking certain credentials, it desperately needs rescuing. Rock and roll music is rarely allowed to stand on its own in any purely musical sense; rock and roll journals load it up with glib and hopefully hip tie ins to lifestyles and trends, and academics, in need of peer justification, tend to weigh it down with jargon and incomprehensible phraseology, interminable tomes for which the operative buzz word is "contextualize." But it's not only academics who fail to see the big picture in real-life terms. Most popular approaches to jazz history depict the deeply American character of that music. They tell us, with great accuracy, that the music called jazz could only have happened here, in a land of great ethnic and cultural convergence, of cataclysmic social stratification and bizarrely juxtaposed racial conflicts. They fail to note, however, that forms like country music and rock and roll are also distinctive creatures of the great socio-historic conflagration of modern times. And rising from the ashes we see not just Louis Armstrong but Elvis Presley who, in his way, was every bit as revolutionary. The truth is, in the overall professional and musical picture, Louis Armstrong and Elvis Presley had much more in common than not. Both men emerged, in their earliest years, with musical styles that were inseparable from their socially undesirable and underground, working-class origins, and both worked hard, later on, having achieved great initial success, to find a middle ground reconciling their own personal, roots-laden instincts with real-world commercial considerations. And both came, not coincidentally, from the South, a region which has mid-wifed nearly all, if not all, of our popular music. And it is the South (not just New Orleans) that is the common denominator of not just early jazz but most other offshoots of the peculiar African-American genius for musical transformation, like ragtime, the blues, white hillbilly music, and rock and roll. Our problem, however, if that we have difficulty reconciling our image of Southern social backwardness with the ingenious creations of its citizens, particularly the white ones. If Elvis was forever a hillbilly greenhorn, a country bumpkin in the minds of people who had a particular distaste for his music, well, than, Armstrong was regarded in much the same way when he first came to New York in the 1920s to play with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. Neither man, through professional thick and thin or the prerogatives of international fame, ever lost his basic country innocence or humility, though Presley was, of course, much more the tragically flawed hero. And there is no doubt that Presley, with his intuitive acceptance of a broad universe of music, and ability to absorb and integrate all kinds of musical styles from Tin Pan Alley to the blues to country music, grew and shed as many musical skins as Armstrong, who spent the 1950s in constant search of new musical sources and fresh musical angles (and who found them in ways surprisingly similar to Elvis). Each wanted to find as large an audience as possible, and neither felt, contrary to some critical speculation, that, in doing so, he had abandoned his musical principals in any way. As a matter of fact, just the opposite was true, the careers of each representing a fierce and unrelenting dedication to musically populist principles of the first order. Both have been criticized in similar ways, for veering, musically, from the paths which first established their great reputations. Armstrong went from what seemed like purely jazz settings to a cushioned seat in front of ever-larger bands, singing songs that seemed more and more frivolous to some his more dedicated followers, in settings contaminated, to their way of thinking, by background choruses and a middle-of-the-road pop repertoire and sensibility. Little did those who objected to such things understand that all of this was less, for Armstrong, a matter of commercial concession than of self image; in his own eyes he was jazz's ultimate everyman, the embodiment of the music's deepest popular potential. There was no one he couldn't reach with a song. And so it was with Presley who, leaving the musically inbred hot house of Memphis, Tennessee, where he made his first recordings, found himself in a much larger musical universe. Instead of running away from it he reached out to it, because it matched his own musical fantasies, of a world in which he was a rock singer, country musician, and pop crooner, all in one. With the assistance of assorted record producers and latter-day song pluggers, publishers who fervently wished to have a song associated with the new King of Rock and Roll, it was a fantasy he was allowed to live out. In truth, both men were allowed, though the oddball courage of their own musical convictions, to live out a particular fantasy of American (and world) mega-stardom. They were able to do so because when it came to song both were simply fearless. Elvis sang country, gospel, rock and roll, soul music, inspirational ditties, pop ballads, and more. One of Armstrong's most effecting post-1960s recorded performances was his rendition of the country staple Almost Persuaded, and it was no accident that he had recorded, in the 1950s, two Hank Williams songs, Cold Cold Heart and Your Cheatin' Heart. Those are two things you are unlikely to hear Wynton Marsalis play in any Armstrong tributes, but they are beautifully done by Louis, who, ultimately, was even more adventurous than Presley. Which means that, maybe, those in the jazz world who have made such a fetish of Armstrong and his legacy are really right, if for some of the wrong reasons: he was, indeed, American music, but an American music that encompassed not just the "elevated" forms of jazz and classic pop balladry, but the deep and broad, and sometimes dark, underbelly of American song.

I've mentioned this before, but my LP total actually went up a bit after the whole CD thing started, when I realized there were significant LP reissues that sounded much better than CD reissues of the same material - this has largely changed, but there's still stuff I prize on LP, like a Kid Ory/Johnny Dodds from maybe 1927 that is in pristine sound - also, a Thomas Morris Black and White that scares me, it sounds so clear - plus a few Decca LPs of amazing clarity.

he was a wild man, lotsa distortion. One of my favorites.

he was Evans' favorite drummer - and though it may be the pot calling the kettle black, Evans' just couldn't deal with Jones' drug stuff.

approx 3000 LPs, 3000 cds - with some exceptions, I've done almost all of my reissue projects from my own collection.

well, let's not forget Little Elvis.

well, no offense to Dimitry - but I wouldn't say his posts indicate an embarrassing wealth of knowledge - claiming that Lennon and McCartney did not write half their songs because the later stuff wasn't as good is like saying that Richard Rodgers didn't write his early stuff because the stuff he wrote with Hammerstein was so mediocre - and we have absolutely no evidence that L and M did not write those songs - and not understanding the connection between Wagner and the Nazis indicates another wide gap in knowledge - you guys need to do some research here -

I like Elvis. Everything else is Crow Jim and racialism.

I think that thread was working, though I gotta admit I was feeling the need to back away so as to avoid saying what I really thought. Funny thing was, because I was worried that some things sound better in memory, I pulled out my Elvis in Memphis and The Louisiana Hayrides, and found I liked them even better than I used to. So sometimes growing up means the opposite of what we assume it to mean,

'If the CD sounded bad, it was probably because the sound was poor to begin with.' No, it was a different issue - though I think the LP is fine (the main problem may have been that it was made in the days when engineers started sending the bass directly to the board). The CD was one of the real early things put out in the RCA masters series, I think it was, and one can hear that the transfer is a mess, it has that grainy thing that happened when they were using bad analog to digital converters.

I agree - incredibly stupid thing maybe we should start another

well, the joke is on her if he lives another 20 years