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AllenLowe
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Posts posted by AllenLowe
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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.
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22 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:
Thanks very much, I am thinking very carefully about how I react to this, for the following reasons.
1. I had this concert uploaded to Dime. He's invented details about the rest of it. It was a test of sorts, to gauge interest at least.
2. He has stolen from the memorial web page, extensively quoting from a transcript of Phil Schaap's biographical sketch during the Memorial broadcast on WKCR, without attribution either of Schaap or the site.
Quite frankly right now I am pissed and inclined to demand a take down as he is not the rights holder. (And its remarkable that he has a page inviting people to contact him for licensing of his recordings which I will pretty much guarantee he holds no rights whatsoever for any of it.
I just tried to post a nasty comment, but for some reason it did not work. Do we have an email for this schmuck?
Actually here he is on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gordon.skene
I just send him a firm FB message, and also posted a complaint on his time line.
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I liked and respected Martin Williams, but he could be a complete a-hole. Bad fingering? WTF did Martin know about playing the horn? Nothing. Dick Katz, who did a lot with Williams, told me his biggest flaw was his inability to admit he knew nothing technically about music. I began wondering about this myself when I read Williams describing the tune Woody 'n You as being "in a minor key." Wrong; it was in D flat major (and I hate when critics pull this crap; Gary Giddins described I'll Keep Loving You as being based on You Are Too Beautiful changes; complete nonsense).
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that may be only the second Dexter Gordon solo I have ever liked (in his work after 1960). He's actually awake.
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very sad to hear this, I recorded with Ken in April and he was magnificent. I love the guy and I hope all of this resolves itself.
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if she is having true mental health problems (and it sounds like she is, whatever the cause) she needs to find a doctor/shrink who will write her out of work, who will put enough restrictions on what she is allowed to do to permit her to go on disability (I am assuming she has some kind of coverage). I did claims work for many years, and she certainly sounds like she qualifies. It doesn't have to be permanent, but I urge you to look into this asap, before the situation gets out of control.
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all excellent.
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you gotta have Elmo Hope.
And I would subtract Weston; I find his Africana speeches annoying.
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17 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:
It feels like more ‘forward thinking’ jazz and improvisation has entered a strange space, where critical praise is linked more to the critics’ trying to keep up with the in crowd than with views on the music. Not that critics ever didn’t do this, but I don’t recall criticism and reviews all seeming quite so rote as it does at present.
The truth is that I really enjoyed your playing on that East Axis record. I thought that the freshness of your ideas on the album stood out in a scene that has become increasingly samey.
Really awful to read this. And sending you best wishes.
Thank you, and I do have a tendency to distrust my work when it comes a little too easily. And by the way thanks everyone for the good wishes. Things are not quite so desperate as they seemed on the day I posted that, though there is still a great deal of ambiguity to my health. I see my surgeon on Friday. He’s a genius, and the only guy who could figure out what the hell to do with me (I essentially suffered from radiation burn, which left me vulnerable to brain infection. I’m safe for the time being, but there are still some nasty possibilities; so the cancer didn’t get me but the side effects of treatment might).
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I am not posting this topic as a hit-and-run… I am currently out of the country, returning Thursday and face a series of surgeries for which the prognosis is now clouded. I mentioned this not for pity, but to explain why my responses here may be a little delayed from time to time.
Here’s what I’m trying to say: I get discouraged by the Jazz world, and it’s frequent overpraising of musicians who improvise in open settings. Case in point: I got the best reviews of my life for my playing last year in a free Quartet with Matt Shipp, Kevin Ray and Gerald Cleaver. It’s always nice to have good reviews, but I have recorded better music at least 10 times in my life without much critical response. The truth is, and few musicians will admit this, that improvising without boundaries or restrictions It’s easy. I repeat, it’s easy. I’ve been doing it well since I was 15 years old and first really understood what Ornette was up to. I certainly didn’t do it as well as him, I still don’t, but neither do thousands of other wannabes. I have a very specific philosophy of free improvisation, I think I can do it more interestingly than most horn players, but it does not compare philosophically or conceptually to the thousands of hours I’ve spent in the last 40 years composing and designing maps for improvisation, many of which combine free playing with chordal playing. One was off the cuff, fun to do but basically here and gone; the other was planned and artistically determined, a matter of artistic conscience and design.
I know there are many really really good musicians who improvise freely and make a career at it. And that historically, from Albert Ayler to Eric Dolphy to Sonny Simmons to Prince Lasha, there has been monumental work done in this grey area of form and content. But the truth is that the concept has run its course, lost its original energy and intellectual vitality. It has become like a cult of musical personality. It is destructive to jazz and destructive to critical standards. That’s just the way I feel, and I repeat again, I’m damn good at free improvisation, and probably better than most. But at this stage of my life it just doesn’t mean that much to me anymore.
I say this as one who had shared stages and recording studios with Julius Hemphill, David Murray, Hamiet Bluiett, Kalaparusha and Roswell Rudd, Matt Shipp and Don Byron. With the exception of Murray and Byron, I love all those guys and feel pride in the work I’ve done with them. And two of them, Julius and Roswell, were monumental musical personalities and god-like in their spirituality and invention. But they are gone, and I feel like I’m living in some kind of a musical shadow world, artistically disembodied, looking at myself from some clouded distance.
I post this here and not on Facebook because it feels like there’s a little more privacy in the shade of these forums. A lot of things are weighing heavily on me right now, and I’m not really sure how long I can continue the pace I have set for myself. I am tired and discouraged, my chops are weak, my jaw is shredded from radiation, and there are days I feel like I’m getting nowhere fast. I’ve just practically killed myself recording what I hope is not some kind of last testament, 6 discs of personal revelations released from a private hell. Still the music means so much to me, and may be the very last thing between my selves and personal surrender.
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59 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:
I am the opposite. For me, I prefer Graettinger, Rugolo, and Richards. Holman and Russo charts tend to be plodding and tedious IMO.
The CD version of City of Glass is poorly sequenced.
interesting; I think Holman is over-rate but I like Russo. Graettinger, however, I love.
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aside from Yoko, who I have mixed feelings about (if I have to hear her again, screaming along with Lennon on some old clips, I may need to react in some non-rational way), the vast majority of musicians I have known came from average backgrounds of no particular privilege. As for Fluxus, I need to do more homework, but my general sense of modernist movements like it is that they made their point, which was potentially radically altering, and then should have moved on into using those ideas in expanding ways. Instead they, like much free jazz that I hear today, got caught up in repetition and cliche.
My biggest complaint about Yoyo is that she convinced Lennon he was a genius, in the most self conscious way, and from then on it was all down hill for his work. It's like with Dylan and Lou Reed: convince someone that they are a genius and they conclude that anything they produce is a work of genius. The result is largely mediocre work and worse. Lennon became an artiste, and it was a disaster.
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21 hours ago, ghost of miles said:
I can’t vouch for Appel’s veracity or lack thereof, but I’ve read several accounts of NYC-area teens attending performances at Birdland in the 1950s. However, my understanding (again, based on what I’ve read—Dan Morgenstern, were he here on the board, could surely clarify) is that teens were required to sit in the so-called “bleachers,” an area next to the stage. Appel’s account has him seated at a table, and a good one, too, next to a table ostensibly reserved for a celebrity guest—so that does sound unlikely. But I don’t think the story can be disqualified solely on Appel’s age at the time of the alleged encounter. Might be a good question to put to Mike Fitzgerald’s jazz research listserv… thinking that there would surely be other accounts of Stravinsky dropping by Birdland one night to hear Parker play, if such a thing did occur.
It's not just a matter of him being 17 years old, but, as you implied, the lack of access that would lead to his sitting next to Stravinsky. It's just a silly story, implausible, just too "good" to be real; reminds me of Al Rose's fabricated conversations, in which the subjects say exactly what we want to hear them say. As to Appel's veracity, see Larry Kart's comments, above. I mean, if you want strange historical juxtapositions, I'll tell you about my meeting with Jean Genet at Slug's circa 1969/1970. I was only 15 or 16, but we never had any philosophical exchange (though he did say to me "son, you will have a great future; and by the way, Sartre says hello." Actually, all he did was nod).
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47 minutes ago, JSngry said:
"those kind of sounds"....what does that mean exactly?
Those later Miles bands were expertly constructed, actually. Arcs, textural developments, rhythmic finesse and colors, you name it, they knew exactly what they were doing and although Miles probably didn't give them the specifics, you can bet - and the players will speak to it to this day - he was guiding the whole thing.
well, I don't want to get into a protracted back and forth, but to my ears it's mostly electronic textures and sonic layering; I hear the whole as being less than the sum of its parts. But I find that electronics create their own atmosphere, and I've put together some musical collages with wave forms, and it was shockingly easy to sound deep and complex.
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there are some interesting moments in those Miles years, but truthfully I felt a lot of the music was lazily constructed. It's really quite easy to assemble those kind of sounds.
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1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:
I checked my copy after reading the Open Culture post, and it appears Appel is referring to himself.
I highly doubt Appel witnessed any such thing. He was 21 when Bird died, so this makes him likely too young to have witnessed Stravinsky watching Bird; this is rumored to have happened in 1951, when Appel would have been 17.
Indie Labels and Petrillo Strike
in Miscellaneous Music
Posted
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.