AllenLowe

If you are implying that I am looking for a problem, that's not really fair. It implies that I come to Sonny's music looking to pick it apart. The truth is really the opposite; for years I cut him a lot of slack, saw him more than a few times through the '70s and '80s and always thought I should like what I didn't, so I kept going back. There were moments of illumination but they were like listening to someone whose feet were trapped in mud. There was no way out, and Sonny, I soon realized, wasn't looking for a way out so I gave up. I'm not questioning his right to do whatever he wants, but that doesn't make it interesting. like with all of Sonny there are some amazing possibilities. He is one of a handful of saxophonists of that generation who made a smooth and real transition to harmonic adventures that shadowed the free jazz/post-Trane movement. That's an amazing thing. But the way they recorded this isn't appealng to me, boomy bass and airless. And his performances don't really go anywhere. But it does make fascinating listening. Sonny's was a great musical mind and listening to him on something like this is like listening to a great scientist strugglling to invent something he knows is within his grasp. This is def. one of his best later things.

Ok I'll put out an APB. But to me that performance is part of the problem. And the rhythm section is like finger nails on a blackboard. Sonny, who spent the first half of his career jettisoning extraneous accompanists spent the last half flooding his music with obstructions.

I love Sonny, he is probably the reason I play the sax, but I have a lot of problems with the book. Years ago Jamil Nasser said to me (and I quote as closely as I can remember): "Sonny was completely thrown by the fact that Coltrane became the dominant saxophone player in jazz. That's why he started all those gimmicks, the Mohawk haircut, the thing about playing on the bridge - it was all to try and get some attention back." And I will add what Paul Bley said about the Our Man in Jazz Group: "We don't need Sonny to play free; we need him to show us how to play standards." (I know that group played standards but they went outside a lot) I love Sonny, and I only read a part of the book (I could not get through the massive and irrelevant, unedited detail) so I don't know how he dealt with the above. But I think it's important to look dispassionately at genius artists like Rollins. Otherwise, if we treat everything as the same, as in "Sonny was great for his entire career," then we diminish the parts of him that actually were great. I know this is not a popular opinion, but I am not the only one who feels this way (I cannot name names without permission).

she sounds good on that later album, her voice is lighter. The only thing is that the mix sounds terrible on the Youtube versions, and there is way too much reverb, which might have been to compensate for an aging voice.

she's very good; I have long had a debate in my head about what makes a jazz singer, but certain ones fall into the cracks. She's one of them. One of the criteria is phrasing the other is emotional; she does do the phrasing thing, but sparely, as though to drop in a "jazzy" variation, but it's extremely subtle. Emotionally she is very direct, lacks the artistic detachment of singers like Holiday; which isn't a deal killer but which always sends me back to rethink the whole question. She is a little emotive for my tastes and I sometimes wish she would back off. But this is not an exact science.

whoops, wrong citation - see what I said, above.

your work as posted here is extraordinary. I haven't compared it to the Archeophone, but one thing I did notice with that set was that the EQ could have been improved (which I was able to do myself with relative ease). Please consider doing more of these.

sale over. Christmas came early this year. And a humbug to you all.

thanks for saying that. It's been a difficult Fall; lotsa rejection, therapy, a few holes I felt like crawling into. But it always helps to hear things like that.

Francis Davis called this project "a revelation" and considers it the top CD of 2024. Dusty Groove writes: "A stunning project from the great Allen Lowe – an expansive array of sounds that's way different than you might expect from the title – as it's not a portrayal of the America during the years in which Louis Armstrong walked this planet – but a pastiche of past aesthetics, present performance, and future-thinking combination of elements! Lowe's always been way more than just a jazz musician – and the set shows the way he often operates with more of a larger artistic vision – not exactly as a composer, but maybe with the energy of a visual artist – part creation, part collage – with a sense of aesthetic interplay that really comes through in the project!" Phil Overeem has said of this project: "No important music chronicler has ever composed and played this well." We performed it to two standing ovations for Yale University's Duke Ellington Fellowship Series. So what're you waiting for? I will never be able to do this kind of work again. It was like a race against death. So far I am only slightly ahead. Both volumes, 4 CDs, for $30 shipped in the USA. This price will hold until Christmas. My paypal is allenlowe5@gmail.com

had to because of the high-intensity radiation I had on my jaw in 2019. My embouchure died at that point; still having some trouble.

I agree but they really both helped create the style. As did Earl Bostic.

does he talk about predecessors? Louis Jordan? Pete Brown? Horsecollar Williams? I somehow doubt it, but those three - at the least - should be in a book like this.

I haven't read, and probably won't - I think this deserves more of a magazine article than an entire book - but I do worry about the anti-art and anti-intellectualism of books that seem, from the description, to create straw man arguments. I know this is probably promo written by a third party, but dumb stuff like: "The New Thing,” as personified by Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and a few others." doesn't help the cause; "a few others" - ? no, hundreds of others of musicians who were feeling a certain way in the 1960s. Or: "Avant-garde jazz, made by musicians indifferent to public perception" is just total crap. Many of the avant garde-ists had a very populist perspective, and saw the music as addressing a deeper and much more direct kind of musical reality. There was a strong black nationalist bend to the new music, and any book that ignores it is only worthy of contempt. These musicians - like Hemphill and BAG - saw themselves as community organizers. So this book, instead of breaking new ground, is trying to reinvent a perspective that has already been expressed. Write about it - but don't try and sabotage musicians who were also in the middle of if all. Include it all. And if you really want an alternative jazz history...well, read my book That Devilin' Tune, which shows there is an entirely different perspective that most jazz writers have ignored.

I wasn't aware of that, thanks, I just have to insist, on aural evidence, that what Pullman thinks was '49 sounds, ballad-wise, nothing like Bud from that year.

well, not ready for prime time.

I find Melle's soloing on the Blue Notes and Prestiges to be....well, a bit amateurish. I don't think he was at the level he wanted to be at.

as all the 1947 Roost recordings - with Curley and Max Roach.

new picture? I would like to hear that; I don't think his Blue Note era stuff has held up well, but when I talked to him (I think it was the '90s) he was most proud of the soundtrack/synth work he had done. And I think this one is pretty cool:

Yes - but it is because of the ballads (I Should Care, for example) - his ballad approach is significantly different than what it would become in the next year or two, a little more decorous and even lush. Compare a ballad from '47 to those from '49 and I think you will hear the difference. Also - and it is less scientific - but I had some long talks with Curley Russell about these sessions, and though I did not ask about the year (this wasn't an issue back in the 1970s when I knew him) he always sounded like those Roosts were from the same session.

well, that's not a good idea, to think differentiating the time period is unimportant. Bud was an amazing figure, and his development as a musician is an amazing and essential thing to witness - and he was a different player in 1947 than in 1948 through, perhaps, 1953, which were his peak years. To say the time period is unimportant is like also saying it might as well have been 1956, when he was audibly deteriorating. Or that what a writer wrote is unimportant to recognize, even if his early work is different than the later. In 1947 Bud is playing great, but he does NOT have the depth to his playing that he has in '48 and '49. How can this be unimportant? It is important because Bud is changing, deepening, expanding. BUT MOST IMPORTANT: How can you trust a writer who cannot differentiate between different sounds and approaches, especially one as clear as this? To me this shows how poor Pullman's judgement is, and it tells me NOT to trust any other musical observations he makes - because the difference in Bud's playing is plain and obvious. And if you yourself don't make the distinction, you should go back, because it is so artistically blatant, and it will lead you to appreciate Bud even more. As for Paudras, I knew him a little, and you seem to be dismissing him. He was a great guy who really saved Bud's life. He deserves better treatment.

He growled at me once, but I still like his music. I hit him over the head with a newspaper and he went away.

always glad to see something about Bud, but I am not a fan of Pullman's bio. Aside from one very bizarre discographical error (he is definitely wrong about some performances which he claims were not recorded in '47 - and clearly they were), he does not write very well. I don't think I ever finished the book, and I am a Bud fanatic.