AllenLowe

yes - Al Cohn.

well, everybody's a pain, but there is something about the musician that stands out - I first got an idea of this in the 1970s when I worked for a well-known record producer who told me that in all his years in the business (and he knew everybody from the 1940s on) he'd only met one jazz musician who he considered to be a grown up.

was he still living in France?

good points, thanks - as to "what 50s book?" I have a book on the history of jazz in the '50s that has been nearly complete for some time - maybe 7-8 years. I haven't found a publisher, so I am toying with idea of posting it myself on my future web site.

I think it was actually the sountrack to Godspell, but there was a typo on the cover.

actually, it may be Rob Lowe.

and no hummintashen -

depends on the humm-ee

some good ideas here - however, remember, we do NOT negotiate with hostage takers - or falafel makers -

maybe we should change it to transvestite hermaphrodite alto clarinet player -

sorry I can't answer your question, but somebody out there has to have a discography - slowly I turned, step by step.................

Bruce, calm down, you need to keep your BP steady (and I don't mean the oil company) -

Allen Lowe today, at a press conference, noted that from now on, when it comes to Hummus, he will eat only the real thing. "It must be all natural with plenty of chick peas. I will accept no substitute," he said.

the only thing I would add to this collective potrait of Henderson is that, when it comes to jazz musicians, never understimate the true depth of neurosis and self-defeating behavior. In my experience there's always more than meets the media's eye.

hey how're things at the Falls? Haven't been there in years (went over them in a barrel around '64) -

would like to hear it - one thing I do not quite understand re: "Anthony Braxton, Milford Graves and William Parker are quite literally three of the most important virtuoso instrumentalists in new music" how could this be true in the figurative sense? they either are or they aren't - so "literally" makes no sense.

yeah, I read that the other day - good stuff. A a matter of fact, the student he mentions who bought his apparently-stolen Selmer and then returned it to him was a guy I knew from Wesleyan in the late '80s.

what I quoted above was a comment that Henderson made to Dave Schildkraut at a jam session, sometime in the early '60s, as I recall Dave told me. Though we could go back and forth on this, and I never met Henderson, I think there is an element of insecurity indicated, especially now as I reflect on Mark's prior post and the thought of the kind of town Detroit was when Henderson was coming of age. I can relate from personal experience, having been pretty close with Barry Harris in the late 1970s that, wonderful guy as he is, he is very ideological when it comes to the music and the "right" way of playing - as a matter of fact, one of the biggest obstacles I had when I picked up the horn again in the early '80s was a sense of betraying Barry's ideals. I kid you not - he's one of the great people I've ever known, and has such a depth of integrity to his whole being that, having come under his orbit, one takes great pains to escape. He had basically told me that a lot of musicians were just plain wrong in the way they played - Ornette, Dolphy, even later Sonny Rollins, and it took some doing for me to overcome this fear that I was not a real musician if I had not mastered the bebop rudiments or if I played in any open-ended way. So, maybe I am projecting, but I think there was real social pressure in that Detroit bebop era to stick to the bebop way. Especially as Barry was considered one of the prime teachers on the scene.

glad it made it - if anybody's interested I still have a few of regular stock, which can go for $56 shipped in the USA.

"by the time I finish, Lennie's molecules will be re-constituted by the Hadron Collidor; Lennie will then return to his earthly body and take over the world with an alien force of diminished chord obsessives who will show us the true way."

I've always felt that that quote was fascinating (and was surprised there was so little reaction here). It indicates some degree of insecurity, but more important is that it's a significant counter to the idea of bebop orthodoxy and a reflection of the kind of peer pressures jazz musicians can be subject to - I mean, he played changes as well as anybody, but he clearly thought that there was some prior "standard" that he was not living up to. It's also a little bit akin to Bill Evans once saying he felt like he was somehow insufficient because he was a bad mimic and had to come up with his own way of doing things.

hmmm.....only 90 years to go......

I was at this party and I was playing the vibes - a girl walked over to me and said, "why do you play the vibes?" I said, "I play the vibes to sublimate my sexual tension." She said, "why don't you let ME sublimate your sexual tension?" I said to myself, "Wow. Here's a girl who plays the vibes."

most interesting Joe Henderson quote (at least to me): "I never felt like I got bebop, and it wasn't until Coltrane came along that I felt I could really do this."

well, no, I'm listening to his current output. It's got possibilities but never quite gets where I think it's trying to get.