AllenLowe

I have gotten in trouble in the past with this basic opinion, but I continue to avoid Dexter. He plays in these later years like his feet are stuck in cement.

"God is an American." It's from the old Broadway show Red,White and Maddox, about the old racist politician Lester Maddox, that I must have seen in 1969 or 1970.

me to, especially when I can color them in -

well, believe it or not, this is a correct characterization of about 90 percent of what appears about jazz. So you are on to something.

interesting, because Hendrix's band was so much better than Cream.

it is true I haven't read the book, but then, I haven't read Mein Kampf, but I have a pretty good sense of where he comes out on the issues of the day.

I hope so; speed correction is very easy these days. There are some amazing programs.

I would like to see the book, but it sounds from the blurb like the same-old-same-old. I'd prefer to see Cafe Bohemia and places like that, clubs in Brooklyn like the one Max worked with Duke Jordan, also that Cleveland club that had a great photographer in residence. Maybe they'll surprise me. I'm just disappointed they didn't interview Grace Kelly. Now she would have insights on the old days.

I've done plenty myself. But that's like saying "stop complaining about Trump and run for president yourself."

no guys, you are missing the point - Moran is a fine musician and nice guy but he has no place in a book like this. I have no place in a book like this, and I at least knew a LOT of musicians who were extremely active on the scene in the 1950s. But it makes no historical sense, none at all, to have Moran as a part of this project. 20 years on the scene puts him at 40+ years too late for this book. It's offensive when there are a number of living jazz musicians who would have been perfect for this, and a few who died recently (like Annie Ross). This is just a crap way to do it and an insult to a lot of great jazz people. Who's going to talk about Teddy Charles and Hall Overton, and Bill Triglia (house pianist at Birdland for a time in that decade), Jimmy Knepper, Al Haig, etc etc? Not to mention that our own Larry Kart, who came of age in that decade, would have been perfect - and Chuck Nessa. It is an incredible lost opportunity of the kind that re-enforces my sense that nobody really gives a damn any more about the depth of jazz history. Ah.....

I think Miles with Stitt was beneficial to both. Stitt couldn't coast and probably was making more $$$ than usual, and Miles was still Miles. And this is an excellent Stitt solo (though his solos on some of these concerts do go on too long, as though he was having trouble figuring out where to stop):

thanks.

we have about 3 days left in the Fund Raiser. Remember all the small children whose prickly heat will harm their lives without your contribution. I thought the following, my entry on Cecil Taylor, might be of help: You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To Cecil Taylor 1956 Though I feel certain that, were he still alive, Cecil Taylor would scorn me for saying so, his desire and ability to stick to musical principal in his early professional years, in the face of repeated rejection and some downright nastiness, took great courage. To say he was ahead of his time is to put it way too mildly. He was just one of those artists who understood, who constructed a personal musical methodology out of an unorthodox sensibility and intense - maybe too intense - self awareness. This was, I would guess, his way of tapping into the labyrinth of his own mind for the sake of real-time translation and transference of some little-known (at least for the jazz world) musical truths. I do have a feeling that, like Thelonious Monk, he had no real personal choice but to do so, and was in some ways trapped by the kind of stubborn individuality that sometimes masquerades as principle. So he is like an example to us all, a portrait of the artist who does as he does simply because he knows of no other way to do it. At the time Taylor recorded Cole Porter’s You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To we might say he was in his ur-harmonic period, still concerned with explaining, in artistic terms, the fragmentary way the mind approaches the wholeness of certain visible yet pliant forms, from painting to language - though in Taylor’s case what he was confronting were songs and song form, the piano, and jazz soloing. James Joyce once argued that the way he wrote, the way he drew out the essence of experience and consciousness and reordered them, was much more “realistic” than than the ways of more socially “accurate” writers, much truer to the reality of life as actually lived. Taylor might have argued that the way in which he exposed song elements - their bits and bites of harmony, with pieces of their melody in harmonic relief - was much more faithful than more “ordered” ways of jazz performance, much more akin to lived, artistic experience, and so to the truest ideals of jazz improvisation. No one in jazz except, perhaps, Lennie Tristano and Bud Powell, had, in 1956, any equivalent sense of the kind of intuitive artistry that sends one down the potential rabbit hole of instinct and consciousness. Playing standards that year with “standard” harmony, Taylor seemed to be starting and finishing at the same time. He was visiting “the tradition” at the same time that he was rejecting it, not exploring it so much as trying to see how much of it might still be of musical use to him. In the long term - though here he shows a surprisingly keen grasp of the possibilities of improvised line - the answer was “not much.” He never seems bored, but instead appears restless on the edge of disdainful, for all that such songs required of him. In the year before Ornette Coleman completely revealed himself to delegates of the jazz profession Cecil Taylor chose to take the first steps toward exiting that world, preparing to go so far inside himself that succeeding performances and recordings would seem less like self-introduction than professional withdrawal (assuming, of course, in a way that Taylor would not, that the profession we are referring to was Jazz Musician). And yes, that was a brave thing for him to do in that place and at that time. No one in jazz, in 1956, on any side of the artistic fence, was near-ready for that kind of self-exposure.

I'm also reading the book, and though I haven't liked any of Woods playing since, maybe, the early 1960s, he is an interesting and important figure. One thing I am very disturbed about is that they would use the same title that Chan used in her autobiography. It's clearly done, in my opinion, because Woods was pissed off at her negative portrayal of him. This is really unethical and should not have been done.

when I was doing a lot of transfers for clients and record companies I owned that thing with the fluids and the turntable - can't think of what it was called but it was considered high end at the time - and I rarely heard a difference with the average, medium-dusty LP. So I don't do it that often. But I often shower myself first, just to make sure none of that old-age dust gets on the vinyl.

as some of you know, my current project, Turn Me Loose White Man: Or Appropriating Culture: How To Listen to American Music 1900-1960 has expanded; the book is now 2 Volumes, and I expect Vol. 2 to be out Spring of 2021 (working on it as this posts). I say, immodestly, that this is the best thing of its kind around. We cover everything from minstrel song to ragtime, blues, jazz, gospel, country, hillbilly, soul, folk, rock and rockabilly, etc. There is commentary, context, expert musical analysis, and the music itself. We have had a lot of raves for the project, which comes with, as I said, 2 books, plus a 30 CD set of all the music. There are intros by Greil Marcus and Greg Tate and a nice blurb by Robin D.G. Kelley. I have to admit, though it won't bankrupt me, going to the second volume has cost me an extra bit of cash and has been particularly difficult in the time of Covid, as my extra earnings, never particularly high, have slowed considerably. I need to raise some more cash to get the rest of this out. Here's what I propose: Volume 1 is already in ebook form, and Volume 2 will be available as same (as well as hard copy) in the Spring. For a very limited time (limited to 20 sets) I can offer E book versions of Volume 1 and 2, plus the actual 30 CDs, for $100 plus shipping ($5 media in the USA, $25 to Europe). I can send you the Ebook as either Kindle compatible or for Ibooks/Ipad/Iphone, volume 1 now and volume 2 in the spring. I apologize to all who have already spent a bit more for this, but I have always had to do these projects without institutional support and/or any external grants. It's just the way it is. But I think I can say that with Turn Me Loose we have broken some new ground, critically and historically. My paypal is allenlowe5@gmail.com. My email is same. thanks -

I do recall reading somewhere where Whitey admitted to putting various substances on the ball from time to time.

a little unsettling as I had throat cancer (not metastatic fortunately) last year. I actually liked his playing when he just played.

actually, this Dexter album was recorded in 1964, but the concert started in 1963.

I wonder if Colomby ever got his commission. It is possible that Monk paid him.

they will bury me face down with as many LP's as will fit inserted into my butt crack, vertically, facing into the sky.This is a re-creation of an old collector's ritual (or maybe it has to do with virgin sacrifice. I don't really remember).

my problem with Ginnell is that, in his Milton Brown book, there is not a single, and I mean not a single, mention of black musicians or black musical influences related to the genre in general or Milton Brown in particular. I found this lapse just incomprehensible.

I saw him for the first and last time playing trumpet in Chicago at the Jazz Showcase; early 1980s? It was more than great, it was astounding. He was one of the free-est improvising beboppers I have ever seen. I was just floored.

not a good thing, but having been to Denmark I can tell you that the good thing about all of this is that the overall jazz scene there will come back, if on a less famous level, because there is heavy government subsidy of even private businesses who run jazz concerts and events.

yeah, he was pretty spry that day, playing, and talking to everyone except me. It's ok. I was mildly offended but that's life.