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AllenLowe

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Posts posted by AllenLowe

  4. New Monk bio in progress by Robin Kelley

    in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    though I do have nice hopes for the Monk bio, Adorno's (and Larry's) complaint fits almost all academic work I have read in the last 10 years, sad to say (notable exceptions: John Szwed and Lewis Porter). I'm always interested in the life of the musician, and often it does help me see the music more clearly, but not in the way that academics seem to picture such things, as large and rationally observable social forces.

    let me quote from the notes to my upcoming blues set:

    • Travelin' Light Billie Holiday 6/12/42 Travelin' white? One academic writer, and I kid you not, has used the evidence of Holiday's expressed pleasure at recording with the Whiteman band on this West Coast trip as evidence of her shame at her own blackness. It seems that Billie tried rehearsing, shortly after this session, with a black band that was more on the roughhouse side, and then informed its members that they suffered in comparison to Whiteman. Sherrie Tucker, in her book Swing Shift, seizes upon this incident as reflecting not just a lack of racial pride and/or awareness on Holiday's part, but also abject personal shame at her own skin color. This is a complete perversion of the truth, and ignores the reality of Holiday's own oft-expressed aesthetic ideas. She simply preferred the softer dynamics of certain musicians and groups, in the same way that she preferred the (white) pianist Jimmy Rowles over (the black pianist) Oscar Peterson. Not to mention that this near-blue ballad is a thing of beauty, and that beauty, to quote Ornette Coleman, is a rare thing. Damn the ideologues -

  8. Beatles Remasters coming! 09/09/09

    in Re-issues

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    danasgoodstuff thinks:

    "...everybody's tying to Be My Baby" & "Honey Don't" (are) from Roy Newman, maybe "Matchbox" as well, all of then possibly 2nd or 3rd hand; that's the way real music works. Clean slate originality is an inanely Romantic notion,"

    missing my point - and if that's the way "real music" works, well, than tell that to Charlies Mingus, who would have chased you from the room with a large knife. Because Perkins barely "adapted" those works, he stole them - give me a break. And it's especially offensive since there was little acknowledgment, at the time (and now, in your post) of the African American oral tradition from which things like Matchbox sprang (and it's silly to do a tracer with Ma Rainey, et al; Blind Lemon brought those lyrics into currency). And it's not like Perkins (whose music I love) was just hanging out on the back roads somewhere with black sharecroppers. Sure, he learned from black locals - but the inane point is that he heard those specific records and swiped those specific songs (you probably are not aware of the fact the B.L. Jefferson sold a lot of records; must be too romantic a notion that an African American could do so in the 1920s). To rationalize it by citing earlier borrowings misses the point. At least the Rolling Stones and Clapton make specific efforts to cite their influences (and in Clapton's case, make sure that people like Skip James got some royalties). This was big business by the 1950s, and Perkins knew what he was doing.

    and I write stuff all the time that is "clean slate" original; at least a lot cleaner than Matchbox and Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby. Lots of people do - I can send you a list - start with Monk, Ellington, Hemphill, Lennon, McCartney....

  17. Beatles Remasters coming! 09/09/09

    in Re-issues

    Posted

    "You say that like Perkins was somehow unique in this"

    1) where did I say that?

    2) my point was only that this was not a new song when Perkins did it and, as I said, he got it from Blind Lemon.

    3) and I repeat, where did I say "Perkins was somehow unique in this" ? Please be a little more careful -

  19. Beatles Remasters coming! 09/09/09

    in Re-issues

    Posted

    actually, if you listen to the guitar solo on Taxman (especially nice with the new mastering) I think you can hear that it's being played by someone with a somewhat faltering technique - which makes sense, as Paul did not play a lot of guitar. Still, it's a brilliantly constructed solo.

    and once again, I'm willing to bet that Paul, dead as he was, played a LOT of the solos we credit to George. In those days McCartney had a sharp lyrical edge to him. George, to quote National Lampoon, was too busy stealing material from the world -

  22. L.A. Independent Record Shop Is Still In The Groove

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    paps - I've always felt that a viable business would be an on-line store for old, "obscure" roots music on CD, early jazz, ragtime, blues, hillbilly, et al - a store that had a limited inventory, but an inventory that could be trusted as having good sound and/or production values, and for holdings that were historically important. However - things have changed, and I don't know, in the world of downloads, whether there is an audience of buyers anymore -

    love the donut idea, too - not sure, however, that I'd want all those cops around -

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