AllenLowe

actually I HATE singers from a personal standpoint - most difficult group of people I ever met (ask me someday about my experiences booking a now-sorta-famous female singer in NYC in the 1970s - she still owes me about $25) - and most of 'em can't sing in tune, and personally I think that there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing scat singing - as Al Haig once told me contemptuously, "they ALL want to be actresses."

and to top it off Doris Day likes animals - how can you go wrong?

very interesting.....

did Granz do something with his janitor? all seriousness aside, a few years back I heard Nelson on one of those tributes-to-Willie concerts on TV, and it was nice - the BIGGEST surprise was his guitar solo style which shows a great debt to - none other than Django, and more so than to any other guitar player.

I can't argue with that - just to add, the conservatism I am referring to is more related to other musicians, as Evans was definitely not with the free jazzers, or even guys like Bley - there is an interview (and Larry Kart talks about this in his book, I think) with Evans disparaging the duet he did with Bley on that George Russell record, as though free playing were too easy - an interesting observation, but ultimately Evans missed the point, as that was one of his best solos -

well, I was only 6 at the time - hadn't gotten to Robbe Grillet yet, was still working my way through Proust (in the original French, of course) -

well, it happened in the past - and he's gone past us - it's not like he passed out - more permanent than that -

the real jazz Bing is generally, to me, prior to 1940 - and like before I want to bring up Doris Day, who in the 1950s made a series of incredible recordings on Columbia with some of the most beautiful pop singing I have ever heard - pure and clear, with a version of I'm Confessin' which is as bluesy as anything June Christy ever did and also just as much jazz.

Evans was a bit schizy in the last few years because of his very severe drug thing that was going on - I knew his wife pretty well and he used to come up some weekends - I tried to engage him in conversation a few times but mostly he basically stayed in his room - at his 50th birthday party we had a long conversation and I was surprised because he was unusually talkative, so must have been having a good day, if you know what I mean. A fascinating and brilliant guy if a little bit musically conservative.

strange thing for him to say, as there are so many non-representational novels - tell him to start with the French, with Robbe Grillet and Claude Simon - than we can move to Peter Handke, thrown in a few Beckett novels - I'll put together a reading list -

how do we know Lennon is playing guitar on those Beatles things? My money is on Paul -

I put the big bucks into my speakers, which cost $2500 ten years ago - or at least I THOUGHT I put the big bucks into my speakers (which are perfect - a nice pair of Bryston Labs) - I guess I'm just on audio welfare -

stop following Jim - I tried that once and got into a lot of trouble (can anybody help me with this restraining order?) -

I would just put on the original recording and lip synch while dressed in drag.

let us remember, please, that Doris Day, in the 1950s, was one of the greatest female singers - she's even gonna be in my blues set - which also includes a Bing/Whiteman from 1927 - so you can't go wrong with those two -

"Marshall McLuhan - what are you doin?"

Mark, thanks for that passage from the interview - particularly interesting to have Sonny say of Ornette that "his own material...was based more on phrases," as Sonny is so rarely musically analytical in his interviews, and that particular characterizations gets right to the essence of Ornette's style ("I just listen to Ornette and follow where he's going by the melody he plays" is what Charlie Haden said to us at Slugs around 1969). I still believe, from Jamil Nasser's recollections (and Jamil is/was a real straight cat, like only a few jazz musicians I have known, whose recollections on other things have been corroborated regularly) that Sonny's personal turbulence was related to how radically different the jazz world suddently seemed, and that that radical difference was most directly related, first, to Trane, and second, to Ornette. It's a little bit like what Joe Albany told me about Bird - that, even though in later years critics were able to relate his work to older players, at the time it seemed so new and different as to almost wipe everything else away. I'm willing to bet that a similar thing was happening at that time to Sonny.

well, only way to find out some of that is to ask Bley - which I might try to do if I can reach him. But don't forget that Paul played with Ornette in '57 - once again I think you're depending on discography more than you should - gotta see if we can check the old jazz grape vine.

better start mowing -

"Freddie Hubbard is quoted about this period as saying Sonny was playing so powerfully you couldn't believe it and that he scared other tenor players to death. Further, having played with both Trane and Sonny at this time, he says that Sonny was definitely the strongest." I actually would argue that this supports my point - because than where would the self-doubt be except in terms of feeling, perhaps, that he was missing a trend? it will however, be difficult to ever resolve this unless Sonny confesses - (and actually, so I'm not misunderstood, let me say that I think it's more complicated than simple jealousy, but a sense that he had lost his bearings relative to leading the pack, now that Trane was starting to pull people into his orbit)

There's more to it than Giant Steps - there's Tenor Madness, so the two were clearly already aware of each other in a more personal sense - and Jamil dated this change in Sonny's demeanor from the time of his attempt to break the band down to a trio for more freedom, which goes into the 1950s - as in the 1957 Vanguard recordings, and I would dare say that Coltrane's ascendancey started well before Giant Steps - and I would add, as well, and though this is just my opinion of course, it is based on early and first hand reports of musicians who knew Sonny from the mid-1950s on - that Sonny was the most competetive of horn players, personally driven in a way that he would never admit publically. And so here's Trane, and all the signs are clear, before even Giant Steps, that there was a new guy on the block. I would take Jamil's word on this, as he worked with Sonny on those (pre-Giant Steps) days. He was there - and you are making a mistake to judge the history of personal interactions strictly by discography. so we have 1959 - Coltrane's already hot, Ornette is around - Sonny knows Paul Bley, who is also feeling the heat - and in terms of Sonny's "self doubt" - well, I would call that one of Sonny's smoke screens. There was no musician in the world more confident than Sonny, and I take this from witnesses like Bill Triglia, who described jam sessions in New Jersey clubs from the 1950s when Sonny would just wipe the floor with other tenors - sure there is some self doubt, but there are way more complicated things going on here like personal jealousy and a certain amount of insecurity and immaturity. He was human, after all.

niko - actually, Stella has an entire website devoted to her work, a memorial trust type of thing -

it's a good book -

I had an interesting conversation once with Jamil Nasser about Sonny in this transitional period - Jamil said, basically, that in the '60s Sonny was really thrown by Coltrane's sudden and overwhelming dominance as THE tenor player, as Sonny had been the king of the hill prior to this. This, according to Jamil, was the real reason that Sonny began his sabbaticals, started shaving his head, doing the bridge thing, et al. He was just off balance and looking for a way to get back - which he obviously did. But his post-60s decline (of course that's just IMHO) shows how much trouble American jazz musicians, who are notoriously a-historical in outlook and universal understanding (lacking the deeper and multi-artistic knowledge that a lot of people in other forms have) have once they hit some of the limits of their own initial artistic instincts. just my theory du jour and don't get me wrong, I idolize Sonny Rollins. I just get frustrated when I look at the strange path his career has taken.

I actually have the LP of the Webster/Otis - and I THINK I used one cut of it on Devilin' Tune -