AllenLowe

as I may have mentioned earlier, on the Blindman's Blues Forum they simply delete the offending post and send the poster an email that says such personal attcks are not permitted - I know this because one day someone there posted a weird, semi-personal response to something I had said, and it was immediately cut, and I was CC'd on an email which gave the reason -

I'm in agreement - this stuff really needs to be put to sleep -

is she coming back? sounds like perfectly a nice person.

in my opinion there is indeed a problem when one considers writing about jazz as a platform for helping musicians promote their cds and concerts - this makes a newspaper's arts section into more of a promo sheet than anything else. I happen to think that not only the music but musicians' reasons for producing it are often more complex and more interesting than this - at least for some of them. To view it in this narrow a fashion is to close off too many important people. It's like ignoring James Joyce because he's not on the best seller list; by this measure, we would never hear of Kafka, Bruno Schulz, etc because they fall under the radar. I think the critic's job is to look under the radar - a difficult thing, to be sure, but much more rewarding.

well, he nearly wrecked 'em -

Deacon Hop

well, it's interesting because if you read Milt Hinton's interview with Gene Lees, you get the impression that Dizzy was trying to kill Cab - but Curley was adamant (and as I recall he got it directly from Dizzy) that Dizzy just wanted to inflict pain, to a part of the body that would be resistant to heeling - it's kinda like cutting your palm - it's always bending and flexing, so a cut on it has a tendency to stay open-

I don't know....reminds me of a tired modern painting -

I thought Wynton Kelly was dead -

close enough for jazz -

well, Cab slapped him first -

yes, that's the great thing about being a member of this forum - no one will ever say a bad word about you here again - well................................... all seriousness aside, and I mentioned this before, and I know you only had vague memories of it, but years ago, Al Haig told me about "this kid who can really play guitar;" you then worked with him in what I believe was his one and only appearance at the West End in NYC - though I can't remember who the rest of the rhythm section was (might have been Ben Brown and Jimmy Wormsworth, but this goes back about 30 years) -

according to what Curley Russell told me, Dizzy stabbed him on the butt - because it would take so long to heal - I think that's the "hip" that they are referring to -

I saw Tiny at the West End in NYC, probably circa 1979, though I could be wrong about the date - it was a lucky time to be in NY, as a lot of great musicians, in their last active years, were still performing wonderfully (Al Casey was another great guitarist I saw at the West End about that time). I don't know what equipment he was using, but he still had that nice boom of a sound, just on the edge of distortion, like a lot of the classic jazz and blues guitarists. It's a function of low power tube amps and alnico pickups that are usually not as strong as current-day pickups, maybe 6-8 ohms, I would bet (though the Charlie Christians may have been higher power; they had more of a p90-ish sound). Also old-style alnico speakers, which break up more easily than ceramic magnet ones. He played great. The reason that lower ohm alnico pickups are important is that modern day ceramics and high power pickups tend to overwhelm a low-power amp

just to add, much as I like the early Oliver band, my favorite New Orleans band, by far, is Dumaine's Jazzola Eight.

re-Oliver, the most personally revealing thing I have ever seen is in Clyde Bernhardt's autobiography - Oliver is generally sort of a musical/social stick figure (I haven't read the Lil Hardin thing yet) - Bernhardt worked with one of his later bands, and Oliver comes off as real salty and salt of the earth, mildly profane, extremely shrewd, and a very self aware personality - if anyone here has not read the Bernhardt bio, btw, I recommend it in general as one of the best jazz books I've ever read. It also has an incredible description of an early Ma Rainey tent show.

sad stuff; he was an interesting guy. The one time I met him, maybe 1979, he found out that I knew Curely Russell and Tommy Potter, and he just peppered me with questions about them and what they were doing, how they were, etc. It was very striking because he was so interested in what had happened to the old beboppers that I knew and what had become of them. I got the feeling that he thought of the bebop days as the most exciting events he had ever experienced, which is no great surprise, though I was interested to see how he had personalized the experience. I also got the impression that he was completely lacking in vanity and had not lost anyof his personal curiousity or intellectual hunger.

the Wailers did Louie Louie before the Kingsman, and were definitely in the garage category - Hendrix was a fan, and Spanish Castle Music was based on nights he'd spent hearing them at the Castle, I think it was called; it was a rock club - the Wailers were an important and advanced band, pre-punk, sort of, very tough neo-soul sound. One of my favorites -

"we loves you Porcy...."

"I like it better than the rest of you." I like most of my CDs better than I like most of the people on Organissimo - I just wouldn't admit it in public. c'mon guys, I couldn't resist. How did everybody else miss this one?

"How nasty was he?" well, I just posted it on the Jimmy Carter thread, but he told a group of nice middle aged women, who were very excited to see him, and were being very polite about it, to "get the hell out of my way."

when I was 15 I had an encounter with Gene Rayburn and he was one of the nastiest people I ever met -

if that's the one with Art Taylor, note how radically the tempo changes after the drum solo - the guy had a lot of problems that way-

not to send you on too many sidetracks, but Jackie McClean told me he used to play a lot at the Bohemia with Dave Schildkraut - which is probably where Dave met Pettiford, as Dave is on one of his Bethlehem albums -

I thought a saxophone had 23 keys -