AllenLowe

thanks for the heads up, Swede - unfortunately my command of languages is limited to English and pig-Latin - and I'm not sure I catch your drift, Cliff -

Phil was not really in contact with Curley in those days, and I saw and talked to Curley pretty regularly - the thing is really a matter of courtesy and credit - not earth shaking, and maybe petty in the big picture, but very typical of Phil, who, for example, would never book anything at the West End unless he could say it was his idea - for one example, I put together a band there with Percy France, Leroy Williams, and Bob Neloms, none of whom had worked together before, and it was an AMAZING band - I knew all the guys, said to Phil, why don't you get them, Percy thought it was fine, ok - and than after the group became popular he kept patting his own back about how smart he was to match them up. Believe me, this kind of stuff gets to you after a while - personally I never take credit for anyone else's effort or idea. I just would not do that. And it gives me no personal satisfaction anyway. I think it's important to attribute things to the people with whom they originate. It's a matter of the historical record.

this is definitely a political mine field - as a matter of fact after I submitted my rock and roll manuscript to one University Press, the editor said "I like it but it won't pass political muster with my board." Not enough of the party line that rock and roll is just a white rip off - same thing happened with ANOTHER university press when I told the editor my idea of the irony of a black musician (Hendrix) who is liberated by whites musicians and audience - the exact reverse of the usual paradigm. He was so offended he basically hung up on me. it also got a rather nasty review from U of Illinois, by Burton Peretti, I later found out - I told my wife this was like losing a human rights award to Hitler - and to add to your guitarists, above, I would say also Wayne Bennett and Mickey Baker - also Pete Lewis -

don't know if I've ever told this story before, but Curley Russell was a friend of mine and years ago he told me that Donna Lee was named after his daughter. so, a few months later (maybe this is 1977) I'm in the West End Cafe. Phil Schaap says to me, "if you can stump me with some jazz trivia, I'll let you in free." so I ask him, "Who's Donna Lee named after?" and he doesn't know, so I tell him and I get in free. 6 months later I'm listening to WKCR. And Phil says, "few people know this but Curley Russell himself told me that Donna Lee was named after his daughter." pissed me off, but that's Phil - so recently I'm looking at Wikipedia under the entry for Curley Russell/Donna Lee - it says: "According to jazz historian Phil Schaap the classic bebop tune "Donna Lee", a variation on "Back Home Again In Indiana" was named eponymously for Curley's daughter." but it turns out that any idiot can edit Wikipedia - so I just added: "Schaap learned this from saxophonist and music historian Allen Lowe, who was a friend of Russell's." I'm feeling better now. No longer have the urge to strangle Schaap (though that will probably change) -

fear and loathing?

yes, Burton is great. But there is something perfect about Scotty's playing. He had just the right sound in the right place at the right time.

I'll never do it - someone will on a Charlie Parker, and I'll give it no stars and say "I hate Richie Cole."

who's gonna hold on to the whips and chains?

thanks, will check it out - and Jim R - actually, I consider rock and roll to be basically white music - if my history of rock and roll (1950-1970) ever comes out, it will describe rock and roll as a white way of thinking about black music. Which is not to say that there are not black rockers, only that I think the origin and most complex development of the music is very specifically white (hope this does not start a stampede here). Diddley is particularly important, and he is one of the few early black players in the idiom who is really stretching the boundary of the blues - Berry also, though he clearly took inspiration from hillbilly music, his whole sound and approach are very middle of the road. Diddley is in the line, I think, of the New Orleans guys, out of Dave Bartholomew, who are taking rhythm and blues and putting a Latin tinge on it. And this clave like beat (as in the Bo Diddey beat and the N.O. latin thing) is really what changes r&B to rock and roll (leads, also, to a hard four beat as opposed to back-beat drive). I disagree that the r&b and blues guys are rock and rollers - they use the terminology, but Elvis makes the music into something completely different (with the help of Crudup) and allows a whole generation (or two) of white guys to take their own liberties - now there's also Hendrix; definitely out of very specific African American traditions - but interestingly enough he faces absolute rejection from that audience, and only gets liberated when he goes to England and faces crowds of white kids (and British rockers) that's just the way I see it.

(those icons have nothing to do with anything - I put 'em there because I'm on fasstrack's ignore list; it's ok - I'm on Stevie Wonder's and Al Hibbler's too)

I don't - I will add that the strangest thing I ever heard was on an old Howlin' Wolf Memhis session - on one cut (would have to go find it) there is a classic bebop piano intro; than into a Wolf blues. The pianist is listed as unidentified, but it has to be Phineas Newborne -

just looked it up - yes, the Burns recording was 1958 - well, as they sang in that other song from the show, "I loves you Porky, though you're a pig..."

I wasn't trying to be glib, only pointing out that sometimes the simple is not so easy to replicate - and I know it seems an odd "set of dots" but it is pretty exact - Blind Blake was the prime ragtime/picker influence in the 1920s and early 1930s; Ike Everly, the Everly Brothers father, was known to have developed a picking style out of Blake (and there are later Newport recordings of Ike that show the debt to Blake); Merle Travis developed his Travis picking based in large part on the admitted influnence of Ike, whom he knew; Travis revolutionized country guitar with this complex thumb and line style; Scotty's playing was really a simpliifcation of this Travis picking, more single line, but alternating with chording - Carl Perkins picked up same - and basically, that is the early sound of Country/Hillbilly rock and roll guitar. Some went in other directions, but the Sun Records crew really caught everybody's attention, from Mike Bloomfield to Keith Richards -

didn't know they were still in business - who's in the orch? who's conducting?

it's ok - just turned 55 so I get my AARP discount -

well, if I could see your post, I might say, good idea - agreed - (I'm telepathic) -

just last night I was listening to a Ralph Burns version of Bess You Is My Woman - a 1950s Decca, Al Cohn, Marky Markowitz - personally I like words - I like talk and action - talk helps to assure that the action makes sense. It's also, in the music field as in the literary world, an intellectual partner. Problem with jazz is not too many words but too many academics speaking those words. Just my perspective. I leave the rest to Professors Kart and Nessa (school of hard bops, I think) -

I agree, actually I wasn't defending Wynton, just noting that we have some idea of Bolden, but who knows? he may have sounded like Don Cherry - or Herb Alpert -

I seem to recall that there is an interview somewhere (maybe on a Folkways LP) of Freddie Keppard's brother Louis, in which he offers a witnessing of Bolden's sound - so it is out there in space somewhere -

there's also a nice lp with Jimmy Ford-

likewise I'm sure - I just don't wanna hear the same cliches about these kids today and it sure ain't like the old days when we knew more than three chords and when musicians were musicians and when you could tell the girls from the guys and we sure paid our dues -

I dunno - I just listened to Connie Boswell with the Original Memphis 5. Seemed like THE SOURCE to me -

re: Scotty - the original strain of rock and roll guitar lineage is basically (with some oversimplification) Blind Blake, Ike Everly, Merle Travis, than Scotty/Carl Perkins. It was the creation of a sound, an approach, a way of keeping time and a tonality that separated white guitarists from the basic black blues approach. Scotty put it there when it wasn't there, and that means a lot, musically and historically. grab a guitar and try to play like Scotty - I'm willing to bet you cannot reproduce the tone, timbre, and phrasing and with any degree of musicality - it can be mimicked, but he had a very personal sound and touch - as for fasstrack saying, re Elvis: "his arrival and prominence was sort of the beginning of the end of the real quality period in American pop music" I think this is extremely wrong minded, and of a piece with the lack of appreciation of Scotty Moore - this is a very different side of American music than that which I think, with all due respect, you really have any sympathy for. It is really a part of he whole process of blues-based and vernacular songwriting as changed by mass communication, basically - and it is songwriting out of a blues/folk/country/hillbilly tradition as reconstructed by pros and as slicked up by pros. SOme of it sucks, some of it excellent, but it exists by a different technical measure, a different way of writing music and lyrics. In a way it is even more difficult than the Great American Songbook, because the genius of people like Otis Blackwell and Leiber and Stoller (and Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan) was creating so much out of so little. Beatles, too; Chuck Berry, Doc Pomus, Gerry Weil - and yes, Elvis wasn't a songwriter, but neither was Sinatra; he was no more dependent on those writers than Frank. as for "corn", there is a world of country music that is much more than that - just for a start: Buck Owens, Merle Travis, George Jones, Webb Pierce, Bob Carlisle, Jimmy Rodgers, the Carter Family, Johnny Cash, Warren Smith, Carl Perkins, Hank Williams, Hank Penny, Bob Dunn, Bob Wills, Bill Willis, Tammy Wynette, Merl Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Carl Smith, Jean Shepard, Tex Ritter, the Shelton Brothers, the Allen Brothers, Riley Puckett, Lefty Frizell, Fran Hutchison, BF Shelton, Louvin Brothers, Dr. Humphrey Bate, Clarence Ashley. Dave Macon, Sam McGhee, Gene Autry (pre 1935) - not trying to be obnoxious, but it's really like someone listening to Kenny G and deciding that jazz is simple and boring - as with jazz, you won't get it second hand, you gotta hear all those guys, and than you'll have a sense of where Elvis comes from -

anything from 1947 - Elevation, etc -

I've mentioned this before, but Raney was the only guy I ever heard Barry Harris compare to Bird - I used to ask Haig about him, but could not get much out of him on the subject - all Al would say is "he's down in Louisville. He's a nut."