AllenLowe

some irony by the way - in the new Downbeat, I think it is, Lew Tabakin takes a blindfold test and complains about Von Freeman playing out of tune - so take that, Carnival -

yes yes yes you are right I mean there's no real jazz after 1925 that damned Armstrong ruined everythiing

"Yes - I did read your post carefully and just don't believe him when he said that. No one in their right mind deliberately plays out of tune. It was his way of getting around the fact that in that respect his playing - or his sense of pitch was faulty - and he was putting you on. Of course he knew that you wouldn't call him on it. Saying "I'm following Bird's example" is so lame " READ THE FRIGGIN POST. please - I never said he told me that, dammit, I was citing some history, READ THE POST ah.....feel better now.............

it is really an amazing book, beautifully and brilliantly written, alternately sad and hilarious - as I told AJ at one point, Joe comes off as combination Ward Cleaver/degenerate junkie, likely an accurate picture. By the time I knew Joe he was off the stuff (though he always had the best pot in NYC), but still a troubled and difficult guy at times. He was generally nice to me, though he did get a bit paranoid toward the end. I think now that he was a classic manic depressive and/or bipolar type who self medicated through the years (not uncommon in those pre-diagnosis days). He could play a brilliant passage and than get suddenly lost, a problem which was related, I always figured, to things like the horse tranquilizer he told me he took with some regularity back in the '50s. But he was a funny, clever, engaging guy who told great stories and was able to laugh at himself (as the "I licked Bird's blood" story indicates).

just about CEDAR - it actually does attenuate some highs; with mulitple passes, the decrackle and de-click will both do so - the de hiss has other problems if used badly - but bad sound can have many related causes (poor A to D converters, for example). JSP, from an email I got from the owner, currently does very little of its own sound work - it mainly copies from other sources - my guess is that most of the bad de-hiss we hear these days is non-CEDAR. I can usually tell because it leaves these metallic artifacts, weird background sound (I have gotten this myself from cheap de hiss programs). The guy to stay away from is Steven Rosenthal, who has ruined some of the Alan Lomax Library of Congress stuff (and he also did the fairly recent Woody Guthrie, unfortunately). Air Show is another mastering house with mixed results, some better than other, but they often use too much de-hiss, which can be heard sometimes as a kind of "breathing" sound (the hiss recedes and than comes back in response to sound pressure). so, the deadness can be bad converters; or too may de crackle/de-click passes without upper frequency adjustment. The last also can leave some audible distortion, a kind of gutteral sound which sounds like someone clearing phlegm from the throat, and it tends to happen with sudden transients. You would be shocked to hear how much major label stuff has this, but I think it's the pressure to remove all noise, which is a big mistake, I think (listen to the opening of Weatherbird on the last Armstrong box - there's a quick flash of audible CEDAR distortion). To me the greatness of digital mastering of analog sources is that we can increase the clarity and detail (I love a good digital eq, for example). Sometimes this means increasing and than attenuating some noise, so the final product is still hissy, but the music is really there. The pressure for de-noise, also, comes largely from consumers, so you people (meaning the world) have to learn a little better how to listen and how to judge sound quality, IMHO -

well, Jaki did it right, I think. I've never heard Carter go through it -

first I just wanted to say that AJ's book on her dad, whom I knew well, is simply one of the best jazz books I've ever read - and according to Teddy Reig Argonne did not stick around because of the a union guy who was checking on the session, ,so Dizzy played piano. and there are no sessions like the ones she suggests.

Larry is absolutely right - it was always interesting to me that Johnny Carisi, whom I considered a very advanced musical thinker, hated the whole avant garde from Ornette on; for all Carisi's adventurousness he was a very schooled composer and he felt anyone who was not was faking it. But the whole "gotta know the tradition" thing is frought with problems and difficult implications, and I say this as a musician who went from Barry Harris disciple to friend-of-Julius- Hemphill player and composer - as I told someone once, when I started to get away from chord changes I felt I was being disloyal to Barry, whom I had gotten very close to; every time I played in any kind of open form, I felt like, musically speaking, I was cheating on my wife, if you know what I mean. But I took heart from guys like Bob Neloms, who was deeply schooled but not afraid to go off in any creative direction. And Dave Schildkraut (yeah the guy I keep talking about) said something that amazed me once. He said that Joe Henderson had told him he never felt like a true jazz musician as long as bebop was the standard, as he never felt adequate to the style - but that Trane freed him up and showed him he could be a jazz musician on other terms. So there's always a different way of doing things. I hate to say this but Hemphill, one of the most amazing musicians I ever played with, who could drive a band with his sound and time, who was a composer of the stature of Duke Ellington, and who was 10 times the saxophonist I was, was not particularly good at chord changes (to my surprise I handled them better than he, and I don't mean that as a boast. He just did not think in those terms, though he could write harmonically complex pieces). But look - Duke Jordan couldn't play stride (and neither can Barry Harris). Cripple Clarence Lofton was a better blues player than a gaggle of jazz pianists. I don't remember the first chord to the bridge of Sophisticated Lady, but I've worked with some heavy hitters. I can barely read music but Randy Sandke, one of the most sophisticated musicians I know, asked me at a recording session who had harmonized a particular tune (it was my tune and my changes and he was very complimentary, to my great delight). I know a popular "free" drummer who cannot keep straight time. And I once played with one of the greatest pianists in jazz who sounded, on the blues, like a bad lounge player. So not everybody can do everything. A lot of the old blues guys, who to me are god-like in their expressive powers, play 13 and 17 and 19 bar blues - the point, as Neloms used to say to me, is "it's not what you play it's what you say."

well, there are a few records that give a sense of what he could do - but still they are records, and the people who speak of him so highly-Bill Evans, Dizzy, Mel Lewis, McLean, Getz, Triglia, et al, are the guys who knew him after hours; and as Loren Schoenberg told me, Mel Lewis never said anything much about other musicians but was ecstatic in his reaction to Dave. Still there are strong samples on the Fresh Sound stuff (ask Larry Kart about the second Handy session) and the Honey Dew. And the concert I recorded has many incredible moments. There was a young guy who was a bebop fanatic in New Haven whom I invited to that concert, and his jaw was literally hanging open afterwards. He said it was the closest he would ever get to having the experience of being on 52nd Street at the creation, and he was right (it helped that Curly Russell was in the audience; Dave had something to live up to). Also, how many guys had Lester Young go out of their way to say, hey, sit in with me? Also, Dizzy kept offering him a recording session; Davey turned him down three times - the last time, Dizzy said, "sorry Dave, I tried, but three strikes you're out." He had some trouble in the recording studio, it is true - his attitude toward playing was very much like Sonny Rollins - a perfectionist, perpetually dissatisfied. But listen, on the song Footnotes, as I may have already mentioned, to his solo. I have never, in my life, heard a more rhythmically complex solo. His brilliance is maybe more subtle than some, as he played with an incredible sense of forward harmonic and rhythmic momentum - but I have no doubt he was one of the greats -

Hitler: Would He Support the Stimulus Plan?

good point - it's seance time -

no - that's not what I said - he played that way intentionally - there is absolutely no question about that; re-read what I wrote - he KNEW he was playing that way, he made a conscious tonal choice -

Mein Kampf

well, there's more - let us not forget Bix Beiderbecke - true genius, as was Jelly Roll Morton.

Davey, as he told me, was a bit uncomfortable on the Miles date, because Weinstock was riding him about working with Kenton (it wasn't hip among the beboppers) and so he tried to wing it without taking enough time to really learn the tunes, just to show Weinstock he could play - he's brilliant, however, on the two Honeydews, which allow him to stretch out - I also recorded him in 1978, and he sounds incredible at times - would also recommend the two George Handy dates (now on Fresh Sound); there's some amazing stuff there - there's also a good Ralph Burns date though, as Triglia told me, Dave was mad about something or other and played intentionally out of tune (though Burns still voted for him in the Encyclopedia of Jazz poll as his favorite alto after Bird) - I want to add, also, that Coltrane was also an admirer of Dave - not a bad fan club, all in all, to have - Trane and Jackie Mclean, Stan Getz and Bill Evans and Dizzy Gillespie -

Al Hibbler Meets Ray Charles: (did they use mapquest?)

Helen Keller: Can You Hear Me Talkin' to Ya?

he's a helluva pitcher, too - glad he picked up a new profession - it beats beer distributor -

understood - but that's a bit different from several of the major figures of post-War jazz all telling you that a single musician is one of the greatest they've ever heard -

to get back to the genius thing, Jaki Byard truly qualifies as well - he was playing "outside" music in the early 1950s in Boston, could do anything, work with anyone. Always ahead of the rest -

well, yes and no - too complicated a discussion for this thread. I only wanted to point out that he was a true genius, and there have been few like him, to be regarded by Getz/Lewis/Evans/McClean/Bird/Young/Gillespie as a major player, so I think he qualifies (another of his fans was Ralph Burns). I have heard Dave play phrases that were other-worldy. Scary guy. Triglia I have not spoken to in some time, though he think he's still alive (he would be 85, I think). This is a good reminder for me to call him.

actually the daughter died in a car accident, in an auto driven by a boyfriend that Dave and his wife had been worried about. After this Gloria (his wife) took to bed and never got out. Dave played club dates over many years (I went to a Bar Mitzvah he did at the Oriental in Brooklyn) but only sporadically - we were pretty close friends for a while, from about 1976, I knew his wife and sons - though I did not see him after about 1992, as he got increasingly paranoid and accusatory. A while after his wife died he moved to Coney Island (he had lived close to the Belt Parkway, I used to go there but cannot remember the address) - my point was that, relative to what could have been quite a jazz career (and Triglia told me that even Bird praised Dave but told Triglia that he predicted Dave would walk away from it all; "it's hard for a white man do do what Dave wants to do" Bird said, interestingly enough) he did very little, started doing only weddings, even turned down an offer from Norman Granz to go on tour with that whole unit (and Granz also wanted to record him with strings). I had a very long talk with Bill Evans one night about Dave, and he was bewildered by Dave's desire to walk away from it all. AS was Mel Lewis. Mel, who was begruding in general with praise, just shook his head and said "wow, Dave Schildkraut" when I brought Dave up on a job I did with him in Connecticut. And even Lester Young came over from Birdland one night to hear Dave play for a strip show near the club, and invited him to sit in with him back at Birdland. Dave of course turned him down -

Davey definitely qualified - picking up the horn about once a year and sounding better than anyone - and a few quotes: "Dave was one of the greatest saxophonists I ever heard" -Stan Getz "The only saxophonist who caught the rhythmic essence of Bird was Dave Schildkraut" - Dizzy Gillespie "There were only two saxophonists who came out of bebop who didn't copy Bird - Lee Konitz and Dave Schilldkraut" - Bill Evans "He had more soul than any horn player I ever heard" - Art Pepper "He was one of my favorite players" - Jackie McCLean not bad for a guy who played in public, relatively speaking, for about 20 minutes total -

no no no no no no no guys, Jackie played that way intentionally, and personally I like the way it sounded - you have to understand a little history here, as he was really working from Bird as a frame of reference, and Bird played sharp a lot - Jackie was just taking it a step further. To suggest it was some kind of auditory problem is really silly. I knew Jackie, and he had all his faculties intact -

can only speak of the ones I've known: Dave Schildkraut, Jaki Byard. Probably Julius Hemphill.