AllenLowe

I respect Brendel, but I wouldn't go overboard on his importance as a player. I've heard a lot of his records and they're really not much in the scheme of things. Unless you're black and have a thing for neglected white classical musicians who have 7 toes on their left foot.

interesting theory Larry, about "the objective" but I see some limitations to its application in certain modernist and post-modernist theory - one of the tenets of moderinism as I find it (and it goes back directly to Rimbaud, twists its way through Brechtian alienation, is there is Robbe Grillet's theory of the New Novel, and is abundant in Beckett) is what I call "the impersonal I," a way of writing about the first person in an objective way, as though the first person is the third person - it creates the kind of distancing that I believe is necessary to rescue art from bourgeouise predictability (and its absence is the reason I find so much contemporary fiction outdated and weirdly a-historical - but than, the last generation or two of writers grew up on TV movies and graphic novels) - this gets a little outside of our mission here, and I'll soon be lost if any real literary theorist is around, but I think objectivity can coincide with a personal lyricism, and the power of a lot of modernist and fresh literature (from Buchner/Woyzzek onward) as well as great jazz (I see Ornette as fitting the objective personal, as well as quite a few others) derives from the tension between the artist as seeing it from both the outside and the inside at the same time - the outside, objectivist perspective gives the artist a necessary distance in order to see things as though for the first time. The insider/persona/lyric aspect, to oversimplify, gives it depth and soul - in terms of this I see Wynton and his crew as being hopelessly old fashioned and stuck in history; great work offers an alternative to that history, stands outside it looking in and not the other way around. As a matter of fact I think this is a larger problem with a lot of very good jazz musicians, who lack any theoretical perspective; when they get stuck in the repetitions of the past, they, without any deep intellectual understanding of the problem, end up with no means of working their way out of these repetitions (hence the old saw about there being no second acts in American life).

weekend work: 168. If you do What you Do Eddie Cantor w/the Georgians 1/4/24 169. Bull Frong Blues Charles Pierce and His Orc w/Spanier, Teschemacer 2/28 170. Copenhagen Elmer Schoebr and His Orc e/Teschemacher 10/18/29 - guitar solo 171. Wailing Blues Tesch, Manone, Bud Freeman, Frank Melrose 1/24/30 172. Peach Tree blues Yank Rachel Sonny Boy Williamsom 1211/41 173. Violin Blues The Johnson Boys (Hayes and Prater) 2/15/28 174. What's the Matter Now Monarch Jazz Quartet of Norfolk 10/16/29 175. Let's Get Loose Clara Smith 12/31/29 176. N Blues George O'Connor 7/18/16

best part of it is that Phil Schaap actually KNEW Johann Sebastian, and has some fasinating anecdotes to tell - and you should hear him dish the dirt on CPE -

I think Larry means something else by "objective" music; I think he's talking about music that exists as a separate entity, almost as an "object de art" to be viewed in a distant and detached way - but I'll let him expound on this if he's out there -

re Alexander's comments - it has been theorized, and is probably accurate, that the minstrel depiction of blacks as comically incompetent was indeed part of the white way of dealing with fears of dark skinned people, by making them seem child-like. It also help allay fears of miscegenation and to justify racism and oppression, as though saying, look, these people aren't smart enough to be truly free or equal -

there's a bit of trickle down theory involved - as in, people will listen to Wynton, fall in love with the music and become crazed jazz fans and start buying JR Monterose CDs - doesn't happen, unfortunately, just like in the original trickle down theory. A rising tide lifts all boats only if you have a boat; otherwise, to quote Jackie Presser, "you fuckin' drown."

creative music always survives because it's like breathing to the musicians that make it - no credit should be given to Lincoln Center, however. Because it is done primarily without subsidy or any other reasonable economic support - now, see my previous post in re: whether or not the so-called progressive non profits are any better than Lincoln Center - there are many notable exceptions, I am sure, but in my direct experience they tend to look down at the independent musician; they will use him or her for small programs here and there but when it comes to major support/money/festivals they will be consigned well to the bottom of the bill. Where I live is particularly bad, but the one guy who does something tends to ignore me (yes, maybe a good thing; just posting that before somebody else does); but when he asked me what I'd been doing and I told him about my trip to NY to record with Matt Shipp, he said (and I quote exactly): "He was playing your compositions?" He was genuinely surprised; he figures if I'm any good, why do I live in Portland (I've wondered this myself)? but his attitude is NOT unusual in my experience -

discovery du jour: Eddie Cantor singing a blues with the Georgians, 1924. Transfer to come -

latest transfers: 158. Swanee Blues J Milton DeCamp 1920 159. Society Blues Kid Ory 6/22 160. Sheffield Blues Reb’s Legion Club Forty Niners 11/24 161. West End Blues King Oliver and His Orch Higginbotham/Holmes 1/16/29 162. Snag It Bunk Johnson/George Lewis 12/6/45 163. Feeling Drowsy Red Allen 7/19/29 164. Blues Bunny Berigan/Fats Waller/Tommy Dorsey/Dick McDonough 3/31/37 165. Cotton Mill Blues Wilmer Batts and the Lonely Eagles 166. Alley Rat Jimmy Blythe piano solo 3/30/28 167. Wild Man Stomp Chicago Stompers Jimmy Blythe banjo solo 3/20/31

Marty Khan's an old friend, and he was telling me these things back in the early '90s - thanks for posting all that Larry. This problem, I will say, is not just with Lincoln Center, but with non-profits who should know better - back in the '80s I was on some of the early panels of the Leila Wallace Foundation which was, at least we were told, trying to re-shape the world of jazz booking as we knew it. The idea, at least as initially described, was that Wallace would give money to the good local non-profit jazz bookers all over the USA so they could change the way business was done, by helping regional musicians to excape their own local imprisonment and help them get work elsewhere with subsidy and promo help. So guess what happened? Aside from the fact that I was kicked off the panel early on (yeah, there goes Lowe again - I got kicked off because I objected to what I could see what was happening) - the money got distributed and the same old same old musicians (even if they were on the more adventurous end) got the bookings - David Murray, Don Byron, et all. Things remained exactly the same except the non-profits now had a little bit more money to do what they were already doing. I got some people pissed off at me at the time, as I was virtually alone in my objections - and lo and behold, a year or so later Leila Wallace commissions someone to do a study of the whole project and what do they say? It was a failure because it failed to create work for less established musicians and only re-enforced what the non-profits were already doing. Gee, what a surprise - my point, I guess, is that though Lincoln Center has been particularyl destructive in this respect, even the progressives tend to retreat to the tried and true. It's one reason why there are so many disenfranchised jazz players, as even their "friends" treat them as aliens and undesirables - lotsa lip service to the independent musician, and little real service -

there's another and more destructive side to this, and I've heard it from more than a few people who book concerts and tours - the Lincoln Center Orchestra with Marsalis has become so dominant in jazz tours and events, especially for organizations that do only a little jazz, that it has sucked away financial resources that otherwise would have been used to book a wider series of events. Why? Because their fees are so high that when a typical local organization in a small to medium-size city books them (because that's all they've heard of in the jazz field and it seems easy and ready-made) the fee will than force them to do little if anything else in the season in terms of booking jazz as they rarely make any money on the event or may just tend to break even or even lose. There has consequesntly been a ripple effect in the industry, greatly reducing bookings and opportunities for other groups. This may be the worst result of all of this -

well, Buster was stiff, I think, enough technique, not too much swing - Procope (later) was the guy in that band who could play clarinet (and alto) -

MANY people believe it in essence -

George Kelly! one of my favorite tenor players - haven;t heard his name in a long time -

well, be careful, than, what you listen to, Larry - we need you to keep breathing so we Lemmings (I love to mix animal metaphors) can follow right behind -

for me it depends on whether the transformation of the idea of time is so convincing that it creates its own frame of reference and wipes away OTHER frames of reference - and with McCall, I agree with Larry. on the other hand people got real pissed off on my when I remarked once on another thread that I had trouble listening to a well-known new-music drummer because I once heard him at a local gig in New Haven trying to play straight ahead and constantly (and unintentionally) turning the beat around - I'm not sure what the larger philosophical implications of this incident are, but it bugged me because 1) if he can't do it he shouldn't try to do it and b) he had no idea it was happening, which is quite disturbing - all of this plays into the Mingus shibboleth that little kids could play this music - we all know they can't, but it's good to avoid the pitfalls of free playing if one can. Because as Ornette once (sort of) remarked, you CAN make mistakes while playing it -

this may sound strange, but when I listen to older music, unless it's really badly mastered in the original, I have no problem listening to it like people listened to it when it first came out - now, this is not a general principle for me, and sometimes it's really nice to hear something well restored that sounded like crap originally; but in general, the Prestige and Bluenote reissues sound perfectly acceptable to me in the incarnations in which I have found them on CD - another good thing about this for us old guys is that it has great nostalgia value - "hey it sounds just like it sounded on my crappy fold up record player in 1968. Now, if I could only bring back the Vietnam War and the Kent State killings and that illegal incursion into Cambodia."

can you post the lyrics?

let me add, a little more in response to Adam's question - my whole question was set as describing the difference between black minstrelsy and traditional white minstrelsy - at the center of my question was a description of the transformation, by African American artists, of minstrelsy from its old identity to its 20th century identity in tent shows and vaudeville and other traveling entertainments - I did not just drop it on him as, "hey, what's wrong with a little blackface?" I gave it a very specific context and description -

strange, as Dicty Blues was the one I picked last night for my collection - great minds think alike -

I don't think it's conscious, but I do think its from ignorance - which is even more ironic, as he frequently rails against cutural ignorance as it pertains to jazz. I think he, like many others, just does not understand and is not aware of so much of the music - and this is music that won't find you, you have to go looking for it, as you know. relative to Braxton's comment, I was visting Julius Hemphill toward the end of his life and somehow Marsalis's name came up on the TV that he had on - Julius snorted and said, of Wynton, "he's tilling the master's fields." So yes, this gets more and more ironic -

Jim - good points all, but I think that I can also make the argument that what Marsalis is trying to do is erase a whole piece of what is African American history - as I mentioned in the last post there are countless black musicians who used the new minstrelsy as a force for personal liberation, as an expansion of repertoire, as a way to, quite literally, change the cultural consciousness of America. To brush them off is to erase them from history, to degrade them in a much different way. It is like telling them that their lives were less legitimate and valid than those of more "serious" performers; their kind of comedy is a serious business and they took it seriously as professionals and artists. I want to recognize that.

Adam - I actually did, as the conversation continued, try to explain the varied implications of the term minstrelsy - I mentioned that Bunk Johnson had made his living in a medicine/minstrel show, brought up Bert Williams and his ambivalent relationship to blackface, the first black minstrel shows, talked about Lillie Mae Glover, a Memphis singer who has spoken about how these traveling shows liberated her and represented the most exciting time in her life. Also Armstrong and Fats Waller, who epitomized just how complex minstrelsy can be, He just wrote it all off as racist degredation. The problem is that he is just not aware of how complicated this thing is/was and was not willing to entertain the thought that there might be things he does not know about.

sorry, Wynton Kelly died a long time ago - go back to sleep -