AllenLowe

Burt Williams Annette Hanshaw oldies but goodies - they need to go through their vaults and put out whatever thay have - though this will never happen while I'm alive (of course I'm not feeling too well today so this could be sooner than we think)

one also might make the argument that he might have lived another ten years without the constant travel - just a thought -

hey Chris, I may be alone here, but I'd like to see more of Lil on that band and Keppard -

just listen to it in a basement with bad acoustics - that adds a lot of bass -

Rick - read my essay a few pages back - I know you're a busy guy, but I've said pretty much the same thing - I would also add that just because most of what he did may have been his own choice, doesn't mean it was the right choice - the All Star Bands are, I agree, much better than touted, but personally I can't listen to more than one recording of that stuff every few months, as it drags - much better were the band things on the musical autobiography. Also, I'm willing to bet that one of the prime reasons he was on the road all the time wasn''t just love of audiences but that, in those days, well paid as he was, musicians' earning did not compare to current day, even adjusted for inflation -

interesting stuff - Peter is a sharp guy, used to be a book review editor at the Times, not sure if he still is-

I certainly agree in many respects - I cited, in another thread, the story of Gil Evans being kicked out of Joe Glaser's office because there were, definitely, some intersting areas that were never explored. At that later point Armstrong could have done just about anything he wanted to do, and a Gil Evans collaboration might have been quite good - on the other hand, Armstrong DID make late recordings with Ellington. There are about 2 albums worth, one of which is as good as anything Louis did in the last 20 years of his life.

those are some of the best - when that stuff came out on a Decca LP, Dan Morgenstern's notes almost singlehandedly rehabilited that era of Armstrong's work -

Louis who? but seriously, if I may, I would like to post something from my upcoming (2010) history of rock and roll:(please pardon some of the formatting quirks as I transfer it from a word file) ELVIS AND ARMSTRONG By now it’s a given that Louis Armstrong created something of a revolution in American popular music, changing the way we, as a musical country, hear rhythm in its very direct relationship to both composed and extemporized melody. Less well understood, by not just pop people but by the jazz world itself, is how closely connected Armstrong was to the spirit of not just rock and roll but to one of rock’s founders, the late, lamented King of rock and roll, Elvis Presley. The unfortunate truth is that, in the mainstream, post-modern jazz world, there is general agreement on two things: 1) Louis Armstrong is a God, an icon of icons who stands (or, maybe, sits) at the summit overlooking the kingdom of music; and 2) Elvis Presley is (was) a peanut butter and banana sandwich eating gag, a hip-swiveling - but not hip - ephemeral teen fad, a running joke, really, among those who value quality in music. To jazz people he’s also much more, and much worse, because he almost single-handedly brought down the House of Good Music, he brought, to carry the metaphor just a little further, the money lenders into the temple of jazz and forever contaminated the commercially inter-active world of music. After his arrival, according to this line of reasoning, immaturity was popular music’s continual frame of reference, pandering to the lowest or simplest common denominator. If we are to believe the jazz press from the 1950s to the present, Elvis Presley’s greatest crime was to ensure the growing and continued commercial hegemony of rock and roll, a music that has, particularly since his recorded debut in 1954, been the dominant strain of American pop. Before Elvis there was Swing and bop and there was pop balladry, not to mention rhythm and blues, a respectable African American form if, to the jazz way of thinking, sometimes a bit repetitious and frivolous. There was also, and most important of all, Louis Armstrong, who represented the golden age of American jazz and American popular music, with the shining beauty of his golden horn and the great transformative power of his singing voice. After Elvis there was only, essentially and unfortunately, Elvis, and than, later, the Beatles; and though Louis carried on past the fall of the House of Good Music, jazz after Elvis was never the same, its audience share fatally reduced to permanent marginality. (And if Elvis was jazz’s 1950s whipping boy, the Beatles served this purpose for the 1960s. Read, for example, the jazz drummer Arthur Taylor’s book of interviews with other jazz musicians, Notes and Tones. One of its most important and recurring themes is how the Beatles, with their masturbatory three chord abominations, completed the youth-dominated ruination of the business.) Now it’s true that not everyone in jazz feels this way; many of today’s young retro modernists (thinking of the likes of Bill Frisell, Don Byron, Brandon Ross, Marc Ribot, Wayne Horvitz, and John Zorn), are of the generation that grew up with rock and roll as their main point of reference, and they understand and respect not only rock but country music. But someone like Wynton Marsalis has made sure to re-enforce at every turn, among his followers, the point that nearly anything short of jazz is just that, short of jazz, historically transient and shallow, fun to listen to, perhaps, but just the kind of passing fancy that a mature person outgrows. Pop, rock, and country music, in this view, instead of being part of a great continuum which does, indeed, also encompass jazz, are historical aberrations, unfortunate musical digressions and cultural dead ends. They are the illegitimate, misguided children of the American vernacular, worth a quick historical glance, perhaps, and even, on occasion, some sociological consideration, but never a real or serious listen. Louis Armstrong is the source of all virtue, we are told, because he is not just jazz, he is American music, hillbillies, big-haired rockabillies, and makeout-obsessed teenyboppers be damned. Now just what is wrong with this worldview? A lot of things are wrong, and they’re not all the fault of jazz critics and musicians. The world of rock and roll has its share of blind spots as well, many of its writers afflicted with historical tunnel vision. There is a pervasive sense in the literature of rock that every musical expression in the world is merely a function of rock and roll history, not to mention a belief (in academic circles) that convoluted notions of sociology will rescue the music, as though, lacking certain credentials, it desperately needs rescuing. Rock and roll music is rarely allowed to stand on its own in any purely musical sense; rock and roll journals load it up with glib and hopefully hip tie ins to lifestyles and trends, and academics, in need of peer justification, tend to weigh it down with jargon and incomprehensible phraseology, interminable tomes for which the operative buzz word is “contextualize.” But it’s not only academics who fail to see the big picture in real-life terms. Most popular approaches to jazz history depict the deeply American character of that music. They tell us, with great accuracy, that the music called jazz could only have happened here, in a land of great ethnic and cultural convergence, of cataclysmic social stratification and bizarrely juxtaposed racial conflict. They fail to note, however, that not just jazz but things like country music and rock and roll are also distinctive creatures of the great socio-historic conflagration of modern times. And rising from the ashes we see not just Louis Armstrong but Elvis Presley who, in his way, was every bit as revolutionary. The truth is, in the overall professional and musical picture, Louis Armstrong and Elvis Presley had much more in common than not. Both men emerged, in their earliest years, with musical styles that were inseparable from their socially undesirable and underground, working-class origins, and both worked hard, later on, having achieved great initial success, to find a middle ground reconciling their own personal, roots-laden instincts with real-world commercial considerations. And both came, not coincidentally, from the South, a region which has mid-wifed nearly all, if not all, of our popular music. And it is the South (not just New Orleans) that is the common denominator of not just early jazz but most other offshoots of the peculiar African-American genius for musical transformation, like ragtime, the blues, white hillbilly music, and rock and roll. Our problem, however, if that we have difficulty reconciling our image of Southern social backwardness with the ingenious creations of its citizens, particularly the white ones. If Elvis was forever a hillbilly greenhorn, a country bumpkin in the minds of people who had a particular distaste for his music, well, than, Armstrong was regarded in much the same way when he first came to New York in the 1920s to play with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra. Neither man, through professional thick and thin or the prerogatives of international fame, ever lost his basic country innocence or humility, though Presley was, of course, much more the tragically flawed hero. And there is no doubt that Presley, with his intuitive acceptance of a broad universe of music, and ability to absorb and integrate all kinds of musical styles from Tin Pan Alley to the blues to country music, grew and shed as many musical skins as Armstrong, who spent the 1950s in constant search of new musical sources and fresh musical angles (and who found them in ways surprisingly similar to Elvis). Each wanted to find as large an audience as possible, and neither felt, contrary to some critical speculation, that, in doing so, he had abandoned his musical principals in any way. As a matter of fact, just the opposite was true, the careers of each representing a fierce and unrelenting dedication to musically populist principles of the first order. Both have been criticized in similar ways, for veering, musically, from the paths which first established their great reputations. Armstrong went from what seemed like purely jazz settings to a cushioned seat in front of ever-larger bands, singing songs that seemed more and more frivolous to some his more dedicated followers, in settings contaminated, to their way of thinking, by background choruses and a middle-of-the-road pop repertoire and sensibility. Little did they understand that all of this was less, for Armstrong, a matter of commercial concession than of self image; in his own eyes he was jazz’s ultimate everyman, the embodiment of the music’s deepest popular potential. There was no one he couldn’t reach with a song. And so it was with Presley who, leaving the relative quiet of Memphis, Tennessee, where he made his first recordings, found himself in a much larger musical universe. Instead of running away from it he reached out to it, because it matched his own musical fantasies, of a world in which he was a rock singer, country musician, and pop crooner, all in one. With the assistance of assorted record producers and latter-day song pluggers, publishers who fervently wished to have a song associated with the new King of rock and roll, it was a fantasy he was allowed to live out. In truth, both men were allowed, though the oddball courage of their own musical convictions, to live out a particular fantasy of American (and world) mega-stardom. They were able to do so because when it came to song both were simply fearless. Elvis sang country, gospel, rock and roll, soul music, inspirational ditties, pop ballads, and more. One of Armstrong’s most effecting post-1960s recorded performances was his rendition of the country staple Almost Persuaded, and it was no accident that he had recorded, in the 1950s, two Hank Williams songs, Cold Cold Heart and Your Cheatin’ Heart. Those are two things you are unlikely to hear Wynton Marsalis play in any Armstrong tributes, but they are beautifully done by Louis, who, ultimately, was even more adventurous than Presley. Which means that, maybe, those in the jazz world who have made such a fetish of Armstrong and his legacy are really right, if for some of the wrong reasons: he was, indeed, American music, but an American music that encompassed not just jazz and classic pop balladry, but the deep and broad, and sometimes dark, underbelly of American song.

"Kind of like actors becoming their own producers?" yes, exactly - and I'll tell you a story Bill Triglia told me about Sonny - Bill's point was that Rollins, who's a good guy and generally self-effacing, is really the most competetive guy on earth. This is not meant as a put down, but I think he is in denial about his own ego; he's the best and he knows it - Triglia is at a jam session in New Jersey in the mid-late '50s at some club; there are something like 10 tenor players on a tune; Sonny refuses to go on, lets every tenor player go ahead of him, quite consciously, waives each one on, one after the other; "than he gets up and wipes them all out, outplays them all put together until the audience forgets there was anybody there but Sonny." the point of my telling this is that Sonny is, I think, much more conscious of his own power than he lets on. But also curiously insecure, as we know - one night he's playing at the Vanguard, having a mediocre night, can't get going - he's wandering the stage, playing a solo intro that goes on a bit to long - he opens his eyes, sees Bob Mover in front of him; he says "is there a problem?" then closes his eyes and keeps playing - complicated guy -

"I sometimes wonder to the degree that Armstrong's ministrelsy-type clowning was a conscious play at minstrelsy, as opposed to just natural clowning from somebody who grew up surrounded by the tradition of ministrelsy...Of course, Armstrong's routines were more consciously designed for mixed race or white audiences, which is maybe where the most important difference lies" that last part is very, very, wrong - race had nothing to do with it - in my opinion it was a very hip appropriation of a persona that was part put on, part insider reference/humor, ingenious in that it worked for both "insiders" and for general audiences of both races, a very brilliant adaptation of the BLACK minstrel/medicine show/vaudeville personality - not unlike Dizzy Gillespie, if in a much different way. but it is a grave mistake to assume that Armstrong was dumbing down for white audiences; the truth is, after everything else, he was a real mensch who, in addition to having these deep theatrical roots, was a nice guy who did not want to leave anyone behind, who wanted to reach as broad an audience as possible. Nothing wrong with that.

"Is he horizontal or vertical while he's speaking?" he's in the bucket -

no wonder that women is dizzy - all the blood must be going to her head -

Ding, dong, the witch is dead...

whenever I look at one of Glaser's letters I can't help thinking of how Armstrong told Gil Evans he was interested in making a recording; he told Evans to go see Glaser, who kicked him out of the office because he'd never heard of him -

thank you, geeks - there's a great future for you guys in circus work -

wait, my house is only 80 years old -

wait, Ithought Norway and Holland were the same - sorta like Germany and Austria - or the US and Canada - or Madagascar and North Carolina -

now we're talking - how about one of you computer geeks posting some sound samples?

well, sometimes late at night, after I've smoked enough tea, taken enough acid, shot enough horse, scarfed down a little meth and chased it all with a nice bottle of muscatel, I, too, speak with Mr. Bolden - unfortunately I can never remember the next morning what the hell he said -

thank you Larry - this is happening a bit more than I like here - I am being misquoted and than attacked for the mis-quote - but I think we have both made our points sufficiently -

well, I never said I could play blues better than Burrell - I think it was, actually, George Benson we were talking about, and my hamster can play better blues than him - as for the black lady on the bus, obviously there's no way I can duplicate her life or her means of looking at the world; I mean, if you want to look at American terrorism, start with the Jim Crow South. But I can still try to look at the world she was looking at, because I believe that, in doing so, I (and a lot of other people who have done work in this field) help to validate her own life and history. and before you jump on that, I am NOT saying it needs validation from white people like me; only that, per Dubois and Ellison, it is an attempt to redress something of that history, to make sure she is no longer invisible. In many ways her history is mine, as even Stanley Crouch might agree, given our American connection. I feel somewhat damned if I do, damned if I don't here - I ignore that history and I am ignorant, I try to dig deeply into that history and I am a usurper of it. But I do believe that my understanding of the sounds she heard is closer than that of Wynton or Stanley. To cite Ellison again, this culture is not dispersed genetically -

hmm, this is getting more complicated - however: "Allen likes to point out that history inevitably repeats itself, keeps coming back. Well yeah, in a sense it does, but not with the same old faces. It's dynamics that repeat, not people. All this micro-dissecting of stuff that's long gone, there's something Pinocchio-ish, Frankenstein-ish about it all. When Chris posts a letter from Joe Glaser, hey, that's fascinating, because it's real. You start "theorizing" about long-gone misty visages in an attempt to prove/justify/whatever something, and even if you do get it done, so what?, sorry, I've lost the notion of why I should really give a shit anymore. If this is the time to officially get off this vampire train, then I'm off. When history becomes something to constantly rehash and redefine (and again - to what end and to whose benefit?) instead of something to enjoy & propel you forwards (and to that end, kudos to Chris for his ongoing sharing of his personal collection, that stuff is fun, in the best sense!), I smell death, and I'm in no hurry to get there any sooner than I already will." 1) I've never said that history repeats itself; I said, after Philip Larkin, that it's always happening, the past is always present in the present. There's a significant difference. 2) to each his own on the uses of history - there is, however, a big difference between the way, say, Jaki Byard, and Bird, and The AACM, and Armstrong himself used it and the way Lincoln Center or the Widespread Depression Orchestra might do so. There is nothing deadly about any of these; just listen to the music. Ask Mr. Nessa about the musicians he's worked for and their attitude toward history (and not just jazz history) as something to be encountered with pleasure, not as a an ideal or a better time - just a different time, but one that still lives. 3) I understand where Jim is coming from, I think; it's like the Great Books methods of teaching, or high school histroy, in which the past is taught because it's somehow good for you - I agree that that's (middle class) nonsense; and Lincoln Center has tended to parrot that attitude. But to lump us all together is grossly unfair. in my own work I study musical history because it feeds me, it keeps me alive, it's like looking into some kind of odd mirror to see not just where we, but where I, have come from. It's fascinating, and I don't believe that, in my own music, I use it in any way that is retro or reactionary. I also think that there is nothing of the museum in my historical projects - I try to make them living, breathing, complex organisms, and this is one of the reasons my work gets regular rejection from academics and academic presses.

thanks Chris, for making sense of a lot this - On one hand, I do think it matters what we call things - in the same way it matters that certain kinds of music are jazz and certain kinds of music may be called rock and roll, because it gives us a picture of why people do things, why they sing and why they make music. It's the reason people come to this site; on the other hand there is the issue of value judgement - the Lincoln Center crew use terms like "blues" divisively, to separate it from that which they consider lesser forms of music like pop and hip hop, and in that I certainly agree with you and probably just about everybody else here. In doing so (and this is why I write) they also deny certain musicians their place in the music and in its history - so when I define Louis's blues playing as less than the blues playing of some other musicians, it is not to belittle his greatness (though Marsalis would interpret it as so) - it is only to say, hey, there is a big world of music out there, let us not use history as a club with which to beat people with whom we don't agree.

whatever happened to Susan? did he kill her?