AllenLowe

I hate everybody. nothing personal -

thanks - the rhythm section at my wedding (1982) was Leroy, Skinny Burgan (a great bassist who had worked with Hampton's band in the '50s) and Dick Katz; nice group -

I'm afraid to go to sleep at night - who's next?

wilbur ware, wilbur ware - saw him only once, at the Village Vanguard, 1969 or 1970 - but I can still hear that bass -

I no longer take my meds - I wouldn't hurt a fly.... but if Kart doesn't give me back those brilliant rhymes, I may have to kill something larger -

well, you know, I have, sitting in my basement (haven't had a chance to fully play it through) a collection of really old experimental electronic music, from the 1920s on - a few Italians, etc. Will look tonight and report back -

to address the question, if I may, I have been a Bud Powell fanatic since about 1968 - and what I love the best is the ballad and medium-tempo stuff, where you can really hear him think - the mediums of the 1946-1949 studio dates (including the Sonny Stitt Prestige and the earlier Bebop Boys); Bud had the most distinctive and amazing time; he was like a high wire walker who seems to falter and stumble but who is really just playing with the audience - it Bud's case he is playing with the time - listen particularly to Somebody Loves Me from '47; for ballads: Polka Dots and Moonbeams and Over the Rainbow (I actually do not think the Bud of 1947 was a good ballad player - that started in about '49) - but what makes him Bud is his time and his touch. He has a sound unlike any other, dark and percussive (not unlike Monk, interstingly). Simply the most profound jazz musician ever, IMHO -

Stevie Wonder still sucks -

it's interesting because I have been doing some basement recordings with my masterlink, to 24/96; even with the machine's built-in converters there is a major improvement over 16/44 (or 48); until I did an A/B I had no real idea, and now it's hard to go back -

by the way I can't stand Stevie Wonder - corny music, corny lyrics, annoying singing. blech

yes good stuff - and earlier, pre-1933 -

don't want to annoy anybody, but I wish someone would do an early Benny comp - like pre-1934. Personally, I find his early playing full of life and depth, the post-1935 stuff slick and pat - though I have tried to like it -

"until you hit the 1980s, that is. For some reason, that decade brought out the worst in just about everyone. " actually, I did some of my best work in the '80s - this thread IS about me, right? I was afraid to read the first post -

personally I love the late 1930s, early 1940s Victors - and particularly the ones with Ladnier, whom I believe is one of the greats -

thank you for posting that - I remember him well -

b.s., sorry, that story about Ellington begging for $10 has as much credibility as the one about the Rolling Stones watching Muddy Waters paint the Chess offices - completely fabricated. Anybody who knows anything about Ellington knows that it's utter invention - as for treatment of the band - I am SURE it was a great time and better than what they experienced before - but how much publishing did ANY of the guys receive? it's not an either/or - they were discarded rather shabbily, and more than one said that at the time - as for collaboration on compositions, read the history of the band - Frank was the auteur but he could have not sounded like he did without that original band - and, ANYWAY, that's not what I said - my point was that, since they were not going to get mechanicals or publishing, it behooved Zappa (as it behooved James Brown, Ray Charles, and Elvis) to recognize how much they had allowed him to shape his ideas in the very beginning, how they contributed to his stardom. None of which he did. And those guys were left scuffling when he dumped them, don't fool yourself -

Zappa definitely thought his first band was technically lacking, and liked the fact that the newer guys could just read through and play the stuff - classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees. The real unfortunate thing about that first band, I've always thought, is that they were the group that put Zappa on the map, they were essential to his whole ethos, and they were great, and when he was becoming a star he fired them. And I'm pretty sure he got all the publishing money, even though you can make the argument that so much of that early stuff was collaborative (of course you than get into an Ellington-type argument here which says, what did these guys do of equal quality away from the band?) But I've always though that, with groups like this, the leader has an obligation to offer some kind of stake when he becomes wealthy. Unfortunately it almost never happens - think Ray Charles, James Brown, Elvis - they never looked back and sidemen be damned, they were just sidemen, the musical equivalent of working stiffs.

hey I've been taking lipitor for 10 years - did wonders for my HDLs but my hair is rapidly falling out - oh well -

thanks Larry, will have to copy and paste that into my intro - well, not exactly, but you've earned a significant footnote - don't want to derail this thread but suffice to mention that whenever I try to explain something BEFORE Larry Kart explains it, I always wondered why I bothered, as his explanation always make more sense to me than mine does -

well, it's better to have loved and loft, than never to have loved at all - **** ****Groucho Marx

the best Joe Maini on record is on those band recordings -

I'm only speaking for myself, but I think Larry is referring to the vocal origins of African American (and most American vernacular) music, and the kind of flexible tonality that kinda puts the notes between the notes, that sees melody as a free-form thing, as a matter of sound and sonority as much as conventional western diatonic scale/intervals -

hey Chris - I actually played at Jazz Vespers with a group of guys (all high school age) - we went on REALLY late - might have been 1969 - I remember very little abut that night except Howard McGhee played, and it wasn't in the church part, he played in some open space -

Larry - thanks for re-printing that Ornette article - your remarks about pre-tonality have been on my mind since I first read it - as a matter of fact, I just started writing a book on the blues, and I'm still thinking about it, though I think I disagree slightly; I think I would say that what you perceive as pre-tonality is really a very common practice among early African American musicians, as in a vertical approach to improvisation, almost a stationery way of playing as opposed to the classic and more typical linear approach; and that the jazz musicians who do the blues best tend to have applied this vertical approach to linear/horizontal methods, to have retained their vertical-ness even in the face of linear improvisation (and ornette's playing is quite linear, I think). I am working on this is in the intro to the new book, which is basically a 20th century narrative of the blues and cuts across all basic popular/vernacular genres. I digress, but thanks again for articulating that about Ornette - it was a major stimulus for my mind, deadened as it is by Maine life -

interesting pianist, too -