AllenLowe

no no no - the funny thing was that he worked with two blind pianists - Foster and Hayward (who looked nothing alike) - and kept calling one the other on the gig -

well, it's good, but it's no Hot Dog -

not as I recall; maybe very light skinned -

Chicago? isn't that near the Bronx?

Buster was one of the few verifiable and direct influences on Bird, and those recordings are the best evidence -

should mention - based on the tune "You're Driving Me Crazy" -

written and arranged, let us note, by the great Eddie Durham - one of my all time favorite people and major if too-little-known historical figure - though I think he's in episode 27 of the Ken Burns Jazz documentary -

Heyward was an interesting guy, played solo for years at the Town Crier - could really play when he wanted to but tended toward the cocktail, as Larry mentions - though one night I was in there and somebody asked him to play The Lady Is A Tramp and he snorted "that's for squares" and just kept going on something else - another funny story - Heyward was blind (no, that's not the funny part) - one night he was playing wiht Percy's group at the West End, and Percy kept introduciing him as Herman Foster, who also sometimes played there with Percy and who was also blind - there was a group of us in the audience, and every time Percy made this goof we almost fell over with trying not to let anyone see how hard we were laughing - hope this isn't offensive, as I still find this amusing -

Percy was the real thing -

Al Haim, and I think it's the same guy if he plays alto sax, threw me out of his office at SUNY Binghamton in 1973 -

about 6 am when the dog swats me with his paw that he's hungry - feed him and its time to go to work; my wife finds this amusing as for many years, and when she met me, I routinely stayed up to 4 am and slept till noon

well, it's basically available from my basement - if you're interested I can sell it for $6 shipped - my paypal address is alowe5@maine.rr.com - (sorry guys, if this is inappropriate) -

Goldberg Goldberg and Goldberg (hope I'm not breaking the rules; from an old Henny Youngman joke)

yeah, Francis told me recently he was going to stop writing for the Voice and make a go at the Trane book -

conspiracy subliminal hint

just for comparison, Percy France plays a beautiful version of I Should Care on the CD I put out that has him "live" with Dick Katz and Jeff Fuller - perfect balance between the romantic and the aggressive, perfect and unselfconscious phrasing -

allright, now I'm convinced - my next CD will be an organ-trio recording: "Lowe plays Lou" - or: "White Like Me: The Funky Honky." or "The Soul-Way of the O-Fay." now if I can only get Alfredson to take a vacation in Maine -

virtually everything in it is an advertisement - articles, reviews; honestly, I feel it's quite degraded, no integrity whatsoever. An occasionally interesting article, however -

well, it's interesting, because this also relates to my current fatigue with "oral histories" which, to me, represent the cheap and easy way out - no research, no understanding, no verification, no integration, you name it, a mindless technique: stick a microphone in front of someone and than transcribe it, and regard the results as the gospel truth.

well, not really; we can't compare the two tests unless we know what they were listening to; sorta like if you gave me two recordings, Sonny Sharrock and the 1910 Fruitgum COmpany; just because I id'd the white guys doesn't mean the same as if someone else mis-id'd Gene Quill and Ernie Henry - different era, different styles; so we would have to know who the bands were with the second (Black Jazz) test -

I guess that's what they mean by sheets of sound -

no problem with it here - I just think the concept of false consciousness tends to deny imagination at times (brings me back to 1973 and debating politics with campus radicals who thought I was a lost and foundering liberal; well, most of them became business majors) - nothing wrong with the idea of false consciousness because it does explain certain kinds of political behavior; only problem is when it becomes doctrine. sorta like Crouch accusing Anthony Davis of not being black enough - or Cynthia Ozick who attacked certain Jewish writers for not being Jewish enough. It imposes a certain sociological burden which can be unfair. and it leads, on racial issues, to all kinds of skewed logic (thinking of Roy Eldridge's blindfold test in which he misidentified a number of musicians by race, AFTER saying he could always tell the difference between a black and white musician). ultimately for great musicians there is no real simple sociological explanation - for Bird, for Ornette; products of their enviornment, yes, but both much more and much less. If sociology was the answer there would be 10,000 Charlie Parkers and 1,000 Julius Hemphills and 20,000 Louis Armstrongs. Donaldson is a fine musician, just lacking in that extra dimension -

and leave Chuck alone, he's like Monty Burns, will live until at least age 200.

you make me sound rational - and that's not an easy thing to do - I haven't looked at this thread in a while, but I honestly don't think Pepper ever had a real Coltrane influence - for him, like a few beboppers who never really "got" the Trane technique, it was really just a matter of superficial gesture; for Pepper it was an occasional slur on the horn, a badly placed squall here and there. Don;t mean to sound cruel, and I know I've posted a few times before about this (probably even on this thread); like Chuck I spent a little time with Pepper late in his career (maybe 1976 or 1977); nice guy, with the maturity of a 12 year old, still a brilliant altoist when he put his mind to it, though a certain narcissism seemed, to me, to have taken over his playing at times (listen to the ballads on the Vanguard set); classic junky behavior I must say with regret, in which the dependence seems to produce (and this may be confusing cause and effect) such a deep sense of self-centeredness that even artistic perspective is lost. Interestingly, as an aside, on the day I met him, in Boston, he had just fired Jaki Byard from his weekend band (I think Jaki's playing was a bit too abstract for him; somewhat ironic given his desire to reach outward musically).

in my day the accusation of "false consciousness" indicated a lack of understanding of one's rightful or correct sociological place; like a black person who wasn't consciously black enough, or a working person who had little understanding of his own class status. While there was often some real truth in such things (as in George Wallace's large working-class following) this perspective did not allow for imagination or certain kinds of historical transcendence. The result was a kind of schematicism, an expectation that people follow certain social scripts. As I mentioned before, my belief is that most art describes an alternative history; so I have no problem with a rich guy playing the blues, for one example. And I don't think the middle class can't be funky, only that it usually fails for lack of imagination -