AllenLowe

thanks - some good suggestions - also got an email from Jim Sangrey with a very nice audio clip of a Japanese singer - thanks, Jim, sorry I can't email you directly from this computer -

when this thread started, the volumes had not come out yet - but yes, volume 1 has tons of stuff from this period - though modesty prevents me from mentioning it here -

looks like she's in Britain - too far to go -

Jordan's great, but too difficult - KD Laing's number is unlisted - don't know about Liane Carroll -

I know Giacomo, worked with him a few times - yeah, I'm thinking of a certain tone and style.

let me also ask - has anyone heard Helen Merrill sing recently? Wondering how she sounds -

listening to Lucy Reed this morning, it occurs to me that the reason I like her so much (also feel this way about Helen Merrill) is that she gets to the essence of the song without artifice; I'm tired of badly executed scat and melisma, sung with bad pitch. Give me a singer who holds the pitch with purity and feeling - basically the same reason I love Sinatra. So I'm thinking, is there anybody around today, old or young (aside from Merrill, whom I've considered calling, as I knew her a bit from when she worked with Al Haig) who can sing in such a way without sounding moldy and anachronistic? Thinking about a future recording project - any ideas? It's gotta be a singer I can contact directly - through email or telephone or maybe by peeping in their front window -

I actually have read and enjoyed Balliett's work for many years - but re-reading it now I just find much of it false and artificial. Just a gut reaction - but what do you rich guys know?

does he deal at all with the black music scene in East St. Louis? (I just ordered the book) -

I'd be interested in reading it, given how few jazz books I find these days that manage to deal with social issues without an academic dryness - years ago Julius Hemphill came up to New Haven for a seminar I was conducting and did a bit of talking about BAG, but I regret that, though it was recorded, I've lost the tape and never made a transcript - Julius was not real talkative, anyway, and I don't think there was anything revelatory in what he said, but that was clearly a fascinating scene -

also reminds me that some things never change, re-nightclub owners. There's a story about when Jo Jones was working at the West End Cafe and lecturing some musicians about being on time. The owner of the place (I can't remember his name but he was universally despised) came up to him and said, "Mr Jones, I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your attitude." Jones turned to him and said "Who the hell are you?" The guy said, "I own this place." Jones said, "A nightclub owner? I don't give a fuck about no nightclub owner," turned on his heel and walked away.

gives new meaning to the old expression, "they couldn't pay me to work there." Apparently it shoud be the other way around -

good - as long as I keep getting my "frequent flyer" discount -

well, I didn't want to say it, but I was thinking about a different kind of stable - in the tradition of Jelly Roll Morton, Willie the Pimp, and Huggie Bear -

"all you writer guys hate on anyone who's successful. " funny to put his in a thread that includes praising posts about writers who have made millions of dollars - so it has nothing to do with success - and if you want to narrow it down to jazz writers, I would praise Gary Giddins, Francis Davis, Max Harrison, Larry Kart - all successful, authors of books, who have made their livings as writers (and that Kart guy is loaded with cash - though I think some of it may have come from his little stable, if you know what I mean; he doesn't wear those funny hats for nothing) -

I love Bud - and his books are great - swings, completely original, unpredictable (Balliett is nuts), good composer, too -

the cds are available, and they contain the whole text of the book - by coincidence I happen to have several thousand copies of them in my basement -

been busy witht his subject on Jazz Research, as Larry can testify - will only add: 1) though I've been polite over there, Balliett really annoys me, though he has done some very good work; problem is that after a while, it's all the same, at least to me. And I am of the post- New Novel French school that agrees with Robbe Grillet, brilliant theorist, that the metaphor is to be avoided like the plague, because it is a method of re-enforcing old and outdated ideas and images, of putting a block between the reader and true experience. It can be done well, but probably has not been done well recently. I actually would propose a ban on the use of metaphor, possibly a small fine and the chopping off of several fingers. 2) I like Ross McDonald but I remember thinking, after reading a bunch of his books, of how he repeated himself; too many plot twists based on incest or uncertain parentage, as I recall. 3) None of these guys hold a candle to Dashiell Hammiett; inconsistent as he was, Red Harvest is the masterpiece of crime masterpieces.

a little late here, but that 1928 trombonist is Mole. Definitely not Dorsey. Mole's sound and Mole's face. Any resemblance stylistically is because Dorsey got it from Mole.

thanks for posting!

I like Braxton very much personally, but he does not return phone calls, emails, or messages left with third parties -

well, Sangrey used to wear a mini-skirt in the late 1960s - I tried a shift, but was tired of the audience always undressing me with their eyes -

it's in my tool shed - actually, I had it shredded for scrap iron - all seriousness aside, thanks for the interview quotes and other insights here. I heard Williams a few times in the 1990s, and met him briefly when I booked him for a large jazz festival I was directing. I'm not saying he played badly, but he really could have been one of a number of competent drummers. I understand the reasons a musician changes style and sound, though I also think it may have been related to his personal demons, substance problems etc etc that others probably know more about than I do. I know of several other great musicians who came out the the other side of that kind of problem, somewhat intact but never regaining a former edge and brilliance, and I have my own non-scientific theories about loss of brain cells (more specifically, Joe Albany and Al Haig were two who suffered post-sobriety musical blackouts, loss of concentration and focus) -

there is no point -

Max was incredible in the early days - what some people hear as mechanisitc I hear as the soul of the machine, to paraphrase someone else; a steely steadyness that was very modern in it lack of sentimentality and aversion to quainter notions of swing. And Larry is right on target, though I associate my problems with Max's later drumming as a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to stay with contemporary trends. It sounds, especially after the 1960s, as though he's trying too hard, working self-consciously to stay with the times. But that's just the way I hear it. Interestingly enough, at the time of Roach's greatest playing he was not personally very stable (one well-known jazz educator who knew everybody will only say "Max had personal problems in those days.") Bill Triglia told me, if he was walking down the street in NYC in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and saw Max coming toward him, he crossed to the other side of the street, as he did not want to turn him down if he asked for money or some other favor. And his violence toward Abbey Lincoln is also known, showing that he was not quite the picture of mental health even in the 1960s. My impression of him, when I ran a jazz festival in the 1990s and hired his band, is that he was a nice guy, easy to work with. As for Tony Williams, I always wonder why his drumming turned so ordinary in his last years - he lost that sound, that uncanny time sense and could be mistaken for just one of many -