AllenLowe

well, I don't believe in outing people, but I may actually die of curiousity -

let's not leave out Miles's gay lovers -

"Since the organizer is likely to have to rely on the entire jazz community in the area to get this festival off the ground, she had weigh using you and alienating a lot of the local jazz educators or cut you out and avoid that problem. Put yourself in her shoes." Huh? Local jazz educators? I taught courses and ran seminars in that area for nearly 20 years; what educators are we talking about, the high school band leaders who asked me to give guest lectures, the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, for whom I gave several talks, or the Yale Jazz band director who asked me to guest with the Yale band? Or the Connecticut Humanties Council, who funded my seminars and various other projects? Or Jackie McLean, who offered me a job teaching in the middle 1980s?

will take under advisement, Jim, but I'm not worried about this blowing up, just going on the record - and thanks, Kevin, for those kind words of support - basically I'm aggressive when I disagree with someone (like you), but conciliatory and a good guy if I agree - I ran a jazz festival for 3 years that drew approximately 100,000 people per year, hired all musicians, coordinated all city departments - yes, I must be very hard to get along with. Just talk to the people I've worked with over the years or whom I hired than, like Max Roach, James Moody, Tony Williams, Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, Freddie Hubbard - I must have been quite abrasive to have not only taken care of those guys but to have restored a reasonable pay scale for the local acts we hired (the previous promoter was paying the local bands $50 per night, flat rate - and that was for the whole group). The Hartford thing was a bunch of small minded musicians who basically strangled that city's jazz scene by grabbing all gigs and keeping everyone else out - this was common knowledge in that city and basically led to the audiences fleeing the local clubs there in the 1980s. I got more musicians working in New Haven than anyone else at that time; and I don't believe in blackballing people who disagree with you or taking credit for ideas that are not your own -

stimulation yes - but I'm in Maine - nice place to live, not much musical stimulation - Jim's right, and that was closer to my life when I recorded in the 1980s and 1990s - I was playing steadily, and was surrounded by world class rhythm sections (no hookers, though) - and recording brings out my OCD traits anyway - best thing I read was Larry's section on Ornette, about Ornette's essential revival of pre-tonal music - it fit right into my attempts at playing country music and the session went pretty well, I would say -

well, you know what they say about things that go bump in the night -

well, it's true, I was not the first to gather this material and I will say I stood on ths shoulders of some giants like John RT Davies - not to mention people like Chris Albertson or Chuck Nessa who have shown us repeatedly how to not only understand jazz history but also how to present it -

thanks Mike - it was really a question of courtesy and consideration - I lived in Connecticut for 20 years, ran one of the largest jazz festivals on the East Coast for a time, employed a lot of musicians and, as anyone who knew me will attest, was always helpful to other musicians in finding work - I never attempted, basically, to take all the work or tried to keep anyone out. (I also quadrupled the pay scale for locally-based musicians at the festival that I directed). Unfortunately, as more than one jazz player will attest, musicians tend to get a little petty when fighting for a small piece of a shrinking pie. I was happy to counsel the Litchfield people, but it stuck in my craw when they not only took my advice and idea but than hired some musicians who clearly advised them to exclude me. It's a kind of politics that is unbecoming to the field of jazz and I don't care how good a bass player Mario Pavone is but the guy needs to get some ethics - (oh no - I mentioned a name; what an unfortunate slip) -

well I'll add a somewhat ironic note to this, but I'm only speaking for myself - musicians in general do not read criticism with any eye to intellectual illumination and stimulation, or to get ideas - they usually read critics to see if the critics liked their recording - but I've always looked to criticism in all the arts I'm interested in (particularly theater, literature, and music) to engage with the form and to not only help me understand what things happen and why, but to give a good explication of the process. As a musician I find this more than helpful, and though there are only about 3 critics I trust enough to stake any of my own musical efforts on, I think, in general, it is really an intellectual (and often musical) failure on the part of jazz musicians when they have so little grasp of not only the music's history but of critical approaches to understanding and interpreting the music. This is a roundabout way of getting to my point - in about 2 hours I'm going into a recording studio for the first time in 15 years and I did what I always do before I record - look for intellectual stimulation that relates to the work I am about to do. So I was up late last night reading Larry's book, really as a way of grounding myself intellectually as I head for recording-land, to re-affirm my own musical/intellectual impulses and to calm myself or the task at hand. So critics do have an influence -

well, I think Stone is a damn good film maker, but suffers from some bad scripts - and in this one he'll suffer from the presence of Nicolas Cage, who is the WORST actor, stiff and talentless and hopelessly transparent -

just to bug Dan Gould, I am going to bump this up - buy one or I'll hold my breath until my face turns blue - and than you'll be sorry -

it is interesting to think about - Don Byron told me that as a result of Gary Giddins's big piece about him in the Village Voice he got both an agent and a record contract -

so go bump yourself -

Dan, you're really out of line in your comments - I bumped that thread because you responded to me in a way which made me seem petty and which made my comments seem insubstantial - and your comment stood for some time by itself because I was at work - so what I did was restore this thread to a position where people might understand better why I might be miffed at the Litchfield festival - any "bump etiquette" is pure BS -

some people do their best work after they die -

he's no Daniel Johnston -

did I violate the bump etiquette?

gonna bump, as I hold a grudge -

it's a little more complicated than that - when I was living in New Haven I did some work for Litchfield Performing Arts, whose director was very interested in jazz - I discussed with the director the idea of putting together a festival - we spoke about it for some time; I was running a large festival myself at the time. She told me it wouldn't work - and than basially put together the festival as I suggested it (combining concerts, educational workshops, etc; she basically pumped me for ideas and logistics) - as a working musician myself I was interested in participating, and she had also dangled, very specifically, the promise of my involvement - basically I gave her the idea and told how it should be set up - she used my ideas and than would not even return my calls once it began - I don't know if the issue was ego or jealousy or credit, but you can imagine that I was (and continue to be) a bit miffed. The other thing that happened was that she began to hire some musicians from the Hartford area who resented me for critcizing them (they had basically strangled the Hartford jazz scene by hogging bookings, keeping non-friends out, and thus killing off the whole thing; when I pointed this out once at a public jazz symposium I became persona non-grata). One in particular (intials M.P) continuously bad-mouthed me as a second-rate musician (this after I had recorded with some rather heavy people) and I'm sure this helped justify, in the director's mind, my exclusion -

It's a nice fest - however, I was the one who suggested they do it, many years ago, and put the idea into the head of the current director - who than took the idea and refused to acknowledge me or to permit me to participate -

"I was playing 'All the Things You Are' one night with Hawkins, and he played some phrase, and I realized that maybe I had idolized musicians like Bud Powell and Charlie Parker too much; because here was a musician (Hawkins) who just kept playing and learning and playing new things." -Barry Harris (ca. 1978)

did that price include shipping?

Book For Sale: Jazz Away from Home, Chris Goddard's study of Eurio jazz from the beginning. Excellent history of jazz overseas. Good interviews, nice pictures. Rare and out of print. Book is in excellent shape with a small tear on the cover. $35 shipped conus. Paypal preferred. Email me at alowe@maine.rr.com Because of my new work schedule I will return all emails after 5PM in the evening -

"his jazz hero is American composer Thelonious Monk." yes and no I would say, unless he has changed his mind in the last 40 or so years - in an old interview with Martin Williams and Dick Katz, Solal is a bit stand-offish about Monk's playing, though he admires his composing, and only acknowledges how creative a pianist Monk is at Katz's prompting ("even while he is soloing he is composing" Solal says) - but one can tell from Solal's tone in the interview that he is not really certain that Monk is a "good' pianist -

well I'd take a picture - but I'd need one of those large format cameras - or one with a wide angle lens -