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AllenLowe

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Posts posted by AllenLowe

  1. Max Roach Health

    in Artists

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    look, Max has a real history, and he cleaned himself up considerably after the 1940s-1950s (a quote from a pianist I know: "when you were walking down the street and you saw Max coming, you crossed the street.") Still, I think we jazz people tend to overlook some of this stuff, and I don't think that's right. And yes, he did beat up Abby Lincoln.

  2. Don Byas

    in Artists

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    I will say, respectfully, that to consign Don Byas to "second chair" is utter nonsense - he is one of the GIANTS of the tenor, and you are looking at the wrong period to realize this. Listen to the Savoy's from middle 1940s - some with Max Roach. Amazing stuff, influenced Sonny Rollins. Harmoncally very advanced, predicting bebop clearly. The 1960s stuff is interesting, but has an odd tension that is never really resolved - I think his problem was that like a lot of ageing musicians, he was worried about keeping up with the times and was trying to change his whole rhythmic approach. I even recall remarks he made about Coltrane which indicated a clear jealously, based on the fact that, as he knew, Coltrane was very influenced by him, as were hundreds of tenor players -

  5. Max Roach Health

    in Artists

    Posted

    I have great respect for Max musically, tempered, however, by the fact that he is another jazz/woman beater - if you don't believe me, ask Abby Lincoln. This stuff has been swept under the rug too much when it comes to jazz musicians (thinking also about Miles and Ben Webster) -

  6. Arthur Miller died.

    in Miscellaneous - Non-Political

    Posted · Edited by AllenLowe

    His adaptation of Enemy of the People was a complete perversion and misunderstanding of Ibsen - I like the Crucible, but it was based on a fundamentally inept parallel with the McCarthy era - as Eric Bentley has pointed out, while there were, indeed, no witches in Salem, there were Communists in the US. Which is not, before you jump to any conclusions, a justification of McCarthyism - it is just to point out that Miller did not have the vision to come up with an allegory that made actual sense. On the other hand it is his best play. Death of a Salesman has power, but it is, finally, a cloying domestic drama. After the Fall, as I said, is a mess and intellectually dishonest, poorly written and full of post-Marilyn apology and rationale. There are some other bad ones: View from the Bridge, The Price (which does have some good writing), Incident at Vichy. He also wrote some appallingly bad short stories. His ouvre is not a distinguished one.

  12. Digital audio question

    in Audio Talk

    Posted

    I don't have experience with that particular program, but I will say I have yet to hear a program where normalizing and using digital means to control peaks works very well - the problem is that the program just looks at the wave form and doesn't really hear it. The best way, in my opinion, is just to do the whole thing by ear -

  17. Arthur Miller died.

    in Miscellaneous - Non-Political

    Posted

    sorry, feeling defensive - the only people on the elevator (at Madison Square Garden) were Hank Jones, Monroe and Miller, so it's not really "in public." Remember, also, she was in the middle of filming The Misfits, which Miller had written for her - so they clearly still had some relationship. Jones repeated this story to me on two occasions, so I doubt there's any question it happned -

  22. Arthur Miller died.

    in Miscellaneous - Non-Political

    Posted

    well, I do think he was over-rated and a mediocre writer - After the Fall is one of the worst things ever written by a writer with a reputation. He also did some horrendous things to Monroe - as a matter of fact this has a jazz connection, as Hank Jones told me this some years ago - Jones played the piano for Monroe at the Madison Square Garden birthday party for JFK at which Monroe sang the famous version of happy birthday - afterwards Jones was in the elevator with Monroe and Miller; she was drunk and Miller hit her hard -

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