AllenLowe

Thanks,Mark - I used to see him regularly when I lived in NY in the 1970s - I even wrote a piece for Downbeat on him, approx. 1976. Nice man as well as a great pianist -

For Bob Mover, get In the True Tradition (Xanadu) if you can find it -

well, maybe I am confusing things - but there's a famous shot in which Maini reveals himself over the bell of his horn (somehow I thought Bruce was involved in this but I'm not certain) -

Do you know about the famous picture with Lenny Bruce and Maini?

tell him I said hello - Barry is one of the most profound musicians you will ever hear - and I've never really heard a recording of his that truly captures his musical presence -

Joe Puma, YES! Great, lyric guitarist, played a piece at Bill Evans's funeral that was surreal in its beauty - I remember it well more than 20 years later - Al Gaffa - worked with Dizzy, Al Haig - Tiny Moore (played with Bob Wills, and could really play bebop) - Junior Barnard (also played with Wills - first rock and roll guitarist, in my opinion, used distortion in 1945!) Joe Cinderella - great and adventurous stuff with Gil Melle -

Am I the only one that gets my own joke here? (Just confirms that I AM getting old) -

that's the one - I don't have it, but was curious about how Woods sounded on it -

I recall Xanadu putting out an LP with one side of "live" Woods, ca. 1956 (?) - anybody have this?

Anybody mention Bob Mover? One of the greatest, in my opinion - and how about Jaki Byard? He played very nice alto - and Boots Musulli - and let's not forget THE DEMON -

I hope Joe Maini is in there -

I thought Latin jazz referred to the Romans -

that'll work - I'll either pick it up used or go to the library -

People are probably going to disagree with me here, but I would say stay away from the Armstrong set because the sound is MUCH better elsewhere - get the old Columbia LPs, the old gatefold Armstrong LP - and hear this music in incredible sound - the box is OK, but the earlier LP issues are superior - not to mention that there is audible digital distortion at the beginning of Weatherbird in the boxed set! This is inexcusable -

would you like fries with your mutton?

I tried, but the damn laser beam keeps shining in my eye - and the guys at the airport don't like it either -

Hey, isn't British "jazz" a little bit like British "food?" In other words, an oxymorn - (hey, really, I'm just kidding)

Hey Larry, is there anyway you can post that Oxford Companion piece?

Well, let's check out the daily schedule for WDNA (off of the web site): "12 Noon-1PM: LunchTime Special:Bebop Meringue with Mr. Mambo 1-2 PM: Clave 'Til You Drop 2-3: Baraka Does the Cha Cha: Latin Music and the Avant Garde" 3-4: Salsa on the Sauce: Latin Bar-room Classics 4-5: Siesta with Kenny G: Sleep Through the Hits 5-6: Tito Puente Meets Tito Jackson 6-6:15: Actual jazz 6:16: Sign Off" - does seem a little heavy on the Latin stuff -

also, I meant to say, just cuts 2 and 4 -

I don't think he plays badly, but there is a certain buoyancy missing, as there is on the 1954 recordings with George Handy - he certainly plays MUCH better on the Uptown than on Handyland, it just seems that some of the life has gone out of his playing - and hey Chuck, where that's Town Hall Charlie Parker?

Apparently the Charlie Paker watch appears to run a little bit fast, but actually keeps perfect time -

As I mentioned, I knew Mike years ago, he's a good and intelligent guy, and this could be an interesting work. The main problem is something I see in a lot of theory-based works (purusant to what Simon Weil has written, above): in many of these books I find that the theory is presented and than the examples given to support, which is fine, but that the writers tend to overstate, as there are ALWAYS exceptions, many many (unmentioned) exceptions (I've been reading Simon Frith's book on rock and roll and he is especially guilty of this). It is as though they set up an ideological/theoretical construct and feel bound to defend it and ignore anything that contradicts. This is an occupational hazard, I fear; I look forward to the book that simply (or not-so-simply) engages the Euro musician and his/her work, without having to prove it is utterly unique or part of a specific trend or isolated or outside of Afro-historical parameters or whatever other boxes such points of view tend to squeeze them into. Having said that, well, he does have to deal with peer review and that does entail a certain amount of intellectual posturing.

Good premise which will probably be an interesting book when dealing with the music and the musicians, less so when he starts digging into the theorists that he mentions (though, from an academic perspective, he probably has no choice); also I would disagree somewhat with: "Whereas earlier American influences, both white and black, inspired imitation of the actual music, those of the free jazz pioneers mentioned above inspired emulation of the musical gesture: as African Americans had mastered jazz's Western premises to turn them to the service of Afrocentric expressions and aesthetics, so would the new generation of European jazz musicians master those (in free jazz, virtually exclusively) African-American premises" this is a gross oversimplification, especially considering the whole picture of 20th century atonality and polytonality.

With Woods I wonder if it's a kind of warped technical mastery - sometimes you can play so much that you lose your editing capability. Another possibility might relate to something Barry Harris said to me once, which was that when Bird died a lot of players seemed to lose their way musically (and otherwise), so dependent were they on Bird and on his the next record, and so rudderless did they feel without him (we were talking specifically about Al Haig's 1950s problems, but Harris thought they applied to quite a few musicians) - I think there very well may be something to this, given the timing of Woods's decline.