epistrophy

I thought he might have been trying to look like young Michael Jackson for a better shot at acquittal...

Someone early in the thread mentioned Omer Simeon. I actually worked for the same company as Simeon's grandson, who shares his name. Unfortunately I left the company before I ever had a chance to get with him for a serious discussion of Grandpa's contributions to jazz.

<< Gigi Gryce... >> Uh, you're kidding, right? That bio was one of the best reads of the year.

I'd mention a couple of old actors named O'Toole and Bonerz, but that would take us even further off topic...

Hey, synchronicity! This morning I stumbled across a transcription of a journalism lecture that references Crouch-on-Rollins: http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/awards/ruhl/2005.html Obviously this fellow thinks that Crouch is the cat's meow. Your mileage may vary.

Has anyone hear ever heard Crouch's poetry album, Ain't No Ambulances For No Nigguhs Tonight? I think Flying Dutchman issued it in the late 60s or very early 70s. He was about as successful a poet as he was a drummer, methinks...

Oh, come on. You guys aren't going to bang on Giddens, too, are you?

Aside from getting hung up on certain tangents, I think Davis is a fine, insightful writer. I was bothered by his near-obsession with the sexual tendencies of various musicians in Outcats. After a while he seemed to be hinting that the book's title was a double entendre. But he's had massive shoes to fill at the Village Voice, and thus far I think he's done a most admirable job. - Todd

Hi, y'all. Various people have told me that I needed to join Organissimo because it's one of the best forums around, so I finally dragged my can over here. So far it more than lives up to the hype. Lord knows I'm tired of rec.music.bluenote... Anyway, I know it's been a while since anyone posted on this particular topic, but as the author I feel a responsibility to answer some of the questions you folks might have about Free Jazz and Free Improvisation: An Encyclopedia. My thanks, by the way, to Chuck Nessa for clarifying our long-ago contact. This project had a long, often annoying genesis that stretched over eight years. I was contacted by Greenwood Press in late 1995 about contributing to a seven-volume series they were formulating under the title "Jazz Companions". (I'm still not sure how they got hold of me, since at the time I had only been contributing to a small Southern California jazz tabloid for a few years.) The recently issued swing-era books by Lawrence McClellan and Dave Oliphant were also intended as parts of that series. My particular volume was supposed to cover jazz in the 1960s, with a special emphasis on free jazz. A couple of years along, four of the authors backed out of their contracts. It was no longer viable to continue with the projected series, but Greenwood asked me (and apparently McClellan and Oliphant, though I can't speak for them) to keep working on the book as a standalone project. They made a few suggestions for redirecting the subject matter, which gradually multiplied over and over again until the final project was NOTHING like the original outline. It morphed from a 150K-word single volume on 1960s jazz into a 260K-word, two-volume reference work that covers the full range of free jazz and improvisation. Several times along the way I let the book sit untouched for months, waiting for the folks at Greenwood to decide whether the new direction I had taken was what they wanted. Then more suggestions would be made and I'd go off on another tangent. I estimate that only 2-3% of the text from my original version made it intact into the final edition. Everything else was rewritten time and again to suit new visions. One thing was always clear: Greenwood recognized that this book could fill a huge gap in the documentation of this music. There are a fair number of errors in the encyclopedia, due largely to the fact that many of the corrections I submitted to Greenwood's editors were not made before press time. Some of them were my own repetitions of frequently printed mistakes, like labeling Zeena and Andrea Parkins as sisters instead of cousins. Others were just boneheaded goofs on my part. (I knew FULL WELL that Dorothy Kilgallen was a columnist, but for some ungodly reason my brain led me to say that she was a singer.) Also, some of the entries were inadvertently dropped during the proofing process, including Coda Magazine, Atavistic, and Arjen Gorter, just off the top of my head. These were very unfortunate, but these things happen in the publishing industry. I regret that I originally opted to not include an entry for ECM just because so many of their releases don't fit the free-jazz mold. In hindsight, there are more than enough classic free albums on ECM that would have qualified them for an entry. At the risk of sounding thin-skinned, I have to say that Ken Waxman's review of the encyclopedia in One Final Note mischaracterizes the book and grossly exaggerates the number of errors. (For the time being, you can read my response to his review at http://www.onefinalnote.com/mail/ .) He would apparently have his readers believe that there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of typos and other gaffes. Thus far, I have only found three typos out of 260K-plus words. Even some of the "mistakes" that Waxman pointed out in his review were incorrect on his part. The impression that I and some others got from his review was simply that Mr. Waxman wished he had written the book himself. But I'll leave it to the readers to sort those things out for themselves. For those of you who wanted to see other reviews, here's one at All About Jazz (disclosure: I am a sometime contributor to AAJ, as are most of the other authors writing about jazz these days): http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=17438 Lawrence Looks at Books, April 2005: http://tinyurl.com/dnkyf Article in Library Journal (their review is apparently no longer archived, but is excerpted on Greenwood's page for the book along with several others): http://tinyurl.com/9vxww Having seen John Litweiler's comments about having the book republished by a foreign company, I just might take that under consideration. Greenwood is, first and foremost, a reference publisher, and their prices run accordingly. It's a double-edged sword because authors obviously make more royalties per unit if the price is higher. But there has been such a clamor for this book among the general market that it would be nice if it were more readily affordable for the average reader. We'll see how all that shapes up. For now, if you would like to suggest that your local city, county or school library put the encyclopedia on the shelves, please direct them to: http://www.greenwood.com/books/BookDetail.asp?sku=GR9881 Cheers, Todd S. Jenkins Contributor, Down Beat/All About Jazz/Signal To Noise/Route 66 Magazine