johnlitweiler

Congratulations, Jim. Thanks for the photos - she's a sweetie. Good genes.

Tony Russell's little book "Blacks Whites and Blues" (Stein & Day was the US publisher, 1970) is quite valuable re the connections between early blues and hillbilly.

Tony Russell's little book "Blacks Whites and Blues" (Stein & Day was the US publisher, 1970) is quite valuable re the connections between early blues and hillbilly.

1. He is the only stand-up comedian I've heard quote a Phillip Larkin poem during his monologue. 2. He has said more than once, "I hate jazz."

Amen. And the "intellectual" theories were basically dishonest.

I'll try to add a bit more. Off the top of my head, genuine jazz revivalism in my view must involve a literal or figurative distance from contemporary phenomena and/or a desire to distance oneself from contemporary phenomena. For example, the very first jazz revivalists, the Lu Watters Yerba Buena crowd in San Francisco, was driven in part by a professed loathing for the supposedly corrupting commericialism of the slick Swing bands (yes, they meant Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, et al., and they felt this music corrupted both musicians and the public) as well as by their belief that jazz had a relatively neglected/forgotten, artistically pure Edenic past, which they could return to and revive. Also, I hate to mention this, but for some of these folks there was a good deal of CPUSA parlor Marxism mixed in. e.g. pioneering primal black geniuses being ripped-off by the machinery of mass-market capitalism. The CPUSA's whole "folk music" binge coincides with this. Of course, Watters et al. also genuinely dug King Oliver, Johnny Dodds, etc., but for my tastes, they seldom were up to the challenge musically (though people whose opinions I respect disagree). Also, and this brings up another key point, though the SF revivalists didn't see it that way, they were perhaps too close -- in time and physical/social distance -- to their models. Here there was the interesting fact that Condonites, whose music was as close by as could be, had never ceased to play their version of the music they themselves had played in the '20s. Don't have chapter and verse on this, but my guess was that the SF revivalists regarded the Condonites as no less corrupt than the Goodman and Shaw bands, et al. I should add that the one great key virtue of the SF revivalists is that they regarded the pieces of the '20s that they were drawn to as worthwhile in themselves, as vehicles for ensemble performance, not merely as frameworks for solos. They themselves IMO were not able to bring this off as well as was desireable, but this was a genius insight in terms of what would come to pass elsewhere. (Footnote: Given the template I'm building here, I think that Wynton definitely is a revivalist, though of a newish, corrupt sort -- because the goals of his movement were so deeply oriented toward acquiring cultural power, under the guise of moral-aesthetic righteousness.) "Revivalist" is a far-too-kind word for the mean way Wynton distorts some old pieces like King Oliver's "Snake Rag" into 2-beat novelties, as if to say "look how quaint those old, unsophisticated guys were." His Morton album, which is rearrangements of JRM pieces with bop-era styled solos, is better and doesn't pretend to be a revival. I'm quite fond of most 1946-48 Lu Watters. It was certainly an ensemble style, the solos were brief, it tried to apply Oliver's 1923 Chicago-band style to a somewhat wider repertoire -- let's say up to Armstrong's 1927 Hot 5 and 7. The brassy sound of that band was unique, sure no other 2-trumpet revival band played w/so much energy. A lot of energy seemed to come directly from Watters himself and from the hyper clarinetist Bob Helm; also, by that time these players (who, according to Martin Williams, began as record collectors) were now simply better musicians than on their collapsible 1941-2 records. There's an ensemble fire, maybe even passion, about pieces like the later "Yerba Buena Strut" and "South" and "Richard M. Jones Blues" that transcends "hot" dixieland/trad playing; at slower tempos Helm could be a good, touching, lyric soloist. Re imitation vs. originality, back then the San Franciscans could seek out some New Orleans musicians and learn from them, which most Australians and latter-day French (and '50s Dutch and British, etc.) couldn't (but didn't the very young Alain Marquet and Jacques Gauthe study under Sidney Bechet?). It's interesting that Lu Watters quit playing about the time U.S. trad jazz became so stylized. The striking features of his 1-CD comeback in 1962(?) are (1) his style is now a slightly later, more ecstatic Armstrong and (2) he tries to push the band by himself. Maybe their fans, for ex. some of the Jazzmen and Record Changer writers, professed loathing for swing, thought it was a perversion of real, true, folk jazz, but Watters etc. started as a swing band (however, w/a weird 2-beat rhythm) and they were more tolerant of post-Armstrong developments. Who knows, maybe they even absorbed some later ideas, like George Lewis copped BG phrases. Watters booked Condon into his nightclub and somewhere on the web is Condon's approving interview (though surely it was his ghostwriter's interview) with Turk Murphy. Larry, was there a direct CPUSA connection to the Watters band? Re Mr. Morel, on the Le Petit recording he plays the really lovely verse to "Old Fashioned Love" at just the right sub-medium tempo; neither James P. Johnson nor anybody else ever recorded that verse. Bless Morel for reviving Tiny Parham's pieces, too. But I do think the playing of Marquet and the perfect tenor player Michel Bescont is most of what survives from some of Le Petit's more obscure pieces. 20+ years ago I wrote a Chicago Reader review of David Dallwitz's "Ern Malley Jazz Suite" and I wish that amazing album were on CD. Is Swaggie still releasing through GHB in the US? Can we get up a crowd to lobby GHB and Swaggie to reissue "Ern Malley Jazz Suite" on CD? In fact, let's ask for all of Dallwitz's 1970s Swaggies. Finally, re revivalism, does anyone have thoughts re Evan Christopher? He was impressive when I heard him playing clarinet with Irwin Mayfield's big band in New Orleans last spring, but he was playing swing, not trad that time.

Yes, and George Washington, Paul Quinichette, and Bill Clinton, etc., but not Abe Lincoln this year.

It's good that Andy is joining WHPK. The station is a U. of Chicago student organization, all volunteers, and the jazz d.j.s are mostly older South Siders, long past our student years (and most of us never attended the U. of C. anyway). His criticisms of the library and studio are on the mark, but most jazz d.j.s play from their own collections. It's a 100-watt station heard from the Loop to the west and south city limits. The AACM used to have a weekly show there when it was a 10-watter and Ed Wilkerson and I and others did shows there in the 1980s when the balance was toward outside jazz. At present Zoundz! (Mike Rock and I, Mondays, 6:30-9 pm Central time) is the only mainly outside show, but maybe Andy willbe adventurous, too.

Figi's review of Coltrane with Roscoe was printed in Change, edited by Sinclair and published at the Detroit Artists Workshop. Figi wrote for 2 big, fat issues of Change. When it evolved into an irregularly published newspaper with a different title Figi continued to write for it; Don Moye was part of the group there -- circulation manager, I believe. Jamil Figi (1937-1999) had a wonderful knack for conveying the feeling and the sensations of events and their significance. A wise writer, as Larry suggests -- worldy wise and spiritually. Ed, thanks for finding Jamil's review and the information about the tape recording. And Dan, thanks for spotting the article about Roscoe. It was good to see Larry Ochs' comments, I always suspected an influence there.

Tomorrow, Monday, Feb. 18, on Zoundz! will be our almost-annual President's Day special. Prezidential music on WHPK 88.5 FM Chicago and www.whpk.org/stream, from 6:30 to 9 pm Central time.

As Szwed's book points out, Sun Ra and his Arkestra got something going here in Chicago because they had a tireless manager who kept getting them gigs: Alton Abraham. I wasn't settled here until the mid-1960s, but from what musicians and older music lovers have said, Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Ahmad Jamal, and a number of our other well-known musicians had a much larger influence on the bop-era and free-jazz-era cultural atmosphere in Chicago than Sun Ra and his Arkestra had. As to direct influence on the AACM, the early-1960s musical and philosophical circle around Abrams and Rafael Donald Garrett was vastly more important. (41 years ago Abrams said in his occasional encounters with Sun Ra, they never talked about music.) All this discourse about Ra's influence, 40-50 years ago, on Chicago is speculative. It's just as valid to speculate that Richard Wang, the young music professor who held Friday jam sessions at a junior college for his early-1960s students, including Threadgill, Mitchell, Jarman, and their friends, was as large an influence on later generations. I generally agree with Chuck's comments here. The trend of the Art Ensemble, after Jarman became a permanent member, was toward more diffuse music. Partly this is because no band could have sustained the incredible intensity of close interplay of Mitchell's Ensemble in the months when Philip Wilson and/or Leonard Smith were the drummers. (For the same reason, Oliver's Creole band could not have continued at the high 1923 level.) Partly this was because Jarman's music usually was more diffuse anyway. There are obvious exceptions to this generalization -- the second half of People In Sorrow, for instance -- but the ongoing ensemble interaction of Mitchell's late-1966-to-mid-1967 Ensemble was rare and precious (in the best sense of the word).

Joseph Jarman also heard the Arkestra rehearse before they left Chicago. Did Mitchell? Bowie and Moye couldn't have back then, though they're both on the much later Sun Ra All-Stars video. "Being aware of" doesn't=influence. Jarman considered Rahsaan Roland Kirk, not Sun Ra, a direct influence on his ideas of sound and multi-instrument playing. I disagree with John Corbett here. Chuck and/or others, did Malachi Favors perform in public on instruments other than bass and electric bass before he worked in Roscoe Mitchell's 1966 groups?

Where can I get a drug that will make me a better writer?

Indeed, almost 3 years later I'm plowing through a copy of Professor Lewis' book and he makes exactly the same point that Mr. Nessa has. The connection is entirely overstated, and Ornette was a bigger influence than Sun Ra. Probably the individual associated with the AACM that Sun Ra impacted the most was Phil Cohran, who left the AACM very early on to forge his own path. George Lewis points out in his book that the influence of Sun Ra on the early AACM was little or none. Listening to the last recordings Ra made before he left Chicago (1960), and Nessa's/Delmark's first AACM recordings (1966-7) confirm this. Phil Cohran expanded on Sun Ra's Afro-centric aspects and Ra's pop-music and modal tendencies, and like Ra, Cohran invented instruments that he played. Cohran also left the AACM after a year or 2: its music was too far out, he thought. Nicole Mitchell used to play with some of Cohran's sidewomen. Mitchell's composing seems sometimes to recall Cohran philosophies (if not his styles) and so, by extension, Sun Ra's, and Mitchell is about 4th generation AACM.

Would you like it if some jerk called your daughter or son a pimp? Larry, you have never pimped your book, because your book is not an act of whoredom. Chris, as I've said before, the issues (beginning with the federal courts, health care, and the environment) are too serious to not vote or to vote for McCain.

Wikipedia says Ware was born Sept. 8, 1923, so he would have been a week short of his 16th birthday at the time of the Broonzy session. Thanks, Larry. 1923 looks right. Ware would have been studying under Truck Parham around that time or a bit later. BTW Ware said he modeled his mature style on Jimmy Blanton with Ellington; Blanton was just 5 years older.

There's a Sept. 1, 1938 Big Bill Broonzy And The Memphis Five Session that includes Wilbur Ware among the "probable" musicians. Gitler-Feather say he was 6 years old at the time, but IIRC other sources say he was 13, and that seems likely. Ware says that he'd begun playing a bass built by his minister-guardian when he was 11. Are there any recordings of Ware in the 1940s?

Last summer at the Chicago Jazz Festival, in a bop set, Charlie Haden played almost perfect Wilbur Ware for an hour -- the repeated notes, the spelled-out chords, the propulsion. Matt Ferguson, who is Von Freeman's bassist, is another who has that Wilbur Ware quality of swing that lifts you up and bouys you along. There's a Sept. 1, 1938 Big Bill Broonzy And The Memphis Five Session that includes Wilbur Ware among the "probable" musicians. Gitler-Feather say he was 6 years old at the time, but IIRC other sources say he was 13, and that seems likely. Ware says that he'd begun playing a bass built by his minister-guardian when he was 11. Are there any recordings of Ware in the 1940s?

No, it's Ham And Eggs. Or Pound Cake.

No, it's Ham And Eggs. Or Pound Cake.

The SIMA.com web site is a useful intro to what's current in Australia, or rather, Sydney. Thanks to Terry Martin, some of the good ones made it to the Chicago Jazz Festival: David Dallwitz band in the 1980s; Bernie McGann, quite a distinctive alto player, in the '90s; the band 10 Part Invention a few years ago. In t he 00's Ross Bolleter made a tantalizing CD of piano improvisations for Emanem (owned by a one-time Australian). Any other worthy outside players there?

Thanks, Chas. Definitely original.

66 next month. Born the day after Jimmy Yancey's 42nd birthday. Although we may never recapture our youth, we may remain immature as long as we wish. (Who originally said this?)

Didn't mean to quote Larry's whole posting, just the 3rd paragraph, about Jazz's relationship to us is so close-up, etc. -- that's the sort of insight that makes you say, Of course! That why I respond that way!