johnlitweiler

Peter Niklas Wilson interviewed Don and Dad (who, in his 90s, was still playing golf) and published a biography of Albert in German. I hope Koloda's book gives some insight into the Aylers' darker aspects like Albert's changing aesthetics re attracting an audience, or his mysticism, or the story about Dad pushing the very young Albert to play publicly and punishing the boy when he played wrong notes.

yes, always behind the beat - a joy to hear

Thanks, Caravan - you've brightened a dark day.

Excerpt from something I wrote about Vaughan, though I wouldn't give her use of vibrato a blanket endorsement: In the chapter [Martin] Williams devoted to Vaughan in his book The Jazz Tradition, he pointed out that it is on Great Songs From Hit Shows that “all her resources began to come together and a great artist emerged.” Those resources, he explained, included “an exceptional range (roughly of soprano through baritone), exceptional body, volume, a variety of vocal textures, and superb and highly personal vocal control.... When she first discovered her vibrato, she indulged it. But it has become a discreet ornament ...of unusually flexible size, shape, and duration.” All true, but perhaps more needs to be said about Vaughan’s vibrato, which to my mind is not an “ornament,” no matter how discreetly it is used, but a resource that, for Vaughan, may be the most fundamental of all.... On Great Songs From Hit Shows she swings harder and more freely on the ballads than she does on all but one of the medium- to up-tempo tracks, where she is accompanied by a brass-and-reeds big band or a brass-and-reeds-plus-strings ensemble. In part that’s because most of the big-band tracks have a rather mechanical, neo-Lunceford feel to them. But the key reason the best ballad tracks here are so rhythmically compelling is that Vaughan’s sense of swing begins in her sound. That is, her shadings of vibrato, volume, and timbre are also rhythmic events (rhythm, after all, being a facet of vibration)--to the point where the degree of rhythmic activity within a given Vaughan note (especially at slowish tempos) can be as intense, and as precisely controlled, as that of any of her note-to-note rhythmic relationships. And one notices that so much here because, as the occasionally very sugary strings swirl around her and flutes are left hanging from the chandeliers, control of the rhythmic flow is left almost entirely in Vaughan’s hands. Of course a taste for imperceptibly shading tone-color events into rhythmic ones is not unique to Vaughan; Debussy’s music, for one, is unthinkable without it, as is, for that matter, Johnny Hodges’s and Johnny Dodds’s. But Vaughan’s overtone-rich timbre, the way it and her vibrato interact, and the seemingly spontaneous control she has over every aspect of all this are unique. As Gunther Schuller put it, Vaughan doesn’t have one voice but voices, while her vibrato is a “compositional, structural...element.” Just listen to Vaughan in full flight--say, at the very beginning of “You’re My Everything.” In the six seconds and five notes that it takes her to sing the title phrase, cruising out on the booming lushness she gives to “thing,” it’s virtually impossible to sort out whether, at any point, it is rhythmic needs that are shaping Vaughan’s timbral colorations or vice versa--and that is as it should be. In fact, one way to describe Vaughan’s timbre cum vibrato, inside-the-note rhythmic shapes would be to say that she has drums in her voice--perhaps Elvin Jones’s. Hm. To take an artist I like far more than I like Vaughan - yes, J. Dodds's shadings of sound are at least as mobile as his rhythms - maybe the best example of his expressing changing feeling via sound color is Someday Sweetheart. But this looks like you're saying the very source of his rhythm in that one is not his choices of where to put notes, but his sound. And not his choices of registers and tones, or his attack, dynamics, and legato-staccato, but his vibrato. The width and speed of his vibrato certainly help communicate feeling, but how are they the source of his rhythm? Rather than simultaneous with his rhythm and the rest of music-producing in his communicating? BTW I think Someday Sweetheart is at least as great as Perdido St. Blues and Hear Me Talking

Texans, thank you for describing the Caravan Of Dreams, its people, and Ornette's relationship with it/them. I should have been suspicious of the articles in the DMN and the Fort Worth papers. From what you all say, the Dolphin-Allen cult aspect seems to have been overstated, at least in relation to Ornette and the Caravan. Yes, "cult" is a loose term. Loved the Naked Lunch movie a couple decades ago but I also had come to despise Wm. Burroughs by then.

Who distributed Pacific Jazz in LA in the 1950s-'60s? Lester Koenig was part-owner of an LA record distributor and I wonder if 1 or 2 outfits handled all the small jazz labels then.

Lately vibrato has been driving me nuts, whether it's Sarah Vaughan or the Saturday afternoon opera on the radio.

Yes. A challenging artist. At best he sounds like the first person who ever played a saxophone. Who issued this 7CD set?

The Basie band from the day Dicky Wells joined to the day Hershel Evans left.

Three for the Johnny Dodds solos: Perdido Street Blues / New Orleans Wanderers Someday Sweetheart / King Oliver Hear Me Talking / Johnny Dodds & His Orchestra Four for Lester Young: Billie Holiday / When You're Smiling Count Basie / Lady Be Good Billie Holiday / This Year's Kisses Count Basie / Easy Does It (There are certainly other perfect and quite different Lester Young solos.) Roscoe Mitchell's alto solo, with ensemble accompaniment, in Lester Bowie / Number One - in fact, the last third of that piece, beginning with Favors' fast bass solo accompanied by gourd and trumpet, in a self-contained work. Roscoe Mitchell's alto sax quartet version of Nonaah, of course Albert Ayler / Angels Cecil Taylor / the solo piano side of Spring Of 2 Blue-Js Oh, dear. I'm starting to remember a lot of other favorites too.

Johnny Griffin was an extremely nice guy. He deserved all the good stuff.

Yes, that's another good book, though she's also led a full life apart from music.

EPIC=End Poverty In California. EPIC was the political party that supported Upton Sinclair's candidacy for governor of CA about 80 or so years ago.

don't need much more

In many (maybe most) states if the key is in the ignition (whether the engine is running) they'll get you for it. Once in a great while someone drunk gets into a car, puts the keys in the ignition but thinks the better of it and sleeps it off in the car. Because the keys are in the ignition and not in the pocket it can mean a headache if an officer finds the person this way. I don't know the details but I imagine the investigation was led by what condition he was in when he drove to the cornfield. Assuming that he did drive himself there, yes. There is no proof to that effect. He was asleep and stopped....and in a cornfield. Not many cars in a cornfield. DUI is a driving violation. Corn is an agricultural product. I'm not seeing a connection. Thank God in my state, you actually have to be driving to get arrested for Driving Under the Influence. Hence, the term. I think at most he should have been arrested for public intoxication, but there again, that is assuming corn can be considered "public". Was it his own cornfield? Might have made a difference.

and / or "garde"

Brownie, how about an e-book of photos?

Private Eye is a fortnightly British magazine, originally a satire magazine, currently a magazine of satire and news reporting, including investigations, that somehow is under-reported in newspapers over there. Its early attitude - all politicians and public figures are liars and crooks until proven otherwise - is healthy, I think. Specific-to-UK people, events, etc. in Private Eye are unfamiliar, but jokes about them are as universal as musician jokes. I could be wrong, but in recent years I sensed an undercurrent of a British-Conservative POV (which is less insane than US right wingers). It used to be hard to find in the US, now I can't find it here at all - maybe it's sold in Canada. Here's a web site: http://www.private-eye.co.uk/covers.php BTW Peter Cook used to own Private Eye. I wonder what Organissimo's members in the UK think. Has Private Eye sold out?

Larry Kart, critic, and Jacob Kart, guitar

I favor Private Eye and The Onion.

I tend to favor piano players who play like Monk or JRM, clarinetists who play like J. Dodds, tenor players who play like Prez or Mobley, Ornettelike altoists, Wilbur Warelike bassists, Ladylike singers, bands that swing hard, truly hot jazz, groups that play very together, performances in which intense feelings are shared, develope, evolve. These are just a few features that come to mind, there are more.

Happy birthdy to ye

Chuck, I'd like to read something nice about Lester Melrose. Where should I look?

Thanks for the photos, Brownie. On Hank's good days he dressed well and looked great. Poor Hank was severely alcoholic and a lot of his other problems followed from that. There was a well-known (at least here in Chicago) incident before he moved to Europe in mid-'60s. He and Kenny Dorham were to play a concert for Joe Segal here. Hank was on a plane up in the air before he realized that he'd forgotten his saxophone. He created such a fuss that the pilot flew the plane back to New York. After he got home that day he decided not to make that Chicago gig after all - too much trouble, he reportedly said. While he was living here, ca. 1972, Joe was running the Jazz Showcase on Rush St. and booked Hank to lead his quintet weekly, each Tues. or Wed. Hank didn't show up that first night, or the second either - Joe was really forgiving with people he admired - but Joe wouldn't take any chances on Hank after that. Hank led a hell of a band in those days - Frank Gordon, Muhal, Rufus Reid, Wilbur Campbell. Hank And Eddie Harris led their bands at a concert for IDAP, the Illinois methadone program that Wilbur directed (his day gig). Big crowd of IDAP clients at the Medinah Temple. At intermission, incredibly huge crowds going in and out of the rest rooms. During Hank's set, the last of the evening, two security men on the ground floor came down the aisle, picked up a man seemingly asleep in his seat, carried him out. I was in the balcony where people were rushing to the edge to watch. In just a couple of minutes most of the people there left and Hank finished his set to a 1/4-filled hall. Too bad, Hank was playing beautifully but the audience was the show. Sidewinder, thank you for that article. Now I want to find that Wilmer interview with Hank.

Ubu, are you being sarcastic?