Ethan Iverson

sorry I annoy you guys! But I'm willing to die on the hill that *nobody* truly transcends race, it is *always* a factor -- although, of course, one of the great things about jazz is how it brings disparate people together. Anyway for those that dig DTM, thanks for reading. I'll get out of here now...(won't keep responding to thread)

Thanks for linking to my post! It's just a diary, I literally made quick notes on things I was boxing up while moving. (Time will tell if I ever get to unbox them again.) There's a related "teaching" DTM concerning 70s jazz that I took more time on: https://ethaniverson.com/2020/05/07/riffs-third-set/

Oh I guess the last thing I'll just note before ducking out of this thread is that my work for the New Yorker is at the Culture Desk. In other words, the New Yorker "blog." I haven't been in the print mag. I think the Culture Desk and the print mag are fairly different in terms of what gets accepted or not and perhaps even editorial style. Richard Brody also writes nice stuff about jazz for the Culture Desk with some frequency, but, as far as I recall, there's something about jazz in the print mag every few years (if it is even that often). Alex Ross is someone who writes about music for both the print mag and the Culture Desk. I haven't done it but I suspect if you compared what Ross piece was in what venue it would give some insight into what David Remnick (or whoever is ultimately in charge of the New Yorker) thinks about what goes where. To be clear, I still am thrilled to be writing for the New Yorker even if it is only online, and I also really appreciate the pro editorial job I get from the staff there -- even though some of the changes (and the famous addition of commas in every possible instance) are sometimes a little shocking. ("I worked so hard for that sentence, do you have to take it out?!?") In an interesting look at the mag's 50s years, Franzen writes, "Outside the offices of The New Yorker, its fiction editors were rumored to routinely delete the final paragraph of any story accepted for publication." https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-birth-of-the-new-yorker-story That has never happened to me, but, yeah...sometimes Warne Marsh is left out.

I can't find the quote offhand, but Branford Marsalis (who inadvertently titled the Chamberlain bio AN UNSUNG CAT) tells of a lesson with Wayne where Wayne demonstrated how to play on rhythm changes. I'm paraphrasing but Wayne played (on his horn) examples of how Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Warne Marsh played rhythm changes. I have no problem (especially listening to that early "What Is this Thing" solo) declaring Wayne knew Warne's music and was directly influenced by Warne. [I keep staring at this page, checking if I am typing Warne and Wayne in the right places or screwing it up...] Warne, like so many greats, remains "unsung," but in his case I think more people (per capita jazz fan or whatever dumb metric) are hip to Warne than ever. He's just too awesome to ignore. In Chamberlain the author finds all these tenor players like Bill Perkins or Bob Cooper that had way more cheerleading press at the time than Warne. I have NOTHING against Perkins or Cooper (they were right in there) but c'mon.... Mark Turner and so many other "young" players regard the Tristano school as a natural and valid influence. Mark was the one who wanted to include Warne's "Dixie's Dilemma" on TEMPORARY KINGS. I can't know this for sure but if you spun the dial a few decades back I think "conventional" players had much less of an overt relationship to the Tristanoites. Back then it seemed to be more like an esoteric thing, not part of the mainstream. Tootie Heath (who loved playing with Warne) told me, "We don't talk about Lennie Tristano enough," but honestly I'm just not sure if that's true anymore. I was just approached to be a part of Tristano centennial celebration next year at a major university; I guess we will see but I suspect that Tristano at 100 will be a fairly visible date among jazz fans and within the industry. (I was part of the cabal that got Tristano into the Ertegun Hall of Fame a few years ago.) As Tristano rises into proper place in the pantheon, I am certain that Warne's star will keep rising as well. Some of the lack of connections between, say, Warne, and the rest of the jazz community a few decades ago was probably partly the result of the insular Tristanoite vibe. Gerry Teekens told me when he offered Warne a Criss Cross date with Hank Jones, Warne said, "Who's Hank Jones?" For myself, these days I frankly worry more about Hank Jones's status as an essential American artist more than Warne Marsh's. But we will see what happens as the years roll by...

I had a short email correspondence with Michael Cuscuna, who oversaw the researches into BN vaults that finally meant that ETCETERA and THE SOOTHSAYER saw the light of day. I had wondered if they released ALL SEEING EYE next because it was more superficially "progressive" but Michael nixed that reason, saying he doubted the choice was that intellectual. He said Alfred Lion just couldn't remember why they shelved ETCETERA or THE SOOTHSAYER. From this vantage point, it is hard to understand the choices. I agree that there is something especially powerful about ETCETERA. The title track might be by favorite Joe Chambers performance: wow! In re: Trane and Wayne: In my original edit I gave credit to Warne Marsh. The one thing that the Desk took out that I really wish they had left in was this paragraph: For Juju, on top of the churn, Shorter plays a mix of simple and surreal. It’s a Coltrane band, the tunes are not far from Coltrane either, but the saxophonist is still “As weird as Wayne.” Some of that surreal quality might come from the intellectual jazz crew of Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and, especially, Warne Marsh. While it is impossible to imagine Marsh playing the music on Juju, the way Shorter follows the thread of an improvised line to a surprising yet logical place is far closer to Marsh than Coltrane. (Marsh’s favorite saxophonist was Lester Young, a shared reference with Shorter, who wrote “Lester Left Town” for the Jazz Messengers after Young died in 1959.) The earliest Shorter solo on tape, “What Is This Thing Called Love?” from 1956 with pianist John Eaton (unreleased commercially) sounds quite a bit like Warne Marsh. It is included with the DTM Wayne Shorter interview. The Shorter interview with that incredible early solo is here: https://ethaniverson.com/interview-with-wayne-shorter/ I particularly wanted to get Marsh's name in the article because Marsh's name doesn't appear in the biography FOOTPRINTS. (However, at least in the interview I got him on record about Warne a bit.) In re: Vee-Jays, I recently learned of a 70's DB Shorter interview where he talks about being so excited to get Wynton Kelly and the others for his first date as a leader. It was a fun read, especially since Wayne is so darn elliptical about his early jazz days in most interviews. The connections to the community at large are vivid on the Vee-Jays, and maybe at some point I will write up those terrific discs alongside all the Blakey/Shorter albums (which I might love even more).

For me those three LPs are a real apex in the music. I (obviously) also think the conceit about Blakey/Coltrane/Miles is striking and helpful but understand if that doesn't ring true for others. The headline "greatest jazz composer" was not by me, the title i had was simply "Wayne Shorter in 1964." in fact throughout there was a heavy edit, an edit that I did not proofread before they posted. I don't mind the edit -- I trust the Culture Desk to bang the piece into shape for their audience -- but not every opinion expressed in the article is exactly what I wrote. This is partly why I added so much detail on DTM. While it doesn't make perfect sense as a birthday piece to focus on three early albums, the Desk requires a hook, something relevant to the current moment. I couldn't write "Wayne Shorter in 1964" for them without the accompanying, 'Wayne is 85." My edit included a mini-review of the forthcoming EMANON (that was cut by the Desk). I like the orchestral music disc quite a bit, especially since Brian Blade is there connecting the dots. If you like ATLANTIS or HIGH LIFE I think you will appreciate EMANON as well.

The Culture Desk requires a "general audience" approach, I gotta leave a certain amount out. In this case there were enough fun extras to make a separate DTM post: https://ethaniverson.com/2018/08/25/apex/ It was a real joy to stay in there with the 1964 records a minute...of course I've heard them a lot over the years, but they will always be three of my favorites

Larry, "these" in "these attempts" refers to "Baraka, Crouch, Early Wynton (or Ken Burns JAZZ), Nicholas Payton" etc. I do have fun dropping the occasional bomb on DTM. Writing is an exercise in power, and I'm pleased when something has an effect. Even the reaction here means I touched a nerve. Of course, this is how I play music too. I just realized that I now perhaps have an obligation to stay in this forum? If so, apologies, I'm gonna vanish. Continue without me. I can conceivably be reached on Twitter if need be. I admire Organissimo as the best jazz forum, and have occasionally learned how to temper my writing on DTM from Organissimo's tough criticism. However I think there needs to be no more back and forth from me and Organissimo about Buddy etc. I will stand by my post and follow-up just above. Carry on!

Hello Ok, the first thing I just want to clear up is that I didn't say that that if you liked Buddy Rich you were racist. I said that if you thought he was the greatest drummer ever, you were racist. That's attacking the cult, not the man. You can't blame the man for the cult, as Mark says, and also why it was good to have Mark there as defense. However in my view the cult is a real problem, for all the reasons I go into. They could have never made the choices they made for WHIPLASH without the cult. --- I also happen to not like Rich's drumming in most circumstances. I left that out of my post - enough is enough -but when I went through some of Stryker's examples, it mostly only verified my general feeling that after, say 1952 or something, he didn't fit in a band so well. I almost added a section on some of the worst drumming I've heard, which is some late in life Benny Goodman quartet with Jimmy Rowles on YouTube. I watch those clips sometimes, because Rowles is so inspired, so idiosyncratic, yet so swinging. In those clips, Buddy is out of balance at the kit. His hi-hat snaps like a loud angry alligator the whole time. And as Tootie says about Rich's feathering the bass drum in our interview, "Buddy Rich used to play it, but he played it like a truck. Sure, it was right there: it was accurate. But no finesse!" The time is accurate, but "no finesse" may mean not just loud but that the beat is also tightly gripped. Bob Cranshaw said to me in our interview,"I’ve never seen anybody play a solo like Buddy Rich, but Buddy’s time feel was not always there." In that Goodman quartet, the feel just isn't there. Ironically, because so many of what I regard as heavyweights have criticized Buddy Rich, in my Lester Young overview, I wrote about the trio with Cole: "Buddy Rich sounds very fine; allegations that he ruins this date (or other early sessions with otherwise black musicians) are ludicrous. " --- My post was not about Buddy's drumming as much as the cult and a stream of influence in society. Why take it to the phrase "racist?" John Tapscott said it was "terribly inflammatory." JSngry suggests the same thing, that it closes doors. I view it as temporary technology. If someone who doesn't know anything is trying to talk to a jazz fan about WHIPLASH, that fan now has the phase, "If you think Buddy Rich is the greatest jazz drummer, you are racist" to reorient the conversation. The phrase lets the elephant into the room right away. Larry said why do a "general lob"; why have two sets of opinions. I always change what I say to reflect who I'm talking to. If I'm talking to Billy Hart or Tootie Heath, I would never riff like I do on DTM. If I'm teaching, I can be ruthlessly authoritarian figure. Most of the time, when I have essays published elsewhere, the editor requests it to be less technical. For the Buddy/Whiplash, my ruling was to make it so that non-musicians could feel the fire, and checked out the flow with a non-jazz fan. As I say, it's too short, it's too abrupt, but, on the hand, I know it being widely read. It's definitely getting back to the creators of the movie. I'm not claiming I'm going to change Hollywood or anything! But, in my view, this topic had to be addressed. I had to try. And making some of the language almost too strong helps the rhetoric, helps the message travel. JSngry, I appreciate your point about Sonny Payne. Mark Stryker can verify that on the phone with him discussing this piece, I said, "There's a problem with Sonny Payne! He's not one of the cats!" I probably should have included this query about where Payne (and other later Basie drummers) sit. --- The point about reparations is that white people have to do 'em. Periodically, black jazz musicians or commentators come out with something strong and sometimes seemingly anti-white: Baraka, Crouch, Early Wynton (or Ken Burns JAZZ), Nicholas Payton...I suspect from what I've heard about the Cheadle movie, it will be something like that. These attempts to reframe the dialogue tend to be rather shrill. Ya can't take white people out of jazz. We're here, we were always here. "American music is a mix of many cultures." But I always support these attempts, because I have real sympathy for their position. Looking at the landscape of jazz, the money and power positions have been held by whites...forever! Gordon Goodwin just won a Grammy for the Phat Band, and in high school bands across America, kids want to play jazz like Gordon Goodwin. What else to you need to know, really? That's the Buddy Rich cult, that's the Kenton/North Texas legacy. Anyway, the DTM Whiplash/Buddy is an act of reparations, an attempt to let in air to what I perceive as a very constricted scene. --- It doesn't feel right to post praise I've gotten for the piece, especially without attribution (Larry's request). I could just make it all up. I do know there's a lot of positive chat on Facebook and Twitter if you feel compelled to check it out. I am adding the following with attribution today, so it makes sense to post it here. Comments by Russell Scarbrough: So I studied composition with Hank Levy at Towson State from 90-94, and played in the band there the whole time. We played only his charts (which we all loved). Many were the odd-meter charts he wrote for Don Ellis and Stan Kenton - which is what he's known for almost exclusively - but he also had tons of quite innovative arrangements of standards which are practically unknown. Quite a bit of the rock-oriented stuff those bands were doing (including Buddy, Kenton, Ellis, as well as Woody Herman, et al) were at the very strong suggestion of their management and record labels. Don Ellis's Connection album, for instance, was really a scandal among the arrangers who all felt strong-armed into doing assigned pop charts. For a time, they also thought odd meters were the way everything was going to go, so Buddy's management thought he should get some of that. So some calls were made, and Hank was asked to write something for Buddy's band. Hank came up with a chart in 7/4 called "Ven-Zu-Wailin", an afro-cuban kind of tune, and sent it out to LA. The story goes that Buddy didn't really read charts. When a new arrangement came along, Buddy hired a session drummer to read down the chart in rehearsal with the band while he listened, then he would take over and he'd have it memorized (so the story goes). Apparently this time (late 60's), the session drummer couldn't really get the feel, and the figures and set-ups were all over the place, and it just wasn't working. The record company guys were there (guess they wanted to record soon), and Buddy tries to play it anyway, and he doesn't get the feel either. So in a rage, he grabs the chart off the stand and flings it across the room and lets it be known what he thinks about odd meters (your imagination can fill in the blanks there). So whenever I showed up for lessons with Hank, I would see the framed letter up on the wall of his office on Pacific Jazz letterhead, saying we're so sorry, but Ven-Zu-Wailin was "a little too different" for Buddy and the band, and they were returning the chart, we hope you find a good home for it, sincerest apologies, etc. And this crumpled-up chart came in the package with it. Hank LOVED that story. Too bad, cause that probably would have sounded great. Hank later re-wrote in 4/4 and we recorded it - it was a burning chart. We did play Whiplash all the time with Hank. It was one of the best-recorded charts of his, and Ralph Humphrey had a lot to do with that, but Ellis's band in general was much better on Hank's tunes than the Kenton band, which was frankly terrible (except when Peter Erskine was in the band). I haven't seen the movie to know if they played it, but the back half of that chart is written in 14/8, because the subdivision is 223322 - a really nice-feeling pattern that Hank said explicitly came from Bulgarian music, and which he used fairly often. Those different subdivisions of the asymmetrical meters are what has been lost lately outside of world music stuff, but Hank and Ellis were very interested in that. A lot of their most interesting experiments in that were never recorded, but we did some of those things - big band charts with 2 drum sets playing in different subdivisions at the same time, for instance. We also played a lot of straight-ahead swinging in 5, 7, and other asymmetrical meters. Not 5/4 as in the "waltz+2" feel of Take Five, but just 5-on-the-floor swinging. Hank's "Chain Reaction" for Ellis has a blistering straight-ahead 13 section for pianist Milcho Leviev to blow over (not long enough, but enough to prove that it can be done, and done well). He also had a few things that were overt homages to the Basie style, but in 5/4. I don't hear much of that kind of thing lately, though in some quarters odd meters are otherwise ubiquitous. In regards to the substance of your post, it would be an interesting comparison to look at the elaborate "drum routines" of the Don Ellis band, which were virtuosic for sure, vs the vaudeville-like solos of Rich. Personally I find Rich's solos repetitive and hackneyed at best, and a true annoyance at worst. On the Roar of 74 album, which is a fantastic band playing really great arrangements, he basically plays a drum solo throughout every every tune, even where the charts have space to breathe built in - he just bashes right through. And then plays another solo at the end. If you ever want to see Bill Holman roll his eyes and shake his head ruefully, ask him about the charts he sent Buddy, and how they turned out on the record. Anyway, many thanks for your erudite post on this subject. The genius of Mel Lewis is the perfect antidote to Rich-ophilia. I'm always telling my students to check him out, and learn to play swinging 8th note fills, and not triplets. Best Regards, Russell Scarbrough

Hey there jazz fans! I'll check in tomorrow morning on this thread if you want to ask me a direct question. If your curious, I vetted my post with a group of 10 critical readers, whose many comments changed the essay over time. This group included several black musicians and several truly excellent drummers. I don't blame them for what I wrote! This was my gig! But consensus was positive. At the end they all said, "do it." I think Mark Stryker is here sometimes...as you may have guessed, having him be the "defense" gave me room to be the "prosecution." If I hadn't been lucky enough to have him participate, I wouldn't have closed with, "In light of the Whiplash phenomenon, I have no problem saying that if you think Buddy Rich is the greatest jazz drummer, you are racist." However, since Mark was there "restoring sanity," I felt I had room to make a complex argument culminating in that admittedly over-the-top claim. (I stand by the claim, even if it is rather theatrical.) The other thing I'd add to this group of experienced listeners is that my piece is intended as a lob to the general world, not to experienced listeners like Organissimo. I must say that most of the responses I've gotten so far from other professional musicians has been gratitude. Everybody's mom is asking them about WHIPLASH. I'm running around today...as I say, if anybody wants to ask a direct question I'll log in tomorrow morning.

My comments about McCall are here, many of them admiring: http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/4-on-the-aacm.html I'm still listening to Air Lore. Still haven't totally made up my mind. However, that album remains a good point to discuss the issue of "swing," which is why I ventured into critical territory. I may write about it again in the future. Your current takeaway "shat on" suggests I need to redouble my efforts to be careful. When I interviewed Threadgill: http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/interview-with-henry-threadgill-1-.html ...I tried to bring up McCall (also Fred Hopkins) but Threadgill is rather quicksilver: there's not as much there about his collaborators as I would have wished. If there had been room to go there I would have liked to get Threadgill talking about the jazz beat but I just was following his lead.

Hi again. Thanks for kind words etc. Over the years I've become aware that DTM is seen by some as an attempt to "take control" in certain ways. That was never my intention, which is why I responded strongly to a few commentators here who were so happy that some of my interviewees dug musicians I have publicly questioned. My guess is that those commentators see me as Mechagodzilla. I'm not!!! In the postmodern age it seems like everything is quite fragmented, and my work both at the piano and on the blog was never intended to be more than one of those fragments.The minute you put something in print it comes across as very strong. I've learned that the hard way. I'm trying to be tempered, and comments from others have helped me work on it. Anyway, I won't be hanging out here too much. Please feel free to comment negatively about my music or whatever, I'm not going to be jumping in. I know very well that TBP and my music in general is controversial, and honestly I wouldn't have it any other way. More relevant perhaps, to Organissimo: Today Ben Street played me some blues from Tina Brooks THE WAITING GAME with an incredible Johnny Coles solo and utterly marvelous Kenny Drew comping. I'll be getting that one for sure, and I'm sure everyone here would dig it, too. signing off: ei

Hi there Organissimo! I appreciate the interest in DTM. When y'all link to something on my blog, I see it in my referrers, so I tend to be aware of DTM-related chatter in this forum. You cats are serious jazz fans, and I'm pleased that some of my interviews etc. are being read by serious listeners. Obviously, my piano playing on "Charade" needn't be for everyone. I admit there are triads in that performance. The reason I'm writing, though, is just to clear up my stance on Oscar Peterson and Chick Corea. There are about a million words on DTM and a few of them are not positive about either of these giants, because both Peterson and Corea offer interesting jumping off points to discuss aesthetics in the music. With Oscar, I wrote an essay (that really should be re-edited): http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/oscar-peterson-and-miles-davis.html Looking at this again, to me it seems clear I respect Oscar, even though I take him to task about certain ensemble issues. I do not criticize Oscar in the Fred Hersch interview. Fred does, but not me: http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/interview-with-fred-hersch.html And maybe I should just make it extra clear that in all of my interviews, many opinions are voiced that are NOT mine. (Fred says you only need one Oscar record, but I'd say you need at least a couple.) It's important that I keep out of the way of the interviewees as much as possible. Sometimes I think I am still saying too much. One point, ironically, where I do step in and "correct" a subject is with Fred on the topic of Chick Corea. I end up saying, "Despite the Akoustic band and everything else, he has something where he could show up anywhere in the world at a jam session, and not only would he play incredible, everyone else would play better too." My harshest comments about Corea on DTM are in the overview http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/73-90-redux.html where I say: While he's a phenomenally talented musician with precise time and commanding virtuosity (I enjoy listening to his youthful enthusiam on the 1967 Vanguard jam sessions, the mastery of Tones for Jones Bones and Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, and the exciting collabs with the Circle circle), after he discovered Scientology and/or fusion I am frequently turned off by something I perceive as cold or emotionally false. This is a minority opinion, of course. If Corea were less celebrated and successful I would never complain. Recently I went through the two Joe Henderson quartet records with Corea, Mirror, Mirror and Relaxing at the Camarillo. There is a moment on the Bird blues "Camarillo" that helps explain why I wish somebody else was holding down the piano chair: Corea shouts at Dumas During the second chorus bassist Tony Dumas begins responding to Corea's open explorations by breaking up the time with some nice supensions. The pianist freaks out and shouts, "Dumas, walk!" (It's about at the 30 second mark of the excerpt.) Dumas immediately falls in line and the moment is lost. I simply can't imagine any of my piano heroes on this page -- including Bill Evans -- barking at a bassist in the studio like this. Part of jazz is going with the moment, and Corea, for all his former excellence as a free jazz pianist (try "Drone" with Holland and Altschul), apparently evolved into someone who worries about always looking good and professional even while just playing a blues. Still, Paul Motian told me he loved playing with Corea for two weeks at the Blue Note this past spring, so what do I know? And, to his credit, Corea did more than anybody else in this era to get Roy Haynes high-profile gigs. Last point: I feel comfortable targeting Corea and Oscar because they can take it. I would never trash a peer or someone struggling with their career on DTM. And, of course, when a musician I interview praises Chick or Oscar, I never step in and argue. I know why they love Chick and Oscar. Chick and Oscar will always be canonical jazz musicians. Thanks for reading ei