Kalo

Wait, I've got it: "Music for people who don't like music."

My problem with the term "smooth jazz" is that is just seems like a misnomer. Though my funnybone favors the word "fuzak," a less pejorative and more accurate term might be "instrumental pop." After all, most of it sounds like mediocre R&B or contemporary pop with a sax or trumpet substituted for the hyperactively melismatic vocals. Elevator Blues? R&Zzzzzzzzzzzzz? (or Jazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz?) The Snooze? Dentist's Office Funk? Bland Music?

Recently the excellent Dana Stevens, television columnist on Slate.com, resorted to the dreaded "dancing about architecture" quote and linked to this site, which attempts to track down the quote's origins: http://home.pacifier.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm

I wish him the best. The man's in the running for funniest mother f---ker on the planet.

Yeah, but do he Kotzwinkle? Happy B'day Dr. Rat!

Thanks Jim! I was starting to get itchy; and I've only been posting for about a week. I can only wonder what it must have been like for the hardcore, long-term Organissimites! B-)

Looking over this thread I wondered if I had been a bit too harsh on Crouch when I wrote several posts back that his Heath article read like a computer translation from the Esperanto. Well, I just read his piece again, and I can truly say that I was being kind. "In our era of neo-sambo minstrelsy arriving in the worst of hip-hop, it is hard for many to realize that there was once a time when black musicians aspired to more than money and access to decadence." "Their aspirations called for moving beyond the buffoon vulgarity that arrived from a racist time in the 19th century." "All of the members of the Modern Jazz Quartet were there when the be-bop generation of the middle '40s came forward and, while caught up in some exotic trappings such as the occasional beret and leopard coat, the group turned its back on the entertainment tradition and tried to receive respect as serious artists." "As we move to reinvent ourselves in the face of our ongoing troubles of commercial sludge in popular entertainment, we can always use as a symbol musicians like the Modern Jazz Quartet. They gave us all that they could." These are some of the most awkward sentences I have ever read. This may be the worst-written piece I've ever seen in a major metropolitan newspaper. The question is, does he really write this way and is cleaned up by editors when he appears eleswhere, or was this particular piece edited to shreds? I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but... THIS PIECE SUCKS. Not least as a tribute to the great Percy Heath. (At least he didn't mention a Marsalis.)

I met Gary Giddins a month or so back and he's a very small guy. Didn't notice his shoes.

Crouch: the position one assumes just before springing up and bitch-slapping someone.

Paging James Joyce: Finnegan has awakened. I love it.

It was something else. Beautiful, lyrical moments intercut with outright insanity. Bennink was truly, as I've written elsewhere, "a cross between comic anarchist Harpo Marx and bebop drum architect Max Roach." He kicked cardboard boxes, played a chair as well as his shoes, and banged mercilessly on the piano smack in the middle of a reverential ballad. Meanwhile, Michael Moore and Ernst Reijseger kept right on playing as though the drummer wasn't RUNNING AMOK. The bit with the fishing line went like this: Bennink announced that he had to go to the bathroom. He tied the line to his hi-hat and played it out, then handed it to a guy in the middle of the audience, telling him "you play while I'm gone." Then he retreated to the back of the room. Moore and Reijseger kept playing, seemingly oblivious to Bennink's antics. The guy in the audience sheepishly gave a few exploratory tugs to the line; the hi-hat sloshing around arrhythmically in response. Then the guy gets a bit TOO bold. He tugs harder and harder to try getting the hi-hat slosh into vague accordance with Moore and Reijseger. Finally, he tugs too hard and pulls the whole thing over, stand and all. At just that moment, Bennink rushes right up to the guy, arms akimbo, the picture of mock high-dudgeon. He disdainfully snatches the line from the guy and returns to his kit to set the hi-hat and stand back upright, all the while shaking his head and shooting reproachful glances at the audience guy. Hilarious. But they could also play so lyrically that it brought a tear to your eye, with Bennink playing brushes softly and beautifully--albeit barefoot, crosslegged on the floor, with the snare in his lap, six feet away from the rest of his kit. Like I said, one of the best shows ever. (I wish I'd written down the setlist.)

I'm listening to the Astaire Story right now and have to emphasize how good it is. Excellent small group jazz accompaniment (Oscar Peterson, Flip Phillips, Charlie Shavers, Barney Kessel, Ray Brown, Alvin Stoller). And Astaire could SING. Not the greatest voice, but his feeling and phrasing were something else. He really swings and goes out on some "fascinatin'" rhythmic limbs here and there. I think that you should definitely play his "Top Hat..." It starts out with a spoken reminiscence of Berlin and it ends with an exuberent burst of tap-dancing. On another current thread someone was quoted as saying something like "All the best piano players are drummers." Astaire shows how much being a dancer can help your singing (He could play piano and drums pretty well, too).

I didn't bother referencing "How deep is the Ocean," as it's probably his most played tune in a jazz context. Almost too many excellent versions of that. Certainly Hawkins's version is a good suggestion. And what was I thinking? "Fascinatin' Rhythm" is, of course, by the Gershwins. Oops. I must have been thinking of "Putting on the Ritz," which has a similar tricksy rhythm to it. "Trumpets No End," is indeed the Duke tune I was thinking of. How about Ella and Louis? "Isn't This a Lovely Day?" and "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" are favorites. Bessie Smith: "Alexander's Ragtime Band." How could I forget that one? I would consider myself a BIG Berlin fan.

I have to admit I'm also a sucker for Dick Haymes's version of "What'll I Do?".

Clusone 3 -- Soft Lights and Sweet Music (Irving Berlin Songbook) (hatART) Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins Duets -- Calling Berlin, Vols. 1 and 2 (Arbors Records) Both of the above are excellent and very consistent; hard to pick favorite tunes. As for vocalists: How about Ella's Berlin Songbook? I'm especially partial to the tune "Lazy." A beautiful melody and one of his cleverest lyrics. A great Ella performance, too. Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine's performance of "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm." (on Emarcy, I think.) Several great Berlin tunes on Vaughan's album Great Songs From Hit Shows, including the obscure "Homework," a beautiful melody with anachronistically sexist lyrics.Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney did nice tribute albums. I especially like Bennett's "Shaking the Blues Away." And if you're doing vocalists, you should really include something from The Astaire Story (Verve), featuring Fred Astaire with Stars of the JATP. After all, he's the guy Berlin wrote many of these songs for. You can't go wrong with "Cheek to Cheek," "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails," or "Fascinating Rhythm." And wasn't there an Ellington tune based on "Blue Skies"? (I can't think of the title at the moment.)

"What's Tom Hanks really like?"

Sorry Heathy Perch. Or is it Creely Pouch? Whatever, please don't bitch-slap me, please Mr. Cooch.

Might as well be Heath on Percy Crouch, though. Best wishes to all.

Nice computer translation from the Esperanto. Is that the way Crouch really writes, or is it an illiterate editor run amok? Is that English? Maybe Gilbert O'Sullivan and Crouch should woodshed at the McDowell colony or whichever before they try to publish again.

By the way, just out of curiosity, How fucked up WAS Alan Shorter?

Or should I say, eric (?).

What I meant to say was: thanks Dr. Rat.

For that matter, what's so wrong with Oprah? I'm no fan, (I don't even watch TV), but she's far from the nadir of the medium with the likes of Pat O'Brien, etc., sullying our airwaves. Damn, she gets people to read. Read books.

Thanks, Nate, for supplying the correct source for the "frozen architecture" quote. Of course, any German saw is immediately attributed to Goethe, just as any American bon mot stands to Martin Mull's credit. (As Triumph the Insult Comic Dog would have it: "I keed!") So you've been edited (or should I say NOT been edited?) by the gremlins at OUP? Forgive my ignorance, but what was the publication?

What this thread tells me is that I have to get Larry Kart's and Allen Lowe's books, and hope that Jim Sangrey writes a book as well one of these days (not to mention Chuck Nessa). I remember reservedly liking the Litweiler book and I hope to return to it soon, though not before I've read his Coleman bio. I recall bridling at his assessment of Andrew Hill as a sort of pastiche artist who (as I recall Litweiler's general drift) draws on the vocabulary of jazz piano history to fragile effect and intermittant success. I think Hill's much stronger and more assertive than that, albeit in a slippery way. But, then again I could have him wrong; it's been several years since I've perused Litweiler's book. As for Guy Berger's comment regarding Litweiler's stance on Keith Jarret being controversial: Jarrett himself has always been controversial with me, ever since the Koln Concert double-disc became sort of a cult precursor to New Age music in the 1970s. And I believe that a large portion of the jazz public shares this opinion. Be it his lack of humor, a repetitive and psuedo-soulful vacuity in his solo piano effusions, or his disingenuous, be-afroed pretence to authenticity, I personally mark him down as something of a poseur, as do many others. He's had his moments (his American quartet, anyone?), but I find him peripheral to the main thrust of the music, however accomplished he may be in some ways. But fine minds may differ. I'm prepared to eventually find myself on the wrong side of history in this matter: though, frankly, I don't expect to.