sgcim

It's almost a given that whatever the reality, the musicians who are coming up NOW, think that NOW is the time. The young mothers I play with in various bands, rarely say to me that the 70s, 80s or 90s must have been a great period in jazz. To them, everything is happening now, which is how it should be. Nothing is so repulsive to me as some of these young guys wearing garb of the 30s, and playing music of that period, as if Bird never happened, let alone Trane. Since I came up in the 70s, THAT was the time for me. It seemed like there was so much going on. Phil Woods just came back from Europe, and formed his own band with players like Bill Goodwin and Mike Melillo- guys who were hardly locked into the 50s. Tom Harrell was playing as a sideman all over the place, after just getting out of Pilgrim State. Bill Evans was playing at the VV, and Thad and Mel were still playing there. NYC actually supported jazz with the Jazz Interactions program, where we got to have free group lessons with cats like Howard McGhee, Attilla Zoller, and others of that period, rather than the Wynton Marsalis Worship Hour we're currently having at JALC. Ed Bickert and Don Thompson came to prominence as world class players, after being unknowns to anyone outside of Canada. Same with Lenny Breau. Jazz guitar started to have a rebirth, due to the rockers getting tired of pentatonic wanking, and songs with purely power chords and triads. Guitarists as diverse as Kenny Burrell, George Barnes, Bucky Pizzarelli, Sam Brown, Joe Puma, Chuck Wayne, Jim Hall, Jimmy Raney, and Tal Farlow were playing clubs and festivals, and recording as leaders. The public were actually excited by jazz, after the energy from 60s rock had begun to burn out. Sure, jazz was never going to be big as the pre-Beatles years, but the 70s can definitely seen as some type of jazz renaissance, at least in NY.

There's no doubt that Evans admired earlier Peterson (Pre-Pablo), but the incident I described took place when Peterson seemed to go off the rails. Perhaps Evans was responding to this deterioration in his playing. To completely dismiss Oscar is,IMHO, a mistake. Though I like some of the tunes he did with the Ellis trio on a case by case basis, in the 60s, when he started playing with Thigpen or Durham, he became a force of nature. His bit as a sideman on "The Eternal Triangle" was also phenomenal.

I loved the "Phoenix" LP on FD back in HS. He could really build his solos up to a.... uh, climax on some of those two chord Latin vamps. "Falsa Bahiana" was my fave tune. We went to hear him play live, and Stanley Clarke was on bass. We got a kick out of his Argentinian cowboy hat, and how he kept sticking his first finger up, and waving it around in a circle.He was like a creature from another planet to us HS kids.

It depends what era Peterson you're talking about. The trio with Ellis and Brown (and no drummer) was different than the trio in the 60s with Brown and Durham or Thigpen . Then, something went kerflooey when he and Joe Pass went to Pablo. I can't listen to that stuff. I remember as a kid, a child prodigy pianist friend of mine and I went shopping at the Farmer's Market, and there were a whole bunch of the Eddie Costa Trio LPs on Jubilee there selling for only a dollar, and we each bought one. My friend copied Costa's solos on the record, because they sounded like Peterson, slowed down. Yet, when I told him how much I loved Costa's playing on the record, he got all indignant, and said something like, "What? That little, puny pianist? He's nothing compared to Peterson!" I'd rather listen to Costa, any day... My friend was a child prodigy classical pianist with perfect pitch, who was playing Bach at the age of four, and it seems like Some classical pianists were floored by his technical ability. Others, like Bill Evans, were nauseated by Peterson. When Evans was on the same bill at a jazz festival as Peterson, he was overheard backstage saying something like,"Do I have to be subjected to listening to this?" I liked some of the stuff up to the Pablo stuff, but when he and Pass recorded for Pablo, it was like that show-offy JATP flag waving stuff; I can't take any of that.

I just tape over my old ones.

I just got Roku express Plus. I was on the Roku forums complaining that my old Roku couldn't get You Tube anymore. They emailed me after that, saying that they would sell me Roku Express Plus for only $15 plus shipping. It turned out You Tube changed their settings so the first generation Roku box I had couldn't pick it up anymore. They were the only ones you could hook up to a VCR and tape things off of Roku. I hooked up the new Roku Express Plus to my VCR, and I'm back in business.

Kurzweil has all their brainz available on file, if you need them...

His hope for the future lies in the number of musicians who are clearly playing jazz and whose music is vital and relevant to our time. They range from mainstream musicians who prove that it is possible to play straight ahead jazz in a way that is fresh, idiosyncratic, and even innovative, to avant gardists who are attempting to redefine the music's vocabulary. He also includes post-modern jazz players, and finally Ornette and George Russell, who were still alive when he wrote the book. He also adds international players like Jan Garbarek, mentioning the Twelve Moons album. He also mentions the Lebanese oud player Rabih-Abou--Khalil's work with Charlie Mariano, Kenny Wheeler, Sonny Fortune and Glenn Moore. He complains that the Neo-Classicists refuse to accept that musicians like Henry Theadgill and Tin Berne are playing authentic jazz, and that attitude will lead to jazz's doom.

I always liked the defiant record store worker in J&Rs, who included Steely Dan in the jazz section with a big written sign saying, "Yes, they are Jazz!!!

I just read in the book 'Blue' that Eric Clapton quit Cream, because their extended improvisations were "too close to jazz".

I agree that bringing up the race card can get ugly. It's better to say that Nisenson is dealing with the 'human inadequacy' of Albert Murray, and his two disciples, Crouch and Wynton. However, it can't be ignored that Nisenson thinks that the central thesis of Murray's 'Stomping The Blues" was that white musicians cannot play authentic jazz, and that is the message that Crouch has passed on from his master, Albert Murray. Nisenson makes it clear that this is specific to Crouch and Murray, NOT some universally held belief by others. He stays with the actions of the JALC programming, and doesn't limit it's view to race; he extends it to ageism, and the notion that jazz stopped at the Hard Bop period, and anything else is NOT jazz. However, he starts with Murray and Crouch. and their talented trumpet playing puppet. At a jazz symposium, he overheard Crouch launching a diatribe on Bill Evans: "Evans was a punk, whose playing wasn't jazz. He couldn't swing, and there is no blues in his playing". He then quotes Tom Piazza: "I must admit that I have trouble sitting still for his work very long.He doesn't swing enough, he can't play the blues, and I don't feel close to his soul". Nisenson cites Evans' playing on "Blues and the Abstract Truth", Miles Davis' comment that he learned a lot from Bill Evans, and that he played the piano the way it should be played, and lists the many musicians that used Evans in their bands, George Russell, Mingus, Miles, Oliver Nelson, Art Farmer, etc... He then mentions the many pianists that publicly stated that they were extremely influenced by Evans; Herbie Hancock, Ahmad Jamal, Keith Jarrett, and Wynton Kelly (who said that Evans completely changed his way of playing ballads). Nisenson then centers on the the complete omission of Bix Biederbecke from JALC. When Wynton was confronted with the omission of any white composers from the JALC programs on a 60 Minutes interview, he angrily said he wouldn't lower himself to answer such a question, and then retorted that, "Duke Ellington was the greatest jazz composer of them all." A representative of JALC is then quoted as saying that they are presenting only the important composers first (Wynton?!), and then may get to the less important ones... Other things Nisenson deals with is the interesting parallel of Mezz Mezzrow's attitude towards jazz (only the original style of New Orleans ensemble jazz was authentic music, and all the post-Armstong innovations had little to do with authentic jazz), and the Neo-classicists' attitude towards, 'authentic jazz'. He then offers a history of jazz, to point out the wrongheaded interpretations of Neo-Classicists throughout. , Nisenson feels most strongly about the point that the Neo-Classicists are doing away with the most important part of jazz (best exemplified by Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis, in that order), that of Existentialism, The Neo's put a straitjacket of tradition on jazz that strangles innovation in the art form, hence essence precedes existence, instead of the reverse tenet of existentialism. Take it or leave it, that is 'Blue".

Great show as usual! Thank God he was able to get away from the overly busy Goodman, and write music without BG barging into every second of his arrangements. There wasn't much room left for him with the Mildred Bailey stuff either. Getz made up for his bad side by letting Eddie write what he wanted on Focus and Mickey-One, one of my fave films of all time.

I recall now that Nisenson felt that most of Sonny's live stuff was great, but most of his studio stuff was pretty lousy.

The adoration thing can get tired real fast. I read Herb Wong's book recently, and it was pathetic. I realize it contained some liner notes he wrote, but there wasn't even a hint of critical thinking in the entire book. It was pure gushing about each player he focused on, and the interviews he did amounted to one sentence answers which can be summed up as, "Golly, this guy is simply wonderful!" I realize Wong had a long time Radio Show, and brought the music to a large audience on the West Coast, but his book is unbelievably worthless.Not even any useful info, which even the worst book contains. Thanks for the warning on his Rollins book, but by the time he wrote "Blue", and got his Leukemia diagnosis, Nisenson was able to focus much more critically on the many musicians he wrote about (although Rollins, Miles and Trane get a pass), and his inclusions of both sides of his arguments become almost comical in their constant presence, as he leaps from subject to subject. I'll be more specific when I've gone over the notes I made in the book.

He doesn't put down Wynton's playing as much as his jazz philosophy and composing. He dissects Crouch and Murray, though. He treats Wynton like he was just their puppet, along with Sony's, but he is very harsh on Wynton's programming at JALC, which is quite justified, IMHO. Nisenson was very close to Miles, and almost forgives his Michael Jackson/Cindy Lauper phase towards the end of his life. Almost... What did he get wrong about Sonny in his bio? In this book, there is nothing but 100% adoration. Same with Miles, Trane and Bird...

I just finished this book, written in 1997, that dealt with Wynton Marsalis and his movement, which the author called 'Neoclassicism'. The book is a strong attack on the trio' of Marsalis, Stanley Crouch, and Albert Murray, and their corporate supporters, Sony and JALC. It's 247 pages, so the author uses the entire history of jazz to support his views on how Murray, Crouch and Marsalis have excluded the contributions of white musicians such as Bix Biederbecke, Bill Evans, etc..,.and have declared any jazz that comes after Hard Bop as worthless, non-jazz. Their contention is that any music that is not strongly blues and swing influenced is not jazz. The author refutes this view by citing musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, and Earl Hines as being not particularly blues influenced musicians, and asking, "Are they not supposed to be considered jazz musicians?" He uses the same logic concerning Dizzy Gillespie's embrace of Latin music in the 50s- "Is that not jazz because it doesn't swing?" The same logic is applied to Anthony Braxton's solo performances and Cecil Taylor. He also cites the exclusion of George Russell's music from the JALC, because Russell included electronic instruments in some of his later compositions.. Another chapter demonstrates the charges of ageism and reverse racism in Murray, Crouch and Marsalis' thought, with endless examples of white and older white musicians who are excluded from the JALC program and their consideration as not being valid jazz musicians by the trio of Crouch, Murray and Wynton. At this point, you're probably saying, "Yeah, I've heard all this before", but the blatant lies of the aforementioned trio are certainly worth being documented, and the author's outlining of the corporate powers backing them are extremely relevant to an understanding of the corruption of NYC in regards to the JALC program, It is important to note that the author knew he was dying of Leukemia when he wrote this book, and that might account for his urgency of tone throughout. It's easy to criticize someone writing from this state of mind, but i prefer not to. I'll leave that up to you...

There better be a lot of Ed Bickert on there!

Wow! What a great thing to do for your father! Putting all that together for him is something you should be very proud of!

I agree that it's not as comprehensive as something like Schuller's Swing Era tome, but he does make clear that it's part of a series of books that intends to include at least two or three other areas (modal and other influences, Free Jazz), and his disregard for Cannonball's 'Soul Jazz' period in the first of the series, here becomes adoration, because it's understood in the context of hard bop (first group of Rosenthal's groups of musicians.). Maybe his lack of first hand sources stemmed from his 'difficult' interview with Jimmy Smith, where Smith refused to talk about the past, angrily insisting that the present was all that mattered. In any event, I agree that the title was misleading,and perhaps he should have called it, "Vol. Two: Musicians Infuenced and influencing the hard Bop Style". s

He includes Wardell Gray on the chapter with Dexter Gordon because of the recording of "The Chase" in 1947, which fits the first group of musicians that Rosenthal says qualifies for inclusion in the hard bop nomenclature. The chapter contains a lot more on Gordon than Gray. He mention McLean in the introduction, saying that although he figures frequently in the course of the book, and was a prominent contributor to the emergence of hard bop, he has deliberately chosen to withhold his discussion of JM's work, because he wants to save JM for the next book in his series, which will look look at the extensions of bop in the early and mid 60s, in modal and other directions. He says, "McLean seems to me an excellent bridge into that development, and also made what I consider to be the most exciting and innovative music of his career in those years. Accordingly, I have reserved any detailed examination of his music for that volume".

He uses Rosenthal's four groups of musicians that qualify as Hard Bop.

very sad to hear this. He used a friend of mine as photographer on some albums. One time GT was stuck for a guitarist, and he asked my friend for a cat in Manhattan for a guitarist for a Ralph Lalamma session. That's how Peter Bernstein got his start.

They put words to Django? NO!!!!

That's a good point, KCR is playing a retrospective on Leo Parker now, and I' really digging it. Pat Patrick, Mulligan, Leo Parker, guys who didn't pay a million notes per second, and kept a lighter sound are okay with me. Even Pepper Adams can be a bit much, as mjzee mentioned above, when he's the only horn on the record. I've never heard Stitt play Bari. It's just the nature of the instrument. It's timbre can be unbearable in large, uninterrupted doses. They're all brilliant musicians, but timbre is an important consideration.

it's a tough instrument to listen to on a small group record where it's the only horn for an extended period of time. A friend gave me a CD like that, and after half an hour or so, I just couldn't take it anymore, and literally had to turn it off. Mulligan or Pepper Adams could pull it off, because of their sound and ideas, but other than them, the range and power of the horn can be too much, especially if the player is trying to see how many notes he can cram into a measure.