sgcim

The apologist couldn't make our weekly rehearsal/session, so we spent a few minutes renaming the infidel 'Stanley Crotch', and then went back to channeling our deity BE, musically. We then took a break, and started recounting several stories that presented Miles Davis in the worst possible light.

Though I could see I wasn't going to change his mind, he knows Sandke, and agreed to read his book. On the free jazz question, he cited a Cecil Taylor concert at JALC. On using whitey, he mentioned his friend, and a few other white musicians, and said the JALC orchestra is an integrated.one. I think things have gotten better in that regard, but the repertoire is still nothing I'd ever want to check out, including the Brubeck program that's coming up.

I just did a google search on it, and found reams of articles mentioning that SC was the co-founder and artistic consultant of JALC. Not that that will mean anything to person i was arguing with...

We were having a nice Sunday afternoon session, when we started talking about JALC. The drummer has a friend who has done some work with Wynton and JALC, so he was very defensive when I started bringing up some aspects of the scene at JALC, and denied any notion of WM being anti-free jazz, anti-white jazz musicians, anti-semitic, etc... I could see it was pointless to pursue it any further, but he seemed especially irate when I said that WM was influenced by Stanley Crouch in some aspects of JALC. He asked for some proof, and all I could think of was a vague memory of it being mentioned in Randy Sandke's book. Can anyone cite any mentions of Crouch's involement in JALC? TIA

We Have a Winner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nobody knows which movie I was talking about? Hint: I was being extremely sarcastic when I called it a horror movie; it was actually a well-known Hollywood movie

I saw the scariest movie I've ever seen the other day, and it had one scene that literally had me jump out of my seat! It was a movie from 1938, and the basic plot was that a young classical violinist defied the wishes of his mentor, Professor Heinrich, and started a band of his own playing non-classical music. He met a blonde female vocalist of questionable moral background, and they reluctantly were forced to work together in this hideous band in San Francisco. As is quite typical of this genre, even though they were repulsed by each other at first, the violinist and the blonde eventually fell in love, but she was lured away to NYC by a big-time theatrical producer. He somehow followed her to NY, but his band now needed a vocalist, and this brought about what was most surely the most frightening moment (IMHO) in movie history: The new young woman vocalist they found, barged into the hapless violinist's hotel room emitting one piercing, frightening, pitch from her vocal cords that can only be compared to the shrieking violin of the shower scene in "Psycho"! Can anyone identify both the movie, and that terrifying vocalist?

Yeah, but he could sure beat those skins! Although he should've used some more name players as sidemen...

Huge fave of mine. One of the most soulful singers that ever lived, IMHO. I used to play "Sackful of Dreams" and "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know ' from the great "Live" LP for the hip-hop kids in my HS music classes, and they'd just say "Old School", and beg me to put on some Fifty Cent (a former student at my school, before they booted him out).

Thanks for the info, Mr. Ascending.

Wow, that was the last big record store left in NYC. Bloomberg let commercial rents go through the roof, and all we have left is a bland, yuppified NYC. I used to love browsing at all the great record stores they had: Dayton's Colony Records Tower J&R Rockit Science Kim's Now they're all gone. NYC, the cultual capitol of the US, right...

I was in my fave used record store the other day, and they had Phil Miller's "Cuts Both Ways" with the omni-present Dave Stewart on keyboards. They wanted a lot of bread for it. Is it a good record?

Yeah, but I don't think they copied enough notes for Horace to get a big payday from those two funky white boys. Keith really took them to the cleaners.

Well, at least WM got to split the 15K that Becker and Fagen allowed him and PC, out of the 50K budget that Warner Bros. allowed them. That's $7,500, probably the most money WM had ever seen at one time. While I think that Becker and Fagen have written some of the best pop tunes of the last 40 years, their pop perfectionist attitude towards a jazz record made what could have been a great record somewhat less than that. I haven't listened to it in ages after being initially disappointed in it. While we're on the topic of the SD boys and jazz, it may be edifying to some people here that they ripped off Keith Jarrett's intro to "As Long As You're Getting Yours" (OSLT?) for their pop masterpiece "Gaucho". Keith wouldn't let them get way with it, and now his name is included on the songwriting credits.

It's a pretty fascinating story that illustrates William Gaddis' theory of "Capitalism and the Arts- the destructive element". From the book, "An Unsung Cat": Marsh and Christlieb were disappointed with the way the LP turned out. They wanted just two tenors and bass and drums like in their private sessions. together. Becker and Fagen however added Lou Levy on piano, and used arr. by Joe Roccisano. WM and PC maintained that WB and DF not only chose the wrong takes, but destroyed the true sound of the band through their engineering techniques. WM said that WB and DF, "spoiled the master in such a way that you really lose the presence of the band. We have a master that's just spectacular. So we feel that that they just castrated the music. They didn't quite know what to do with us. Originally they wanted just me alone, but I wanted Pete because Pete can really play. There was no trouble with the band, but the producers had something else in mind." In 5 days, the group recorded a total of 33 takes of ten different tunes. Becker and Fagen rejected a half dozen tunes entirely, and even on tunes they accepted, PC said they chose takes that the band didn't like. "Everything we worked for was in jeopardy. They didn't want what we wanted." The group was particularly dismayed that WB and DF rejected a "Body and Soul" that the group loved. "They looked at it with such disdain, that it wore a hole in our soul. That one tune in place of their tune "Rapunzel" would have made an entirely different LP today." PC appealed to Warner Bros. executives in an attempt to rein WB and DF in, but was told that his problem was with the producers, not them (WB). Becker and Fagen made it clear that the LP would be done their way, or it would be Shitcanned(!). After Marsh returned to NY, Christlieb and the rhythm section were called back in to the studio to record five more tunes, but only one, "I'm Old Fashioned" was used. If Marsh was called for this final session- PC said he wasn't- he declined." As a previous poster said, 1991's "Conversations With Warne" on Criss Cross is the same band without the piano that consisted of material recorded before the 1978 "Apogee" sessions.

I was surprised to read in the Warne Marsh bio, "An Unsung Cat" that this was a pretty negative experience for Warne, because of the poor production choices of Becker and Fagen of Steely Dan, the record's producers. It must have been pretty hard to fuck up a session with two of the best tenor players around, but somehow Becker and Fagen managed to really make idiots out of themselves, according to the bio.

That sums it up pretty well. If you look at the the two projects he's been involved in; JALC and the Ken Burns doc, it's not that much of a stretch...

That's alright brother, when our two Evans-hating moderators wake up on Judgement Day, and are greeted by a tall, skinny, bespectacled pianist, they'll realize the error of their ways. They'll be told to board the Down Elevator, where waiting for them will be Crouch's lips, willing to service them for all eternity... :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

I don't think there's any doubt about that. Here's a quote from an article about it I found online: "Just how did Ken Burns treat the enormous importance of Bill Evans to jazz history in his 19-hour presentation? In less than about 90 seconds, and only within the context of a section from Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue", the best selling jazz album of all time. The narration mentions Evans only inside a black-and-white narrative framework of Miles being colorblind when it came to the music. As "All Blues" played in the background, veteran critic Nat Hentoff, who was a friend of Miles, commented on how Evans' employment in the band came at a time when blacks were wary as to whether a white guy "could even play the music", and also of West-Coast jazz (played mostly by whites). Burns' film at least had the decency to add that Miles liked Evans' quiet fire" and "cascading waterfalls" piano sound, but after this brief mention of Evans on perhaps jazz' greatest album, the pianist is gone for good."

That's anecdotal evidence, has he made it his position in print or in recorded interviews? See Commentary Magazine, Jan. 1998. "Does Bill Evans Swing" by Terry Teachout.

I don't know why anyone would want to read anything an ignoramus such as Crouch would have to say about jazz, Here's something I found that he had to say about Bill Evans: "As far as Bill Evans is concerned, readers should note that Stanley Crouch, Marsalis' admitted mentor, is responsible for serious negative attacks on the pianist, as noted by jazz writer Eric Nisenson: "I once overheard [the jazz critic] Stanley Crouch giving a diatribe against Evans. It was just before a kind of symposium of jazz critics.... Evans, according to Crouch, was a 'punk' whose playing could scarcely be considered jazz. He could not swing, according to Crouch, and there was no blues in his playing." (11) These are simply inaccurate and dirisive remarks, especially since musicians as diverse as Miles Davis, Ahmad Jamal, Oscar Peterson, Cannonball Adderley and scores of others clearly disagreed. That Evans considered the blues a limited harmonic structure for his own purposes, and only rarely used it as a vehicle for blowing, is a given. That the often blues-based solos of Monk, Bud Powell, Horace Silver and others were, as he himself noted, a big factor in Evans' own pianistic development is also a given. That all of this ought to somehow diminish his brilliant artistry and widespread influence is just plain silly and inexcusable. For proof, just open any decent jazz history book."

That's that gunslinger mentality that was essential to survival back in the day but that can get you killed nowadays. I have mixed emotions about the change, to put it mildly. Let me put it this way - if the guy didn't fight back in some manner (preferably by playing better) then he deserved the disrespect he got, and should have learned from it for the next time. Stitt would not have pulled that shit if he really respected they guy (and no matter how good the guy was, was he REALLY up to the job of sitting in with Sonny Stitt? Was Sonny Stitt his idea of a Benevolent Negro Grandfather who was there to share the love and the bandstand and make everybody feel good that Jazz Will Survive, All God's Children Got Rhythm And Can Play Changes!!! ? There's a rather...serious degree of Disrespectful Cluelessness inherent in the notion of sitting in with Sonny Stitt unless you're ready to BRING IT, ya' know?)) and/or if he knew that he couldn't have gotten by with it. Wrong place/wrong time, blood would have been spilled (or at least drawn), and perhaps rightfully so (depending on time/place). But times have changed, and we make room for everybody these days, because we are such nice and evolved people and everybody's beautiful in their own way. So MANY people play the music now, and it has thrived and improved as a result! Or something. Sonny Stitt is dead now. I guess you've got a point there. Where would music be today if that drummer (Jo jones?) hadn't flung that cymbal at Bird when he tried to sit in at a session and didn't have his shit together? That made Bird woodshed like a maniac, and look what he came up with... Max Roach tried to pull something similar with Ornette at the Five Spot, but I don't think it took... Roland Kirk got his ass kicked by Stitt, and then RRK went on to kick ass whenever he could- ask Dave Liebman, George Adams, and many others about it.

You ain't kidding when you say a 'range of opinions'. I have to admit that I was turned off to Stitt after working with a Stitt disciple, alto player for many years, who was very competent, but boring as hell. He told a story about Stitt humiliating some fat, white tenor player who tried to sit in with him by pulling on the fat folds of flesh on his throat (like a turkey) while the guy was playing! I had also heard a bunch of Stitt recordings (and caught him live at the first Newport in NY shows) that didn't particularly impress me, but after recently hearing the Dizzy/Rollins/Stitt LP, I realized that when Stitt was 'on', it was something really special. IMHO, the "Rearin' Back" LP with Ronnie Matthews was one of those 'on' albums, and the Ellington LP was not.

I found this in the new releases section of a library, so I don't know if this is the first time this was available on CD, but it features two Stitt LPs- Rearin' Back(1962) w/ Ronnie Matthews, Lex Humpries and Arthur Harper, and an earlier all Ellington set (1959)w/ Stan Levy and Lou Levy. I forgot who played bass. "Rearin' Back" is Stitt at his best, with equally good Matthews. Those of you ready to dismiss SS as just a Bird imitator should be happy with today's jazz scene- nobody sounds like Bird anymore... The Ellington set is pretty sad in comparison. Stitt plays tenor on all except three cuts, and doesn't get anywhere near where he was at on Rearin' Back.

I liked his work with Grant Green- RIP.