Hot Ptah

Virgil Tibbs Mark Thackeray Dr. John Wade Prentice

One of the best things about living in Kansas City over the past 25 years was the opportunity to hear both of these musicians live very often. Claude Williams was very memorable live. I remember one concert in a theater in which Jay McShann was the headliner and Sweets Edison, Harold Ashby and Claude Williams were the front line. In the first song Sweets and Ashby played very good solos. Then Claude stepped out and blew them off the bandstand with an intense, short, electrifying violin solo, that made members of the audience all around me spontaneously gasp in astonishment. Another time I saw him in a small tent at the outdoor Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival. He was not one of the headliners on the large main stages. He was dressed in a T shirt and shorts, standing in the grass a few feet from the audience. Every note he played for the hour long set was compelling. The only thing wrong with the set was that he was too democratic, allowing all of the musicians a lot of solo space, and I wanted to hear more from him. Jay McShann--I heard him more than 25 times live, and it ranged from very good to truly great. His piano playing was very underpublicized. He could really play in a virtuoso way when he wanted to.

Jim, I appreciate your response. I don't hear any of what you say when I listen to a variety of Jarrett albums, and I have known the type of whiny adult you describe. To me, Jarrett is more like the Grateful Dead in that when they really jelled and somehow came together in their instrumental passages, it could be really good--but then there were those dull, uneventful passages too, sometimes for a long time. It never struck me that in Jarrett's case, that this was due to a whiny, selfish personality. To me, it was more that he tried to improvise without much structure and the pan did not always shake out with gold in the bottom--sometimes it was just dirty gravel. Still, sometimes there is gold, more often than many other musicians.

I must confess that I don't understand the strong emotional reactions which Jarrett produces here. I find some of his albums quite good, some pleasant enough but not that memorable, and some not very enjoyable. I have the same thoughts about the recorded output of Ahmad Jamal. I listen to the Jarrett I like, and do not play the ones I find less enjoyable--just like Jamal. I saw Les McCann really abuse an audience once, yelling out that we were a "sad ass town" and making very crude remarks from the stage directed at specific women in the audience. Apart from the abuse directed at the women themselves, there were many small children clearly visible in the crowd at this outdoor festival event. But I do not feel seething rage every time I pick up a Les McCann album. or read his name. So why do some of you get so angry about Jarrett? What is there about him that produces such bitterness? I don't get it.

Yes, Keith and Ra were hardly unique in the 60s/70s in that sort of talk (I blame cheap paperbacks of Sanskrit texts and the like). They clearly believed that they were part of whatever master plan the creator had. Now where are those Alice Coltrane records.... Any rock fan who enjoyed Yes albums in the early 70s and, more to the point, was convinced that Jon Anderson's lyrics held a key to the universe was a natural for Jarrett's philosophising. Would certainly have been far more appealling to the spirtual seeker in '76 than Johnny Rotten's! Even Frank Zappa got into the act. Didn't he have a philosophy that people, and maybe the universe, are made of strings? You may be referring to these spoken lyrics from Zappa's "Lumpy Gravy". I am not sure that they represent his sincere personal beliefs: "Ronnie Williams: Buh-bah-bahdn Spider: Oh! John: There it went again.. Spider: It's a little pig . . . with wings Pig With Wings: EE . . . Gross Man: I hear you've been having trouble with pigs and ponies! Left channel: Calvin: To . . . just the opposite . . . going around to the other direction Right channel: Calvin: How 'bout us, don't we get any? Gail: We don't get any . . . Calvin: That's very distraughtening Gail: We don't get any because we're otherwise Spider: Everything in the universe is . . . is . . . is made of one element, which is a note, a single note. Atoms are really vibrations, you know, which are extensions of THE BIG NOTE, everything's one note. Everything, even the ponies. The note, however, is the ultimate power, but see, the pigs don't know that, the ponies don't know that. Right? Monica: You mean just we know that? Spider: Right! Spider: "Merry Go Round! Merry Go Round! Do-Do-Do-Do Do-Do-Do Do-Do-Do!" and they called that "doing their thing." John: Oh yeah, that's what doing your thing is! Spider: The thing is to put a motor in yourself. ****** Spider: I think I can explain about . . . about how the pigs' music works Monica: Well, this should be interesting Spider: Remember that they make music with a very dense light, and remember about the smoke standing still and how they . . . they really get uptight when you try to move the smoke, right? Monica: Right John: Yeah? Spider: I think the music in that dense light is probably what makes the smoke stand still. Any sort of motion has this effect on . . . on the ponies' manes. You know, the thing on their neck John: Hmm . . . Spider: As soon as the pony's mane starts to get good in the back any sort of mo . . . motion, especially of smoke or gas, begins to make the ends split. John: That's the basis of all their nationalism. Like if they can't salute the smoke every morning when they get up . . . Spider: Yeah, it's a vicious circle. You got it."

What's a "dux"? These unusual terms from Wales really baffle me sometimes.

Here are my suggestions: Supersonic Jazz (also reissued as Supersonic Sounds) Cosmos Unity Solo Piano Vol. 1 St. Louis Blues Nubians of Plutonia Fate in a Pleasant Mood Bad and Beautiful Angels and Demons at Play Mayan Temples Visits Planet Earth Sun Song

Misty Mundae Wednesday Addams Billy Sunday

Mickey Vernon Steve Ridzik Bob Saverine

Ensign Ro Seven of Nine Kes

I wonder if it has ever been played. As these albums are in sleeves containing the Presidential seal, imagine what they would bring if they suddenly starting popping up on ebay.

Here's a story line for a novel--an older, unhip President discovers the collection, pulls out "Trout Mask Replica", is unfamiliar with it but puts it on the turntable, and becomes obsessed with it. He cannot stop listening to it, every waking moment. He has the sound system moved into the Oval Office so that he can listen to it non-stop all the time. He insists on having it play over speakers in the Situation Room during international crises. The effect of so much listening to "Trout Mask Replica" is that the President.....

Meg Ryan.

Didn't Jim actually pass 30,000 some time ago? Didn't the long time posters all lose a significant number of posts when the board crashed a few years ago?

Mickey Vernon Roy Sievers Harmon Killebrew

Why is everyone talking about him in the past tense? He's still here.

Iverson is a bright guy, a nice guy, and a fine player, but I was disappointed by the facile-cheesy/armchair psychoanalysis amalgamation of musical and racial themes in the passage Quasidmodo quoted, and elsewhere in the essay IIRC. Some of the same thinking crops up in Iverson's much chewed-over here interview with Marsalis, where at one point Iverson himself gets all "I'm not worthy" (along musical/racial lines) with Wynton about Iverson's provincial (for want of a better term) Wisconsin upbringing. BTW, Lester Young had much the same taste in drummers as Tristano did, apparently for similar, primarily musical reasons. But I guess Pres was lying and really didn't want too much African diaspora in his jazz. Being a Wisconsin native myself, I can tell you that it is easy to think of yourself as a rube when talking to people in major metropolitan areas. This is not to excuse Iverson's leap from that, to unsupported musical/racial themes. I have known some people from larger cities all too eager to label a Wisconsin person as an uncultured hick, and Iverson may have run into that himself. However, at some point you've got to get past that, and not mention it defensively yourself. In fact, now I occasionally use it as a diverting tactic, to make business opponents think that I am less of a threat than I really am, then I sneak up on them. The most dramatic example that I can remember--I interviewed for a job in the recruiting office of my law school, with a Chicago law firm in 1980, and when the attorney heard that I was a Wisconsin native, he said, "Wisconsin! I just think that you will not be able to survive in Chicago. Wisconsin people are so backward. You have twenty seconds to convince me that you have some cultural background, something different about you so that you will be able to live in Chicago with a hick background like that." I quickly ran through the file cards in my mind, thought about mentioning the Jazz Showcase and Jazz Record Mart, decided that such an answer might be considered so out of the mainstream for a downtown professional office that it would not be a good answer, wondered if I should give the jazz answer a try anyway, but by then the twenty seconds were up. The attorney abruptly left the cubicle in the recruiting office without another word. I've often wondered if I would have had the job if I had mentioned Roscoe Mitchell. I never did break into Chicago. But Valerie Bowman of my 100 student first year section at law school sure did. She's now known as Valerie Jarrett.

Gerald Ford Garth Hudson Abraham Lincoln

That's the best idea I have heard yet. Thanks, Jim.

This album has received some positive reviews, and the reviewers tend to focus on the fun quality of the music as well as its substance. Saxophonist Jon Irabagon just won the Thelonious Monk competition. Has anyone heard this album, and what are your reactions?

I guess I feel a little less dense, if no one on this board could come up with any more information than I had about these lyrics. The songs themselves are great, in my opinion. I really like Archibald's style on piano.

I remember that Forrest's claim of composer credit for "Night Train" has been discussed in a negative fashion in several printed articles. I remember an interview with him in one of the early years of Jazz Times, when it was still printed on newsprint--it might have been during the time when it was still called Radio Free Jazz. The interviewer asked Forrest if he thought that Duke Ellington had stolen "Night Train" from him. Forrest said that he thought that Duke had stolen the song. The interviewer was clearly surprised, and commented that Duke had composed over 4,000 songs, so why would he steal one more? Forrest continued to say that he thought that Duke had stolen the song from him.