Hot Ptah

Not only Debby Boone!

1968 is a funny year to have chosen. Most people who only like his early stuff would have said '66. I think al he did between 66 and 68 was John Wesley Harding and the basement tapes. And surely you find some merit in Blood on the Tracks. I think that the dividing line should be drawn right after The Basement Tapes and John Wesley H.

Thanks for that nice comment. I especially feel that I wish that I had a musical background when listening to Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Muhal Richard Abrams, Sam Rivers, George Lewis, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton--with them, I am left with thinking, "hey this is really interesting. I have no idea what they are doing, but it is intriguing on some level. Is it good musically-I guess it must be. I don't know. But it's very interesting, and often enjoyable. I will consider it to be great, and keep listening." If I was a musician, I would know exactly what they are composing and playing, instead of that inadequate response.

I still think that musicians have another level of understanding that I wish I had.

My grandmother, RIP, would routinely eat large lumps of Vicks VapoRub whenever she got a cold. I tested the ability of 1000 mg Emergen-C to knock out a cold this week. It didn't.

MG, Your wife is looking over your shoulder! Didn't you hear her coming?

As an enthusiast who has listened a lot to jazz for over 30 years now, I feel that sometimes I am fairly well equipped to evaluate what is going on, on a certain level. If I am hearing a mainstream jazz quintet playing a commonly played song, I can tell if the solos are routine or if the musician is adding some personal expression that takes the solo into another area. I do not know how to describe what the more creative musician is doing technically, but I can tell that it is more creative than someone just playing something hum-drum, because I am comparing it mentally to what I have heard other great musicians play in the past on that song. When the music becomes more complex or unusual, I am just left with trying to appreciate and feel it. I often think, a musician could explain what is going on. A musician could explain whether this is an inspired, brave step beyond convention or just some musicians noodling around with no particular intrinsic value to what they are doing. I don't have a clue in those cases. I usually give the musicians the benefit of any doubt and think that it's all great.

I am quite sure that the musicians appreciate and understand jazz at a much more advanced level than enthusiasts like me. I often feel that I am missing some level of understanding of what I am listening to. It is often frustrating. One tiny example--there was a transcription of Ornette Coleman's trumpet solo on the Charlie Haden duets albums on A&M/Horizon, in the liner package for the album. Before then, I had never thought that Ornette was that great on trumpet. When I viewed that transcription, I realized that although I had played trumpet for several years in school, that there was no possible way that I could ever play anything that difficult. It hit me at that moment-I have no idea what I am listening to, when I listen to jazz. Everything is much more advanced and difficult than I ever imagined. I also have no way to explain what Roscoe Mitchell is really doing, for one example. I am left with vague, incoherent thoughts about what it "seems like." If I had a musical background I would know how creative he is, and why.

Marty Marion Spin and Marty Bill O'Reilly

It was the B side to the U.S. single release of "Let It Be."

Allen--I agree with you that he ran out of ideas in 1968. To me, after that he was a professional recording artist, fufilling his contractual requirements for albums. He had enough talent that an occasional good song or performance surfaced, but most of his post-1968 output is product, not nearly as good or inspired as his pre-1969 material. In that he is not unique. The same thing happened to Paul McCartney, for example. The difference to me is that Dylan has attracted a group of admirers who insist that virtually everything he has ever done is genius. Few people would say that about McCartney, or any of the other rock performers who had a creative period and then just played out the string. There seems to be an industry which has grown up around the idea that everything that Dylan has ever done is genius, with countless books published about him especially. Except for the Grateful Dead, there must be no rock performer with as many books published about him, as Dylan in the past 10 years.

I don't think that anyone has mentioned Bheki Mseleku. I have enjoyed his albums, especially "Celebration". I would be interested in what the contributors to this thread, who know far more about South African jazz than I do, think about him.

Son House Rice Miller Jim Rice

Interesting... Did the school do any promotion around the significance of their band making the finals? And did the news media in your area take any notice? Here in Seattle we're lucky to have a full-time jazz critic (de Barros) on staff at the Times. He's also (time to haul the flamethrowers out of the holsters, boys ) the correspondent for Downbeat. It was the subject of local newspaper stories, and the high school band in question got to play a special concert at the Gem Theater in the 18th and Vine museum district. It was well publicized. We have a great weekly jazz writer at the Kansas City Star.

Most gorgeous? I might have agreed before her Playboy spread. It showed the value of leaving something to the imagination, in my opinion.

The Essentially Ellington high school jazz band competition article raises a point that I have often wondered about. Many high schools in the U.S. have a school band program. Most of those programs have a jazz big band, sometimes called a stage band, as one of a very few options open to band members. However, even with these thousands of high school jazz big bands playing all over the nation, being part of the regular curriculum of high schools everywhere, very few high school students know anything about jazz or like to listen to jazz. There is no spillover, or very little, from the school jazz band into the musical taste of the student population. Why not? In 2006, the jazz band at the high school in my neighborhood, Shawnee Mission East, was one of 15 national finalists in the Essentially Ellington competition. There has been no groundswell of interest in jazz in this area, I can assure you, among young people or anyone else.

Rodney Scott Red Rodney Tampa Red

My most enduring memory of ELP was a late night TV show, an in concert program, in which Keith Emerson played his keyboards suspended in mid air while he and the keyboards were spun around, head over heels again and again. To me, that summarized how some technically skilled musicians too often fell prey to bombast, showmanship and poor taste.

That is hilarious!

But, to pick up on Larry Kart's point again, none of the musicians on that list are likely to attract a mass audience while also creating great music, the way that an Erroll Garner did. Since the members of this super-informed jazz forum have to discuss among themselves whether any creative musicians are out there, and then a well-informed member puts together a list which contains some names which I (for one) have never heard of, what chance do these musicians have of breaking through to popular consciousness, or the attention of young people? To pick up on Jim Sangry's posts, many of these musicians are not young, and will not be part of the "building of new houses" that Jim wrote about. I guess I am left with the thought that young people are being exposed to jazz in unprecendented extensive ways, they aren't interested much in jazz, and why should we expect that they would be. Jazz does not speak to their need for music in their social lives with their peers. There are creative musicians out there, but they are as disconnected to the young people's lives as the currently great artists who work in sculpture are disconnected to mine. A towering sculptor could emerge who would create great art and would sweep the world, even coming to my attention, a person with no real interest in sculpture. There could be a jazz musician or musicians like that, who would create excitement in the young people. I don't think that there is anyone like that out there today.

or Mahavishnu or Larry Coryell or Jimmy Page or the Byrds or... I suppose that McLaughlin's "My Goals Beyond" and Page's acoustic playing on "Led Zeppelin III" especially, could have paved the way for Towner.

If you read the current blues musician's threads on Blindman's Blues Forum, the joke should now read: Blues is 3 chords played in front of 30 people. Jazz is 30 chords played in front of 3 people.

Eh? Eh? I just dropped the tin funnel I put up next to my ear--it rolled under my wheelchair. NURSE! Get my tin funnel, some young whippersnapper is saying something or another.

That's a great post, JSngry. I like the idea of letting the young people build their own houses. One question that remains for me--when we get out of the way so that the "young people" build their own houses, should we hope that some of them create jazz which is new, unique, but is based to some extent on the jazz that we love? Or it is inevitable that any future music will not have a link to the "jazz tradition"? Perhaps any future music with a link to "the jazz tradition" needs to come from the "young people" discovering that jazz tradition for themselves, or not, and building from it, or not. As the young people are building, should an old person resist any temptation to pass on information about the great materials from the past? This discussion is far removed from the beginning of the thread, which in this context might be summarized as "why don't these young people learn more about our old building materials so that they know a lot about them too, and can build with them too?"

If something "new" kicks in for this young generation of Miley Cyrus lovers, and if this something "new" becomes a well known phenomenon despite the fragmentation of the market and the forms of communication among young people, it strikes me that it is a real long shot that it will involve jazz in any form. "Exposure to jazz," at least jazz as it has existed up to today, is not the problem, or the solution.