Hot Ptah

My wife owns about 20 versions of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons", including virtually all of the versions recommended highly in the Grammophone and Penguin guides. This one is her favorite, and I think that it is more compelling than most or all of the other versions:

Another pipe smoker:

Lee May Lee Maye Maybelle Carter

How about the 10 CD boxed set of the Cecil Taylor Big Band playing "It Came Upon The Midnight Clear", Volumes 1 through 10? One highlight for me is when the melody of the song is finally hinted at for the first time, obliquely, in the middle of the fourth disc. What a concert that must have been to have attended!

I am on the other end of this situation. My younger brother is deeply into punk music and looks down on me as a person because I do not like much of it. He seriously thinks that I am a lesser person than he is, because of his greater appreciation of punk, and often lets me know it. He is always trying to "turn me on" to punk, to get me to like punk more, to become more familiar with more punk music. I don't like it one bit. That's hard - but you have a strong sense of humour and I feel that always helps in difficult situations. MG Actually, it's more of an annoyance, like a mosquito buzzing around my head, than an actual difficulty.

I am on the other end of this situation. My younger brother is deeply into punk music and looks down on me as a person because I do not like much of it. He seriously thinks that I am a lesser person than he is, because of his greater appreciation of punk, and often lets me know it. He is always trying to "turn me on" to punk, to get me to like punk more, to become more familiar with more punk music. I don't like it one bit.

But it doesn't matter if they don't. What are you going to do if they love what you think is trash? Love them less? MG That's right. You can hope that they get into better music, but it's just a hope. Actually, there's a really good chance that they never will.

This entire topic brings up a sad point about the father-daughter relationship--it seems that it is inevitable that it shifts from a friendly one, in which the daughter talks warmly and openly to the father and listens to what he has to say, to one in which the father's thoughts and opinions are no longer valued by the daughter, or at least if they are valued it is a well-kept secret. At least that is what happened to me. Music is only one aspect to it. But I think that if you push too hard in any area, that area will become the lightning rod for the entire relationship change. It would be too painful to me to make music the battlefield.

clementine's negative opinions remind me of Lester Bangs' writing. Bangs would make very negative remarks about a rock group which was widely loved and critically respected, on the basis of ideas which were certainly different than the mainstream thought, and not always obviously correct. He was thought provoking, and made you question the conventional wisdom and whether you had just swallowed the conventional wisdom whole. I see a value in that type of "poking a needle into the balloon" writing. I would find it more difficult to enjoy a young poster who had not heard much music and wrote things like, "that Duke Ellington sounds so old timey, he's no good." That would be unproductive negativity, in my opinion. There could still be some value in the discussion it would provoke, I suppose.

I still don't think she will like it. If my parents had told me when I was 13, "in addition to the albums you have, you should give a listen to this great rock band we've read about"--I would have immediately put that rock band, whoever it was, in the lame category, and would have filed it in the "never play" pile. I would have literally never removed the shrinkwrap from the LP cover. Your heart is in the right place, but as JSngry said, if you suddenly showed a great liking for all of the pop music that your daughter is listening to, she would immediately dislike it, and think it must be highly suspect. What I do is ask for a Christmas list, buy the CDs on it without comment, no matter how ridiculous I think they are, and keep my mouth shut. I hope that the truly great music wafting through the house sinks in on some sublimal level. That's all you can hope for, in my opinion.

That means a lot coming from Larry Kart. I have been enjoying your book "Jazz In Search of Itself" a great deal recently. I had become frustrated at my inability to read it without constant interruptions from family members, so I moved it into a permanent place in the bathroom. Now I am able to read portions of it in a completely focused manner. I find your writing to be remarkably clear. It is a pleasure to read such well crafted prose. You make it look easy, which means that it was not easy to write that way at all, and was the product of a great deal of hard work and care. Also, your thinking about jazz is remarkably clear, which is a rarity among jazz writers of any era.

I agree with JSngry. It has been impossible for me to "guide" my eleven year old daughter into jazz or other worthy music. She has heard a great deal of jazz and classical around the house since she was born, and thus hates all of it, or at best takes it for granted as background wallpaper. "Her music" is the pop music of today. Within that context, she has some discrimination. She does not care for Hannah Montana while many of the girls in her class were bragging for weeks about how they were going to see Montana in concert. I have taken her to live jazz concerts, of accessible music, and she has not enjoyed it. She just doesn't care for jazz or any other music which my wife or I might like. As JSngry said, by trying to force the issue, it only creates a deeper backlash. This has all to do with independence, setting her own identity, and getting involved with the young music of today. I did the same thing when I was young. I refused to listen to my parents' show tunes albums and classical albums. They had one Art Tatum album in the bunch too. No, I was into my Beatles and Crosby Stills and Nash and Led Zeppelin, which my parents found incomprehensible. I would completely give up, live and let live, and don't worry about what your children listen to or try to change the situation. It will only create negative feelings and will not change their listening. Maybe someday, in their late 20s to early 40s, they will have a jazz epiphany and think, hey, my dad has a great music collection. I think it is unlikely to happen for decades, though.

One of my great jazz nights ever was at the Parisian Room, Los Angeles, late summer 1979, seeing Lockjaw and Harry "Sweets" Edison. The evening opened with an African American comic whose entire act was complaining angrily that everyone was switching to small cars and motorcycles, while he was always going to drive the largest Cadillac he could find. The bartender told us that there was a two drink minimum, and that we might as well order a mixed drink because beer was the same price. We ordered gin and tonics and got a huge glass of straight gin instead. We were soon almost on the floor, literally. Lockjaw was phenomenal throughout the evening. He stood still at the side of the small stage, just blowing the roof off of the place. I could not see anything different about his saxophone. My vision was getting more blurry by the sip, though. Harry "Sweets" Edison, on the other hand, danced around the stage, often singing out loudly, "when you smoke Thai you know you're high." I wonder what he meant by that.

That set is certainly excellent but $162.50 per disc!!! Wow, I need to tell my wife that we have our retirement covered with the shelves full of Mosaic box sets.

Don Lock Fred Valentine Willie Kirkland

I had forgot about I Can See for Miles...it was another big favorite of mine as a young teen. Miles Davis thought that "I Can See for Miles" was written about him, according to the book written by his roadie.

I have not found mold inside any of my Mosaic boxes. Nor any calcium deposits. One time I bought a single LP of Willie "the Lion" Smith from an ebay seller. The bottom half of the cardboard cover was consumed by mildew, to the point where the printed material was no longer legible, and it stunk so bad that even when I put it in the garage, we could still smell it inside the house. That seller then sent me a series of emails arguing that I "owed" him positive feedback.

What I find interesting about the column is the premise that adults under 35 could not have fun if jazz is playing. Perhaps we are beyond the point of even wondering "Why Jazz Is Not More Popular", but I suggest that if it has become "a given" that jazz will not appeal to anyone under 35, there is not much possibility of it becoming more popular.