spangalang

Yes. Tonight!

well put.

Am I "ready to accept the possibility..."?!?! LOL

So at this point, I am extremely interested in reading more of Rosenthal's book. From what I've seen, he offers a much needed defense of hard bop as an expansive music in its own right, rather than just a cliched segway between Parker-bop and Free jazz and/or as a politically impotent, regressive genre, which (at least in the case of Baraka's writing) strikes me as a bit reductivist. I am surprised to see hard bop getting so slammed...

That's interesting. Could you explain what "full victory" would have amounted to in that analogy? Is there an assumption that somehow the "promise" of bop was never really actualized or that Hard Boppers are somehow responsible for what one might see as the "arrested development" (as it were) of that realization?

Understood, but surely Parker's innovation and expression is an impossible standard to which to hold all others. Especially since Jones is so quick to explain Miles Davis' tone (and one might assume blues-y economy of sound) as "a means rather than an end... a deep connection to the basic blues impulse... insinuat[ing] more blues with one note and a highly meaningful pause than most cool instrumentalists could throughout an entire composition." Why not give similar bop musicians and their styles (i.e. Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan) the same charitable interpretation? I definitely intend to. I loved reading this piece, regardless of my reaction to it.

Of course, my title for this thread is meant to be a bit provocative-- I don't mean to suggest that Baraka literally "hates" hard bop. However, I just finished his "Bop" excerpt (included in Gottlieb's Reading Jazz and taken from Jones' larger work, Blues People) and I can't help but be taken aback at his dismissal of Hard bop. He describes the initial beginnings of Hard bop as the inevitable reaction to the very-White, accessible cool jazz of the 50s, noting Hard Bops' musicians desire to return back to the more "Black" roots of jazz through emphasis on Blues and Gospel. However, although he is duly critical of the cool jazz musicians, he almost seems *more* critical of hard bop. As merely a fan, I have a really hard time believing that, within the broader context of jazz history, the powerful music of Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley, etc. (on and on) could be so casually relegated to the "final meaninglessness of the popular," as Jones puts it: "[Hard Boppers] lost sight of the important ideas to be learned from bebop and substituted largeness of timbre and quasi-gospel influences for actual rhythmic or melodic diversity and freshness... [Hard bop] has become a kind of 'sophistication' that depends more on common, than banal, musical knowledge, instead of truth or meaning suddenly revealed. What results, more times than not, is a self-conscious celebration of cliche, and an actual debilitation of the most impressive ideas to come out of bebop. One has the feeling, when listening to the most popular hard-bop groups of the day, of being confronted merely by a style, behind which there is no serious commitment to expression or emotional profundity." Yikes. Admittedly, I have not read the rest of Blues People, and perhaps I am misunderstanding Jones' interpretation or do not yet know enough about jazz criticism to adequately respond. However, I'd love to hear some more thoughts on this...

Grados are awesome, but I found the pads got a bit scratchy on my ears after a while.

So jealous!

I am new to the Forums and would love to hear everyone's opinion of their favorite cans. I don't have a huge budget for my audiophilia, but I still try to find the best on which to listen to my jazz collections. Definitely some headphones are better at balancing the super bright highs of the trumpet, for example. Some of my favorites are Grado SR60, Sennheiser HD 202 II, and Klipsch IMAGE S4. Anyone have other recommendations?

Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Brad Mehldau

I'd love the download!