Christiern

I just called and left a message on Joe McPhee's machine. He and Craig Johnson were in touch with Shrugs from time to time, so it is possible that they have heard from him or seen him at a performance. Anyway, this is quite disturbing and I'll stay on the case. Hope to be able to report a sighting.

You beat me to it, Big Al.

Name your favorite Braxton composition--I dare you!

This is the best thread you've ever started, berigan. Thanks.

With a couple of exceptions, I think the handful who remain at JC are slowly killing the board.

I agree with Allen, there is an awful lot of idiotic assumption going on in many of these books. Remember, too, that they are often written to fulfill an academic requirement. Years ago, in the Saturday Review, I took Ben Sidran to task for this kind of sloppiness. He wrote me a pathetic letter the gist of which seemed to be that a reviewer has no right to point out factual errors--it just isn't fair!

Those new pills are amazing, Allen. B-)

An excellent series, IMO.

This thread epitomizes the kind of crap we can do without. Wouldn't surprise me to learn that it was started by a racist--well, at least a fool.

Yes, as were quite a number of musicians of his generation.

I don't care much for the later stuff, which I find to be far too pretntious, but I really like the quartet recordings, and Desmond's presence contributed to that. As for his various experiments with time, I never paid that much mind, but there were, I admit, times when I wished Brubeck would do a little something in CP time, if you know what I mean.

Verizon is always over-priced. Why not get a pay-as-you-go T-mobile? I just got one of those, paid $79 for a phone and the first 100 minutes, but will get $40 backm so it's actually only $39. They have $10 and $25 cards, which can be purchased in stores all over the place, or over the phone. Once you have bought $100-worth of cards, you get 15% more time. Can't beat it. The Nokia 3595 is the one I got. Lots of features, colo screen, etc. Check it out here

And here's Jimmy's card...

Told this one before, but seems to fit here. One night, in 1961, I was at Jimmy's house for dinner when the phone rang. It was Benny Goodman asking him to sing with his group at an upcoming Vassar concert. I heard Jimmy say something like, "Benny, I'll sing for 75 dollars if you'll play at one of my gigs for the same fee." Benny made a more acceptable offer. Here I am with Jimmy in his dressing room at Vassar. We arrived first, so he took the best one, the only one with its own toilet. At one point, Benny came in and, very meekly, asked for permission to use the toilet. Jimmy waved him in there and when Benny made an embarrassing sound, Jimmy said, "I heard that!"

Perhaps they need a musical director who has a grasp on jazz.

I think one needs to distinguish between musical analysis and history/biography. While I have listened to the music for well over half a century, I have never studied it formally, so I am not equipped to write analysis, but I do work on getting my facts straight. When writing Bessie, my biography of Bessie Smith, I felt (and here I may be rationalizing) that analyses of her music would have been inappropriate. I did go into some detail on a handful of her recordings (especially in the revised 2004 edition), but in very superficial terms, mainly describing what I hear. Here is a case where all the recordings are readily available, as are books that focus on the music. Apropos dissecting music, I am reminded of Gunther Schuller's analysis of Bessie's "Jailhouse Blues," which I used (with permission) in my Bessie Smith Songbook (Schirmer's). I read it to Ruby (Bessie's niece) because I was curious to see her reaction to such detailed examination. When I got to "because Bessie is heading for the tonic," Ruby remarked, "Bessie didn't drink no tonic." It has always amuses me how confused/amused many artists are by analyses of their own performances. As for books dealing with jazz/blues history or biography, there is a sorry wealth of trashy ones out there--the genre is the low fence over which uninformed, uncaring "writers" jump.

When Kofsky was around and writing for Bob Thiele's magazine, the musicians I associated with on a regular basis (and they were many) rarely mentioned him unless he made some outrageous claim. He actually never brought out anything that people in the business (including artists) did not already know an had not themselves expressed. He was a foul-mouthed, vindictive man who often expressed his personal likes and dislikes in print. There is nothing wrong with that, per se, but he colored the truth to suit his own agenda. To illustrate how disingenuous Kofsky was, I'll repeat--in brief--an experience I had with him. When he had a hissy fit because I mentioned in a review that I had been unfamiliar with a certain local San Francisco bassist, he began a card-campaign in which he demanded that the editors of Stereo Review fire me. These were hysterical crank missiles that were not taken seriously on the other end, but they became increasingly venomous and Kofsky accused me of all sorts of things, and here is my point: He wrote that my book was full of factual errors, and thus worthless--it was, he said, fiction from beginning to end. Well, imagine my surprise when I came across his web site, many years later, and found him foaming at the mouth about John Hammond and what a fraud he was. He was in many ways correct about that, but the funny thing was that he cited my ("worthless")book to support his claim. So, all of a sudden, because it fit into his agenda, my observations went from fiction to fact. When I read that, I immediately sent Kofsky an e-mail message, but he was already dead. That fact, IMO, represented no loss to jazz.

Bear in mind that hardly anything is happening on JC and AAJ at the moment. This is the place, for sure.

Kofsky wrote some truths regarding the music business, but his Marxist zeal often got in the way. He was, in many ways, a nut case with an agenda and little in the way of integrity. His writing is not to be swallowed whole.

Guess I had better make the IDs: These are members of USO Camp SHow 1076, "Dixieland Jamboree" posing after their performance at the 765th TRSB (whatever that is): From left to right, they are Henry Long, Bass Pruitt, Edward Cornelius, Alberta Hunter, Ken Bryan, Snub Mosely, Bernie Peacock, Willard Brown, and Frank Gabb. BTW, Alberta led the first black USO show to go on the road. It was towards the end of WWII and she covered both the ETO and ICB areas. Here she is in Korea with Major Eisenhower (Ike's son) in 1952, and in 1945 Germany with a Nazi plane and a view from Hitler's pad...

I only mentioned the ego to explain why it is that Bob had his picture on just about everything he did. It has no bearing on his accomplishments as a producer.

Bob Thiele had an ego that matched and may even have exceeded Orrin's. He constantly included photos of himself, even when the context did not call for it. He also had on his office walls gold records, etc. that should have been handed over to the artist--one that I remember in particular was a Coltrane gold disc. John Hammond did the same thing. I received a telegram notifying me of the award, but never saw the actual Grand Prix du Disque sent to me by the Montreaux Jazz Festival, in care of John. That's show-biz, I guess.

It's part of Bush's peace-through-death-and-destruction program. I bet these hypers of Compassionate Conservatism never planted a single land mine on a golf course or estate lawn. And, yes, the politics forum is the place for this.

Odd that--in the piece linked to--there is no mention of Baker's Chocolate, which was the source of his family's fortune.

Can we make that Billie? Or has Schaap invented a brother?