Christiern

Set a good example and others will follow

To be specific, Louis told me that he made the switch while a member of Erskine Tate's orchestra at Chicago's Vendome Theatre. Tate asked him to switch, because he didn't think it "looked good" to have a short horn in the trumpet section. Ergo, it was for esthetic reasons. If you are reluctant to believe that explanation, it's no problem, but I hope you understand that I was reminded of it when you offered yet another example of reality-starved analysis.

When will y'all learn that DEEP likes to play these games with you? Given an opening, he storms into these thread, armed with little more than caps (bold and otherwise), quickly becomes the dominant poster (without posting anything of substance), and slings his childish insults in every direction. Granted, most of these insults are but a part of his game and should not be taken seriously as such. In fact--as any novice psychologist will tell you--all this tiring, somniferous blather is an inflated ego's cry for attention. DEEP owes the longevity of these threads to his straight man (person?) Patricia, who faithfully trails behind and fuels the inanity, but the credit for leading thread after thread to destruction belongs to DEEP himself. Well, his new recruit, "groper," does assist, but he goes strictly by the DEEP book, so he is but a distributor in thios game, an extension of...amazingly...nothing! I would have ignored the thread that begat this one, but it was originally addressed to me. Likewise, I would bypass this one except that little-DEEP brought up my name. Now, however, I will go back to my work, with occasional side trips to spread the word on the Bush crime family: DEEP's (and, of course, little-DEEP's) court-appointed gollywogs. BTW, if DEEP really wanted the thread shut down, he would simply have stepped away, and instructed Little-DEEP to do likewise--Patricia would have followed.

I rather like the androgynous jazz of the mid-west.

I once read an article that went into great--if somewhat jibbery--details to explain why Louis Armstrong switched from cornet to trumpet. It had a lot to do with his highly sensitive ear for music, the Author said. I asked Louis why he switched and he explained that it was strictly for cosmetic reasons. The turn taken by this thread reminded me of that. Chuck, I share your pain!

The rarest one was a virtual race between two Mercedes cars. Bill Grauer sent a couple of guys to Gemany to record the engines of these two extinct cars. The tapes were then edited to fake a race that never could have taken place (guess you had to be there ). They ended up with 6 minutes, the result was issued on a $5.99 one-sided, red vinyl Judson (like "Riverside," named after a telephone exchange) disc and advertised as "a buck a minute." If it sold 6 copies I would be surprised. The race (let's make that racing ) discs reflected a passing consumer fascination with stereo/hi fi sound. I don't think the sales figures were impressive.

Both Riverside and Prestige released non-jazz albums, which may be one reason why they never attained the near-legendary status of Blue Note. There was a purity about BN, otherwise the question that sparked this thread would not have been asked. Riverside issued pop material, sound-effects, comedy albums, etc. Prestige's catalog included such items as Billy Dee Williams singing cabaret songs, Burgess Meredith reading Ray Bradbury stories, an album of Hermioney Baddley's comedic monologues, and even an odd Flamenco session. Had Riverside and Prestige survived, they would probably have an equally eclectic catalogue today, and we would think nothing of it.

I think the point is not whether Norah Jones' music has merit--of course it does. The point is, as I read it, whether or not the current powers at Blue Note are diluting the label's good jazz image. Personally, I think that adding artists like Jones, Van Morrison and Al Green to the roster indicates a mind-set that counters that which made the label so successful and widely revered. Many years ago, when another company (I believe it was United Artists) took over Blue Note, the label's jazz integrity suffered a blow, but it eventually got back on track and has since thrived, largely on the catalog Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff built. Yes, it is about making money, but I don't see that as an excuse to sacrifice artistic integrity. The argument one hears is that the commercial success of artists like Norah Jones makes possible the maintenance of a reissue program. Hogwash. The commercial success of pop and borderline jazz artists on the label only benefits the true jazz fan if the profits from such side trips are put into the production of new jazz sessions; the reissue program is self-sustaining, because the material has already paid for itself and the profit margin is high. If reissues were not profitable, they would only be produced by a small group of dedicated independent labels. So, I think Lion and Wolff would indeed take a dim view of their label's new direction away from jazz.

That's what happens when you have a forum that defies categorization.

"Some Liberals hate Bush too much to be bothered with facts...."--berigan Some lock-steppers support Bush so blindly that they wish the facts would go away--well, berry, they won't. Facts are currently unraveling his game and they will be his undoing. Face them or cry little neo.

Does anybody here get the idea that Lonson likes Phil's approach to this album?

I have no problem with his chasing and sharing details of Parker's life, but there is a lot of stuff in that set which has nothing at all to do with Charlie Parker, and while you may want every cough and sneeze, every second of sound, most consumers buy a Charlie Parker album to hear Charlie Parker play--not a 3-second presumed snippet of "Lover Man." My point was simply--and here I speak as someone who has produced a number of reissues--that I think it is foolish to aim strictly at the completist or buyers with a collector's craving for minutiae. Foolish, because it can--as is the case here--increase the price of the album. It also forces the average listener to sit through a lot of meaningless, irrelevant material. Phil, of course, is not just a completist, he has on several occasions simply invented "discoveries" in order to perpetuate a largely self-proclaimed authority. He has claimed discovery of hitherto unknown tracks that had, in fact, been released previously (one reason Verve dumped him), and he has edited tape to sensationalize, as in the case of "Mahalia Swears," an outrageously dishonest, gratuitous track on his Black, Brown, and Beige reissue (one of several factors that led to Columbia dropping him. Enough about Phil, but I hope you get my point re the Benedetti release.

I have a couple of questions for those who find that the quality of the music outweighs any drawbacks posed by the inclusion trivial material. If you had a choice of purchasing a less expensive set that included only the musical performances (i.e. no 3-5-second alto blips, no train passing by the window, etc.) would you not opt for that? If so, don't you find Schaap's obsession with frivolous sounds to be a flaw in this release? My point was that a more sensibly programmed set would have allowed more affordable pricing, thus making these Parker performances available to more people.

I had a rubber stamp made. It's kinda worn, but one can still make out the NoHM

Mikeweil made a comment, I responded in an attempt to set the record straight, and you make some kind of an issue out of it! You obviously have a problem with that, although I can't imagine why. Anyway, I took the bait when I should have simply ignored. My bad.

The title is a scramble of Orrin's name, as we all know. Orrin was, after all the session producer, at least in name. What's you point? If you are trying to say that Bill Grauer did not call the shots at Riverside, you are wrong. It wasn't called Bill Grauer Productions for no reason. Remember, too, that The Record Changer was Bill's publication. Unlike Orrin, Bill was content to stay out of the spotlight--he did not have the ego problem.

Found this NY Daily News 11/8/41 piece at the Fifth Ave. Library this morning. That's a photo of the ship I was on--in fact, I'm still aboard as this was taken.

Since we have been asked for our opinions on this set, here is a review I wrote in the June, 1991 issue of Stereo Review--I hope you find it useful: CHARLIE PARKER: The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings There is no question about it, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker was the pivotal figure of bebop, the “modern” jazz style that challenged tradition in the post-war years. When Parker died, in 1955, he was only 35 years old—that, and the enormous impact his music had already had on jazz, immediately made him a legend, the first such jazz figure since Bix Beiderbecke. Unlike Bix, who died in 1931, “Bird” spent his most productive musical years in an age when technology allowed recording activity to stretch beyond the authorized, planned studio session. Accordingly, he left behind a seemingly inexhaustible legacy of private recordings which, when combined with commercial releases and the inevitable alternate takes, make up a Charlie Parker library so voluminous as to rival the average jazz record collection. The latest addition to the ever growing library of unofficial Parker documentation is an authorized, first release of the so-called Benedetti recordings. Dean Benedetti was an alto saxophonist and fanatic Parker fan who in the late Forties followed his idol into clubs, armed with recording machine and a determination to leave no Parker note behind. Unfortunately, Benedetti seemed less interested in the work of Bird’s co-musicians, so he was loathe to waste acetate disc space on them; consequently, what we have here is 278 tracks that add up to more than seven highly fragmented hours of bits and pieces—Bird droppings, if you will. Many of these snippets capture engaging streams of improvisation that will prove invaluable to the serious Parker scholar, but there is also great excess here. Most of the longer tracks have neither a beginning nor an end, but they do at least contain a performance worthy of our ears; What mars the release is the inclusion of extraneous material that adds nothing to our understanding of Charlie Parker’s music; this includes a 19-minute collage of Benedetti home recordings (a passing train, rehearsing on his alto, reading a letter to his mother, etc.) and ridiculously brief snatches of Parker, ranging in length from three to thirteen seconds—tiny bits and pieces that clearly have been included solely to satisfy an obsessive craving for completeness. For example, it really makes little sense to include eight seconds of Night and Day five seconds of “Probably” Stardust, six seconds of “Possibly” Stardust (note the variation), a five-second “ending of unidentified tune,” and so forth. That’s like uttering “years ago” and calling it “possibly the Gettysburg Address,” these super short tracks are meaningless snippets from which I defy anyone to derive even a modicum of enlightenment or enjoyment. Thus the set is probably more complete than most listeners would wish it to be, but even so, “The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings Of Charlie Parker” is a misnomer, for portions of the original acetates were too damaged to be included. So why include meaningless scraps? Chalk it up to the producer’s obsession and the label’s established title concept. Mosaic’s catalog is rife with “Complete” titles, "The Complete Candid Recordings of Charles Mingus,” “The Complete Blue Note George Lewis,” etc. Clearly, the idea was to continue the trend with the Benedetti recordings, but one can easily become a slave of such a concept, and this is an obvious case of the release falling victim to its title. Who cares if every scrap of Benedetti’s random recordings is preserved? Determined to capture every bit of Parker’s solos, breaks and codas, he frequently started his machine in vain, then stopped it, presumably to save precious space on the acetate disc. With his relatively primitive equipment, he was unable to edit such false starts out, so they were unintentionally preserved, but that does not make them worthy of release. Don’t get me wrong, there is a great deal of wonderful music here, a real feast for the serious Parker fan, but a sensible approach would have yielded a more listenable—not to mention, affordable—five-CD set. Price is an important consideration here, because this is not he kind of album one buys for pure listening enjoyment; you don’t slip these discs into your player if you wish to relax with a significant other—it is decidedly a set for musicians, scholars, and the must-have-everything collector. If you wish to acquaint yourself with Charlie Parker’s music and don’t care if he wore red socks to the studio, ate a blueberry muffin for breakfast, or borrowed a chord pattern from Baroness Koenigswarter’s upstairs maid, I suggest you pick up some of his commercial releases. The compiler of this seven-CD Mosaic set is a local New York college station disc jockey who is known to New York jazz fans for his compulsive preoccupation with trivial details. Whether Parker blew the two notes on one four-second track during the same set as the three barely perceptible notes on another five-second snippet leads to senseless speculation in the producer’s liner notes, which are full of conjectures that have little or no bearing on anything. Equally stupid—and that is putting it mildly—is the system by which the selections are marked. Here, too, trivial details provide stumbling blocks. Some examples: “DBck” after a title indicates that Benedetti placed a check mark on the label or sleeve. Do we know why? No. So why do we need to know? “DBd” means that Benedetti made one or more copies of this particular selection—so what? And “NoHM” after a selection stands for "No audible Howard McGhee.” Can you believe that? Most of the recordings in my sizeable collection fall into that category. In an attempt to recreate the chronology, the 278 tracks are grouped into 64 “sections,” but the accuracy of this rearrangement is highly questionable, as is its importance. I could go on about the negative aspects of the album’s packaging, but I don’t wish to discourage the effort as a whole. As I said, there is plenty of good, listenable music here, fine Parker work extracted—sometimes in a crude, abrupt manner—from group performances that one wished had been preserved from beginning to end. Not everybody will adjust to the inferior technical quality, and the fragmentary nature of these recordings limit the audience to which they will appeal, but Parker’s stature earns these discs a prominent place in the documented history of American music. The accompanying, illustrated 48-page booklet is not all trivia fluff, parts of it are actually well written and sensibly focused. This includes an informative essay on Benedetti by co-producer Bob Porter and interesting notes on the music by Jim Patrick. Chris Albertson CHARLIE PARKER: The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings. Charlie Parker (alto saxophone); other instrumentalists. 278 tracks containing complete and fragmented Parker solos ranging in length from five seconds to nearly five minutes. MOSAIC D 129 (seven discs) (430 min).

"Haynes used to come into Condon's back in the middle '80's..."--DEEP What are you saying here? Condon and Haynes? I think someone had better clarify!

Perhaps one of you is wrong.

"One's for sure: without him some of the greatest jazz records wouldn't exist!" Don't be too sure. Bill Grauer was the power behind Riverside, and many of the decisions Orrin now takes credit for were Bill's. Before anyone suggests that I am this bitter old man who envies Orrin his Trustees Grammy,* I should mention that I was awarded one some 33 years ago. *Don't laugh, I've heard that one a few times.

I have seen many poorly produced Grammy shows, but I think this one might be the worst, so far. They need t get rid of Pierre Cosset as producer. Of course they should also consider featuring quality music--after all, this is supposed to be the cream of the crop. Last night's show was a mess, dominated by mediocre artists singing blah material, unimaginative production numbers, and embarrassing dips into the past. EW&F was terrible, and I'm not just talking about the sight of these old guys prancing around in costumes that should have remained in their closets. George Clinton? Well, he has been an embarrassment for a few years now. The Chick Corea segment was not worthy of him, and Sandoval's thing with the breast-grabber was positively nauseating. The producers seem to like Sandoval, but only when he resorts to cheap, labored blowing. I watched the whole thing and found it to be a complete waste of time with not a single moment worth repeating. Anyone agree with me?

This is one end of my system--there is another, and it actually requires electrical outlets.

At age 72, I have never attended a funeral. I guess the only way to keep that going is to not have one of my own.

Yes, Buck contributed to Bill Grauer's Record Changer magazine. He apparently had an abiding interest in African-American arts and people, in general. Click here for details.