Larry Kart

And of a notable Brubeck-Desmond concert: http://www.allmusic.com/album/dave-brubeck-paul-desmond-at-wilshire-ebell-mw0000877468

Gibbs and Niehaus for sure in my book. Distinctive voices, considerable bodies of work, often at a very high level. And Gibbs embodies the spirit of jazz.

Love you, too, but I'll stick by that claim that the pre-World War II and post-World War II divide dwarfs anything we've seen since -- culturally, politically, socially, economically, you name it. For one thing, only after (and largely because of) WW II did the US become a full-fledged international power, whether it wanted to or not. Born in the early spring of 1942, I have no direct literal experience of the pre-WW II U.S., but a whole lot of what we were in the '20s and '30s and before was still hanging around to be felt and observed when I was young and conscious, and you wouldn't believe how different it was in all sorts of ways. Further -- and this I did directly experience -- I do have memories and feelings of what it was like to be born and live for a while in a civilization that not only was at war, with my father and a great many other fathers in the service and perhaps not coming home (this not comparable to anything we've had since on that front), but also was fighting a war in which, when I was born and for a fair while afterwards, it was possible that we might not prevail, and this against Nazi Germany and Japan. No less important -- and I've noticed this time and again -- I of course have a good many friends who were born after the big wave of post-WW II prosperity and the rise of suburbia and the consumer culture we now all take for granted began to kick in -- say, around 1950. The big dividing line there, in terms of sensibility (or so it has seemed to me for a long time), is that if you were born during WW II or earlier, you perforce lived within the framework of history -- the events of today and tomorrow fundamentally were tied to, emerged from, and were shaped by aspects of the past. (To pick one obvious example, WW II itself was shaped by the nature of Germany and related matters going back a good long ways -- no WW I, no Versailles Treaty, no collapse of the German economy, no world-wide Depression, no simmering stew pot of German anti-Semitism, no Hitler, no WW II). If you were born after 1950, I think that the framework of history in the sense I just mentioned (as part of one's overt or implicit sensibility) became semi-arbitrary, if it had much if any force at all -- life took place in one long today and tomorrow, not a today conditioned by yesterday. If there was much past, it existed like a channel on your TV set (and that most people had one of those after a while was a huge deal in shaping one's sense of life as a near-endless today); you could visit the "past" for fun or for thrills and chills, but it was no longer a limiting, shaping, inspiring presence, an unavoidable reality, in American life. Actually, one of the nice incidental signs of this shift in sensibility were the odd little bursts of cultural nostalgia that arose from time to time in the post WW II era, and particularly post 1960, where guys like R. Crumb became fervent collectors of "vintage" cultural debris from the American musical and otherwise pasts. The sense that something precious had been or was being lost, of course, but also the sense that contemporary life had and perhaps could have no equivalents of this almost lost authenticity.

Nobody's saying anything negative about Aretha. Rather, it's David Remnick who's in the stocks.

As house booker Val Parnell said in Lenny Bruce's Palladium routine: "Maria Callas? Cancelled."

By post-war Remnick clearly means post World War II, which is a bit odd if one is judging singers. Billie Holiday is certainly both pre-war and post-war. Mildred Bailey (who counts in my book) is mostly pre-war. Bing Crosby (he also counts?) is both but leaning toward pre-war. Sinatra is both, leaning toward post-war. Nat Cole is mostly post-war. Peggy Lee is both but mostly post-war. Ella is both but leaning toward post-war. Etc., etc. The only major clearly post-war pop singer of note who comes to mind is Tony Bennett. Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, and Aretha have been mentioned. Anita O'Day, Chris Connor, June Christy, Little Miss Cornshucks -- while I'm sure I'm forgetting many, by the time we get to Dylan, my interest and competence cease. As for adults of our kids' age, I'd surprised if they had much if any concept of post-war of any sort -- Vietnam, Iraq, you name it. I mean what in terms of the culture did the actual war in Vietnam separate versus what WWII did? Rock 'n' roll began well before Vietnam. The rise of the so-called counter-culture? That also began before Vietnam, though the war certainly gave the counter-culture impetus. But then what does the culture-culture amount in watershed terms to "adults of our kids' age"? Pre WW II and post WW II was a huge divide in this country in just about every way, though you'd need a good sense of what life was like pre-WW II to credit that.

Just a wisecrack reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Between_the_Tates

The War Between the Tates.

Again -- I think that Remnick was just trying to get a rise out of folks. One of the oldest and lowest journalistic tricks in the book. From the editor of The New Yorker, no less. This is habitual with Remnick, especially when it comes to music, or so it seems. He recently referred to Bob Dylan as “the greatest and most abundant songwriter who ever lived.” http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/bob-dylan-and-the-hot-hand Move over Franz Schubert. Or if you will, Gershwin, Cole Porter, etc.

Never liked anything Koopman did other than his Handel Organ Concerti. In particular, I once bought and disposed of a set of Koopman's Buxtehude cantatas with much distaste. That does not bode well for me and his Bach. The Suzuki I've sampled seemed elegant but bland, and I didn't care for his soloists -- often lightweight and with little sense that they understand what they're singing. Wener's Helmut Krebs, for one, KNOWS.

If you love Aretha, fine. If you love Sinatra or Sarah Vaughan or whomever, fine. It's not an athletic contest, Mr. Remnick, you nitwit -- or should I say you journalist-editor who's trying to rouse the rabble.

Yes, there are a good many fine recordings of individual cantatas, but I wanted them all and a few years ago, nudged by various things I'd read (in particular a piece by that dangerous jerk Richard Taruskin) and some previous good experiences with Harnoncourt in other repertoire, I bought the complete Teldec Harnoncourt-Leonhardt set, with its stop-and-start rhythms, often out-of-tune squeeky soprano boy soloists, etc. Finally deciding that enough was enough, I began to explore on Spotify and elsewhere the other modern or relatively modern complete sets -- Gardiner, Koopman, Suziki, Rilling (am I forgetting anyone?), eventually realizing that none of them (for various reasons) was right for me. Then by chance I picked up for $1 used a box of Karl Richter's secular cantatas and was quite taken with the quality of his (no doubt too large) choir, though his grim contralto soloist Hertha Topper (other soloists were typically excellent) and his typically slowish tempos and solemn gluey rhythms were not a plus. Did I want all the cantatas from Richter? I wobbled and decided probably no. Then I heeded a recommendation to check out the 55 cantatas (in two sets of 10 CDs each, at bargain prices) that Fritz Werner (1898-1977) recorded for Erato from the late '50s to the early '70s. Just started to listen, and I think I got what I've been looking for. The vocal soloists are excellent -- tenor Helmut Krebs, soprano Agnes Giebel, basses Erich Wenz, Jacob Stampfli and Barry McDaniel, etc. -- as are the soloists in the orchestra (oboist Pierre Pierlot, trumpeter Maurice Andre, violinist Reinhold Barchet, etc.), and Werner's flowing, dancing sense of rhythm and phrasing is what I want, especially by contrast with Richter's almost uniform massiveness and Harnoncourt-Leonhardt's unwillingness to ever settle on a steady tempo (this allegedly, per Harnoncourt and his admirer Taruskin, for rhetorical reasons -- Taruksin even claims that the cantatas often should sound "ugly" in musical terms [awkward rhythms, strained voices, etc.] because the content of the texts Bach was setting often was awkward and ugly. Think I know what Taruskin means up to a point, but there's a line between conveying some sense of strain and awkwardness and simple musical incompetence). Only drawbacks are that Werner's choir, while OK, is not in the same class as Richter's, and it's 55 cantatas, not everything; but I can't wait forever...

Try David Cates: or Bradley Brookshire:

Don't live in the area, but there are buses: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=annapolis+to+dc+public+transportation

What I said back in January about "Affinity" FWIW: As a longtime mixed-feelings-toward-Evans listener, this one from 1978 strikes me as quite fine. There's something about Toots' affinity (right) for long-lined, almost moaned out, melodic statements/declarations that frees up Evans to stand over to one side and respond with a great deal of decorative fanciful inventiveness that is close to florid at times -- this burst of floridity seemingly a form of emotional release for Evans. Similarly his comping is strikingly aggressive/interactive behind Schneider. Evans' biographer Peter Pettinger refers to "the recapturing of a sense of the unexpected in his timing, but with a new precision and confident edge, left-hand displacements being placed against the beat with an outright intent that shocks us into acceptance...." Don't know about "shocks us," but, yeah. Also, engineer Frank Laico (once with Columbia, here with Warners) did a lovely job of capturing Evans' sound; the piano's extreme upper register, where he spends a good deal of time, just rings and glitters.

It was mine, too -- until I succumbed to "Affinity" with Toots Thielmans, which is surprisingly good; Toots kicks/pushes/nudges him into some different, novel places.

Just bought it on vinyl (for the second time, oops -- but for $1, then for 50 cents). I like the look and feel of RCA opera sets of that vintage, and they do crop up around here from time to time, at library re-sale shops especially. Zinka Milanov, Warren, Jan Peerce, Cellini -- ah, yes. Added thought that has no connection to the above: Malcolm Arnold's Sixth is the one where, in the first movement, he said he was inspired by Charlie Parker. I hear it, kind of, though if he hadn't mentioned it, maybe not. I've got all the Arnold symphonies I don't already have coming my way -- that would be 1,2,3 &4. That may or may not turn out to be a foolish move.

Fine group. Walt's one of my favorite players.

Got the other day a fully packed 3-CD compilation of most of Byas' French quartet dates from '46 to '54; it doesn't include the material on "Le Grand Don Byas." So far, Byas is at a very high level throughout, though it's not an album to listen through track after track -- many performances are similar in tempo, plus the gaps between tracks are negligible, which can lead to a feeling that one is hearing a single long Byas solo, albeit that "solo" is the work of a magician. The liner notes reproduce Byas' familiar statement that his primary musical influence after Coleman Hawkins (IIRC he says he heard Hawkins a lot in person in the late '30s and pretty much absorbed all he needed to or wanted to from him at that time) was Art Tatum, and that his Tatum affinity was perpetual, particularly in the areas of harmonic ("e.g "there are no 'wrong' notes") and rhythmic adventurousness. In any case, there's something about Byas that reaches the depths of my soul.

Nice. I just bought some stuff from a guy from our electrical firm (he'd just installed a ceiling fan for us) who was selling his late mother's LPs. A fair amount of older classical stuff I didn't have, all in fine shape (a bunch of Novaes' Vox albums, Gigli's "Tosca," "Un Ballo De Maschera," and 1938 Verdi Requiem, etc.) but also a bunch of MJR LPs (Earl Hines, piano anthologies, Don Byas, etc. and some Mary Lou Williams). His mom must have been a cool lady.

Many thanks, Caravan.

I looked at the contents of (I think) all the Byas CDs available on Amazon and saw only a few titles duplicated from the MJR LP.

This MJR (Master Jazz Recordings) LP, which collects recorded-in-Paris by Charles Delauney small group dates from 1952-5, is just stunning, as good as anything by the great Byas as anything I've heard. His sound is a bit more purring and liquid than usual, and his phrasing and time feel are also remarkably fluid. I was gripped throughout. Unfortunately the album seems to be o.o.p. If you see a used copy, don't hesitate.

Don't know much of Arnold's music -- a situation I will remedy -- but listening to this disc it immediately became clear that he was an orchestrator whose knowledge and control of symphonic resources was stunning. What an ear for sonorities and how to realize them! Also, reading about him, I discovered that he was also batshit crazy for much of his life -- a nasty alcoholic, so abusive toward his first wife that he was put under a protection order, Arnold spent a good portion of his later years in mental institutions, though he also remained a prolific composer. . That's the best "Pastoral" I know. Perfect tempos, among many other things.