Larry Kart

I recall taking a look at this book a year or so ago. To answer your question "does this book's author write about Bud as 'black music' in an intelligent, insightful, nuanced way or not so much..." my impression was somewhere between "not so much" and "not at all." Ramsey is no George Lewis, nor, when it comes to Bud Powell, no Peter Pullman.

Don't think it was Paul Bley; Ira Gitler wrote the notes -- right? --and I don't imagine that he and Bley would have been talking much at the time or ever actually. Zawinul doesn't seem quite right to me either. Nico Bunick? Bunick was Dutch and was a member of Mingus' band with Hillyer and McPherson. If it was Bunick, he might have looked down his nose at the style of the Harris-McPherson-Hillyer combo versus that of the Mingus band in which they had played together.

Agree about Hillyer and Cherry. I'm not awed by the album either, but its freshness really struck me -- this from a band that at the time I might have thought of as a bit self-consciously "retro" in its bebop homages. By the same token, at the time McPherson's drenched in Bird approach hit me the same way; now it seems attractively detailed, not at all by rote, and with a good deal of individuality to boot. But then I heard McPherson at a jam session in San Diego (his hometown I think) in maybe 1978, and he played a ballad, probably "Body and Soul," that knocked me out. BTW, I've since picked up a studio date from that era on Prestige with McPherson, Harris, Carmel Jones, Nelson Boyd, and Albert Heath. Doesn't have the electricity of the live date, and I prefer Hillyer to Jones on this occasion, but Boyd is a treat -- perhaps one of the models for Wilbur Ware.

Picked up an LP set of Janigro and Carlo Zecchi a while ago. Zecchi (a Busoni and Schnabel pupil) was one heck of a pianist. Also like Fournier and Schnabel, though it has sonic limitations:

Still with us at age 89: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Crow Fine player IMO. Also compiled/wrote two nice books of jazz anecdotes/reminisences and has a regular column of same on the NY musicians union site. http://www.local802afm.org/news-allegro/bill-crows-band-room/ More: http://www.billcrowbass.com/billcrowbass.com/WRITING.html http://www.billcrowbass.com/billcrowbass.com/HOME.html

Deceased: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Scott_(musician)

A neon sign versus self-communion.

By contrast (as Crow rightly suggests) try this:

Mucho bathos.

Heaven knows what Bill Crow would make of this latter-day Scott performance:

Well, his clarinet playing certainly has deteriorated.

Bill Crow's epic takedown of Tony Scott is worth seeking out; few if any non-musicians writing about jazz have ever flayed the skin off a player (and person) the way Crow does here. An issue or two later there was a letter from Bill Evans defending Scott. A bit messy, but here's Crow's review: TONY SCOTT and the ALL STARS: .52nd Street Scene. Coral 57239. On Dines lor "The Street," and Lore Is JIKI hound lite Corner; Joe Thomas, trum- pet: ,1. < . 11 igginbotham , and W ither De Pari>. trombone-; Tony Scott and Pee Wee Kti.— ell. clarinets; Sonny W hite, piano, Den/.il Best, drums; Osear Petiiiord, bass; AICasey,guitar.OnBody and Soul: Cole- man Hawkins, tenor; Tony Scott, clarinet; Tommy Flanagan, piano; Gene Ram ey, ba.-s; Walter Bolden, drums. On Ornithol- ogy; same as Body and Sou! plus Jimmy Knepper, trombone. In Lester Leaps In, t.orer Man, Woody 'A" You, 'Round Mid- night, and Mop Mop: Tony Scott, clarinet and baritone ^as; Al Cohn. tenor: Red Rodney, trumpet; Jimmy Knepper, trom- bone; George W allingtou, piano; Oscar Pelliford, ha«s; Roy Haynes. drums; Mun- dell I,owe. guitar. A legend has somehow grown up around Tony Scott, casting him in the role of "the real jazzman" whose credentials are his eagerness to sit in with everyone and to organize jam sessions. Now it is true that a lot of pleasure, inspiration, and education is available for jazzmen at in- formal sessions. This sort of playing is a source of true recreation, offer- ing a musician more freedom than he may be allowed where he earns his money, or a chance to play when he is out of work, or close artistic contact with other musicians without the responsibility to entertain cus- tomers. These objectives are inter- fered with and often made impossible to attain by the attitude with which Tonv approaches a session. Though he professes a great respect for the work of other musicians, he seldom waits to be asked before leaping onto a bandstand with them, horn in hand —and he eyidences little awareness of the tastes or sensibilities of the musicians playing vyith him. When be is around it is always a show, and it is always Tony's show, unless a bigger ham upstages him. Tony wants to be a star. He uses every situation as a stepping stone in his energetic scramble not for artistry, but for fame. He is so intent on his goal that he doesn't even realize how badly he uses his associates. His manner has become so ingrained that he continues to put on a break-it-up show even when musicians are his only audience. He plays in a tortured, rigid, sensationalistic manner thai successfully attracts attention but has little to do with playing music. Since he usually hires good men, I assume that Tony is able to recognize high quality work, but he does not appear to aim for this quality in his own playing. He concentrates on the end-result image of himself as a musical hero and applies himself to the evocation of that image in more dramatic than musical terms. His en- tire bag of effects are used with no concern for their musical value, but only as large electric signs flashing •"ME! ME! ME!" His affectations of humility are loaded with egotism. He continually professes his respect for the work of Ben Webster. Charlie Parker. Coleman Hawkins, etc.. and showers them with maudlin praise, but his playing indicates that he has learned very little from them. The foregoing notwithstanding. Tony is a definite presence on the jam session scene, and probably be- longs on this album as much as any- one else, since he is the inveterate sitter-in. His presence is representa- tive, if not particularly valid musically. His tone and phrasing here indicate a stifflv held body, shallow breathing, a generally un-giving attitude, and a lack of belief in what he is playing. He tries to make up for all this with dramatics that are about as believ- able as Liberace’s smile. He plays with less affectation on the baritone sax than he does on clarinet, though he is never com-pletely candid. His baritone sound is very clarinet-like. It occasionally slips into the true resonance of the instrument, but Tony evidently pre- fers the airier quality. His clarinet sound is either a fidgety, watery sub- tone or a thin, shrieky full tone, with rare lapses into a more normal tim- bre. Instead of following up the in- teresting fragments of ideas thai pop up in his playing, he falls back con- stantly on his three favorite devices: five-note descending chromatic runs, ear-piercing squeals and glissandos. and hysteric noncommittal twittering around the changes with an air that puts one in mind of Billie Burke in a high wind. Tonv is juxtaposed in an illumi- nating way with Pee \\ cc Russell on Love Is Just Around The Corner. (They split the opening chorus, alter- nate choruses, exchange fours, and take the tune out together.) Pee Wee's style is. for entirely different reasons. \erv similar to Tonv s. He plays tentatively, uses both subtone and full air . bends notes, and shrieks, but the difference could not be greater. His faltering and mut- tering is an expression of the ago- nizing self-conscousness that causes him to qualify every statement with effacement and apologv. but beneath this is a warm gentle man who w\ith all his stammering, manages to ex- pose his most tender feelings. The indefinit-'iiess in Tonv's playing is of another genre, resulting from, an evasion of rather than an attempt at direct expression. I hear no gentle- ness in him, only hardness at varying levels of volume. Blues For "The Street" is charac- teristic of jam sessions, each man playing several choruses with a rhythm section. A l Casey sets a very easygoing mood in his opening cho- ruses, and Joe Thomas, Sonny White, and J. C. Higginbotham follow in a similar vein, J. C. playing with more enthusiasm than inspiration. Oscar Pettiford's solo is ripe andfluentand his intonation and blend with the accompanying guitar i s exquisite. Tony begins his chorus sotto voce, playing perfectly valid blues melody in what amounts to a loud stage whisper. . . . "Look, look! I'm being subtle!" Wilbur DeParis' straight- forward simplicity seems particularly meaty after all this, and Pee Wee's customary intensity sounds relaxed by comparison. The remaining tracks are more re- stricting, since the amount of indi- vidual playing time has been curtailed in order to give everyone a chance to be heard. Body and Soul is divided among Coleman, Tony, and Tommy Flanagan. Though Tony fools around less here than he does on up tempos, the time would have been much better devoted to further development by Coleman. Hawk makes a whole lot out of his last half chorus, blowing away all the cobwebs with which Scott has decorated the first half. Mop Mop allows each soloist one chorus of / Got Rhythm at a fast tempo, and hardly anyone gets going before his chorus is over. Red Rodney plays with just Oscar accompanying (except on the bridge), and his tone takes on an unusual richness because of Oscar's resonant support. Knepper and Cohn both needed another chorus. Scott plays like a stunt rider on a tricycle. Roy Haynes' excellent half chorus is upset by Pettiford, who puts a lead-in figure on the bridge in the wrong place. Everyone goes along with Oscar, so the ending is strong even though displaced a beat. Roy makes the adjustment nicely. Al Cohn hits his stride on Lester Leaps In. He plays a fat, rolling in- troduction, decorates the lead chorus tastefully, and composes a well-con- structed chorus of his own. Lowe's guitar, Scott's baritone, and Walling- ton's piano solos are satisfactory, and Knepper, Rodney, and Haynes create interesting choruses. Oscar begins his solo with a delayed permutation of the original melody, loses Roy, loses himself, and leads the band back into the last chorus a bar early, but his conception is so interesting and his recovery so absolute that it's a good chorus even with the goof. With all his preciosity, Tony comes closest to playing meaningful music on Lover Man. The notes he chooses have something to do with the tune, and he restricts himself to a mini- mum of archness. Mundell plays a prettily chorded bridge, and Jimmy Knepper's last eight of the first chorus is lovely. George W allington's bridge sustains the mood effectively, but seems terribly sere and brittle. Woody W You allows each soloist eight bars, and there is hardly enough time for anyone to say anything, let alone relate it to what has gone be- fore. Still, it's a pleasant, craftsman- like track. Midnight has a prettily played intro and coda by Red, the melody played rubato with great depth of feeling by Oscar, and a melodramatic clarinet solo played by Theda Bara. The sad thing is that if he would drop the phony passion he'd discover that he is actually play- ing some beautiful notes, and might feel some real passion about that. Flanagan plays two handsome cho- ruses on Ornithology, illustrating his indebtedness to Hank Jones. Coleman barely gets warmed up to this tune before his time is up. Knepper is agile and imaginative, but sacrifices a lot of tone quality for speed. (What- ever became of the fat trombone sound? Jack T eagarden, Jack Jenney, Murray McEacher'n, and several others played with agility and still got a big tone.) Tony builds an agitated chorus out of his chromatic descending runs and little else, giv- ing an impression of great mobility restrained by tremendous rigidity. YIKES! I myself grew out of (or, if you prefer, abandoned) at age 14 or so a fondness for Scott that I had developed the previous year, but -- YIKES! While I basically agree with Crow's strictures, there must have been something personal at work here.

It was "Jazz Panorama," ed. by M. Williams. I have it as a Colliers paperback. http://www.amazon.com/Panorama-Pages-Review-dustjacket-Jasens/dp/B000JLF6B8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457389259&sr=1-1&keywords=jazz+panorama Worthwhile just for Joe Goldberg's "The Symposium."

Two tracks from "Africa Speaks, America Answers." The trumpeter on the first track sounds to me like Art Hoyle. Red Saunders, Gene Esposito, and Hoyle (a Sun Ra sideman early on, of course) were all Chicago-based: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exve2JO8hxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmJfp1ypWMg

I think you mean HIP (historically informed practices). HIP pretty much includes period instruments but adds further would-be info (or guess work) about how the music of those times was played. The biggest specific HIP fuss of recent times, I believe, was when Joshua Rifkin claimed (with pretty good evidence behind him) that Bach's major vocal works (like the Mass in B Minor and the various Passions) were not originally performed by large bodies of singers but one voice to a part. You can't imagine the uproar, and from previously HIP inclined ensembles and conductors, too. I think that Koopman was among those who resisted. In any case, I have some Koopman recordings I like (e.g. his Handel Organ concerti) and have heard others I didn't care for. BTW, I may be wrong about this, but I think I recall reading that he was in poor health lately.

Talented composer-bandleader Anita Brown (daughter of Tristano-ite tenor saxophonist Ted Brown) used to be the Vanguard Orchestra's copyist (or one of them) in the Jim McNeely era.

Just arrived today. I'm a few tunes into disc one and even though I'm playing it at less than the volume I normally would because my wife is working on something upstiars on her computer and requests relative quiet for a while, I'm galvanized. I know what Jim means about the booklet questionnaire being fairly repetitive, but I'm grateful for the care with which some guys specify how important and distinctive Lewis' drumming was. With Thad being out front and writing most of the pieces, it would be easy to think that it was essentially his band, but it was definitely Thad AND Mel. Also, am I wrong or does this edition of the band sound a good deal looser than it does on any of its other recordings -- at the Vanguard or in the studio?

Sorry -- maybe I didn't put that quite right. What I meant is that some (most?) people have a pretty good sense of who Harris is and think that a Gene Harris album is pretty much a Gene Harris album in flavor. I think I could say that of most Harris albums I've heard, though I certainly haven't heard as many as you have. But on this one you get to hear Harris, some interesting, even imposing, other soloists, and, above all for me, a really together, top-level big band playing some interesting arrangements. As I think you said of one of these two albums on another recent thread, for you it was a good big band album, but as a strong Harris fan you would recommend his better small group albums first. I, by contrast, and without denigrating Harris, was more attracted by the makeup and playing of the band, and by the tasty (or better than tasty) arrangements.

I also like Dodgion on another McPartland album, "Plays the Music of Billy Strayhorn," the best solo work I've heard from him. Don't think of him by and large as a gripping, story-telling improviser but as a tasty embelisher (sp?) and top-drawer section man; on the Strayhorn album his handsome soulful personal take on Hodges is evident throughout. Spent a fun very late evening with him and singer Anita Gravine once in NYC after a concert; a lovely guy with a wry sense of humor and a fund of great stories. Dodgion is also in good form on this sadly o.o.p. and at the moment ridiculously pricey Eddie Bert album, which also has some superb Carmen Leggio. (It seems to be o.o.p. and ridiculously pricey on Amazon but also seems to be available direct from Fresh Sound at its original price.) Charts are a bit cute at times, but the playing is as good as you might expect/hope. Duke Jordan!

Just for the heck of it I picked up a used copy the other day of a 2-CD compilation of two albums by the so-called Gene Harris Superband, “LIVE AT TOWN HALL” AND “WORLD TOUR 1990” — sorry for the caps but I hit that key by mistake and am not going to type it all over. Harris is Harris, but other soloists are heard,and the band itself is quite something. Collective personnel is Johnny Coles, Harry Edison, Michael Mossman, Joe Mosello, Glenn Drewes, James Morrison, tpts; Urbie Green, Morrison, Eddie Bert, Paul Faulise, George Bohannon, Robin Eubanks, trbs.; Jerry Dodgion, Frank Wess, James Moody, Ralph Moore, Plas Johnson, Jeff Clayton, Gary Smulyan, reeds; Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, Kenny Burrell, Jeff Hamilton, Harold Jones, rhythm; Wess, Dodgion, John Clayton, Torrie Zito, Lex Jasper (?), H.B. Barnum, Bill Berry, arrangers.What a remarkably together band (Dodgion is listed as co-conductor, which probably means straw boss, and they did do a world tour), and the charts so far, especially Wess’ (he and Clayton did the most) are at once subtle without being clever for their own sake and right “in there.” Dodgion’s charts are also very good and quite individual, or maybe a bit Thad-like. The lead trumpeter (Mosello?) is excellent as are both drummers, upon whom a good deal depends with a band of this general style.

Yeah -- I listened to "Little Pixie" on Spotify and placed my order immediately. When I asked my friend Bill Kirchner about the set (a frequent reed section sub in later editions of the band, he wrote the notes for the Mosaic Vanguard Orch. set) he replied: "The first night in particular is as you might expect--exciting but sloppy. To me, the most remarkable thing is how just six weeks later, the band already had started to acquire considerably more focus and polish. "Here's a video of my favorite edition of the band: in Nice, July 1977, with Danko, Rufus, Dodgion, Oatts, Perry, Frank Gordon, Pepper Adams, et al. Astounding, and little documented, alas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5sbYomOixk

Nicely played

Those who are stylistically so inclined might want to check out this "live" recording of the band's initial 1966 Vanguard performances. Listened some on Spotify -- sound is quite good, the band is on fire, and one gets to hear Thad solo a good deal.

My father-in-law was the ad man-product design guy who came up with the idea of the Pillsbury Doughboy. He named it the Doughboy because his father had been a much-decorated and underage soldier in WWI, and U.S. soldiers in WWI were known as as "Doughboys." http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/origindb.htm Leo Burnett copywriter Rudy Perz has been credited with the Pillsbury Doughboy idea, but in fact it was my father-in-law Norman Kosarin's baby. Among other things, my wife, then age 9, clearly recalls her dad -- also a Leo Burnett employee and still with us thanks be -- creating the Doughboy figure in their kitchen. He never made a big thing of it, regarding it as part of his job.