Larry Kart

Got a copy but am pretty sure I want to hold onto it. Don't care for all the works/composers, but the Concord was one heck of a group.

I believe I've heard of that, though I haven't read much Dortmunder. Westlake liked to set himself odd challenges as a writer. One of my favorites comes in the Parker novel "Ask the Parrot," where an entire chapter is told from the point of view of that creature. Reading it, I had no doubt that this is what a parrot -- or better, that particular parrot -- would be thinking at that point. And it's not just a writerly trick; the novel might not work unless we knew what that parrot was thinking.

Doesn't Parker come in toward the end of "Lemons Don't Lie"? Also, what happens to Grofield eventually in one of the later Parker novels hit me hard. What a nice character Grofield is, kind of a link to the tone of Westlake's Bernie the burgular books. Oops -- Bernie the burgular is a Lawrence Block creation. What I meant was Westlake's Dortmunder novels.

How true. Not that I'm necessarily right in this particular instance, but that was, now that I think of it, exactly the feeling I had while listening to Mark Turner and Avishai Cohen in concert about six months ago. All the pieces were in 4/4, the rhythmic underpinnings were fairly steady and kind of "cooking," but it was all "flat-lined in terms of inter-phrasical dynamics," thus no swing. Why then I wondered not drop the pretense (or what you will) of "swinging" and discover/uncover/place in the foreground one's likely "prose" rhythmic thinking? I mean, why have a metrical framework bubbling along when no one interacts with it?

I love Westlake's Richard Stark novels, have read them all. (Can't deny Westlake's overall expertise, but I have no taste for the more whimsical sort of crime novels that he wrote under his own name.) I believe that "Lemons Never Lie" was my first Stark, which in retrospect felt like a somewhat odd point of entrance because it's essentially a Grofield novel.

Sorry. It is "Cheryl." For my sin I've been banished for a week to a room full of Eddy Duchin recordings.

Charlie Parker's "Anthropology"

Heard Avishai with Mark Turner in concert last year and thought I was going to die of boredom.

The two men who assembled that list of models are major Powellians, but I still don't like Galsworthy for St. John Clarke. Dismissible though Galsworthy's fiction might be, it's not in a class of moldy banality with St. John Clarke's. Also, I'm not aware of Galsworthy becoming a voguish Left-winger, as St. John Clarke does. Further, the merry-go-round where St. John Clarke dumps his assistant Mark Members and replaces him with Quiggin, who is eventually supplanted by Guggenbuhl, is IIRC taken fairly directly from stuff that happened with Logan Pearsall Smith and his assistants. Finally, in the time period where St. John Clarke figures prominently in "Dance," he is a distinctly outmoded figure, not only in literary circles but also with the general novel-buying public; Galsworthy in the '30s had not yet been relegated to the dustbin I don't believe, not in the second category. Orwell disguising himself as a tramp in order to explore "conditions" does rhyme with one bit of Warminster/Erridge's behavior, but that's the only point of resemblance I can see. Orwell of course did many adventurous things in his life, wrote a great amount that was worthy and influential; Warminster does little but be cranky according to his own basically crabbed reclusive lights and essentially has an effect only on his relatives. Also, Powell and Orwell became fairly close friends; there's a wonderful portrait of him in Powell's memoirs. Forget to mention that, as the list makers say, X. Trapnel is modeled on Julian McLaren Ross. I thought that Crowley and Trelawney were a pretty close fit. When Powell was a young man in publishing, he met a by then decrepit and semi-mad Crowley and found him immensely creepy. He writes of the encounter in the memoirs.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Powellian, have read the entire sequence at least twice, favorite individual volumes more than that, actually interviewed Powell back in the '80s (a delightful experience), and am even, Heaven help me, a member of the Anthony Powell Society, which is worth joining if you're interested (it's easy and there's an Organissmo-like board) because, as one might expect, a lot of people who know a lot about Powell's work spend time there. That said, neither George Orwell, nor Lord Beaverbrook, nor John Galsworthy are models for any of Powell's characters. I assume you feel that Lord Beaverbrook = Sir Magnus Donners and John Galsworthy = St. John Clarke (I have no idea who you think is modeled on Orwell, certainly not Warminster/Erridge or Quiggin either). In any case, Donners and Beaverbrook are far apart (the former an industrialist-magnate who is fairly secretive about his affairs, the latter the most prominent British press baron of his time and a man who fed upon publicity), while the mostly forgotten novelist Hugh Walpole and another mostly forgotten litterateur Logan Pearsall Smith (he was of American parentage, lived in England, and wrote a good many aphorisms) would be much closer to St. John Clarke than Galsworthy was. Also, Sillery is not at all modeled on C.M. Bowra, a mistake that many have made. The closest jobs of character modeling I can think of in "Dance," would be composer-conductor-author Constant Lambert as the model for Hugh Moreland and Barbara Skelton (ex-wife of Cyril Connolly, former mistress of King Farouk, with a whole lot more to her credit or discredit) as the model for Pamela Flitton. Field Marshall Montgomery and Lord Alanbrooke of course appear as themselves, and Isobel Jenkins seems to be very close to Powell's own wife, Violet. Alick Dru, pioneering translator-advocate of Kierkegaard among other things, is to a fair degree the model for Pennistone. Leftist publisher Victor Gollancz is close to the model for Howard Craggs. Somewhat rackety American publisher Donald Friede is close to the model for Louis Glober. Ralph Barnby shares several traits with Powell's longtime friend Adrian Daintry -- both were painters and womanizers in the top class. One real-life exchange between Powell and Daintry was transferred directly into an exchange between Jenkins and Barnby. Powell once asked Daintry -- whose experiences with women both in number and variety far exceeded those of Powell, and indeed those of most men -- whether he agreed that a good many women were surprisingly unsensual. "Do you know," Daintry replied, "I've never noticed." P.S. If you can find a copy, Hillary Spurling's "Invitation to the Dance: A Guide to Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time," is a great and often entertaining resource.

Picked up a copy of this 1977 Pickwick LP the other day. Marvelous. Have yet to compare it to other recordings I have of these pieces, but I think Wellstood in some cases either is working from different texts or is adding his own variations and, even, new whole strains. If it's the latter, are they ever good. Nothing radical, all in style, but again marvelous.

Thanks. I'll try.

I meant the JRM but only as a joke -- likewise with "Koester frequently told me that it was Hefner's love of jazz that put the JRM over the top." The JRM may never have had a Cy Coleman album in stock, while Coleman was an iconic Playboy figure, composer of the Playboy TV show theme.

Think of all the Cy Coleman albums they sold.

No, you didn't miss it. BTW, Koester frequently told me that it was Hefner's love of jazz that put the JRM over the top. And Hef was a fellow Chicagoan, too!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-chicago-jazz-record-blues-brubeck-edit-0219-jm-20160218-story.html Hugh Hefner?

How did you know?

Not to be sexist, but I can see Ms. Bertault singing this to me in fairly personal circumstances.

Nice video interview with Jeffrey about Sonny Rollins:

The shower-stabbing music comes pretty directly from an early Prokofiev symphony, either no. 2 or no. 3, don't recall which right now.

Two good ones I just picked up: Someone may have mentioned this recently, but Lockjaw is on fire on Basie's "Get Together"-- indeed all parties are in fine form, Freddie Green and Gus Johnson being crucial in the rhythm section. The McPherson "Live at the 5 Spot" from 1966 has about as strong a "live" feel as any recording I know, thanks in part to Billy Higgins and some of the most vigorous McPherson and Barry Harris I know. I also enjoy the sometimes hit or miss playing of trumpeter Lonnie Hillyer; he is of necessity always in the moment.

I love Zoot (such rhythmic flexibility!) on Quincy Jones’ “Evening in Paris,” also from 1956, with Herbie Mann, Art Farmer and Milt Jackson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfMGezw2k1Y

Yes, he always did swing, and in 1962 (as above), he could still be in his wheelhouse. But in the period that I think of as vintage for Zoot, he paid darn close attention to the evolving shape of his lines (as below), which IMO was not that much the case in later years, when those shapes pretty much became semi-pre-determined "Zoot-isms," attractive to be sure but not alive the way he is here: More Zoot of the vintage(s) I love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMyoLoXwZvk (all below from the ’56 Argo album “Zoot,” with John Williams [not the movie guy], Nabil Totah, and Gus Johnson). The "freshness" (for want of a better term) of Zoot at this time is a joy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih_Rr8-x_NY&list=PL4ypuAMic-Gj2hcIlK1oWCQzz3wkLfu8T&index=8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fRSiQY8TZM&list=PL4ypuAMic-Gj2hcIlK1oWCQzz3wkLfu8T&index=6 (on alto) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djeNFZb7yTY&list=PL4ypuAMic-Gj2hcIlK1oWCQzz3wkLfu8T&index=5

Not sure -- I have both on LP. I do see it on the Fresh Sound site http://www.freshsoundrecords.com/folk_jazz_usa-cd-4670.html but on Amazon it gives the label as "Record".

One that hasn't been mentioned so far, I think: John Benson Brooks' "Folk Jazz U.S.A.," with Zoot playing beautifully on alto (listen to him on "Turtle Dove"), Al Cohn on baritone, and Nick Travis on trumpet. It's coupled here with Brooks' excellent "Alabama Concerto," with Art Farmer and Cannonball Adderley.