Larry Kart

Lowdown on the creation of the Pillsbury Doughboy: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/10/nyregion/chronicle-832219.html A guy named Rudy Perz nabbed the credit (Perz was on the creative team at Leo Burnett that was working on the account), but my wife recalls seeing her Dad draw the Doughboy from scratch one night and saying the Manhattan equivalent of “Eureka!” Actually that cry of discovery would have been uttered not in Manhattan but in Chicago, where my father-in-law worked for Leo Burnett for several years, but he is a totally NYC guy.

His name was spelled "Louis," but it was pronounced "Loo-eee."

I believe it was always spelled that way, never "Louie," even though it was pronounced "Loo-eee." But isn't that often the case -- see "Louis XIV."

Can't find that book anymore where that and tons of other things were mentioned. Can't believe I would have let go of it, but... damn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Darden

No it does not leave "the essential story pretty much intact." The main points that the blog post I linked to made are that the uranium deal was not viewed as dubious AT THE TIME and that Clinton herself as Secretary of State did not play a role in OK-ing it. Other than that, what the heck is left of this supposedly "blockbuster" story? Krugman I'll give you, but the Times' track record, going back to Whitewater, Wing-Ho-Lee (sp?), remember him?, the twisted sillinesses of Dowd and Gail Collins, the presence of David Brooks, Jayson Blair, Judith Miller and WMD, etc. -- it is hard to think of another paper, given the Times' role in our society, that has done more damage to the fabric of our lives in recent years.

Irish Spring Soap. Cool. I'll have to track down that jingle. BTW, my father-in-law played the major role in the creation of the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

No, I found that transcription on the web and corrected few errors in it.

Severn Darden, from The Second City album “Thge Sound of my Own Voice” Intro: And now, ladies and gentlemen, Professor Walter von der Vogelweide will present "A Short Talk On The Universe.” Darden: Now, why, you will ask me, have I chosen to speak on the Universe rather than some other topic. Well, it's very simple, heh. There isn't anything else! Now, the Universe we examine through what Spinoza has called "the lens of philosophy". He called it this because he was a lens grinder. Heaven knows what he would have called it had he been, for example, a pudding manufacturer. Now, into three branches is philosophy divided: ethics, esthetics, and metaphysics. Now, ethics is that branch of philosophy which is neither esthetics nor metaphysics. Esthe--well, I think you follow. This evening I have decided to take the jump. Heh heh. Metaphysics. Now, metaphysics is--what IS everything--ANYHOW? And what's more is more than what's less—generally. Now, in the universe we have time, space, motion, and thought. Now, you will ask me, what is this thing called time? [7 second pause] THAT is time. Now, you will ask me, what is space? Now this over here--this is some space. However, this is not all space. However, when I said that was time, that was all the time there was anywhere in the universe ... at that time. Now, if you were to take all of the space that there is in the universe and CRAM it into this little tiny place, this would be ALL the space there was! Unless of course, some leaked out. Which it could. And did! Heh. Hence the universe! Now, the early Egyptian astronomers (there were no late Egyptian astronomers) looked up at the stars and with these they measured time. But the Greeks, who were very exact--sometimes to the point of tediousness--came along with this question: is time the measure of motion, or conversely, is motion the measure of time? Viz. I have in my hand a stopwatch--imaginary. And coming through the room is a railroad train--also imaginary, heh heh. If it was a real railroad train it would kill us--and besides, it would be very expensive. Now--I'm timing the train now. Is time the measure of motion--click--[makes train noise and runs across stage]--click--or is, conversely, motion--now I'm going to be for you a grandfather's clock [swings arm]--tick--tock--tick--tock--the measure of time? Now, with the arrival in the 20th century of Planck's constant and the theory of quantum mechanics and with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle--I think--we still don't know. However, we might very easily turn to the pre-Socratic philosophers (who were always good for a laugh) for assistance. Now, take Heraclitus. Dr. Jose Bernadette by the way, has said in his book "Coming and Becoming", he has quoted Heraclitus incorrectly as saying that "time was a river which flowed endlessly through the universe." He didn't say this at all. He said, "time was LIKE a river which flowed endlessly through the universe." Aha, there you are, Bernadette! Nonetheless, he discovered this one day, and he went home to his wife, Helen. That was her name, Helen Heraclitus. That's two H's, like Hugo Haas--Herman Hesse--Harry Haller--Herbert Hoover--Heinrich Himmler-- oh, that whole crowd, ja. Anyhow, he went home to his wife, Helen, and he said "Time is like a river which is flowing endlessly through the universe, and you couldn't step into the same river twice, Helen.” And she says, "What do you mean by that, Heraclitus? Explain yourself." That means you could go down to the Mississippi River, for example, and you could step in, and you could step out, and then you could step in again. But that river that you stepped in has moved downstream, you see, it's here. And you would only be stepping in the Mississippi River because that's what it's called, you see? Not only all that water, but if something were on top of the water--for example, a water bug--if it was there, it would be downstream. Unless, of course, it was swimming upstream, in which case it would be older and it would be a different bug. So, anyhow, Heraclitus went home to his wife with this news, and he said "Time is like a river which flows endlessly through the universe, and you couldn't step into the same river twice." She said, "Don't be an ass, Heraclitus. You could step into the same river twice--if you walked downstream at the same rate as the river." He was amazed! So he went down to the agora, or marketplace, where there were a lot of unemployed philosophers (which means philosophers who weren't thinking at that time). And they had a few drinks first and they went down to the river, and into the river they threw a piece of wood just to test how fast the river was going. And so Heraclitus saw how fast the wood was going. So he stepped into the river, and ran and stepped and ran and stepped and ran, and finally he ran out into the Aegean Sea and was drowned. So much for time. Now we come to another pre-Socratic, Zeno, for time and motion, and Zeno's Paradox. Now, a paradox is something which when it isn't, it is, paradoxically. And Zeno's Paradox is that if Achilles, the great Greek hero and athlete, were to get into a race with a tortoise, that he couldn't win. Silly, isn't it. Well, if, for example, the tortoise was here and he would give the tortoise, say, a 10-foot head start, just to be fair to the beast, and there would be--it would take, say, Achilles, 1 second to go 1 foot. So at the end of 9 seconds, he would have one foot to go in one second, ja? And in a half of a second, he would still have a half of a foot to go, you see? And in a hundredth of a second he would have a hundredth of a foot to go. And in a millionth of a second, he would have a millionth of a foot to go. And since time and space are both infinitely divisible, he would never pass the turtle! Heh, heh. But this is ridiculous! Anyone in this room could win a race with a turtle, you know, and we're not great heroes and athletes. Even for example, some old, very dignified person, like Bertrand Russell, HE could win a race with a tortoise. And if he couldn't win it, he could outsmart it, ja? Nonetheless, I have discovered possibly the meaning for this paradox. I was reading recently a book called "Greek Pots In Polish Museums" by John Davidson Beasley. 8 vo., $9.75 and worth every penny of it. Big wide margins--er, I'm getting off my point. Anyhow, in there is a picture of a pot that has on it a picture of an archaic tortoise of the kind that Zeno would have known about. Now, it isn't a little, flat American tortoise. IT'S A LITTLE BULLET-SHAPED TORTOISE WITH LONG, SINEWY LEGS, ABOUT 4 FEET LONG, AND IT COULD RUN LIKE CRAZY! Now this would seem to explain it, ja? But it doesn't! Because Homer, who never lied about anything, said that Achilles could, if he wanted to, beat any man or beast in a foot race. Now what does this mean, "if he wanted to"? You know how some people can't step on the line in the sidewalk? Achilles couldn't pass a tortoise! He was a very sick hero! Now, thought. For centuries philosophers have told us that thought cannot be seen, it cannot be heard, cannot be felt, smelled, cannot be tasted. It is not in the key of G--or F. And it is not blue--nor is it mauve. It is not a pot of geraniums. It is not a white donkey against a blue sky. Or a blue donkey against a white sky. Nor does it have aspirations to become archbishop. It is not a little girl singing an old song. Thought is not a saffron-robed monk pissing in the snow. In other words, philosophers can tell you millions of things that thought isn't, and they can't tell you what it is! And this bugs them! But you are out there and you're thinking and I'm up here and I think that you're thinking, and we think, and we think that the sun comes up in the morning, pouring forth its beautiful bounty of light, and as Shakespeare said, "What a piece of work is man!” Are there any questions? Thank you. I would really like to answer any questions that you might have. Now, I don't have anyone planted in the audience. Occasionally friends of mine who are in the audience throw up some hideous thing. They know the areas in which I am weak! Only in this sense do I have someone planted. So if you could ask me anything that you might not know about the universe. Q: What is the relation between space and time? What is the relation between space and time? Well, let's see, I thought I had covered that. Now the relation--well, space, for example, it is a thing which is occupied by matter. Ja? Whereas time occupies space, as we all know. Have you ever, for example, had any time pass when there was no space? I mean, have you ever been no place for a long time? It couldn't happen! It could, theoretically, of course. But I mean, even with a lot of equipment it would be difficult. Could I have another question? Q: Do fish think? Well, that's a very good question, but it's not in the realm of metaphysics. Now I had a fish once--name was Louise, as a matter of fact. Small, fat fish. And every day at the same time I would go to the edge of the pond--a little iron tank in my house--and throw it a bunch of grapes. You know? Every day at the same time the fish would be there. After a few days she knew at 1:45, grapes, bam! Fish! However, I began making it 15 minutes later every day, you see. And then when I was there at 2 o'clock, she'd be there at 1:45. She was 15 minutes behind. After a while she was hours and days behind! And she starved to death. Yes, fish think--but not fast enough! Could I have another question, please? Q: [German accent, much thicker than Darden's] Professor, what is truth? What is…? Q: Truth. Truth? Q: Truth. Oh, ja. Mm-hm. An accent. Well, truth is very difficult to explain. It is not merely the opposite of falsehood. When I say I am here, that is true temporarily, but it is not always true. And certain truths are immutable. Like for example, I am not elsewhere, which is just as true here [walks across stage] as it is over here. You see? I am still not elsewhere. No matter where I go I can't get away from me! Sort of frightening--that should be called truth! Could I have another question? Q: Will the sun rise tomorrow? Yes. Next question? Thank you.

And here's the other one: It`s Not Funny! American Humor Hasn`t Been Well Preserved March 22, 1987|By Larry Kart, Entertainment writer. Popular entertainment is made to be consumed--in vast quantities and as quickly and as completely as possible. And perhaps that is the way things have to be--in order to keep the wheels of the entertainment industry turning and to give our amusements that air of constant change without which they might not be so exciting to us. But not everything that was made to be enjoyed at the moment deserves to be thrown away, which is why attempts are being made to preserve the best of our popular-culture heritage. The movies, jazz, comic strips, the music of the Broadway stage--thanks to the efforts of a host of dedicated fans, the past treasures of many of our homegrown arts are once again available, in books and on records, tapes and videocassettes. But when it comes to the history of American humor, some of our most famous and influential comedians still rest in a cultural limbo--unless their careers happened to coincide with the heyday of radio and thus can be repackaged for the nostalgia trade. If one wants to know what Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade et al. were like, some of their best work is available on records and tape from companies that specialize in ``the good old days.`` But then, just at the point where Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Jonathan Winters, Shelly Berman, Bob Newhart, Woody Allen and a host of other hip, young comics began to redefine the shape of American humor, the trail of recorded evidence comes almost to an end--even though these performers made the comedy album commercially viable. Fortunately, Bruce and Allen are well-represented on record today--the former because he remains a cult figure, the latter because his films keep him in the limelight. Otherwise, though, it`s welcome to the wasteland. There is no Sahl currently available, except for one unrepresentative album, no Winters, no Berman, no Nichols and May, no Second City or Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, and almost no Newhart or Lord Buckley or Bob and Ray--the list goes on and on, even if one thinks only of the most well-known figures and forgets about such eccentric gems as the album Severn Darden recorded for Mercury, Henry Jacobs` ``The Wide Weird World of Shorty Petterstein`` and Del Close and John Brent`s ``How To Speak Hip.`` And the labels that control the rights to those recordings seem to have little or no interest in re-releasing them--either because they don`t know what they`ve got in their vaults, or because they believe, perhaps with good reason, that a Sahl, Winters or Nichols and May album wouldn`t sell in sufficient quantities to make a reissue financially worthwhile. Polygram, for instance, owns the Verve and Mercury catalogues--two labels that encompass a great many important comedy albums of the 1950s and `60s, including most of Sahl, Winters and Berman and all there is on record of Second City and Nichols and May. But Tim Rogers, the executive in charge of that portion of the Polygram empire, says that ``we have just tentative (reissue) plans right now. ``Comedy is not my forte,`` Rogers adds, ``but check back with me in a few months. I think we might be doing something.`` Hardly encouraging words. But looking at things from a bottom-line point of view, there is no reason why the major comic performers of the recent past should matter very much to Polygram or any other major label. Yes, a Nichols and May anthology or collections of the best of Mort Sahl or Jonathan Winters would be significant cultural events. But while it is possible that such albums would sell, the chance that they would not is what keeps the recorded legacy of so many of our major comedians out of circulation. So anyone who wants to know what Sahl, Winters and all the rest were really like is faced with the problem of how to break into a locked museum--simply because the record companies that control the rights to this material aren`t interested in putting their comedic treasures on display. Dealing with dilemmas of just that sort, the Smithsonian Institution has ridden to the rescue in the past--as such savvy, dedicated executives as Martin Williams, J.R. Taylor and James Morris have used the Institution`s quasi-governmental clout to compile ``The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz,`` ``The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics`` and the invaluable, seven-record ``American Popular Song`` anthology. This time, though, the Smithsonian can`t help--in part because it, too, has to take account of the bottom line. ``I`ve proposed the idea (of an anthology of American comedy on record),`` Williams says, ``but I was told that it didn`t `test well.` What we need is some young idealist who has an independent label.`` Echoing that estimate is veteran producer Richard Bock, who recorded Lord Buckley and Henry Jacobs in the 1950s, when he was with the World-Pacific label. ``It (a comedy reissue series) probably wouldn`t come off,`` Bock says, “unless it was being done by someone from the outside. As soon as, say, Fantasy wants to get stuff from Polygram and Atlantic and Capitol, then the hackles come up. But if the person involved is a respected, neutral source who can say, `The only way to do this properly is to get all you guys to cooperate,` then it might work.`` So in case that ``young idealist`` does exist, let`s explore the possibilities. First, he would have to get his hands on Ronald Smith`s forthcoming book``Comedy on Record`` (Garland Publishing)--a 600-page tome, priced at about $50 and aimed at the library market, that describes, says Smith, ``every comedy record ever made.`` The author of ``Stars of Standup Comedy`` and a biography of Bill Cosby, and the editor of ``Rave`` magazine, Smith has a long list of favorite albums that have gone out of print--including work by Jackie Vernon (``the inspiration for Steven Wright``), the late Herb Shriner (``he has a big reputation among comedians, but who would know it``), Jean Shepherd (``a unique monologist``), Jackie Mason (``very underrated``) and Smith and Dale(``their Jubilee album is the greatest record of vaudeville material ever made``). So there is, as Smith says, ``an awful lot out there.`` But he also has some horror stories to tell about the cavalier attitude of the record companies that control the rights to this material. Having spent five years in search of an obscure, Groucho Marx children`s single, ``The Funniest Song in the World,`` Smith finally found that it had been made for an outfit called the Young People`s Record Company. ``I went there,`` Smith says, ``asked if they had a copy in their archives ``and was told that they had destroyed every one because they `needed the space.` Then when I asked if the record will ever be reissued, they said, `It can`t be--because we also destroyed the master. It was our property, and we could do with it as we pleased.``` One hopes that the major labels haven`t been that high-handed with the comedy records they control--because the thought that, say, Capitol-EMI might have lost or destroyed the master of the Mel Brooks-Carl Reiner ``2,000 Year Old Man`` album is enough to send chills up the spine. But so much for tales of despair and woe and on to a vision of the promised land. If our idealistic producer can acquire the rights to all or most of the best comedy albums ever made, how then should he or she proceed? Well, some comics--Sahl, Winters, Bruce, Newhart and Richard Pryor for openers--have been gifted and prolific enough to make the idea of collected-works sets attractive. And right here in Chicago, radio station WFMT-FM has on tape all 67 Second City revues--a comedic motherlode of major proportions, provided the rights to issue the best of it could be resolved. But compiling a comprehensive historical anthology of American comedy on record would seem to be the first thing that needs to be done. Yes, it would be difficult to assemble. And whatever the dimensions of such an anthology might be, some very hard choices would have to be made. But if we are serious about preserving one of the richest strains in our cultural heritage, it`s a task that is well worth undertaking. After all, the things we laugh at are among the best possible guides to who we really are. And besides, as Ron Smith says, ``not only does this stuff have tremendous historical value, a lot of it is just plain funny.``

Ask and ye shall receive, Jim. (Actually I wrote another piece on this subject, which was the piece I was thinking of, but I'm still looking for it). Tracking Laughs An Amusing, Critical History Of The Comedy Album May 22, 1988|By Larry Kart, Entertainment writer. It`s intended as a reference work and priced accordingly, at $55. But Ronald L. Smith`s hefty new tome ``Comedy on Record: The Complete Critical Discography`` (Garland) is a compulsively readable book, too-an informative and often very amusing trip through the history of recorded American humor. Amply fulfilling its stated goal, ``Comedy on Record`` lists in alphabetical order, rates from zero to four stars and describes, often in considerable detail, virtually every comedy album ever released in this country-beginning with ``Abbott and Costello on Radio`` (``an excellent compilation of the boys` silliest word-confusion routines,`` the album gets four stars) and concluding, some 730 pages and 2,600 recordings later, with a look at a trio of albums put out by the ``The Zoo,`` a pool of ``obnoxious, pseudo-hip`` Manhattan disc jockeys. Editor of ``Rave,`` a comedy magazine, and the author of biographies of Bill Cosby and Johnny Carson, the 35-year-old Smith is himself a dedicated collector of comedy records. (``The main reason why this book exists,`` he says, ``is that the author always wanted a book like it.``) As a consumer guide, ``Comedy on Record`` has two facets. The star ratings reflect Smith`s estimate of each recording`s artistic, historical and entertainment value, while frequent ``collector`s notes`` give his sense of an album`s rarity and its price range in used-record stores. (Most of the albums in ``Comedy on Record`` are, unfortunately or not, out-of-print.) Aware that ``tastes in comedy vary tremendously,`` and eager to be as objective as possible, Smith says that his ratings ``are intended for that mythical `average reader.` `` But Smith`s own solid sense of taste manages to emerge in the book`s extensive critical and descriptive passages. And as all that information begins to accumulate, one realizes that ``Comedy on Record`` has become both a useful consumer guide and an informal but detailed history of the field. Merely by restricting himself to comedy albums, Smith makes an arguable but important historical point: That even though comedy singles of great popularity date back to the 1890s, something changed when the comedy album became a viable proposition in the mid-1950s. A look at some of the key early figures of the comedy-album era (Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Shelly Berman and Jonathan Winters) suggests that the rise of urban hipness was the chief reason behind the successful marriage of those performers with the phonograph record. Because Sahl, Lehrer, Bruce and the rest were available to the public in just a few big-city clubs, and intermittently and often in censored form on television, much of the potential audience for their humor could encounter it most easily on record-if, indeed, they could find it anywhere else. By the same token, this was the time when such overtly ``blue`` comics as Belle Barth, Redd Foxx and Rusty Warren began to sell under-the-table albums in carload lots (5 million albums in all for Warren over the years, estimates Smith), because almost nowhere else in the marketplace could sexual and scatological humor readily be found. The principle was the same in both cases—supplying a type of entertainment that the rest of the mass media was as yet unprepared to handle. And once comedy albums became a familiar item, the next, perhaps inevitable, step was taken in 1959 by Bob Newhart—a Chicago-area accountant whose taped sketches had been aired on a local radio station but who had never performed in front of an audience when he was signed to make his first ``live`` recording at a Houston, Texas, nightclub. If Newhart was an extreme case of the ``album`` comedian, the boom in comedy on disc made album sales a major source of income for the likes of Berman and Sahl-while making a hit album was the goal of most would-be hip young comics. Packaging a comic`s best material, or just preserving a typical night in a club, was the principle behind most comedy albums at first. And when the comic was as brilliant as Sahl, Berman, Bruce or Winters were, who could complain? But other heads were at work on what might be called ``album humor``— comedy that was conceived to be heard, not seen, and that could be crafted only in a recording studio. In that vein, the druggy, late-1960s counterculture humor of the Firesign Theater is what most people recall—although some 10 years before, another San Francisco figure, Henry Jacobs, had come up with an obscure but no-less spacy album, ``The Wide Weird World of Shorty Petterstein.`` The success of the Firesign Theater was again based in part on the general unavailability of their type of stuff anywhere but on record. But that principle no longer applied to other kinds of American humor that a few years before had seemed far-out. And in a few years more, the same would be true of the surrealistically elliptical Firesign style—which could be heard, in debased or even in superior form, from a number of young radio personalities. Smith quite rightly suggests that the era of the comedy album is over, a victim of the videocassette. After all, who would want to buy a copy of, say, Robin Williams` ``A Night at the Met`` album or Emo Phillips` ``Live From the Hasty Pudding Theater`` when the same performances of those very visual comics not only are available on video but also can be rented for a dollar or two? But a vast amount of classic American humor is available only on record—a treasure trove to which Smith`s book is a delightful and enlightening, though not flawless, guide. Among the few outright errors, both of omission and commission, is the listing, without comment or star rating, of Second City master Severn Darden`s lunatic album ``The Sound of My Own Voice``—and under the name ``Steve Darden`` to boot. (The problem there, Smith explained in a phone conversation, was that he had been unable to obtain the album, while the source that informed him of its existence had garbled Darden`s first name.) Smith`s decision to omit most so-called ``spoken arts`` or ``novelty`` records was sound, but his inclusion of S.J. Perelman and Ogden Nash albums makes one wish he had found room for the monologues of Ruth Draper—which are wise, funny and beautiful and had a strong influence on Lily Tomlin`s work. As for Smith`s taste in humor, the only major quarrel I have with him is over the low ratings he gives to ``Vintage Bob and Ray`` (a collection of the sketches the team did for the old ``Monitor`` radio show) and to an album that preserves four episodes of ``Vic and Sade,`` the slice-of-life comedy series that was on the radio from 1932 to 1944. ``Irritatingly slow, inanely repetitious and achingly dull`` is Smith`s response to the oblique, gently demented wit of ``Vic and Sade,`` which usually reduces this writer to tears—while Smith`s estimate of ``Vintage Bob and Ray`` (``to the average listener much of this stuff will seem jokeless and bewildering``) makes me wonder whether, in this case, ``average listener`` isn`t a synonym for ``idiot.`` But Smith`s judgments are on target most of the time, while for anyone who cares about American humor, the wealth of solid (and sometimes bizarre) information in ``Comedy on Record`` is itself worth the price of the book. Where else, for instance, can one learn that Don Adams lifted two complete routines from Jackie Mason`s brilliant first album, ``I`m the Greatest Comedian in the World, Only Nobody Knows It Yet,`` discover who wrote Jackie Vernon and David Frye`s material and find out that a weird Kay Ballard parody of ``Autumn Leaves`` was created for her by none other than Lenny Bruce?

I knew the guy who created that series of ads and this one in particular -- his name was Richard Rand (a terrific, smart, kind-hearted man who sadly is no longer with us) -- and the Threadgill ad had nothing to do with PR. Rather, Richard was a very knowledgable jazz fan, and he thought it would be fun if he could get Threadgill into this ongoing series of ads, many of which used figures from the arts who were of note in their fields but not yet household names -- that "not yet famous but of great worth" pattern being the premise of the ad campaign. But no one would have thought to put Threadgill in there if Richard hadn't proposed doing so -- this because he knew and admired Threadgill's music. IIRC, neither Threadgill nor any of other other people pictured in the series, were paid in money for doing so. Instead, their reward was an ample supply of Dewers, several cartons worth, I think. John Litweiler, who knew Richard better than I did, might know for sure. No, it does not. For instance, that recent "blockbuster" series on Hillary Clinton is a journalistic disgrace. For IMO convincing evidence of that, go here: http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com and scroll down to “The Pseudo-Journalism Rules.”

When was the last time you read anything in the NYT that was not a publicity piece for something. either a gig or a book or a record or a party or SOMETHING? These guys do not - for reasons I would not claim to know - do not just wake up one day and say, hmmmm....Don Byas was one helluva tenor player, let me do a column about Don Byas. Now, if somebody has a book coming out about Don Byas, or if some guy is giving a lecture about Don Byas, or if somebody has discovered a treasure trove of heretofore unknown ANYTHING about Don Byas and wants the world to know about it, then there will be that article that Don Byas was one helluva tenor player. It is, after all, a news paper, not a collection of gentle musings. To what extent tail wags dog, I don't know, but I do find that I'm never disappointed to just assume that to be so, and wake me when I'm wrong. A different era, perhaps, but I wrote a whole lot of pieces for the Chicago Tribune from 1978 to 1989 that were entirely generated by my own musical tastes/interests and were the precise equivalent of me waking up one day and thinking "Don Byas was one helluva tenor player, I'll do a column about Don Byas." The piece I wrote about Roscoe's "L-R-G/SII Examples" album was one such; there were many more. Occasionally I might get a "Who's that?/why's that?" question from an editor, but it was my beat and either they trusted me or didn't know enough to care that much or say "Why not Kenny G?," in which case I would have told them why not. I'll add that if there had been no Don Byas music available to listen to, I might not have written such a piece, though I do recall more than once writing pieces about "Why is there none ( or so little) of this important stuff available?" -- in particular one about all the wonderful important comedy albums that were out of print. But then I knew that a fair number of readers would remember some or most of the albums I was talking about. In general, it was my belief and practice that you could (and should be able to) get away with writing about almost anything in a mass-market publication as long you could set the table swiftly and in an inviting manner. But I can see that times probably have changed.

Met her once while interviewing Steve. She had a powerful classy presence, was obviously damn smart, and she and Steve seemed like a terrific couple.

Not in a position to say for sure, but "Sound" I would guess was not/did not need to be scored per se, other perhaps in an initial minimal determination of starting point and mood. Given that, the players involved all would have known what/what they wanted to do, how to modify and expand upon the initial premises. By contrast, "The Little Suite" and "Ornette" are quite detailed, but I would guess that virtually all that detail was hammered out and incorporated by Roscoe et al. in give-and-take rehearsals in much the same way that Mingus and his associates did, though I'm certain that in this Roscoe was not as imperious as Mingus apparently was. Further, it's hard to convey the deep familiarity/closeness that all the these musicians shared. Hearing them in person under circumstances where at times little or no preparation was possible, one typically encountered a seemingly spontaneous compositional wholeness that apparently sprang from something akin to mind-reading.

Is "Nessa" a Viking word?

IIRC, it got a five-star review in Down Beat from Bill Mathieu. It certainly blew me away (for sure I wasn't the only one), though I was pretty much prepared for what was on "Sound" by live performances from Roscoe and the other players. Chuck probably can answer your questions about what the musicians thought they were doing. I can see your point about "Ornette" being a kind of calling card, but that performance is at once on fire and totally (and somewhat ironically) under control (which was a new feeling IIRC), and akin in its abrupt shifts to "The Little Suite." Surprised you didn't mention "The Little Suite." To me a whole lot of what Roscoe et al. would go on to do in terms of shape-shifting, multi-level ironic/dramatic musical play was right there, and that, unless I'm mistaken, was an important new strain in the '60s avant garde, though it does have links to aspects of Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and, to some degree, Rollins.

Here (from my book) is what I wrote about the L-R-G disc back in 1979: Roscoe Mitchell’s L-R-G/The Maze/SII Examples may well change the musical future. Best known today as a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Mitchell has been a key figure in the jazz avant garde ever since he recorded Sound for the Delmark label in 1966. His days with the Art Ensemble began soon afterwards, and he still helps that band function with some intensity. But, it has become obvious that his musical needs are leading him elsewhere, away from collective, free-association drama and into more adamantly controlled forms of creation. The fruits of his new endeavors became visible last year with the release of his two-record Nessa album, Nonaah, which was highlighted by an exhaustive and exhausting solo alto saxophone performance of the title piece and another version of “Nonaah” scored for four altos. Characteristically, each of these performances began at one musical pole and traveled to an opposite position--the solo, “Nonaah” imposing a stern order on seemingly ecstatic material, the quartet “Nonaah” insisting on strict repetition until the musical machine melted into calm or exploded into its component parts. Those performances were startling enough. But the added weight of the works on Mitchell’s new double album makes it clear that he is in the vanguard of all music that rewards contemplation. “SII Examples” may be the best place to start, a seventeen-minute piece for soprano saxophone that explores the myriad tones that fall between the notes of the standard scale –“quarter tones, semi-quarter tones, the same note with different timbres, that sort of thing,” according to the composer. Timbre is the key element here, as Mitchell oscillates slowly through a closely bunched group of notes, creating variations that sharpen our awareness of one particular building block of music. Absorbing in detail, the piece almost becomes hallucinatory; but “SII Examples” is not “trance music,” like the work of such minimalist composers as Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. Instead, as with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, one is always aware of the materials involved and the process that shapes them; no attempt is being made to seduce the listener into transcendence by shifting his attention from the matter at hand. The next place to go is “The Maze,” a twenty-two-minute percussion piece for eight players (Mitchell, Thurman Barker, Anthony Braxton, Douglas Ewart, Malachi Favors, Joseph Jarman, Don Moye, and Henry Threadgill) who perform on approximately 230 instruments --from standard drum kits to a cornucopia of bells, gongs, marimbas, and vibraphones. That layout may suggest cacophony, but “The Maze” is the calmest, most lucid percussion piece I’ve ever heard--a series of linked events (thirty in all) in which clearly defined percussive textures are interwoven to create a design of dense, extravagant lushness. Especially intriguing is the way “The Maze” makes one aware simultaneously of minute details and overall form, as though one were watching the creation of a Persian carpet. First, each colored thread of sound is apparent, then the middle-distance designs come into view, and finally, the completed maze solves and resolves itself. “L-R-G” should be approached last, because it combines the timbral variations of “SII Examples” and the structural techniques of “The Maze.” A thirty-six-minute trio for woodwinds, high brass, and low brass, “L-R-G” is performed by the men whose initials give the work its title--Leo Smith (trumpet, pocket trumpet, and flugelhorn), Mitchell (piccolo, flute, oboe, clarinet, and soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass saxophones), and George Lewis (sousaphone, tuba, and alto and tenor trombones). The musical events of “L-R-G” (forty- four in all if my count is accurate) are more clearly separated than the events of “The Maze.” And each of these events, which range in length from about twenty to ninety seconds, is a complete multilevel structure in itself. The degree of activity in each event is determined by how many instruments come into play, how widely separated they are in pitch, and how quickly the phrases of each instrument change shape. Functional harmony is nonexistent, as are melody and rhythm in the sense of variations from any norm outside the world of the piece. Instead, we hear timbre and the shape of phrases in space, with the space between each shape always clearly defined. That may sound forbidding, and in a sense it is--one almost has to learn again how to listen, how to take in sounds that occur simultaneously but refuse to be integrated. But this is not the first time that music has asked that much from its audience, a fact that became apparent when I began to search through the past, hoping to come across some music that sounded like these seemingly unprecedented works. Analogies to “The Maze” were not to be found among other twentieth-century percussion pieces; by comparison Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Zyklus” seems as simple as a Gene Krupa solo. But the glacial calm of “SII Examples” pointed in the right direction, to the slowly unfolding but infinitely complex masses of the fifteenth century French master Guillaume Dufay. And in the fourteenth century, in the music of such composers as Grimace, Solage, and Matheus de Perusio, one can find works that resemble “L-R-G” more than any other music composed during the intervening 600 years. Listen, for example, to de Perusio’s “Le greygnour bien,” which can be heard on David Munrow’s recording The Art of Courtly Love. In the words of annotator/conductor Munrow, the composition’s “three parts often appear totally unrelated,” and even ears attuned to polyphonic textures are forced to hear each part as a separate entity. Such an extreme disassociation of parts was a primary goal for these fourteenth-century composers, who were working at a time when the very idea of polyphony was new and harmony was still a naked babe. Their musical world was one in which the component parts of Western music were still vigorously independent. And that independence was a quality that their music was trying to elaborate on and preserve. Because Roscoe Mitchell’s music, too, is homing in on first principles, it is natural that his work should resemble compositions that were created when Western music was taking shape. And in the process, he is discovering anew that when music is truly broken down into its component parts, a new order can emerge. What effect the discoveries of “L-R-G,” “The Maze,” and “SII Examples” will have on the future of music and how quickly those discoveries will take hold are questions for the future to decide. For now, all that can be said is that a different beauty has entered our world, one that demands much from us and gives much more in return.

http://www.amazon.com/Berlioz-Nuits-dété-Ravel-Shéhérazade/dp/B000V6MS9E/ref=sr_1_4?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1429875755&sr=1-4&keywords=crespin+berlioz If you're interested in the repertoire (these are arguably the best performances of the Berlioz and the Ravel), get only this Decca Legends version. A later remastering of the same performances was botched.

Am not entranced by Fuller all the time, but when he's in a groove, a ruminative one especially, he gets to me.

"The world -- and any eligible bachelor in it -- could be hers."

I wasn't thinking of Hank's harmonic sense when I made that remark/semi-wisecrack but of his frequent reliance on what might called "crystalline" tone and his similar taste for "shapely" phrasing and corresponding avoidance of boppish rhythmic angularity. BTW, I admire Teddy Wilson a lot.

Mine, too.

I should add that one of my favorite solos is Jones' on "Autumn Leaves" from "Something Else." But perhaps RVG should get an assist there.

Peter -- I come and go on Hank Jones but feel in general that his more or less updated Teddy Wilson approach doesn't fit that well in Hard Bop settings: I prefer him on his own or on dates like Coleman Hawkins' "The High and Mighty Hawk" (Felsted). I know the term Hard Bop can be annoying if used in a limiting manner, but IMO there is no planet in the solar system on which Sonny Red and Jones can co-exist. I agree, too, that there is some rhythmic lumpiness on the Fuller-Garland date, though Red's comping at its best is nicely aggressive, and I do really like those two tracks where Fuller's tone is veiled and he's so relaxed rhythmically.