Larry Kart

Perhaps interesting (albeit chewy) passage from an article by Charles Rosen. He begins by quoting a passage from musicologist Laurence Dreyfus's book "Bach and the Patterns of Invention" on a hallmark of Enlightenment aesthetics, which was meant to apply to all the arts and which was ill-suited to Bach's typically "learned," artfully complex, and highly detailed music. "The New Enlightened aesthetic was also a theory [that required] art to be produced and judged according to how well it offered direct access to the mental representations that lay behind the work, its signifying ideas.... Words, music, gestures, pictures -- all were there not to draw attention to themselves but to be as transparent as possible...." Rosen adds: "Any such theory spells big trouble for music.... For one thing, the principle of transparency is more problematic for music than for any of the other arts.... [T]he sheer breadth of detail within a musical experience are always far out of proportion to any underlying affect that can be proposed for it. Whereas a painting can be seen to resemble an observed view, or the plot of a novel can seem to replicate a realistic experience, the phenomenon of music itself does not by and large resemble the experience it may wish to convey.... [My emphasis]

Comments from a poster on rec.music.classical.recordings on that Sony Box: I've just finished listening to the Gary Graffman "Complete Album Collection." Mostly with great pleasure: I was well acquainted with about two-thirds of the recordings already from LP days. The album essay is frank about the limitations placed on Graffman's recorded repertoire: during both his RCA and his Columbia years, he remained in the shadow of more prominent (=better-selling?) artists such as Rubinstein, Cliburn, Horowitz, and Gould. Nevertheless, his considerable strengths are on display throughout the collection--superb technique, terrific energy and weight. He has the fleetness one associates with the post-war Americans but power of one of the Russians--almost Gilels-like in some works. My wife's response to the observation was, "Well he was sort of Russian," which is true. Those who like his general musical approach, as I do, will find few out- and-out failures here and much to enjoy. My biggest disappointments were his Brahms "Handel Variations," which I found rushed and brusque (contrast Fleisher), and some of his "big" Chopin (esp. Scherzo #1), ditto. OTOH, his Paganini Variations are excellent (if not quite up to Katchen's) and his op. 27 Nocturnes are lovely, so I won't generalize. His superb Prokofiev Sonatas ##2 and 3 and Concerti ##1 and 3 made me yearn for more of same. There should have been cycles of both, but alas.... His Brahms D-minor Concerto is a classic, but why no B-flat? (Yeah, I guess I know why). Terrific Schumann Symphonic Etudes and a surprisingly flexible Carnaval as well. Finally a word in praise of his Beethoven Sonatas. Only four of them, but they are all excellent, especially a gorgeous "Waldstein" and an "Appassionata" that is in the Gilels/Berman class, imo. Probably everyone here has an opinion about his Rachmaninov w/Bernstein and his Tchaikovsky w/Ormandy, both very much to my taste although I know that others have held a contrary view.

"The Third Man" Couldn't disagree more, though, about "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" and Kubrick's "Lolita" being as good as the books. OTOH, there's "The Russia House."

Oops -- Friedwald is right.

Maybe -- but what would "the minor's gong" mean in a Bop context? A drug reference of some sort? But if so, I can't see how how that would have made it onto disc on a major label in the late '50s.

As some of us probably know, Anita O'Day's terrific version of "You're the Top" from the album "Anita O'Day and Billy May Swing Cole Porter" includes an alternate lyric "You're the Bop." In it at one point Anita sings: "You're the bop, you're like Sarah singing, you're the bop, you're like Yardbird swinging ... you're the minor's gone (or minor's skong [???]), you're the greatest song that Eckstine ever sung, you're a Moscow Mule, you're oh so cool, you're Lester Young. Two questions: What the heck is what I've written down as "minor's skong" and what does it mean? Also, did Anita write "You're the Bop" lyrics or did someone else? Finally, the way Anita sings "Lester Young" -- what a ray of sunshine. P.S. the YouTube link says Buddy Bregman, but it's Billy May.

Certainly true, overall, but the non-presence of jazz (which again invariably raises the question "WHICH STYLE OF JAZZ are we talking about"?) in the awareness of the music-listening public AT LARGE to a certain degree is of the own making of the jazz "in-crowd" (the self-professed "true jazz fans"). Small wonder many occasional listeners would not venture into jazz places if the only jazz foisted unto them was "far-out weird noises" that they could not relate to at first listening. You cannot expect people to embrace music (which ALWAYS is a matter of very personal TASTE) if you confront them with something radically different they have never been exposed to before instead of EASING them into it and providing them with opportunities to gradually find their way into the music and then let them decide for themselves. Expecting people to expand their cultural horizons when it is just about a night out in a bar is maybe not the best approach for hardcore jazz zealots to make converts. In the 90s certain styles of jazz (yes, Neo-Swing or "Retro Swing" or whatever you would like to call it) was indeed comparatively big and had its following (and some of it is still going on today). And of course the keepers of (self-professed, again) "true" jazz faith had nothing better to do but to blast everything from that corner - too diluted, too much watered-down, not enough art in it, musically dissatisfying, pale imitations, etc. etc. And all this without even bothering to distinguish between what's good (there were/are good bands with quite some originality) and bad (yes, there were/are weak bands, just like eversywhere else - I'd bet avantgarde has its share of "emperor's clothes" cases too if you look closer). OTOH, even if hardcore jazz fans would fault many of these bands for the above in one swipe (which I still feel is unfounded if you do not differentiate) they'd have to admit a lot of what has been played by these bands (and still is, in certain places) is much closer to jazz than a lot of really non-jazz pop music that the general public is exposed to everywhere today. And those who went to live gigs by these bands (and not all of them had been diehard jazz fans before - far from it) certainly knew what a trumpet looked like and would have been able to tell a trumpet, a trombone and the various saxes apart (as well as their sounds). Regardless of whether you'd loathe these bands because, for example, they combined (oh horror!) punk rock influences with big band sax sections and lounge vocals. After all, where's the fundamental difference betwen the influences these band sworked under and the influences from non-jazz at work in some of those "world-music-cum-jazz" projects? One man's meat is another man's poison. Everywhere, all the time ... And at least over here, those neo-swing bands spawned a subculture of fans, listeners, dancers and bands that do keep playing their own variations on a SWING theme. They do listen to the old masters and just as much to current bands playing in that idiom. Can't find much wrong with that. There are MUCH worse stepping stones into other (maybe more advanced) styles of jazz. But if jazz cannot or won't reach out to the straw that might help to keep jazz above water, then ... well ... Got nothing against Neo-Swing or "Retro Swing" for what it is, but let's be clear about what it is/was and is/was not. Given that that trend, or what you will, emerged in the '90s, one would think that if it had then the potential to draw its fans to any related form of jazz, we would have been aware (or would have been made aware) of that. I'm still waiting. Rather -- and again no blame here, provided one had no such expectations -- it was an arguably fun phenomenon for a while, and then it more or less wound down of its own accord, as such phenomena do -- not, in this case, because the jazz world didn't embrace/acted snotty toward it. If you're going to tell me that what happened or didn't happen to Neo-Swing or "Retro Swing" was significantly a matter of jazz's not being able or willing "to reach out to the straw that might help to keep jazz above water," I see no evidence that that straw ever existed. That is, again, Neo-Swing or "Retro Swing" was just the fun and mostly social phenomenon it was; what evidence is there that anyone or anything in or around it was a straw for jazz to reach out to -- other than it gave some players some more or less enjoyable gigs that they otherwise would not have gotten?

Ahmad Jamal

Janacek "House of the Dead" Britten "Billy Budd" Working up to a real fun evening

I don't "present" jazz. I believe, to anyone who doesn't already find it interesting, nor would I do so if I did in any other way than as something that I find very entertaining and enjoyable (though I might, if asked, then add some details). Nor, I hope, do I spend any time and energy on trying to tell those who don't like jazz that they're dolts because they don't like or get it. I had a useful real-life experience along those lines with my son. He could hear the music in the house, and while I would answer questions if and when they came up (they did now and then), I never tried to sell the music to him, in large part because he was all wrapped up in the forms of rock that he was listening to and eventually began playing himself as a member of various bands. However, on his own hook, at about age 17, he spontaneously got caught up in the Grant Green recording of "Stolen Moments," and jazz began to become some part, though not all, of know what he paid attention to. Don't what would have happened if I'd been trying to sell jazz to him all that time, but I don't think it would have worked. Had a friend who was just getting into jazz way back when (7th grade), and he kind of sold it to me at first -- the way a friend several years before might have infected one with his interest in toy soldiers -- but I soon began to run with the ball myself. BTW, that friend ended up about a decade later as a big fan of the music of the Yale Glee Club and Los Indios Tabajaras -- go figure.

A whole lot depends on what you find entertaining. Forms of entertainment that are generally engaged in are not that entertaining to everyone. Why should they be? And why should the fact that others find engaging/entertaining things that some others find abstruse/puzzling, etc. be used as a stick to beat those others and their tastes/interests over the head? There is, or should be, room for both. Or have all these points already been made on this thread?

Sound Congliptious Nonaah Coming up on the far turn -- L-R-G and Numbers 1&2

http://www.amazon.com/Washington-Concerts-Charlie-Parker/dp/B00005AQCH The small group tracks http://www.amazon.com/Boston-1952-Charlie-Parker/dp/B00000AFBX/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1426355471&sr=1-1&keywords=charlie+parker+boston “Groovin’ High” in particular

The piece of John's that he links to in post #78 is well worth reading. full of shrewd, better-than-good good sense.

Sorry to hear that. But a friend who may have the most acute ear of anyone I know heard Lee in Chicago recently and was very impressed.

Sgcim: Disagree about Lee, based on some (but not all) recent Konitz recordings and some live performances as well. The athletic side of music-making has never been as crucial for him as it would be for -- to cite one of your other examples -- Freddie Hubbard.

Not sure I can afford a doctor to interpret this for me. You didn't get your secret decoder ring?

Over the past fifteen years or so, I've put my butt in as many or more seats in Chicago venues that presented the music of the local avant-garde scene than I did in any club or concert seats when I was reviewing jazz performances regularly for the Chicago Tribune from the late '70s to the late '80s and in all the years before that, from the time I could get into places that sold alcohol. But in the last several years (I'm now 72) my attendance has dropped off a good deal -- in part because I've remarried and have a 13-year-old stepdaughter, which means that my wife wakes up at 6:45 a.m. to drive her to school, which means that I pretty much wake up at the same time, which makes staying up late the night before less attractive; in part because it seems like the very yeasty Chicago AG scene began to get a bit less yeasty about the time my attendance began to fall off; in part because my favorite venue folded and one of the chief newer ones doesn't feel that comfortable to me (the folded favorite one was the most comfortable place, physically and terms of atmosphere, that I've ever listened to music). I should add that I don't like to go to the chief local mainstream venue for the lack of a comfortable atmosphere reason; also there just aren't many people who play there that I have a strong desire to see these days. Benny Golson, for example, would be an exception; venerable he is but still fervently creative. Not to insult his memory, but in the latter portion of his career I had no desire to catch, say, Clark Terry because I felt I'd already heard most everything he was going to play. Sorry if I'm being too discursive, but perhaps my behavior and feelings are indicative of some aspect of the lay of the land. I would say that my general stance -- details of age and second-marriage life taken into account -- is that basically I want to hear NEW music: either music that's stylistically novel in the sense that part of the pleasure it gives me, when it's good, is the pleasure of figuring out the novel what and how of what is being said, or music that is stylistically familiar to me but still feels like it's being made "in the now" (Golson or Lee Konitz might be good examples). If the music isn't new in one of those two senses, I'm not that interested anymore.

Probably late 1930s. If Pegler were around these days, his head might explode.

Klezmer what? Is a less popular genre than jazz?

Klezmer?

If he forgot to ID the singer in the picture for some reason, he wouldn't be around to ask who she was because Betts died in 2005.

Betts and Ennis did cross parths: http://www.allmusic.com/album/bass-buddies-blues-beauty-too-mw0000322174

Could be Ethel Ennis, originally from Baltimore (Betts was D.C.-based). If so, Ennis was very good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2uWNTDNfEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW9X7kHGoho&spfreload=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJXNn_Sle6E&spfreload=10 Lots more Ennis on YouTube.

An archaic piece of wisdom from the inimitable (and sometimes reprehensible) Westbrook Pegler: "I claim that anyone professing to be an entertainer should be able and willing to walk out before a cold audience and go to work without the services of a missionary, and I renounce all interest in the private personalities, the business affairs and the marvelous capacity for friendship of those whom I pay to amuse me. In the vaudeville business and musical comedy they used to pretend that they were actors, persons of a make-believe world, and they kept their place and gave us an illusion and more or less fun, according to their abilities, without crawling all over us and breathing in our faces."