Larry Kart

Are you speculating that the same attitude that precipitated the gap between 1967 & 1974 was in place between 1948-1958? Those were pretty different time frames as far as jazz and jazz record making. The former thriving, the latter, not so much.. Along those lines, who approached who about Teddy recording for Contemporary? He them, or they, him? Or, I guess more chronologically relevant, PJ, not Contemporary. Interesting too is the chronology between 1958-1960, two 1958 one-cut sessions for inclusion in a PL "Blues" anthology, a 1959 live half-album side for Metrojazz (coupled with the Metrojazz Sonny Rollins/Music Inn date), and then, finally, the 1960 PJ sessions, which got the ball rolling there for a while. It took two years to get Teddy excited, or what? Seems odd, might not be, sut sure seems. Let's not overlook, though, that Don Schlitten always made room on his labels for California-based "bop" players - Edwards, Criss, Dolo Coker, Frank Butler, who else? The label that I always wonder about in all of this is Tampa...their roster was anything but monolithic in terms anything! http://www.discogs.com/label/102350-Tampa-Records Maybe it all comes down to a variant of this - East Coast jazz labels weren't as "scared" of doing business with possible junkies" as were West Coast labels, although Art Pepper, Chet Baker, Russ Freeman, Hampton Hawes, god know who all else, kinda blows that out the water. Maybe what it all really comes down to is this - what got widely documented was perfectly valid, but there appears to be no equally valid reason for what didn't get as reasonably equally widely documented that is preliminarily based in "social comfort", which may or may not be primarily driven by race, and definitely should be examined on a case-by-case basis. As Gioia speculates, what might have transpired in terms of a larger net being cast for recording opportunities of the LA "bop" players if Ross Russell had, if not stayed in California himself, at least kept an active Dial presence in the city? Gerald Wiggins? Have no idea whether what precipitated the first gap in Edwards' recording career was the same as what precipitated the second -- or even if Edward's explanation of the second gap is the whole story there (I suspect not). But what he said to Mark Gardner does suggest that he was a man whose response to frustration/ill-treatment was hurt feelings and withdrawal to some degree rather than to keep knocking on doors. I think Edwards might have been one of those artists who needed a connected advocate. Aside from the '40s material, I first came across him as the only horn on a very good Atlantic date led by pianist Joe Castro, "Groove Funk Soul," with LeRoy Vinnegar and the young Billy Higgins (it may have been Higgins' debut on records). Castro, who could play, also was Doris Duke's companion of the time (many sessions were held at Duke's L.A.-area mansion, Falcon's Lair) and perhaps Castro, who appeared as a sideman on one of Edwards' Contemporary albums (was it the first?) did some coat pulling on Edwards' behalf. Thanks be that Edwards for a time had an advocate with direct access to a record label in Don Schlitten.

I was inspired by this thread to order one of the few Teddy Edwards albums I didn't have, his "It's All Right" (OJC, originally on Prestige, rec. 1967). In Mark Gardner's liner notes for Edwards' "Feelin's" (Muse), rec. 1974 -- note the seven-year gap between albums -- Edwards is quoted as follows: "After all the work I put into writing and preparing for the 'It's All Right!' album, and it got so little or no promotion, it kinda killed my soul for making records, so until this day I haven't bothered about approaching anybody about recording."

There's certainly something to what Edwards said, but he himself did record two albums as a leader for Pacific Jazz in 1960, and four for Contemporary from 1960-2, five if you count "Back to the Avalon," which was not released until the 1990s, I think. And Hampton Hawes was ignored? Lester Koenig, IIRC, recorded Hawes as often as he could when Hawes was not incarcerated.

Yes, Kenyon Hopkins, and Phil Woods for sure:

More about “Desert Fury.” Note the still of bare-chested John Hodiak and Wendell Corey. Both writers certainly get the sexual ambiguity (if that) of their relationship but don't detect the theme I mentioned in my previous post: http://www.filmcomment.com/article/lewis-allen-desert-fury http://thegirlwiththewhiteparasol.blogspot.com/2013/05/movie-review-desert-fury.html

Dalton Trumbo? (Though he claimed he quit the party pretty early.) Rossen was not one of the Hollywood Ten but he was blacklisted. I always thought he was an excellent writer director. His breakthrough film was "Body and Soul". I can't remember whether they play the song in it. Sorry -- you're right. Rossen (a CPUSA member from 1937-47) was not one of the Hollywood Ten; rather, he was one of those who named names of former fellow Party members before HUAC. Rossen also wrote and directed "All the King's Men" and "Lilith" (1964), with Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg, which I remember as being interesting, although it was a commercial failure and his final film. He died two years later at age 57. No, the "great writer" in my story was not Trumbo, who was in any case not a great writer IMO.

Post of mine from 2007 about "Desert Fury, a movie I'd give a lot to see again. I ordered a copy once from Amazon, from some dubious third party seller, but DVD that was sent was unplayable: Another interesting (and I think little known) noir is "Desert Fury," with John Hodiak, Wendell Corey, Lizbeth Scott, and Burt Lancaster -- directed by Lewis Allen, script by Robert Rossen (the likely autuer)? To me, it's the quintessential pre-Hollywood Ten movie because its chief theme, transformed into a gangster setting, is loyalty on the part of actual or would-be intellectuals to the Communist Party no matter what (or rather to some degree because the loyalty the CP required was of the "no matter what" sort). This comes through in one key element of the plot -- the belief (held by some committed CPUSA members) that the ultimate test of virtue was one's "hardness" (not only as in toughness but also as in willingness to do any deed in the name of submission to discipline -- especially if its dictates ran counter to the promptings of one's personal [i.e. bourgeois] conscience, convenience, or morality.) Thus Hodiak's character is a handsome, narcissistic frontman (a star gambler) who shies away from the doing the rough dirty stuff, while Corey, his sidekick who does the rough dirty stuff when that's necessary (actually, as I recall, he deeply enjoys doing it), is at once is in love with Hodiak's character and his "star" aura and is enraged by the gap between what Hodiak's character thinks he himself is too good to do and what Corey's character both has to and, in some sense, chooses to do instead. Corey, playing a deeply twisted man, gives a terrific twisted performance. BTW, I can't swear that this is true, but a great American writer who shall be nameless (because, again, I can't swear that this story is true, though I trust my source for it) and who was a committed CPUSA member of the type outlined above (that committed CPUSA member part is fact) was among those who decamped to Mexico when things got hot in the immediate post-war Red Scare era was among those who bought into the ultimate test of one's virtue as a committed Party member was one's "hardness" -- this despite (or maybe in some sense because) he was an essentially kind, gentle man. In any case, according to the story I was told, in Mexico his "hardness" was put to the test and on Party orders he engineered the death of a fellow leftist American emigre who was suspected of being a traitor to the cause. BTW, Rossen, probably best know for writing and directing "The Hustler," was one of the Hollywood Ten. ​P.S. Lewis Allen is not to be confused with "Lewis Allan," the pseudonym of Abe Meeropol, the New York schoolteacher who wrote the lyric to "Strange Fruit" and eventually adopted the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Meeropol

I'm also fond of Andrew Rangell's "Art of the Fugue" (on piano), which can be heard on Spotify. Never heard an arrangement for an ensemble that worked for me.

Bradley Brookshire: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fugue-Bradley-Brookshire/dp/B00442FPMS Brookshire's "Art of the Fugue" isn't on You Tube, but his terrific recording of the French Suites is, and that will give you an idea:

London was superb in two superb westerns of the late '50s -- Anthony Mann's "Man of the West" (1958), with Gary Cooper (his final film), and Robert Parrish's "The Wonderful Country" (1959), with Robert Mitchum. The latter has a superb Alex North score, and the cast includes Satchel Paige.

This 1998 Childers big-band album is nice: http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Happening-Buddy-Childers-Band/dp/B0000250O4/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1423152408&sr=1-2&keywords=buddy+childers This, from Childers' LA Times obit, is interesting: In the 1980s, Childers served as musical director for Frank Sinatra Jr. and went along when Sinatra Jr. was asked to lead the Frank Sinatra orchestra. "He's the best boss I've ever had in the music business," Childers said of Sinatra Jr. in the 1996 Times article, "a person who really treats musicians with respect." The older Sinatra, he said, "doesn't know I exist."

Also contra-Richards is Don Reed: “I think he was Stan’s favorite arranger, but those scores were so demanding physically on the band because the trumpets were constantly screeching. Everybody was playing loud all the time, long sustained notes that blared, and the arrangements didn’t swing.” The reason "Basie-type swing" keeps coming up, I think, is just because that was the common reference point for big bands in the 1950s -- both the swing of the late '30s Basie band and the different swing of the New Testament Basie band. Further, of course, there was, just within Kenton circles, the recent tussle over the more swinging, arguably "Basie-like" feel of Bill Holman's charts and the "Contemporary Concepts" album, which Kenton didn't care for. Also, there was the neo-Basie feel of virtually every big band album that came out of the NY studios at the time, plus, on the West Coast, things like Shorty Rogers' "Shorty Courts the Count." ​The other kinds of swing you mention weren't on these guys' radar screens, either because there weren't that many recorded examples of bebop swing in a big band setting (Blakey with Eckstine, Joe Harris with Gillespie?), while big bands with hardbop swing or Elvin swing were still a ways in the future.

Buddy Childers, perhaps? Now there's an unsung hero, right there, a guy who could and did play lead in any band...and considering that he played Toshiko's charts, which were no picnic, whatever he says about anybody's parts, pro or con, I'd not argue! It was Phil Gilbert, quoted on p. 150 of Michael Sparke’s “This Is An Orchestra!”: “Richards was a highly educated musician with great orchestrating skills, but he was also very disturbed and drank heavily. ‘Cuban Fire’ was his best, and he wrote some nice ballads … with no explosions or head-on collisions. We did not enjoy his ‘Back to Balboa’ charts at all. I hated them. Too hard and to what end?” Jim Amlotte, on the same page, has a different take: “Johnny Richards is one of my favorite composers, but his music taxed you to the end. To Johnny, nothing was unplayable, and his music was … very, very challenging. Richards put his arrangements together so well. Some guys will say that there’s too much tension, but this is what I like. Some things are going to swing, and some things aren’t, but as long as there’s a pulsation, that’s enough for me. They don’t all have to be Basie-type swing.”

Richards in excelsis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D93UFJJZ2oU&spfreload=10 The exuberant trombone chase features in order Jimmy Cleveland, Jim Dahl, and Frank Rehak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHspf3Xq-p8&spfreload=10 Soloists are Charlie Mariano, Stu Williamson (valve trb.) Shorty Rogers, Maynard Ferguson, Richie Kamuca.

Have you read Arnold Shaw's Honkers And Shouters? That's exactly the kind of book you're looking for, or would be if you'd want it to be about the early days of R&B...a lot of stories about the Bihari brothers, though, and if Crown don't fit into the Southern Western Coast Of California Jazz Overview, then...I'll send that over to Chewy for arbitration! Liberty, yes, nuts. I found that Steve White thing in an East Texas "bargain barn" back in the 1980s...how it got there is probably more interesting than the record itself, although not the cover, which is still UBER-messed up. Stayed away from White's Nocturne sides for years because the Liberty side left me kind of...dis-motivated. My bad. I trust that you've heard the Julie London NSFW outtake tape? Liberty! I have a soft spot for Johnny Richards, his crazy Bethlehem album in particular, also the best tracks on "Wide Range" (Capitol) -- especially the noble melody of "Cimmaron" and the subsequent hellacious Gene Quill solo. What I think people miss with Richards is his surreal sense of humor, which runs all through that Bethlehem album. e.g. "Burrito Burracho"-- his frequent use of piccolo and bass saxophone in particular; those piccolo parts probably bore the annotation "dementado." Interesting to me that the guys in the bands Richards assembled himself played their asses off for him, or so it sounds to me -- as much so perhaps as the members of any ensemble of the time. OTOH, one of Kenton's trumpet section mainstays, don't recall the guy's name, spoke disparagingly of Richard's writing, saying that the brass parts often were unnecessarily awkward and difficult. Did look at the Shaw book once -- a little too Arnold Shaw for me, IIRC, but I'm a tough crowd. Steve White's latter day offshoot probably is Ernie Krivada -- the former of Armenian descent, while the latter's background is Hungarian IIRC. In any case, there's a similar somewhat ethnic "gargle" in their playing, plus a sense that the whole thing may go off the rails in the next moment. Yes, I've heard and love the J. London tape. Nice story about her and her then husband Jack Webb, told by Milt Bernhart. Milt was then a member of the Goodman band, which was working a movie theater stage show with Webb in the early heyday of "Dragnet," then still a radio show, I believe, but a hit. Webb invited the whole band to come up his Manhattan apartment for a big party, during which he put on stack of Eddie Condon 78s. Julie walked over to the record player, removed the disc that was playing and substituted "Shaw 'Nuff." Bernhart turned to a bandmate and said, "This marriage ain't gonna last!" Fortunately for Bobby Troup, and no doubt for London, it didn't.

All apart from all that, that's not a bad idea. I think more singers should cover this song, it's got a potentially helluva lot more resonance than all the retro-stuffy-turkey "interpretations" of "standards" by people looking for questions to answers in songs that have already asked and answered themselves endlessly numbers of numbers of times over and then some more. But no, who wants to sing about reality any more? Hello, jazz people - LIFE IS NOT HAPPY ALL THE TIME, (in fact, if you break even over the long haul, hey, you win, more or less) THAT'S WHY THEY CALL IT LIFE AND NOT PERPETUAL ORGASM. Ok? I mean, fuck "Frank Sinatra", just give me Frank Sinatra when he's being real. Bob Dylan, same deal, and Bob Dylan should be able to be real about on this song. Just asking -- but how many of the songs on "Only the Lonely" or "Where Are You?" are happy songs?

Some Jack Lewis info: http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopic.php?p=623710 A passing mention of Lewis in this nice Mark Meyers interview with Sol Schlinger (good stories here): http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopic.php?p=623710

I can read VERY fast when I have to and, in particular, when I'm looking for a certain kind of thing, as I was this time. A glance more or less usually tells me whether there's any of that kind of thing on a particular page; if there isn't, onwards -- though of course I will linger if it's otherwise interesting. A detailed account of what it was like at a good many independent jazz labels of the '50s (or within jazz enclaves at major labels of the time) is a book I'd snap up. Things must have been particularly off the wall at Liberty under or around Harry Babasin (this after Babasin’s Nocturne label days with drummer Roy Harte), witness “Jazz Mad, featuring The Unpredictable Steve White”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3dkhm5PPmY or Buddy Childers’ “Sam Songs,” where all the tunes have “Sam” in their names for some reason e.g. “Sam Metrically, “My Wild Irish Sam,” “Three Sam in a Fountain.” (some nice Herbie Steward from “Sam Songs” here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PW_7Toj-pQ&spfreload=10 I’ve always been curious about what a guy like Jack Lewis, at RCA in the ‘50s, was like. He sure turned out a lot of stuff. Must have been a Jim and Andy’s/Charlie’s Tavern regular. Tom Stewart, sometime tenor horn player, A&R man at ABC-Paramount, I think. And on and on.

Think I read the Gordon book but don't recall it much at all. See if I can find a copy at a local library. BTW, to clarify this passage from Gioia that I quoted above: "But after this is acknowledged, one is forced ask whether, given this diversity, there was really anything unifying to this music, anything that would justify concern with these musicians as 'West Coast' jazz musicians, instead of, say, individual players tied together only by a coincidental, but hardly crucial, shared geography. The answer to this question must be an unambiguous yes. Not because those musicians shared the same musical goals and precepts -- they most obviously did not -- bur rather because they shared a group of institutions essential to West Coast jazz. The real story of West Coast jazz as a somewhat unified phenomenon, may well be the story of these institutions -- or, in some cases, their notable absence -- institutions that were crucial in establishing West Coast jazz in the postwar years. [My emphasis] I think "these musicians" should be something like "all these musicians." Further, if by "these musicians" he is in fact speaking of both Sonny Criss, Teddy Edwards, Harold Land and their many musical confreres and of the practitioners of the West Coast jazz style as it was commonly regarded at the time, of course the individual members of each those groups were tied together socially and musically in many ways; it's that the members of each of those groups tended not to be tied together musically and socially with members of the other group.

Big Beat Steve -- Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I've just about finished re-reading the Gioia book and eventually may try to come up with a broader response to it and to some of the other related issues that have come up here. Here, though, an interim report, which may turn out to be all of it. First, I did mischaracterize the Gioia book to some considerable degree, but my memory of "West Coast Jazz" the book as something of a reparations job was conditioned by several things. First, by my lived-at-the-time experience of WCJ as the rather tightly knit style that at this point I probably don't need to characterize further any more. Second, by the fact that age 72, having taken in over the years a good deal of the recorded sounds of jazz that were made on the whole West Coast in the era Gioia is writing about, plus a host of information about those sounds and musicians and the various social scenes that they emerged from that I took in over the years from liner notes, other books, jazz magazines, etc., (and here I'm speaking only for myself) I really didn't need to be told by Gioia a large percentage of the information that "West Coast Jazz" the book conveys. I already knew about Sonny Criss, Dexter Gordon, Teddy Edwards, the Central Ave. scene in general, et al. and had of course thought about the musical and social relationship and/or non-relationship between those players and this scenes and the players and scenes of what was commonly labeled WCJ. Beyond that apology/semi-explanation, though, I just feel too damn tired, at least at this moment, to say much more. Gioia BTW does states quite clearly on p. 363 what his rationale is. After aptly characterizing on the previous page the WCJ style as I and many others knew it at the time, he writes: "But there was other music on the coast as well. And not only was it just as much a part of the story of West Coast jazz, but it is in many ways the story that most needs to be stressed.... There was the West Coast sound, but there was much else besides." [My emphasis] Gioia continues: "But after this is acknowledged, one is forced ask whether, given this diversity, there was really anything unifying to this music, anything that would justify concern with these musicians as 'West Coast' jazz musicians, instead of, say, individual players tied together only by a coincidental, but hardly crucial, shared geography. The answer to this question must be an unambiguous yes. Not because those musicians shared the same musical goals and precepts -- they most obviously did not -- bur rather because they shared a group of institutions essential to West Coast jazz. The real story of West Coast jazz as a somewhat unified phenomenon, may well be the story of these institutions -- or, in some cases, their notable absence -- institutions that were crucial in establishing West Coast jazz in the postwar years. [My emphasis] "It is no exaggeration to say that what made West Coast jazz possible, first and foremost, was a small group of local record companies dedicated to presenting the area's musicians to the nation at large. Without the Dial, Fantasy, Pacific, Contemporary, and Capitol labels, this music would not have happened and this book would never have been written." OK, those last two paragraphs in particular are true up to a point -- but what point is that? On that, unless I'm mistaken here, Goia is more or less mum, even though he has just said that this is "the real story of West Coast jazz." Further, that definitive-in-tone-and-substance statement comes on p. 363 of a 369-page book! Did Gioia arrive at this conclusion only in the act of writing those sentences and then realize that either, in the light of what he had just concluded, he would have to go back and rethink/reshape/rewrite much of what he had already written or just let this statement, and the few further pages he then adds to it, stand as is? As something of a seat-of-the-pants writer myself, I sympathize what what seems to me to have been Gioia's plight here, but I can't say I'm satisfied. For one thing, Gioia's conclusion not only is significantly left unexplored by him, but it also seems to mean that, in his view, the most important -- note that "unambiguous yes" -- "unifying" aspect of all this otherwise diverse music were the institutions that selectively presented or chose not to present it to the public at large. A worthy subject for exploration to be sure, but where does that leave the music? My experience (or perhaps my prejudice) always has been that the actual music -- or any actual work of art for that matter -- tends to "speak" intensely, in abundant detail and with great depth, and that it is this "speech" that one ought to pay attention to first and foremost. Yes, this "speech" can be partially blocked, or misunderstood, or ignored, or you name it, but it is there, if only because it is the very nature of art and artists to be expressive -- and I would say, expressive in ways and on wavelengths that at once include and often exceed much or even all of the information that can be conveyed through rational expository discourse, though of course I and others then will then try to speak of that expressive "speech" in words, for better or worse.

The "other" Texas tenor, referred to a page or so earlier, is Illinois Jacquet, who had jousted with Dexter Gordon in 1940 on a Lionel Hampton recording "Po'k Chop." Ammons comes up when Gioia is talking about Dexter and Ammons battling on Eckstine's "Blowin' the Blues Away."

Am trying to re-read Gioia. Not that it's that big a deal, but I notice that on p. 43 he refers to Chicago native Gene Ammons as a "Texas tenor." Well, Ammons did have a sound that was as big as all outdoors.

Maybe I'll re-read Gioia but probably not soon enough to keep this ball rolling -- got too much other stuff beside the bed that I want to/feel I need to read right now.

Hey, Jim -- I think that on this one from now on (pending my re-reading the Gioia book, which I may or may not do), I'm going to hire Scott Dolan to post on my behalf. No doubt he'll make just as much sense and allow me to lower my blood pressure.

So YOU are saying it's NOT common sense to defend against the most likely play the Seahawks would and should call?? That's exactly what the Patriots did. There's nothing "common" or "sensible" about putting a goal line package out against a three WR set, no. In 36 years of watching the game I'm not sure I've ever seen that before. But in that article do you see some disconnect between these two passages? 1) The first and most obvious thing to note is that you can see exactly why Seattle wanted to pass the ball. Even though they had three wide receivers on the field, the Patriots were almost completely selling out to stop the run. [Notice that "almost."] 2) [The Patriots] ran this play in practice specifically to prepare their defensive backs for it. Nothing in football gives you an edge like knowing exactly what is coming. People have called this play a great read by Butler, but if you take a look at his reactions, he is playing nothing else. He knew this play was coming and that’s all he was planning to defend. [Notice the phrase " knowing exactly what is coming,"] So the two Patriots who are not selling out to stop the run [browner and Butler] just happen to be the two guys who are defending against the play the Seahawks actually ran. The Seahawks got out thunk, I think. No, there is no disconnect between the two passages you highlighted. The Seahawks ran that play three times during the regular season. Belichick and his staff took note of it and learned specifically how to defend it. That what great coaches do. And the "almost" means that you had seven up the middle (six down linemen and a linebacker) selling out to stop the run, and four defensive backs in zone coverage behind them. Not just Browner and Butler as you incorrectly assume. OK -- so two of the four Patriots who were not "selling out to stop the run" happened to be the two who together made that decisive play. And the Seahawks still didn't get out thunk? As you say, " Belichick and his staff took note of [that play] and learned specifically how to defend it." And Carroll and his staff were not one step behind them?