Larry Kart

The portion of the notes to the new Dial Mosaic written by Ross Russell in 1995 include this paragraph: Charlie Parker signed a contract to record exclusively for Dial on the condition that he would have complete control of the sessions, the material to be recorded and the selection of his sidemen. Bird had lost interest in making such up-tempo, "frantic" recordings as SALT PEANUTS and A DIZZY ATMOSPHERE. "They are played too fast," he told this writer. "They are not my kind of music. I have my own tunes that I want to record." This was the basis of the contract signed after the closing hours at Tempo Music Shop on February 26, 1946. FWIW, the discography (and Russell in his notes) indicates that there were seven Parker-led Dial sessions. The first four (from March 1946 - February 1947) were recorded in Hollywood. The remaining three (from October 1947 - December 1947) were recorded in NYC. I wasn't thinking of number of sessions but amount of recorded/issued material. Maybe my reckoning is off, but I count 27 eventually issued takes from Dial's Parker Hollywood dates and 32 eventually issued takes from Dial's Parker NYC dates.

A FB response from John Burton, which seems to refer in part to a longer version of the piece that appeared in the print edition of the WSJ: Marc Myers should be ashamed of himself for writing this. So many errors flowing from his misguided attempt to shoehorn the Bird/Dial legacy into a false story about Los Angeles jazz, black v. white, and the relationship between modern jazz and the development of R&B and Rock and Roll. Some examples: "[The Dial contract] was a breakthrough for the rising bebop star, allowing him to record his improvised blues rather than the frantic jazz style popular back in New York." Uh, no. There is not one blues on Bird's first two Dial sessions. What Bird wanted was to get out from under Dizzy Gillespie's musical domination. "Over the next two years, Dial's recordings by Parker and local bebop musicians not only radicalized jazz in Los Angeles but also had an electrifying effect on the city's 'jump blues.'" -- WTF??? "Parker was a big catch for a small label like Dial." Wrong again. Dial records was established specifically for the purpose of recording Bird. "[Ross] Russell . . . between 1946 and '48 . . . documented some of the most exciting and influential West Coast jazz of the period." Very misleading. At least half of the Bird/Dial recordings were made in NYC. No one would call most of the Dial recordings "West Coast Jazz." The Dexter Gordon/Wardell Gray/Teddy Edwards tenor battles might be the exception. "unintentionally provides a missing link between jazz and rock 'n' roll". This is just silly, IMHO "Other examples of bebop's development in L.A. include . . . Sonny Berman's Big Eight . . . and Fats Navarro." The former was in town briefly while touring with Woody Herman, a NYC based band. The Navarro sides were made in NYC. I mean, c'mon. "But despite Dial's efforts to widen bebop's appeal in Los Angeles, the music never caught on." Huh? Dial was a national label, and LA remained a secondary center for modern jazz for years to come.

Hope this link works; IMO there's some jaw-dropping misinformation here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-label-for-a-new-sound-1419982709?KEYWORDS=dial+records Responding to a critical Facebook response to the WSJ piece, Myers doubles down with this: "Bird's own motive [for signing with Dial] was to escape the frantic, soulless bebop of NY and record his approach, which was more blues saturated." What "frantic soulless bebop of NY" are we talking about? And, among other things, weren't most of Parker's Dial recordings made in NY?

That's pretty much it -- the cage rattlers part and the "laborious and PO-faced" response part. But I don't quite get the "pointless fare for middlebrows" versus "who are you callin' middlebrow?" dynamic. Didn't seem to me that either the free-lance cage rattlers or the irritated occupants of the jazz cage had, or were accusing others of having, their brows at any particular level, high, middle, or low. Rather, it seems to me, that this mini-shebang was based (however distantly) on the various moves over the years to more or less defensively sanctify jazz -- e.g. "It's America's classical music," Wynton and J@LC, the Ken Burns series, etc. Maybe Jim in post #8 kind of agrees with me on that, but maybe he's just having fun.

Leaving aside "Whiplash," which to me seems an unrelated matter (also, I've only seen the tour de force verbal abuse scene, not the whole film), I think that the main point of interest in the Rollins-W. Post- and faux KOB kerfuffles and their offshoots is where they came from and why. That is, none of this b.s. would have worked (or "worked," if you prefer) if there hadn't been some prior agreement (or "agreement") out there in some precincts of the culture that jazz was a handy stand-in for all sorts of stuff that gets or has been culturally sanctified without the likes of the would-be hip sneering classes being consulted or getting a vote. No, I don't think that the indignant moralistic tone of much of the pushback to the aforementioned provocations was strategically sound -- I would have preferred a brief surgical response on the "why" front, then silence -- but one of the things mentioned in the Times piece seemed to me to be the best response at all because it wasn't a response but just was good/full of life and, FWIW, abundantly, unpretentiously hip: Antonio Sanchez's drum score to "Birdman." Fact is, we've come to the point (though that point may well have passed) where jazz can be/could be used by turds, trolls, and creeps to advance their little agendas. The only answer, as in the "Birdman" score, is more or less un-ignorable value and vigor. Yes, getting such work out there is a problem, one that was solved in the case of "Birdman" because of the actual tastes of the people who were already in charge there/in a position to make things happen. But isn't that often the case?

"In 1998, Bayless chose to leave Dallas after 17 years and become the lead sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune."

Bayless was a columnist for the Chicago Tribune for a while when I was there. A total disaster and loathed by one and all.

Don't know D'Amico beyond the mid-'40s but don't recall him as particularly modern, as in boppish, player but as attractively warm and gentle. As for Scott, check out Bill Crow's assault on him in The Jazz Review in 1959: http://jazzstudiesonline.org/resource/jazz-review-vol-2-no-6-july-1959-0 which an issue or so later led to a letter in defense of Scott from Bill Evans. The Crow piece is interesting because I don't think of him as a malicious person, though he is a man of firm opinions -- witness his famous piece about touring Russia with Benny Goodman: http://www.billcrowbass.com/billcrowbass.com/To_Russia_Without_Love.html

Am a bit surprised about what that Dan Mrogenstern quote claimed in that interview? Buddy De Franco the only clarinetist who "caught on to the new jazz language"?? Jimmy Giuffre? Tony Scott? Who else (even if not of the stature of Buddy De Fraco)? And who knows where Stan Hasselgard would have gone if he had not died an untimely death? Certainly Buddy De Franco would not have been considered a major swing clarinetist per se who made the "transition" to modern jazz? What he did before modern jazz came along only were his first flings with professional music and when he made a name for himself he WAS part of modern jazz? For all the merits he had, at any rate he really cannot be considered the "only" clarinetist in modern jazz? By "new jazz language," Dan means Bop. Guiffre on clarinet eventually went straight on to his avant-garde thing but never had much of a clue about or interest in Bop. As for Scott, he sure tried hard, but I for one can't stand his playing, with rare exceptions. Good point about Hasselgard, but the evidence sadly is lacking. Aaron Sachs to some extent. Sam Most. Some Europeans, like Putte Wickman and Rolf Kuhn. But Buddy was a veritable colossus.

My memory may have scrambled this up a bit (perhaps Chuck Nessa can straighten it out, if needed), but when DeFranco last performed at the Chicago Jazz Festival a few years ago he played a beautiful version of "Memories of You," which led Muhal Richard Abrams to say (either within my range or that of someone else who later mentioned it to me) that it was the best solo on that piece that he had ever heard.

I got 15 out of 15; for several years I was newspaper copy editor.

A f---ing dressmaker.

BTW, that Clarissa from post #123 is seemingly not a straight excerpt from Robin Holloway's 1976 two-hour opera based on Samuel Richardson's immense 18th Century epistolary novel "Clarissa Harlowe" but a self-contained encapsulation of/reflection upon the opera (for soprano and orchestra) that he created in 1995.

Very interesting post -- "...that the doubts about the consolations of musical discourse are there from quite early and get written in ever deeper..." in particular. To this RH probably would reply (from his Shostakovich essay): "But what else is there to go on, in works of art, but their artistic workmanship -- in music, the actual notes? All human experience can be encompassed and expressed in music's actual notes, when they show themselves to be capable of containing what's entrusted to them." That is a point of view that has a lot of appeal to me, but I think you're saying "Hey, not so fast."

I don't agree with all of RH's critical views but find him unique and stimulating and also FWIW pretty much on the money about Die Frau. His essay on Haydn is a killer. If you're saying that Hofmannsthal is so far above the level of Larkin that this somehow devalues RH, I would say that the Hofmannsthal of Die Frau is not Hofmannsthal at his best. You might want to check out this excerpt from Holloway's Clarissa: Harry James?

If you think that Holloway's Gilded Goldbergs (about which I have mixed feelings) are the work of "a drearily restrained ... stereotypical tight-ass Brit," I can't imagine what you're talking about. In general, despite some semi-neocon works (e.g. the violin and horn concerti) Holloway is about "drearily restrained" and tight-assed a composer as Chabrier or (a particular favorite of his) David Del Tredici. His enthusiasms as a critic are no less wide-ranging or, if you prefer, all over the place -- from Haydn to Glinka, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Chabrier, Faure, Debussy, Richard Strauss, Elgar, Ravel, Poulenc, Janacek, Berg, and Julian Anderson. Not a "tight-ass Brit" list, I think. As for Vainberg and Prokofiev, I myself don't prefer the former to the latter (for me, it's apples and oranges), and Holloway AFAIK has never uttered a word about Vainberg's music (I expect he wouldn't like it any more than he does Shostakovich's). He certainly abhors Schnittke, and he doesn't like Schulhoff either.

Speaking of Rollins and fond memories, today I thought in passing of "The Christmas Song" and recalled that its lyric was written by Bob Wells, who also wrote "Born To Be Blue" and other songs with Mel Torme. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Wells' name was there as the lyricist of a tune (composer was one David Saxon) that inspired one of my favorite though not that well-known Rollins recordings, "What's My Name," from the trio side (with Henry Grimes and Specs Wright) of the Metrojazz album "Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass." The tune, at least in Rollins' hands, was so imposingly noble and shapely that I wondered where it came from. A bit of poking around led me to Billy Eckstine's recording, which probably was the one that had stuck in Rollins' head way back when and then inspired his version. Here they both are:

I see that "Willie" is on McFarland's 1966 album "Profiles": http://www.dougpayne.com/profiles.htm

At least two more McFarland Mulligan CJB charts -- "Weep" and Chuggin.'" Don't recall "Willie" (that would be for Willie Dennis) being recorded.

Three years of Latin in high school, a class in Homeric Greek in college. In neither case did I do my part very well, but in later years my interest in the literature/culture and the times has grown. Just read a terrific newish translation of Suetonius "The Caesars" and a very good one of Horace's Satires: http://www.amazon.com/Caesars-Hackett-Classics-Suetonius/dp/1603843132/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419182842&sr=1-2&keywords=suetonius+hurley http://www.amazon.com/Satires-Hackett-Classics-Horace/dp/1603848444/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419182932&sr=1-1&keywords=horace+satires+hackett

Uh-oh.

These books might be a good place to start about the history and the how it was done: http://www.amazon.com/Dance-History-Classic-Theatrical-Dancing/dp/0837139724/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419056543&sr=1-4&keywords=lincoln+kirstein+classic+ballet http://www.amazon.com/Ballet-liveliest-artdby-Walter-Laurel/dp/B0007I6UXG/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419056614&sr=1-2&keywords=walter+terry+ballet

Further info on the Joffrey Ballet reconstruction: http://www.amazon.com/Nijinskys-Crime-Against-Grace-Reconstruction/dp/0945193432 http://www.ocregister.com/articles/hodson-409325-rite-ballet.html http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/25/arts/the-joffrey-ballet-restores-nijinsky-s-rite-of-spring.html http://www.joffreymovie.com/2012/08/29/reconstructing-the-rite/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labanotation That system was developed after "The Rite," though. Don't know how the Joffrey recreation was accomplished.

For me Kenny Davern is the Bob Wilber of the clarinet. FTW