Larry Kart

Thread title edited to eliminate ambiguity.

Sorta kinda, but in my friend's case it was much more than that -- a kind of home-grown, self-consciously eccentric "I will fit inside none one's pre-existing holes" rebelliousness; this combined with haughtily proud attitudes (in my friend's case) borrowed from those of the famous Stride Piano tickers, like Blake, Willie the Lion, James P., Donald Lambert, etc. Also, I forgot, one of his proudest accomplishments as a teenager was that he played vicious tailgate trombone a la George Brunies and, then toward the end, in his electronic music phase, built far-out pieces (I never got to hear them but heard of them) out of multi-tracked neo-tailgate lines that probably sounded like Brunies run through an Edgar Varese mixmaster. Also, IIRC, my friend and Kellaway ran across each other when they were both at the U. of Illinois in the mid- to -late-1950s. Further, one his proudest claims was that he could play Tristano's multi-tracked "Turkish Mambo" all by himself. This I heard him do, and while he might not have gotten every note, he came damn close. Besides, the effect was not of a trick but of something that was musically and emotionally overwhelming. But then, when done, his attitude was again very akin to that Stride Tickler thing -- like "Dig my box-back coat." At once very engaged in the musical task but as though he also were a character in a self-created social/emotional drama.

I agree about 98 percent, thought he has made nice contributions as a sideman from time to time, along with some darn obtrusive sideman contributions, too, IMO. To me, the thing about Kellaway is that he is, to perhaps coin a term, a "diddler." I had a talented pianist friend, now deceased and of Kelleway's vintage (they knew each other early on, I believe), who was a diddler too, although he also could get it all together. My friend was a terrific ragtime and stride pianist (the best of of his generation according to Eubie Blake), a brilliant Tristano cum Bud Powell disciple, etc. etc. but he also got deeply (almost obsessively) into Burt Bacharach's music at one point and eventually preferred to play "casuals" (wedding, private parties, etc.) rather than jazz gigs because, he said, they ask you/you get to play everything there. Eventually he got into fairly abstract electronic music. My friend did have a genuine musical self or selves IMO, but he also seemed to be more or less running away from them fairly often.

Only Moe this time: He's sitting on a park bench, sobbing like a baby. A guy comes up to him and asks, “What’s wrong?” Moe says, “Even though I'm in my 90s, two weeks ago I married a beautiful woman. She’s a natural blonde, age twenty-five, intelligent, a marvelous cook, a meticulous housekeeper, extremely sensitive to my wants and needs, very giving, my best friend, and she's intensely passionate in bed.” "So what's your problem?" “I can’t remember where I live!”

I have major reservations about Evans -- expressed at perhaps tedious length in my book -- but they don't have to do with his supposed inability to swing or his lack of bluesiness, coded phrases so it would seem for him being of Caucasian descent. Swing he certainly did IMO, and while bluesiness was not his thing very often, he did have a vein to mine in that realm. My complaint (in brief) is that Evans's playing became rather formulaic after Scott LaFaro died and that his taste for upping the sophistication level of show-tune-type harmonies ("romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty," he said) was rather creepy in terms of emotional expression and a kind of musical dead end.

Moe and Sam, both in their 90s, are life-long baseball fans. They're sitting together on a park bench when Moe turns to Sam and says: "Will you promise me something? Promise me that if you die first and go to heaven, you'll come back and tell if there's baseball there." Sam agreed and made Moe promise the same. Three months later, Sam dies, and the next week Moe wakes up in the middle of the night to hear someone calling his name. "Moe! It's me, Sam!" "Sam! It's so good to hear you! How's heaven?" Well, I've got some good news and some bad news." "Tell me the good news." "OK, there is baseball in heaven." "What's the bad news?" "You're pitching on Friday."

I hear what you're saying about operatic aria-like singing (actually operetta-like singing might be more accurate, and even then), but there's a difference, I've found, between the likes of Nelson Eddy and Jeannette McDonald (a.k.a. "The Iron Butterfly") and a good many less oppressive, lighter-toned in both vocal and emotional-dramatic style vintage Broadway and film musical singers. The Smithsonian back in the '70s and '80s compiled some nice LP sets of vintage original-cast show recordings, and they were a revelation for me. Jazz is my first and last love, but it's also a matter of different genres with different demands, not just a matter of "square" versus "hip" or a simple "progression" in singing styles, from mannered to loose and swinging. Think, perhaps, in the arguably different realm of film acting, of a figure like William Powell. Both in physical demeanor and speech one could think of Powell as rather stylized compared to, say, the latter-day "naturalism" of a Brando or a James Dean, but Powell's stylization is artful in its own way and fit his roles perfectly, no? One doesn't disparage Powell in "The Thin Man" because of Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause."

Think I saw the Drabinsky version on the road in Chicago. If so, it was not the McGlinn version.

A McGlinn performance of ATTYA is on his album "Broadway Showstoppers," which can be found used on Amazon. Bennett and Stafford inhabited fairly different genres -- Broadway show music and Swing Era big bands. The former probably could seem rather corny from the vantage point of the latter. But Bennett within his genre was widely regarded as a sophisticated customer. He also orchestrated Richard Rodgers' score for "Victory at Sea."

Almost it certain it would be the original orchestration -- McGlinn was committed on that front. If so, it was by Robert Russell Bennett. More info: http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2010/01/that-moment-divine.html

Geez -- by Jerry Lewis standards (and I once interviewed him, a profoundly creepy experience) that clip struck me as remarkably honest and grounded.

If you want to go whole hog, there's this, which is quite a bargain, six whole shows on 13 discs for $49.95: http://www.amazon.com/Broadway-Musicals-John-Mcglinn/dp/B002NZOLFA/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1395700190&sr=1-1&keywords=john+mcglinn And there are lots of individual McGlinn collections of show music as well. If I had to pick one, I'd probably go for his "Showboat," which can be found on Amazon used for less than $10 I think. As for that video of "All the Things You Are," I can't swear that it's from the original show or is a special concert version, but in the original show , "Very Warm for May" (1939), it was performed by two couples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McGlinn Don't know what you mean by "what is that?" I think it's just the song as Kern wrote it to be performed originally. As for McGlinn, he was among the first and best in the movement to treat vintage Broadway show music with the care and accuracy -- in terms of texts and performance styles -- that some feel it deserves. Most of the vintage scores that had any continuing life at all had been freely modified and "modernized" over the years by layers and layers of adapters, all in the name of momentary show biz necessity. If the drive to return to original texts and styles sounds like a recipe for mustiness, that's not what it was like in McGlinn's hands (see his "Show Boat" recording for a good example -- and that was among the scores that had been most mauled about over the years). So what happened? Well, such recordings were very expensive to produce, the number of such scores that would sell in sufficient quantities was limited, and McGliinn by several accounts was a very moody, edgy guy who alienated a lot of people, record industry executives included. So Finis. But boy could McGlinn get it right. A useful point of comparison would be the recordings made in that era for CBS-Sony by Michael Tilson-Thomas of two vintage Gershwin musicals, "Of Thee I Sing" and "Let 'Em Eat Cake." As I wrote in my book: 'Gershwin’s close associate, Kay Swift--who, at age ninety, played an advisory role in these recordings--has stated that Gershwin “never had a conductor like Tilson-Thomas. Everything that’s exciting in the music, he brings it right out.” But Tilson-Thomas’s brand of excitement veers dangerously close to artificial peppiness at times, as though the conductor felt that the music needed an extra dose of pizzazz in order to make it in today’s marketplace. Tilson-Thomas takes much of Of Thee I Sing too quickly (faster doesn’t always mean funnier), while exposed instrumental lines that have humorous connotations often are exaggerated to the point of caricature. And the same holds true for the singers--not only because some of them have voices that are a bit off for their parts, but also because, in the tricky area of characterization, they seem to have taken their cue from Tilson-Thomas’s whiz-bang approach.'

Album is excellent. Fujiwara plays his ass off, but the whole trio is tight.

Would have made Preston Sturges proud? I thought that scene would have embarrassed Jerry Lewis.

By "fake" (too strong a term IMO) ATR probably is referring to the fact that the "Jeep's Blues" issued on the original "Ellington at Newport" was not the performance recorded at Newport but one that the band recorded later on in the studio (with crowd noise dubbed in) because Ellington was not happy with the performance and/or the recorded sound of the Newport version. If the filmmakers were aware of this, that would be a nice extra layer of irony. In any case, the two main characters bonding over their love of this recording was quite effective dramatically, I thought. As for the 'electronically rechanneled for stereo' cut of it, what's the problem? That quite likely would be the version of "Ellington At Newport" that those two people would have gotten their hands on at that time they did.

I've heard the verse before, but it's still a shock here when the first two singers peel off to reveal the two who will sing the chorus. Jphn McGlinn, who died at age 55, was a great loss; I was stunned when he heard him early on in his career conduct the Gershwins' almost forgotten musicals "Primrose" and "Pardon My English" in concert versions in Washington, D.C. P.S. I knew that McGlinn could be a difficult person, but this article was an eye-opener: http://articles.philly.com/2009-09-22/news/25267639_1_show-boat-broadway-composers-theater

One of the great Swing Era vocal recordings IMO. Nothing flashy or "jazzy," but the deep warmth of Forrest's voice and the way she subtly personalizes the song by easing into or extending certain notes and emphasizing key words (e.g. "things" the first time around) is magical:

My favorite Farmer quartet date (nice painting of him on the cover, too): Art Farmer Quartet Art Farmer (trumpet) Tommy Flanagan (piano) Tommy Williams (bass) Albert Heath (drums) Nola's Penthouse Sound Studios, NYC, September 21, 22 & 23, 1960 (Argo 678) I'm A Fool To Want You Out Of The Past That Old Devil Called Love The Best Thing For You Is Me So Beats My Heart For You Goodbye, Old Girl Younger Than Springtime Who Cares Very tasty choice of standards, plus Golson's "Out of the Past."

"We like animals on the band."

Also, especially evident at up tempos, all those notes were part of striking rhythmic-melodic designs. His lines really "spoke," almost literally at times. Interesting, too, how individual he was -- I think he cited Navarro and maybe Freddie Webster as key early influences, and there certainly was some Gillespie in the mix, but you could never mistake him for anyone else. The title of one of his sides with Blakey kind of sums up the Hardman presence, at least early on -- "Stanley's Stiff Chickens" (co-written by him and Jackie McLean).

That was one hell of a set. A perfect choice of players; IIRC Ray Crawford was the cream in the coffee.

It's Angelica Sanchez. Oops. You're right. Heard her on a Chad Taylor trio record back in 2009 and was impressed. http://www.482music.com/albums/482-1065.html

Only heard him as a sideman on disc and once in person, but I wasn't impressed. Bleak, mooing and/or vacuum cleaner tone and that tendency, once so common among second-, third- or fourth-generation Trane-influenced players to get "ecstatic" too abruptly to be believable, at least by me. Much prefer the music of his pianist ex-wife, Angela Gonzalez.

Also, FWIW, Shoemaker's '“Old” (performed by the quartet of the saxophonist, trumpeter Lester Bowie, bassist Malachi Favors and drummer Philip Wilson) ... inspired Chicago critic Larry Kart’s image of Mitchell picking the lock to a museum and “jitterbugging with the artifacts" is not quite what I said. First, I was referring to all the music made to that point by the AEC and pre-AEC versions of the group, not just to "Old." Second, what I said was: "The function of irony in music can be difficult to describe [and then I quoted a longish passage from Pierre Boulez about Stravinsky's use of irony, which he sad led Stravinsky "to use parody openly ... to introduce 'found objects' into a stylistic complex where they function by distortion' etc.]" And then I said: "To put it another way, Mitchell has picked the lock of the imaginary museum and begun jitterbugging with the artifacts." Maybe I'm being too picky, so to speak, about "a museum" versus "the imaginary museum," but the latter phrase (not coined by me, though I'm not sure who came up with it) refers to the non-existent museum in which all the cultural artifacts of humankind can be found. P.S. I see now that "The Imaginary Museum" was a phrase and a concept conjured up by Andre Malraux: http://neatlyart.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/andre-malraux-chez-lui-maurice-jarnoux-over-the-last/ Those darn frogs and their "cultural workers"!