Larry Kart

I was a hardcore golf addict beginning in the mid-1980s and lasting until about 2006, when I developed tendonitis in my right shoulder, plus some pain in my right knee and hip, from practicing too obsessively (if you want to call it practicing rather than just hitting way too many golf balls) from a driving range rubber mat. It was the repeated shock of hitting the club against the mat that did it. The orthopedic guy I went to, also a golfer, gave me a cortisone shot and more or less said, "Don't do that [i.e. play golf] anymore." I do have pleasant memories of playing good courses all by myself in the early morning on a weekday, when a round could take a bit more than two hours. Playing in a foursome on crowded weekends was not much fun, unless you were with really nice people, and even then the time spent waiting behind the previous foursome was a drag. I got hooked when I played a handsome Robert Trent Jones resort course on Kuai. The risk-reward logic of the layout and the game suddenly was indelible and intoxicating. Another potent lure, but also a big potential drawback to the game, is that for many types of people (and I was one of them) your only real opponent on the course is yourself, or rather your sense of how you can and should be playing versus the way you actually are. Such a mindset, plus the fact that often I was not playing that well, can readily lead to depression and anger. Perhaps that bout of tendinitis was blessing.

I heard Pres in Chicago in Oct. 1955 with JATP. He was not in good shape and was hospitalized that November for alcoholism and depression. He emerged, judging by the music he made in 1956, in very good shape. IIRC, the superb "Jazz Giants' 56," with Roy Eldridge, Vic Dickinson, Teddy Wilson, Gene Ramey, and Jo Jones, was the first album to proclaim his return. Yes, 1954-1955 was generally a down time for Pres. It was no accident that one of the tracks from his Verve session as a leader in 56 with Teddy Wilson was titled "Pres Returns." Still, lucky you to have seen Pres live in any condition! What I wrote about that concert in my book: 'The first live jazz performance I heard was a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert that took place at the Chicago Opera House on October 2, 1955, with a lineup that included Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Flip Phillips, Illinois Jacquet , Lester Young, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich. Aware of the music for just five months, at age thirteen I knew the names of most of these musicians. And one of them, Eldridge, was a particular favorite because he seemed to speak so personally and openly through his horn, with such passion, genuineness, strength and grit. (By contrast, I thought that Jacquet and Phillips’s tenor saxophone battles were exciting but mostly for show, not to be taken at face value.) 'Lester Young, however, was only a name to me; I’d yet to hear a note of his music. And partly because of that lack of context, much of what he played that afternoon struck me as very strange. (As it happens, the concert was recorded, and eventually released on the album Blues in Chicago 1955, so I can place memories alongside what actually occurred.) Young was not in good shape on the1955 JATP tour, physically or emotionally . He would be hospitalized for several weeks that winter, suffering from alcoholism and depression, though he would recover sufficiently to make two of his best latter-day recordings, Jazz Giants ’56 and Pres and Teddy, in mid-January 1956. But in the gladiatorial arena of Jazz at the Philharmonic, the wan, watery-toned Young I heard seemed to speak mostly of weakness, even of an alarming inability or unwillingness to defend himself. And yet this state of being was undeniably, painfully being expressed, though at times perhaps only out of dire necessity; the brisk tempo Gillespie set for the piece the two of them shared was one that Young could barely make. 'Then toward the end came a ballad medley, which began with Young’s slow-motion restatement of “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.” That he seemed to be more in his element here was about all I realized at the time, though even that fact was provocative. And the recorded evidence confirms this, as Young bends a bare minimum of resources to the task --as though he were saying “This is all I have” and asking “Is this not enough?” Admittedly, that is largely an adult response to a performance that now seems remarkable to me. Yet something of that sort must have been crystallizing back then, because I was immediately eager to find out more about Lester Young.'

I heard Pres in Chicago in Oct. 1955 with JATP. He was not in good shape and was hospitalized that November for alcoholism and depression. He emerged, judging by the music he made in 1956, in very good shape. IIRC, the superb "Jazz Giants' 56," with Roy Eldridge, Vic Dickinson, Teddy Wilson, Gene Ramey, and Jo Jones, was the first album to proclaim his return.

It was pianist Bill Potts, who played on the gig and IIRC also recorded it. Potts, as you probably know, also was a brilliant D.C.-based composer-arranger, best known for the album "The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess."

Step away from the credit card, sir! Actually some $19 of that total was from a four-album compilation of early 1960s Coleman Hawkins material: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BLQVKJM/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000040OHJ&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0JCHYBYABA1KXYMMZX7X that was spurred by this interesting set of recommendations from Grant Stewart: http://jazztimes.com/articles/76359-artist-s-choice-grant-stewart-on-big-tenor-sounds

Thanks to this thread, I've now ordered about $90 worth of Jordan as a leader, Jordan as a sideman dates. Help!

Great stuff.

Couldn't stand this book's p.c. tendentiousness. GDP's Amazon review of the book, which is somewhat favorable: http://www.amazon.com/A-History-Opera-Carolyn-Abbate/product-reviews/0393057216/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 explains why. The passages he/she quotes -- oy vey. Try Grout, or even better (though it of necessity doesn't talk about all one would want/need to know about opera and talks about much else beside) the late Carl Dahlhaus' brilliant "Nineteenth Century Music."

I didn't say that "everyone that used to go ... is now going to" etc. I was just responding to your "what happened to?" question. Do agree, though, that the Green Mill calendar doesn't make the heart go pitty-pat. Just meant that the place is still up and running and probably still drawing its regulars.

AFAIK, the Empty Bottle no longer books jazz; The Green Mill is going strong: http://greenmilljazz.com/

Some Caroline Davis links: Of those below, I've listened to "Blood Count" and "You Send Me," both interesting: http://carolinedavis.org/#f93/soundcloud

Wayne was not a weird choice for banjo but a logical one. His Wikipedia entry notes: "Wayne was born Charles Jagelka in New York City on 27 February 1923 to a Czechoslovakian family. In his youth, he became an expert on the banjo, mandolin, and balalaika." Apparently he kept up his chops. "Blame It On My Youth" http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=art+farmer+blame+it+on+my+youth

Two favorites are "Bearcat" and "The Adventurer." Won't ever forget buying "Cliffcraft" when it was brand new. Didn't yet know who Jordan was, but listening to one track in a record store listening booth (it was that long ago) was proof enough.

Last night at Elastic: Caroline Davis Quartet, with Mike Allemana, Matt Ferguson, Jeremy Cunningham Russ Johnson, Nick Mazzarella, Joshua Abrams, Damon Short Hadn't heard Davis in some time. She's worked a lot on her sound, or maybe it's just evolved -- beautifully round and kind of cool-warm, somewhat reminiscent of the late Hal McKusick's sound at times. OTOH -- and this may have been the result of fairly worked out compositions -- she didn't seem to give/immerse herself in the act of improvisation as much I might have thought she would, a certain reticence. Also, at times she seemed rather soft-edged rhythmically, which of course could be a choice because Davis is basically a lyrical player, but when I noticed this I wondered a bit. More listening on my part is called for. Was awfully tired by the second set, but it was a good one. Johnson's recent appearances have been a delight -- what a distinctive, mature player, with a fabulous but also more or less unobtrusive technique -- and the whole group, a new one, was fruitfully in tune with each other. Short is a fine partner for the horns and such a swinger; Mazzarella often gives me the feeling that his lines are almost literally in flames. That is, there's the slower moving basic melodic line, but the overtones/roughed-up timbres more or less add additional flickering/flaming, very "hot" melodic details to the core melodies. It's an effect we're all familiar with from Ayler and some periods of Trane, but it's not often heard on alto, except (in my experience) from that great Japanese player Sakata, and Nick's version of it is quite his own. I feel good that I felt that he was going to be something special when I first heard him maybe three or so years ago, when he was so drenched in Ornette that some thought that he was and would always be a mere imitator. But, no -- I knew right off that Nick was focused like a banshee and heading outwards. Had a similar experience about twelve years ago with Keefe Jackson, just knew right off that he would grow and grow, even in his case had a pretty good idea of HOW he would grow. Also had at least one experience the other way on this scene -- a player who shall be nameless who I and a lot of people were more or less knocked out by in the early and mid-2000s, and then IMO he began to run in place so to speak and lose a fair amount of his former creative intensity. Music can be a cruel mistress.

Does anyone know and have an opinion about Abbado's 1993 DGG Webern disc with the Vienna Philharmonic? (It also includes Schoenberg "A Survivor from Warsaw.") I picked it up after reading someone on rec.classical.recordings praise it, and so far (Six Pieces for Orchestra) I'm knocked out. It's as though I were hearing this music for the first time, in large part because Abbado lets it (if "lets it" is the right phrase) coalesce into music, if you know what I mean, instead of giving us a series of modernist X-rays. And there's great passion as well, e.g. in the second piece. Other recordings I have include Dohnanyi Decca, Craft Columbia, Craft Naxos, and Boulez Sony -- all of which except for Craft Columbia I've now compared to Abbado. Unfortunately, the Abbado disc does not include the Symphony or the Concerto for Nine Instruments; there would have been plenty of room for both. http://www.amazon.com/Schoenburg-Survivor-Warsaw-Webern-Orchestral/dp/B000001GF3

Think that was "Red Alert." Nice one.

Don't miss the stuff on page 5.

Paul Plummer was a terrific and quite individual player who grew a great deal from the already high level he had reached when he was young and with George Russell.. I have an album he did in the mid-1980s or earlier with an Indianapolis keyboardist Steve Corn that's a gem. And there were some fine CDs with Plummer later on, too. Latter-day Plummer was perhaps somewhat reminiscent in approach to JR Monterose in that however striking their work was harmonically, it seemed to be all melody and rhythm in inspiration. Here's that album, co-led by Plummer and drummer Ron Enyard: http://www.amazon.com/Detroit-Opium-Paul-Plummer-Enyard/dp/B007TNE980/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1364311852&sr=1-3&keywords=Paul+plummer Also, there's this, which came up once before here a good while ago: http://iufoundation.iu.edu/newsroom/archive/2012/plummer-jacobs-gift.html

A must-read if you know Bissinger's work as a journalist (he was briefly at the Chicago Tribune when I was there) or as the author "Friday Night Lights": http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201304/buzz-bissinger-shopaholic-gucci-addiction?currentPage=1

Ah, yes -- "Rollin' with Van Ohlen." That was a fine band, or rather a real band. It also gave birth to at least one nice recorded small-group offshoot, band member Tim Hagans' first album -- "From the Neck Down" (1984) an LP on a local label MoPro. I reviewed it enthusiastically way back when. Nice also to hear a lot with the Blue Wisp of the band's other chief trumpet voice, George Russell alumnus Al Kiger.

How is it? Thought about getting used on Amazon once or twice, but it seem too pricey for my mood at those time.

By all accounts, it's genuine: http://www.vulture.com/2011/09/see_mia_farrow_respond_amazing.html

I too like McCaslin and Shim -- ran across the former in a Berklee classroom some 25 years ago and was impressed, told Gary Burton (then in some administrative position at the school) that he should check him out, and mirabile dictu McCaslin showed up a year or two later in Burton's band; have enjoyed the latter on record but was really knocked out when I heard him at the Jazz Gallery in NYC about 8 or 10 years ago in band led by Mark Helias with Herb Robertson and IIRC Craig Taborn, and Eric McPherson. That was some night. Anyone know what has Shim been up to? Another very good one is Jason Rigby.

Last night at the Hungry Brain: Jaimie Branch (tpt), Jarrett Gilgore (alto), Anton Hatwich (bs), Frank Rosaly (dms) Branch, who has been in living Baltimore recently, studying under Dave Ballou at Towson State, was excellent; Gilgore, age 21 from Baltimore, was scary good.