Larry Kart

I had the Eschenbach and found it to be too clipped and Germanic. I'm very happy with Perlemuter; though sound quality is average or a bit below average mid-'50s mono, savvy and sensibility are top notch. I'd avoid the mincing Uchida. For an interesting other view, try Anthony Newman on fortepiano (three volumes, available used on Amazon for about $1.50 per disc, but listen first if you can).

Byrd certainly had his influences -- who does not? -- but he was not a copycat. One recognized his voice as his from the first. That Blue Note book was a piece of trash in my opinion. Picked up a copy at the library the other day after this mention. Skimming through, my favorite gem so far is Cook's saying that Curtis Fuller's solo on the title track of "Blue Train" is "dyspeptic." As someone used to say, "word salad." That may be the most stone-eared description I've ever seen of practically any piece of music. Dyspeptic? Curtis' solo bursts with exuberance. It's an amazing, swinging, bluesy ride, strutting with confidence, lickety-split technique and soulful expression -- one of the great trombone solos of the era and a definitive example of his style that shows you why he zoomed to the front of the line when he arrived in NY. I'm dissecting that solo in some detail in my piece about Curtis for my book. In fact, it's the lede. Absolutely -- always loved that solo myself. And given what Coltrane already has played, to come up with a solo of that quality...

Not an album per se, but way back when (at about age 13 and for reasons I no longer recall), I couldn't understand why anyone would ever want to hear a guitar solo. Then I ran across a nice/groovy Barney Kessel album "To Swing or Not to Swing" and that prejudice evaporated. Likewise, at the same time in the classical realm, I couldn't stand anything with strings (which was kind of limiting), associating strings with Mantovani and the like. Then I ran across a Vox Box set of the Mozart String Quintets, and that prejudice was gone.

I notice that John Fordham's obit: http://www.guardian..../12/donald-byrd says that Byrd "honed his craft as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers." Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the Messengers still a co-operative group, not one led by Blakey, when Byrd recorded what IIRC was his only album with them, the great Columbia date with "Nica's Dream." And then when Horace went off on his own, didn't Byrd and Mobley go with him, with Bill Hardman and Johnny Griffin (or did Ira Sullivan precede Hardman for a time?) then becoming the frontline in the first edition of the Messengers with Blakey as the sole leader?

Someone suggested that I plug the opening sentence of the passage into Google, which would sift through tons of stuff and turn up any match. I did that -- no match.

Byrd certainly had his influences -- who does not? -- but he was not a copycat. One recognized his voice as his from the first. That Blue Note book was a piece of trash in my opinion. Picked up a copy at the library the other day after this mention. Skimming through, my favorite gem so far is Cook's saying that Curtis Fuller's solo on the title track of "Blue Train" is "dyspeptic." As someone used to say, "word salad."

Oh yeah -- the deliberate oxymoron of "discontinuous continuity" is akin to one of my verbal tics.

Not an issue to me. I'm just wondering if I did write the damn thing.

My typo/misspelling. And no need to get permission, I think, if I wrote the quoted passage to him in a letter or e-mail. And even if it had been published, fair use would apply to a passage of that length quoted in a piece on the same subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use You say that as if neither are a particularly desirable state... The former is quite OK IMO, this side of wearing lampshades or kissing porcelain.

Phrases like "the most extreme case in all Schoenberg..." and "Nor does the emotional-musical texture of any Berg work seem as genuinely extreme..." make me wonder. I know a fair amount of Schoenberg and Berg fairly well but not enough of their music that thoroughly to say things like that -- unless I were drunk or temporarily in a state of manic pretentiousness.

On p. 64 of Robert Craft's recent collection of memoir-like pieces "Down a Path of Wonder" this passage appears (it may also appear in the liner notes to his Naxos recording of Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, but I don't know for sure): “No one has written about ‘Premontions’ [the first piece of that Schoenberg work] with as much insight as Larry Kart, book editor of the Chicago Tribune: ‘The discontinuous continuity of “Premonitions” is the most extreme case in all Schoenberg. Even Erwartung is not comparable in this regard; though there is a near continuous avalanche of new material in that work, it is linked to a character, a drama, and a text, no matter how disordered all three may be. Nor does the emotional-musical texture of any Berg work seem as genuinely extreme as that of “Premonitions,’ while the eruptive-disruptive aspects of “Premonitions” have a quite different relationship to Schoenberg. It is as though this music that threatens to rend the fabric of music itself were being greeted by its maker with both delight (at the onset of an unparalleled fecundity of invention) and terror.’” Now I did have some correspondence with Craft in the mid-1990s when he wrote a book review or two for the Trib, but I have no memory of writing the above, either to him or for publication. Also, the passage sounds a good deal more chewy and "knowing" than anything I would or could have written on the topic, especially to Craft -- though I do kind of like what it says. At first I thought it was something that Carl Dahlhaus or Charles Rosen wrote, that I quoted it to Craft, and he mistakenly thought it was something that I'd said. But I've looked in the Dahlhaus and Rosen books I have that deal with Schoenberg and don't see that passage, while there are a few fingerprints in it that could be mine (e.g. "eruptive-disruptive" -- I've indulged in such hyphenated chiming before). In any case, if anyone has a solution to this little mystery, I'd be relieved.

Byrd certainly had his influences -- who does not? -- but he was not a copycat. One recognized his voice as his from the first.

Was on a two week tour of Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands with him a few years ago, with Mike Reed's expanded People, Places, and Things (Julian, Art Hoyle, and Ari Brown added to the regular lineup of Greg Ward, Tim Haldeman, Jason Roebke, and Mike). Warm, subtle man, and, it goes without saying, one heck of a player. I think we all had a good time, musically and otherwise.

Dianne Dorr-Dorynek Dianna Dors Googie Withers Richard Widmark Frank O'Hara Morton Feldman

You're too hip for the room?

One of the things about Byrd that intrigued me back in the day was the rather considerable IMO stylistic shift between the light-toned, at times almost bouncing-ball-like fluidity of his mid-'50s work and the arguably somewhat studied but also at times moving brassy solemnity/sobriety of his late '50s/early '60s work. In the latter bag, I'm thinking in particular of his playing on "Fuego" on pocket trumpet, though there are a fair number of other instances. I have the feeling that Byrd did some studying with a trumpet guru of some sort, and that this bought about that change. Was Byrd -- knowledgable trumpet players please weigh in -- using the so-called "no pressure" system early on? I think I recall reading words to that effect, but that would have been many years ago.

Don't understand about difficulty in identifying Moody if you've heard him much. His tone and his phrasing (especially when he doubles things up) are quite distinctive.

Terrific music, played with great gusto. Probably my favorite Nelson recording.

First thoughts, through piece #4: Wayne remains a lovely player of the soprano (one of the few); Perez's responses/own ideas are fairly obvious I thought -- wonder what Wayne would sound like with a stylistically compatible but more subtle and adventurous pianist (IMO) like Marc Copland. The group interaction strikes me as rather studied/careful (very much with a net-like), especially when things get "hot." I'll keep listening.

Perfect title, too.

Vivid memories of how he played back then. Remember in particular a session in the living room of the house in Hyde Park I then shared with drummer Doug Mitchell that paired Kalaparusha and the late tenorman Fred Schwartz, and a time that he and Roscoe Mitchell sat in at a gig that drummer Gerald Donovan (Ajaramu) and keyboardist Amina Claudine Myers had at a bar on Stony Island Ave. Answering an audience request for "Happy Birthday," Kalaparusha and Roscoe improvised on the piece with much seriousness and intensity for maybe 20 minutes. A very Roscoe-like thing to do, but Kalaparusha was into it all the way.

Great track, but it's 13:19. How about "Marchin' Along" (17:40) from Tiny Grimes and Hawkins' "Blues Groove"? Never let it be said that Bean couldn't play the blues -- at least eventually. In case Grimes is not to your taste, Hawkins' epic solo begins at the 8:26 mark and lasts roughly 5:40.

Not the same track with Zoot and Jaws that Branford heard but from the same album: How could Mr. In the Tradition mistake either man, especially Jaws?

Hmm -- he thinks James Moody might be Lew Tabackin and says this of a track where the two tenor soloists are Zoot Sims and Lockjaw Davis: "This is going to be hard, man, because it’s old guys. This is hard to identify. For instance, Don Byas when he was younger, was influenced by Coleman Hawkins, but by the time they got older and were playing together, it was hard to tell one guy from the other."