Larry Kart

http://jimromenesko.com/2013/01/19/what-the-hell-toronto-star/

Remember, gentlemen, forum rules prohibit linking to bootlegs. Tell me if you can why that rule doesn't apply here, or those posts/links will be deleted shortly.

Sorry if I'm being too PC, but I edited the thread title to reflect a complaint that the use of "girls" to refer to two adult black women, one of whom was 40, was not too cool.

Last night at the Hungry Brain -- Russ Johnson, Keefe Jackson, Anton Hatwich, Tim Daisy. Johnson continues to please, to say the least, and of the reed partners I've heard him with, Jackson for my taste is the best -- Keefe's big ears and his suitcase being kicked down a flight of stairs obliqueness being a fine complement to Johnson's clear, sometimes lush lyricism.

Here's what I wrote about Mobley in my book. It's not perfect (I feel queasy about the periodization of his career), but it's certainly a positive look at him: HANK MOBLEY The first of these two pieces was the liner note for a reissue of Hank Mobley’s 1957 album Poppin’. (The reference there to Nietzsche supposedly commenting on Mobley’s style was a would-be serious joke. Nietzsche did write those words, in his essay “Contra-Wagner,” but he was referring to the music of Georges Bizet.) The second piece was a posthumous appreciation. [1982] In the mid-1950s the Blue Note label yielded momentarily to supersalesmanship, releasing such albums as The Amazing Bud Powell, The Magnificent Thad Jones, and The Incredible Jimmy Smith. That trend was dormant by the time Hank Mobley became a Blue Note regular and unfortunately so--a record titled The Enigmatic Hank Mobley would have been a natural. “To speak darkly, hence in riddles” is the root meaning of the Greek word from which “enigma” derives; and no player, with the possible exception of pianist Elmo Hope, has created a more melancholically quizzical musical universe than Mobley, one in which tab A is calmly inserted in slot D. Though he was influenced by Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt, and, perhaps, Lucky Thompson, Mobley has proceeded down his own path with a rare singlemindedness, relatively untouched by the stylistic upheavals that marked the work of his major contemporaries, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, not previously known for his interest in jazz, Mobley’s music is “without grimaces, without counterfeit, without the lie of the great style. It treats the listener as intelligent, as if he himself were a musician. I actually bury my ears under this music to hear its causes.” And that is the enigma of Mobley’s art: In order to hear its causes, the listener must bury his ears under it. In a typical Mobley solo there is no drama external to the developing line and very little sense of “profile” the quality that enables one to read a musical discourse as it unfolds. Not that high-profile players--Rollins and Dexter Gordon, for example—are necessarily unsubtle ones. But to understand Mobley the listener does have to come to terms with complexities that seem designed to resist resolution. First there is his tone. Always a bit lighter than that of most tenormen who worked in hard bop contexts, it was, when this album was made, a sound of feline obliqueness--as soft, at times, as Stan Getz’s but blue-gray, like a perpetually impending rain cloud. Or to put it another way, Mobley, in his choice of timbres, resembles a visual artist who makes use of chalk or watercolor to create designs that cry out for an etching tool. Harmonically and rhythmically, he could also seem at odds with himself. For proof that Mobley has a superb ear, one need listen only to his solo here on “Tune Up.” Mobley glides through the changes with ease, creating a line that breathes when he wants it to, one that that is full of graceful yet asymmetrical shapes. And yet no matter how novel his harmonic choices were--at this time he surely was as adventurous as Coltrane--Mobley’s music lacks the experimental fervor that would lead Coltrane into modality and beyond. Mobley’s decisions were always ad hoc; and from solo to solo, or even within a chorus, he could shift from the daring to the sober. What will serve at the moment is the hallmark of his style; and thus, though he is always himself, he has in the normal sense hardly any style at all. Even more paradoxical is Mobley’s sense of rhythm. His melodies float across bar lines with a freedom that recalls Lester Young and Charlie Parker; and he accents on weak beats so often (creating the effect known in verse as the “feminine ending”) that his solos seem at first to have been devised so as to baffle even their maker. That’s not the case, of course, but even though he has all the skills of a great improviser, Mobley simply refuses to perform the final act of integration; he will not sum up his harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral virtues and allow any one element to dominate for long. In that sense he is literally a pioneer, a man whose innate restlessness never permits him to plant a flag and say “here I stand.” Thus, to speak of a mature or immature Hank Mobley would be inappropriate. Once certain technical problems were worked out--say, by 1955--he was capable of producing striking music on any given day. New depths were discovered in the 1960s and the triumphs came more frequently; but in late 1957, when Poppin’ was recorded, he was as likely as ever to be on form. Much depended on his surroundings, and the band he works with here has some special virtues. The rhythm section is one of the great hard-bop trios, possessing secrets of swing that now seem beyond recall. Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers, partners, of course, in the Miles Davis Quintet, shared a unique conception of where “one” is--just a hair behind the beat but rigidly so, with the result that the time has a stiff-legged, compulsive quality. The beat doesn’t flow but jerks forward in a series of spasmodic leaps, creating a climate of nervous intensity that was peculiar to the era. Either the soloist jumps or he is fried to a crisp on the spot. As a leavening element there was Sonny Clark--equally intense but more generous and forgiving in his patterns of accompaniment. Clark leads the soloists with a grace that recalls Count Basie; and his own lines, with their heartbreakingly pure lyricism, make him the hard bop equivalent of Duke Jordan. The ensemble sound of the band, a relatively uncommon collection of timbres heard elsewhere on Coltrane’s and Johnny Griffin’s first dates under their own names, gives the album a distinctive, ominous flavor; but this is essentially a blowing date. Art Farmer, for my taste, never played as well as he did during this period, perhaps because the hard bop style was at war with his pervasive sense of neatness. Possessing a musical mind of dandaical suavity, Farmer at times sounded too nice to be true. But this rhythm section puts an edge on his style (as it did a few months later on Clark’s Cool Struttin’), and I know of no more satisfying Farmer solo than the one preserved here on “Getting Into Something,” where he teases motifs with a wit that almost turns nasty. Adams’s problem has always been how to give his lines some sense of overall design, and too often the weight of his huge tone hurtles him forward faster than he can think. But when the changes and the tempo lie right for him, Adams can put it all together; and here he does so twice, finding a stomping groove on “Getting Into Something” and bringing off an exhilarating doubletime passage on “East of Brooklyn.” As for the leader, rather than describing each of his solos, it might be useful to focus first on a small unit and then on a larger one. On the title track, Mobley’s second eight-bar exchange with Jones is one of the tenorman’s perfect microcosms, an example of how prodigal his inventiveness could be. A remarkable series of ideas, mostly rhythmic ones, are produced (one might almost say squandered) in approximately nine seconds. Both the relation of his accented notes to the beat and the overall pattern they form are dazzlingly oblique; and the final whiplike descent is typically paradoxical, the tone becoming softer and more dusty as the rhythmic content increases in urgency. In effect we are hearing a soloist and a rhythm player exchange roles, as Mobley turns his tenor saxophone into a drum. On “East of Brooklyn” Mobley gives us one of his macrocosms, a masterpiece of lyrical construction that stands alongside the solo he played on “Nica’s Dream” with the Jazz Messengers in 1956. “East of Brooklyn” is a Latin-tinged variant on “Softly As in a Morning Sunrise,” supported by Clark’s “Night in Tunisia” vamp. Mobley’s solo is a single, sweeping gesture, with each chorus linked surely to the next as though, with his final goal in view, he can proceed toward it in large, steady strides. And yet even here, as Mobley moves into a realm of freedom any musician would envy, one can feel the pressure of fate at his heels, the pathos of solved problems, and the force that compels him to abandon this newly cleared ground. In other words, to “appreciate” Hank Mobley, to look at him from a fixed position, may be an impossible task. He makes sense only when one is prepared to move with him, when one learns to share his restlessness and feel its necessity. Or, as composer Stefan Wolpe once said, “Don’t get backed too much into a reality that has fashioned your senses with too many realistic claims. When art promises you this sort of reliability , drop it. It is good to know how not to know how much one is knowing.” [1987] “Ah, yes, The Hankenstein. He was s-o-o-o-o hip.” That was the response of Dexter Gordon when the late Hank Mobley’s name came up in conversation a while ago --“Hankenstein” identifying Mobley as a genuine “monster,” in the best sense of the term, while the slow-motion relish of “he was s-o-o-o-o hip” seemed to have both musical and extra-musical connotations. But then, like so many who came to know Mobley’s music, Gordon decided to qualify his praise, echoing critic Leonard Feather’s assessment that Mobley was “the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone” whose approach to the instrument (according to Feather) lacked the “magniloquence” that Gordon, Sonny Rollins, and others had brought to it. But that is not the only way to estimate Mobley’s achievement. The middleweight champ, yes, if magniloquence and size of tone are what is involved, but never merely a middleweight--for Mobley, who died last May at age fifty-five, blazed his own trail and left behind a body of work that never ceases to fascinate. Indeed, when one examines the core of Mobley’s music (the twenty-four albums he recorded under his own name for Blue Note from 1955 to 1970), it seems clear that his poignantly intense lyricism could have flourished only if magniloquence was thrust aside. Mobley’s career as a recording artist falls into three rather distinct stages. The first ran from 1955 to 1958, when he made eight of his Blue Note albums, while working with the Jazz Messengers and groups led by Horace Silver and Max Roach. The second produced the magnificent Soul Station, Roll Call, Workout, and Another Workout albums in 1960 and 1961, when he was a member of the Miles Davis Quintet. And the third ran from No Room For Squares (1963) to Thinking Of Home (1970). Influenced initially by Sonny Stitt, but incorporating far more of Charlie Parker’s asymmetrical rhythmic thinking than Stitt chose to do, Mobley also was attuned to the lyrical sensitivities that Tadd Dameron brought to bop--an unlikely, even perilous, blend that gives Mobley’s stage-one solos their special flavor. Perhaps the first critic to pay close attention to him was an Englishman, Michael James, in the December 1962 issue of Jazz Monthly, and James’s account of the tenor saxophonist’s solo on “News”--from the 1957 album Hank Mobley (Blue Note )--is particularly apt. “His phrases grow more and more complex in shape,” James writes, “until . . . it seems that he is about to lose all sense of structural compactness. But he rescues the situation... and his last 12 bars, less prolix and tied more closely to the beat, imbue the whole improvisation with a unity of purpose that is paradoxically the more striking for its having tottered for a while, as it were, on the brink of incoherence.” Solos of that kind and quality can be found as early as 1955, when Mobley recorded his first album, Hank Mobley Quartet (Blue Note ). And, as James suggests, his best work of the period is so spontaneously ordered and so bristling with oblique rhythmic and harmonic details that its sheer adventurousness seems inseparable from the listener’s--and perhaps the soloist’s--burgeoning sense of doubt. That is, to make sense of Mobley’s lines, one must experience every note--for there are so many potential paths of development, each of which can inspire in Mobley an immediate response, that the ambiguities of choice become an integral part of the musical/ emotional discourse. And that leads to the genius of stage two, for as Mobley gained in rhythmic and timbral control, his music became at once more forceful and uncannily transparent--as though each move he made had its counterpart in a wider world that might not exist if Mobley weren’t compelled to explore it. Two fine examples of that urgently questing approach are “I Should Care” and “Gettin’ and Jettin’,” both from Another Workout (Blue Note). Rather than being a direct romantic statement, “I Should Care” becomes a song about the possible contexts of romance--not so much a tale of love but a search for a place where that emotion could be expressed. (Mobley does this by building his solo around “balladized” bop phrases whose angular tensions, here made more languid, serve to test the romantic dreaminess, which in turn tries to subdue those “realistic” intrusions.) Mobley’s sensitivity to context is present in a different way on “Gettin’ And Jettin,’ ” as he pares down his lines toward the end of his brilliant solo in order to invite the active participation of drummer Philly Joe Jones. (Mobley’s interaction with drummers is a story in itself--his exceptional taste for contrapuntal rhythmic comment bringing out the best that he and such masters as Jones, Art Blakey, and Billy Higgins had to offer.) Stage three of Mobley’s career has its virtues, too, and if such recordings as A Caddy ForDaddy (Blue Note ), Dippin’ (Blue Note ), and the first side of the recently issued Straight No Filter (Blue Note ) were all we had, Mobley still would be a major figure. But as John Litweiler has pointed out, Mobley “consciously abandoned some degree of high detail in favor of concentrating his rhythmic energies,” which gave his music a bolder profile but left less room for the jaw-dropping ambiguities of his stage one and stage two work. Above all, though--and to a degree that is matched by few jazz soloists--Mobley invites the listener to think and feel along with him. Indeed, his commitment is such that a commitment of the same sort is what Hank Mobley’s music demands.

"Jodie Foster" -- what was that person thinking? Though I suspect that Foster and Maja Rios might have gotten along if they'd met.

Yes, the Guardian Angels. http://en.wikipedia....ki/John_Klemmer A few typos there -- it should be Joe Daley and Wilbur Campbell. IIRC, being a Joe Daley student was among Klemmer's entrees to the scene, though he was, as that first album makes clear, a fluent, talented player. I assume that the association with Sam Thomas came about because they worked some gigs together and hit it off musically. The partnership is a good one.

When others do it, it's pontificating. When I do it, it's informed opinion.

In fact the point I tried to make is just the opposite: Of course Trane would have not been one to "walk the bar", nor Rollins (etc.), and it would have been foolish to expect them to. But I don't think anybody loooking at (and understanding) modern jazz in the 50s would have seen them in such a role ever. On the other hand, judging by what has been written about all those "honkers and bar walkers" (as descendants of Illinois Jacquet or Flip Phillips who had often been accused of vulgarity, ugly tone, etc. in their JATP days too), it was them who were faulted for being primarily entertainers (and wanting to be entertainers, evidently) and not living up to the esthetics of those lovers of jazz as fine art of the 50s. So it was them who were denigrated for not living up to a role model they never set out to aim for in the first place IMO. A skewed perception on the part of the critics, scribes, etc. IMO. And it happened with many jazz writers. I agree modern jazz sax men of the 50s achieved higher levels in jazz as an art form (there is your "more" ) than those R&B sax men did. But for all the technical competence on their instrument the aims and the target crowds of the R&B sax men were quite different, their music served different purposes (within one larger overall framework IMHO) and to anybody broad-minded enough and not focusing very narrowly on one's very own yardsticks there ought to have been room for both after all? Beyond that point, personal taste does come in IMO, but that would be another discussion altogether. (As for that "universal" tag for jazz as dancing and partying music in earlier times - point taken. Make it "generally", O.K.? (With "partying" also including certain brands of jazz jazz being played to a seated audience that was non-dancing but very much drinking-glass clinking, O.K.?) JR Monterose also duly noted ) FWIW I meant specifically that at one point in his early career Coltrane was told that he should/had to walk the bar as part of the gig, and he resisted this, apparently because he felt that doing so would be demeaning/at odds with what he was hoping to accomplish musically, and that this lead to trouble between him and the bandleader or clubowner. Others, of course, didn't resist and/or felt otherwise. As for Jacquet and Phillips, while I can't read minds and thus don't know for sure how each of them did or didn't feel about what they were doing when they began to honk or squeal more or less on cue with JATP or elsewhere, it's a fact that a whole lot of their playing in a shall we say less by-the-numbers demonstrative mode was also very exciting, and inventive and spontaneous. And I do like a good deal of JATP Illinois and Flip. BTW, about not knowing "for sure" -- I would guess that Illinois was a deeply/inherently excitable player, though not only that, while Flip was at heart more of a rhapsodist, even if he could swing you into bad health.

Interesting post, Steve. (BTW -- and this comes up from time to time -- it's JR Monterose, not J.R. The JR are not initial letters but the standard abbreviation for "Junior" -- his given name was Frank Anthony Monterose Jr, and the JR got tagged onto the front early on). Back to your post -- I agree up to a point about "those who'd be inclined to take sides in these debates would insist that there are musicians who are above all criticism and there are others who have forfeited any right to indulgence because they have not lived up to the art standards set up by those very critics, scribes (whoever ...)," except that a good many musicians themselves were uneasy about the requirement that they cater"to the dancing and partying audience (just like jazz had universally done in earlier decades)" -- e.g. Coltrane's feelings about "walking the bar" (and I don't agree with that "universally in earlier decades" -- Ellington, for openers, anyone?). In any case, I don't think that Trane had those feelings because of anything that, say, Martin Williams or someone of that sort said; they were his feelings, and he was not alone. Further, I don't see the point of regarding the differences between, say, Rollins and Willis Jackson or Jay McNeely as only or essentially a matter of personal and/or primarily socially conditioned taste. Satisfying as the latter figures may be in terms of succeeding at what they aim to do, Rollins was aiming and succeeding at doing something that was both different (allowing for some overlap) and (dare I say?) more. The real sore point in what I think you're talking about would be those critics of a certain austerely intellectual sort who can't see/hear the across-the-board stature of, for example, a Gene Ammons because they think of Ammons (Jacquet and others, too) as a mere popularizer or some such when IMO nothing could be further from the truth.

Yet I wonder ... When exactly the same accusations are raised against Joe Houston, Big Jay McNeely, Chuck Higgins, Hal Singer, the early Willis Jackson, the latter-day Joe Thomas (who actually graced us with a tune called "Tearing Hair" )) and of course Illinois Jacquet or Leo Parker, the voice of what exactly is speaking there? Apart from, possibly, the voice of the oh so sophisticated "jazz-art-for-art's-sake" proponents who sneer at the lowly "exhibitionism" that only goes after the lower instincts of the masses (blissfully neglecting any of the original purpose of jazz music played to a live audience)... See? Look at it any way you want, it all boils down to one's personal terms of reference that determine the angle we use to approach a given subject and to pass judgment. To answer the question "the voice of what exactly is speaking there?" you have to know who Whitney, or at least Whitney circa 1956-7, was, and what the role and style of the New Yorker was in its heyday (a role and style that Whitney stepped into). First, I would be surprised if Whitney even knew who (with the exception of Jacquet, and possiblly Leo Parker and Hal Singer) any of the saxophonists you mentioned were, or if he did, they wouldn't have showed up on his aesthetic radar screen as figures he would have needed to know much about/take account of. Second, Whitney's stance was not that of an 'oh so sophisticated "jazz-art-for-art's-sake" proponent who sneered at the lowly "exhibitionism" that only goes after the lower instincts of the masses.' Rather, he was , as I said above 'a pipe and slippers, Irish setter at my feet, snifter of brandy in the library sort of jazz fan, and while he was very fond of any number of truly estimable figures -- e.g. Ben Webster, Pee Wee Russell, Bobby Hackett, Sid Catlett -- his fondness for them was very much akin to the "comfortable because it's comforting; if it's not comforting, we probably won't like it" way the magazine that he wrote for, the New Yorker, tended to regard many of the manfestations of the so-called Modern World.' In this, though perhaps there was no direct influence, he was in the line of descent from figures like George Frazier and Lucius Beebe (though the latter was not a jazz fan to my knowledge). In other words, the stance or pose was not that of an intellectual but of a certain sort of "finer things in life" gentlemanly urbanity, one that could be thought of as unstuffy and/or a bit raffish or "colorful" around the edges but one that finally could be domesticated. In the words of Isaac Rosenfeld (writing of E.B White and the New Yorker in 1946): "There is no such thing as urbanity without partisanship.... The bourgeois will never give up its tone without a struggle."

I would guess that Whitney meant warm (as in warmed by the sun) and thus relaxed. Don't know about the "dry" part; it does imply skeletal remains, and I don't think he thought of Bill Perkins that way, at least I hope not. Of course, the sardine in the machine here is that Perkins would soon go on to attempt to assimilate as much Rollins and Coltrane as he could, arguably with not that much success in terms of personal musical coherence, yet doing so (so IIRC Perkins said in an interesting Cadence interview) in part because he felt that his lovely and I would say quite personal Prez-drenched playing of his "Grand Encounter" period was at once retrograde and even rather effete. Interestingly enough, his running buddy of that time, Richie Kamuca, began to travel much the same stylistic path in the late '50s/early '60s, i.e. assimilating some and/or a fair amount of Rollins and Coltrane, and did so IMO with great success, in large part because (as time would fully reveal when Kamuca would eventually to go on to record beautifully on alto) he must have had a whole lot of Bird's fluidity/angularity in him from the first and thus had had a running head start on what Rollins and Coltrane were up to. This'un? That section refers to Bill perkins, BTW, and as it happens, Hank "Mobely" is lumped in with Rollins. A product of its time, those liner notes, IMO, and opinions differ anyway, and of course those who are/were on a traditional/"mainstream" kick will see things palatable to them in jazz differently than those who, for example, by their own admission have seen the light in jazz when experiencing free jazz firsthand. Nothing wrong with either approach but isn't this how attitudes and approaches to the subject on hand are formed and passed on after all? "...the hair-pulling, the bad tone ... the ugliness..." -- has the voice of genteel appreciation ever spoken more clearly?

If by "Fans of Coll" you meant to say fans of cool and meant to lump in Balliett with such, Whitney (at least c, 1956-7 Whitney) was a man who more or less wished that anything post the mellower side of the Swing Era (i.e. Bop, Cool, and Hard Bop) had never comes to pass. He was, again (and IMO), a pipe and slippers, Irish setter at my feet, snifter of brandy in the library sort of jazz fan, and while he was very fond of any number of truly estimable figures -- e.g. Ben Webster, Pee Wee Russell, Bobby Hackett, Sid Catlett -- his fondness for them was very much akin to the "comfortable because it's comforting; if it's not comforting, we probably won't like it" way the magazine that he wrote for, the New Yorker, tended to regard many of the manfestations of the so-called Modern World. Getting back to Mobley and Myers' "voice of reason" remark then, I think that, a la Balliett, the reference is not to steadiness and dependability but to, in Myers' view, the relative smoothness/calmness of the surface of Mobley's playing in terms of timbre, melodic flow, accents, volume level, tonal "distortions", etc. -- all those things in hands of Rollins, Coltrane, et al. being marked by lots of typically Modernistic disturbance/agitation and thus serving as signs of "unreason." But of course we all know that Mobley was, as Dexter once put it, the "Hankenstein." Or, in the words of poet Frank O'Hara: "A lot of people would like to see art dead and sure, but you don't see them up at The Cloisters reading Latin."

I don't know what this means. Me either, not quite. But it does sound somewhat related to that dire gobbet of spit that Whitney Balliett hocked up about Sonny Rollins (the "bad taste ... hair-pulling" phrase IIRC) in his liner notes for the original issue of "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West" (a.k.a. "Grand Encounter"). Don't think those notes were reprinted in any of Balliett's collections, BTW. The passage in full would be instructive to read if anyone has access to it, because it certainly encapsulates a moment in the pipe-and-slippers mode of responses to jazz. In any case, What Myers probably means is that Mobley's relative/surface air of calm or lower intensity, versus the often extreme surface turbulence of a Rollins or a Coltrane et al., made him "the hard bop movement's musical voice of reason." No, no, a thousand times no, but I would guess that's what he was thinking.

FWIW, I was being ironic.

Sometimes you may know a little about it from the word of mouth. Sometime the same players or organization have done them before and you know from past experiences whether it's worthwhile to give a listen. The Blue Note has done many with McCoy and others that I wouldn't go to, for example. All of these factors can give you a idea if the program is going to be worthwhile, or if it's going to be a thrown together set of players picking tunes on stage, playing with little real energy. There's going to be a Dexter Gordon Tribute coming up soon. Dexter's widow and manager Maxine Gordon is fully involved, and the musical director is George Cables. Sounds good. And the role of Dexter will be played by Eric Alexander?

Yes, both "Free Jazz" and Ascension" have composed frameworks/sign posts, but don't the improvised contributions/interactions of the specific players at their best not only make up the majority of each work but also serve as the chief points of interest, compared to the relatively loose weave of the composed parts? BTW, I never heard it (don't believe it was recorded, only performed), but my favorite "loony tune" idea of the sort we've been talking about is David Murray's orchestration of Paul Gonsalves "Dimineundo and Crescendo in Blue" solo from Newport.

That link didn't work for me.

Info in previous post (about a Bill Evans album with Tony Oxley) deleted. Again -- forum rules prohibit linking to bootlegs, and that's what this album is.

I vaguely recall a Max Roach Blindfold Test where he responded to a track from the Dorham-Ernie Henry album on Riverside with "Kenny can play some stuff that's really abstract."

If you can locate a copy of the Fricsay recording (on DG) it will chill your bones. Dandy. I have fond memories of a Constantin Silvestri recording on EMI, coupled IIRC with an equally striking Mathis der Mahler -- both pieces "shaped" more than is usual.

Bartok's Divertimento for Strings (only movement one on in this clip), a work with a unique lilt, Hungarian rhythmic zest, and echt Bartokian harmonic rightness:

Suk, Serenade for Strings -- unending tender lyricism (first movement only in this clip): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AD0RA3AgrY Well, actually the tender lyricism of the Suk Serenade does end -- the piece as a whole runs about 26 minutes -- but you know what I mean.

What's so familiar there -- the girl?

What's funny about that is that I've heard more than a few older jazz musicians who had no real liking for "Latin" musics on their own terms (i.e. - they'd call a tune with a "Latin" feel to play bebop over and let it go at that; I mean, they were some bad cats, but...play them a hardcore Salsa thing and it was, like, ok, two chords and a lot of singing, where's the MUSIC? ) hear people like Eddie Palmieri (ok, there's really nobody like Eddie Palmieri...) and dismiss it as not swinging and sounding like Brubeck! So, where's this hidden Afro-Cuban-Germanic link to all this hammering going on, anyway? Those guys can say Eddie Palmieri et al. sounded like Brubeck as a way of putting down both Brubeck and Palmieri et al., but did it sound that way to you? If not, I don't see the point, other than that 'more than a few older jazz musicians who had no real liking for "Latin" musics on their own terms' were in the Palmieri et al. case dealing from relative ignorance/lack of real experience. But that doesn't necessarily prove that their judgment of Brubeck's rhythmic alleged rhythmic incapacities was mistaken, unless (again) you feel that Brubeck's rhythmic approach was truly akin to that of Palmieri et al.