Larry Kart

Yes -- you've got to know what you don't know is something I've had carved into my forehead ... backwards of course, so I can read it in the mirror. And even then it's not that simple, at least for me, because I'm often drawn to poke around in more or less technical areas where I don't know what the "proper" names for things and the current formulas and understandings of those things are. OTOH, my relative innocence/lack of that sort of knowledge has served me well at times I think -- in part because it leads me to ponder in somewhat novel and ultimately valid (IMO) ways about what everyone already knows (but sometimes they don't), and also because the naming and conceptualizing processes in jazz are far more fluid IMO that a whole lot of people like to believe -- especially those who think that the technical-conceptual languages that arose from and pretty much fit most classical music can be applied just as neatly to jazz. For some reason I think of a Pepper Adams story. He and his fellow bandmates in the Jones-Lewis Orchestra are looking over a new chart from Thad and scratching their heads. Pepper says not to worry, "It's the same changes as 'Death and Transfiguration.'"

Now, that's funny. you got that? It took me a while to work it out, and I'm from Essex! Not immediately, but when I sounded it out, yes. Cracked me up. I could see that woman as well as hear her. A bit frightening.

Racism? Is Polish a race? I didn't know about POlish jokes in the USA either. Yes, we have Irish, Scottish and Welsh jokes here. Even about Essex Woman - What's Essex Woman's favourite wine? 'I want to go to Spine!' MG Now, that's funny.

Great post, Ben. I particularly like "'I think "harmonically strong" players like Parker and sometimes Coltrane had such strong ears that their lines dictated the harmony, not the other way around" and all of the previous paragraph. Geez, if you keep working at it and thinking this hard, you might even become a "critic."

Two Giddins stories, both from the same source, a prominent NY-based jazz musician whose name I won't mention for obvious reasons: Stopping by Giddins' apartment one day to drop off a copy of his current CD, he was greeted at the door by the man himself, who, pointing to all the for-potential-review CDs strewn about the floor and on chairs, tables, etc., referred to them as "cockroaches." A mood boost, right there, albeit credit Gary perhaps for telling the truth about how he really felt. Second, he and Giddins are standing backstage at a NYC jazz concert. During one number, Giddins turns to the musician and says:, "The blues and 'I Got Rhythm' are essentially the same thing, right?"

Peace.

Gives a new meaning to the title "Miles Ahead." Having been on the receiving end of one piece of Miles' dickhead behavior, I know what you mean. The new boy at Down Beat in the fall of 1968, I was at the Plugged Nickel trying to set up an interview with a reluctant Wayne Shorter (he said he didn't want to do one because he didn't have anything to say) when Miles from across the room hissed out "Don't tell him any-thing, Wayne." (Miles knew more or less what I was up to because I was there with my boss Dan Morgenstern, and Miles knew Dan.) In any case, Wayne, seeing me wince at Miles' words, which came from behind my back, and (so I later came to think) probably engaged himself in a tit-for-tat power struggle with Miles, immediately said that he'd do the interview the next day. It's the one that was rightly printed under Wayne's own name as "Creativity and Change" -- rightly, because it was spoken by him in a virtually unbroken 90-minute monologue.

I understood it that way, and that's why I changed my mind about closing the thread. It was Big Wheel's nyah-nyah post above that irked me.

Just send checks (and chicks) directly to me.

All I'm doing is trying to clean up the garbage that other people have dropped in the streets of Organissimo, and obviously I'm wasting my time trying to do it. If make a mistake, maybe you should go get yourself a new garbage collector or just stroll through the garbage-littered landscape while keeping your nose pinned and your mouth shut.

I believe it was the "Breezin'" album in that compilation that seemed to me to have topnotch Harris.

Allen can explain (and no doubt he will), but IIRC what Giddins did in the course of his review of one of Allen's books or its related series of CDs was was make an utterly false and dismissive factual statement (and doing so in a quite authoritative tone) about the relationship between the text of Allen's book and the set's extensive liner notes. This statement Allen felt was not only false but also directly damaging to the marketibility of his set and book. It might be, keeping it within the legal framework, as though someone were writing in a newspaper about the quality of local law firms in a particular field and stated that Gould, Lowe, Kart, and Associates had gone bankrupr a few years ago or been cited for gross violations of ethics, when neither thing was the case. Further, I believe that when Allen got in touch with Giddins and asked him to correct his mistake (I'm sure Allen did this quite calmly ), Giddins told him to go f--- himself.

Yes, Allen -- many thanks. I've been enjoying it. Got it at about the same time as a recent 2-CD Sonny Red compilation of Jazzland, etc. material. Interesting to compare: http://www.freshsoundrecords.com/quartet,_quintet_&_sextet_4_lps_on_2_cds-cd-5679.html Both Quill and Red somewhat acrid in tone but attractively so to me, Quill more mobile but Sonny Red no slouch, Red at times edging into modality but this development in the music occurred after the Quill recordings were made. BTW, one of the Sonny Red albums on that compilation has what strikes me as the best Barry Harris I've ever heard. Also interesting are the variations among the rhythm sections Sonny Red plays with. One took in such differences at the time, I suppose, but with the passage of 50 or so years (!), how the musical personalities involved interact and the various overall flavors that result seem more striking.

I'd bet the drummer is Stan Levey; somehow he sounds left-handed.

Forgot to mention that among Bob Wright's other passions was sheets of sound Coltrane. This is a passion he shared with steeped-in-Pee Wee Russell-but-still-his-own-brilliant-man clarinetist Frank Chace (d. 2007). Back in the day (probably the mid-1980s) I made a cassette tape of Bob and Frank rehearsing in Bob's living room; they played several Coltrane and Dameron tunes. Sadly, the tape seems to have vanished about fiv e years ago after I lent it to a friend to have it digitalized, but his apartment is full of stuff, so I haven't given up hope.

Clarence St. John's "Cole Smoak" (correct spelling):

Two more, Joplin's Haunting "Magnetic Rag" and Cow Cow Davenport's "Atlanta Rag": IMO, Ms. Tichenor has really got that thing.

Poking around on the 'Net with thoughts in mind of my recently deceased friend Bob Wright -- the great Ragtime and Stride pianist who also loved the music of Lennie Tristano (Bob claimed to be able to play Tristano's multi-tracked "Turkish Mambo" all by himself; I heard him do it once but couldn't swear he got all the notes in), Ravel, Burt Bacharach, Bud Powell, and others -- I thought of checking out the work of his Ragtime and Stride colleague ( both as a player and a scholar) Trebor Tichenor, only to discover that Tichenor's daughter is one terrific player herself. Check out these two performances (the first of a fine piece by Trebor, the other of a gem by Mae Aufderheide). There are more from Virginia on YouTube. What a swinger she is!

Richard Twardzik's "Yellow Tango" and "A Crutch for the Crab": Or if we were we talking about something else, how about Chopin's Sonata No. 2?

Taylor's liner notes for the Smithsonian John Kirby set are particularly fine. There were others I'm sure that were, like the Kirby notes, known to more than "other writers," but I'm too tired from today's 12-inning Sox loss to think of them. Apparently, Taylor's journalistic writing on jazz was confined to the Washington Post by and large and thus wouldn't have been known to many people outside that area. Had the same problem myself writing a whole lot about jazz for the Chicago Tribune for more than decade; virtually no one knew unless they lived in the Chicago area, not until I put some of it in a book in 2004. Then jazz people worldwide could know, and they were correspondingly enraged and disgusted.

by way of Bill Kirchner and Mike Fitzgerald's estimable website: http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Essays/jrtaylor.htm Sadly, J.R. doesn't write about jazz anymore.

OK -- you convinced me. I'll unlock that thread.

The rationale is simplicity/one-stop-shopping, you name it.

Noting cumz from viynl.

I want to know everything about everyone, but I'd prefer that no one know much of anything about me.