Larry Kart

Yeah, clearly he wouldn't allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Much of Schubert is sublime, but it would probably take a special interpreter to make it funky. I know why he mentioned it, but I meant that I didn't know how to nudge the Schubert sonata into the sentence grammatically.

They should have included this:

P.S. Nice to be informed that "Wuthering Heights" is a remarkable novel and by Emily Bronte, too. Also, that final sentence, as written, makes no sense; it says that "I" (i.e. West) am "[L]ike Heathcliff and Catherine's relationship" and " Schubert's tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat." What he means is that "Like Heathcliff and Catherine, I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!" Don't know how to nudge the Schubert sonata into the sentence, though.

Quote from a poster on the Pro Football Talk blog, referring to the screwup in the Tebow-to-Jets trade, but capable of wider application: THIS IS THE GREATEST OFFSEASON IN NFL HISTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then I guess I won't reply to it.

Shoot -- I mistakenly deleted Jim's last post while trying to delete/modify my response to it. Please repost yours, Jim.

And why -- compared to any number of other arguably wayward and or evolving-at-oblique-angles threads, including some (e.g the Quincy Jones thread) in which IIRC you yourself veered toward the Bastille bearing a torch in your hand -- is this one a "50 car pileup"?

Next up -- Monica Lewinsky.

"...a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find." You gotta love that "hard to find."

Never been a Liebman fan, but those interviews are interesting to say the least.

Thank you, Mark -- Owens' is the chapter and verse passage I recalled reading.

JeffCrom -- I didn't put what I said quite right, and what you said pretty much hits the nail on the head. By systematic harmonically, I really meant systematic in the particular way that the quoted passage suggests he was, "using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes." Instead, as you say, "Bird's quote seems to imply that he was using a lot of elevenths and thirteenths, but that's not really what was going on." What you add about his rhythmic innovations and "macro [and micro?] syncopation" is spot on, too. As I wrote in my chapter on the Jazz Avant-Garde 1949-1967 in"The Oxford Companion To Jazz": "However 'swing' is defined, it would seem that up to and including Parker, jazz's rhythmic language depended on the presence of relatively stable metrical frameworks -- ones in which rhythmic events could be shaped by, as Igor Stravinsky put it, 'the fruitful convention of the bar.' But in Parker's music the ability to make meaningful microsubdivisions of the beat within such frameworks may have reached a kind of physical or perceptual barrier. In any case, nearly five decades after his death (a very long time for an art such as jazz) that barrier arguably remains unbreached -- by John Coltrane, by Ornette Coleman, by anybody. New metrical frameworks, looser metrical frameworks, no metrical frameworks -- the issues were in the air."

Sorry, Chuck, I too can't cite chapter and verse, but the money line from the Biddy Fleet-Bird at Minton's anecdote is Bird supposedly saying: "I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing." The source I can't recall said while that is all well and good, "using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line" is something that Bird really didn't do. Rather, IIRC, the point was that his melodic choices were far more "free" and (so to speak) sudden/less systematic from a harmonic point than taking the given chord structure of a tune and "using the higher intervals of {those chords} as a melody line."

Litweiler's review of Shaw appeared in the Oct. 17, 1968 issue of DB. The club was the Hungry Eye. The rest of the band was organist Bobby Pierce and drummer Fred Stoll. I should copy out the review, which is indeed excellent (and soulful, too), but I'm too lazy to do that right now. It's rather lengthy, we're in the midst of a warm pre-spring day, and I feel a nap coming on,

Interested in the AFLAC gig? They need help, and badly. Don't have the voice for it. BTW, Manduck was the title character in a terrific old Mad (when it was still a comic book) parody of Mandrake the Magician.

No -- a guy, can't recall his name. I'll try to track down that Litweiler review, may have it in a bound volume of DB. Yes, and I can't believe I left out Larry!!! Semi-invisibilty is one of my secrets and often a very useful one. The call me Manduck the Magician.

I did, too. Same time, same place. On Wells St., don't recall the name of the club/bar (the Something or Other SquIre), but I know where it was physically, that you could see the band in the front window (I think), and that Shaw played great. There was a fine Litweiler review of the band in Down Beat.

Same here...usually.

Gentlemen -- the leering and comments like "Tell her everything. And don't be gentle when you do." are getting out of control IMO. 'Taint funny, McGhee.

Singlesnet.com?

Remaindered! There's justice after all! Not necessarily -- the previous owner may have sold it.

Hey -- I bought the "Baraka Reader" today at Half-Price Books.

Yes: http://www.amazon.com/Go-West-Young-Med-Flory/dp/B00005EBU2 Other tracks are by Med's 1956-57 West Coast band, which became the core of the Terry Gibbs band, plus two brief and forgettable "exotic" 1959 tracks by a reeds and rhythm ensemble.

Sorry -- Feb. 4, 1954. Born in 1926, Med would have been in his late 20s. He'd been in bands since he joined Claude Thornhill in 1950. Those 1954 performances, four of them, were recorded by John Bello, Al Derisi, Jerry Kail, Doug Mettome, tpts; Billy Byers, Urbie Green, Milt Gold, trbs.; Med, Hal McKusick, Al Cohn, Jack Agee, reeds; John Williams, pno.; Teddy Kotick, bs., Art Mardigan, drms. These days Med sounds as vigorous as all get out -- more so than I do most days.

Called Flory today (first time for me) in search of info about a set of liner notes. Med said, "Howdy," and we were off. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell me much about my subject, cornetist Don Joseph, other than that Joseph's eyes were always red (ha!), but we were having a good time and wandered onto other subjects, including an IMO great Al Cohn chart with a stunning shout chorus, "No Thanks," that Med's NY rehearsal band recorded in 1953. Whereupon Med onomatopoetically sang the whole damn, almost 4-minute piece -- "Blee-bop-bud-dah-bop" etc. -- with immense gusto. Somewhat dumbfounded, I asked how long ago it was that he'd played "No Thanks." "When we recorded it," he said -- i.e. some 59 years ago. How remarkable a feat of memory that is, I don't know, but I have a feeling that it's evidence that when jazz musicians really care about something, they really care about it. One other thing. Speaking of Joseph and his friend Tony Fruscella's drug use, I stumbled into the familiar phrase "victims of the times" or something like it. "Victims?" snorted Med. "They were enjoying themselves."