Larry Kart

Nicely put, but one man's creepiness in another man's... But then there's the story that someone recently told us.

And why do you think that romance and creepiness are mutually exclusive?

Formulaic, yes, but I like the formula, in part because it speaks to me so clearly of its time. How old where you in 1958? I was 16. Sounded romantic to me then.

Maybe I'm an idiot -- no, don't answer that -- but I find Kenton's own charts on the 1958 album "The Ballad Style of Stan Kenton" (if they are indeed his charts, as billed) to be seductive and intriguing, though one of the chief points of interest for me, the flowing, slow-motion writing for sax section, may owe or may not a debt to the Ralph Burns of "Summer Sequence" and "Early Autumn." Not a masterpiece, but the work of a significant and AFAIK individual voice. The Kenton "sensibility," if you will, counts for something -- however disparate (bombast-aggression, pretentiousness, Graettinger, ballroom 'tenderness," Holman-esque swing, et al.) its various parts may be. Take away Kenton from his time, and it wouldn't have been that time. The cultural historian in me takes account of that.

Excellent Glasel here from 1959, and the Westchester Workshop portion of the program, also from 1959, is fascinating, too: http://www.freshsoundrecords.com/the_westchester_workshop__the_john_glasel_brasstet_-_rare_studio_recordings_by_two_outstanding_jazz_ensembles-cd-3547.html

If the music's any good, I usually find myself closing my eyes while listening.

Hildegarde!

Johnny Richards was a "buffoon"? I'd say, instead, that he had an often maniacal sense of humor, though I do vastly prefer his writing for his own bands to anything he did for Kenton, even to the movement of "Cuban Fire" that has that lovely Lucky Thompson solo.

Just to be clear, I agree with the above. My sidebar point, prompted by Hajdu's piece, was that to some Kenton apparently still is worth kicking at for musical and socio-political reasons.

A different assessment from Max Harrison (you'll have to scroll down some): http://books.google.com/books?id=6CsSipsOGrMC&pg=PA298&lpg=PA298&dq=max+harrison+stan+kenton&source=bl&ots=4ZawkazHnH&sig=GoO4jbyIlDEoEVutGsZvkQdfEU0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BDjxTpDqHYetgwfp_rGVAg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

If you listen to a lot of white musicians today, it could have been this afternoon. But really, the telegram and all that comes with it is irrelevant today. What is relevant is that...uh...mmm... Sorry, I can't think of anything about Stan Kenton that is relevant today. Carry on! What's relevant about Kenton today (at least in this case, as I said early on above) is that he still can be used (as I think he has been by Hajdu) as a kind of inside-out Stepin Fetchit -- a figure that all right-thinking folks can agree deserves/demands total execration.

Sorry -- I meant to say "badge of self-righteousness." And when did Kenton send that telegram? Fifty-some years ago?

Of course he did, but that doesn't invalidate what I said: "...whacking the Kenton pinata is a handy, calculated way for a white writer to cover his flanks in the game of racial-cultural politics." But you knew that already, right? What I don't know is where "whacking the Kenton pinata" ends and simply calling bullshit on Kenton's bullshit (and there is plenty of it, musically and otherwise) begins, or the other way around.... It begins and ends when your common sense tells you that someone is bringing up Kenton to pin a bag of self-righteousness on himself.

Further, Jim, I think that's exactly what Hajdu was up to here, which accounts for the odd brevity of the piece. It started off like it was going to be a quite hostile but fairly extensive account of Kenton alleged artistic monstrousness, and then Hajdu shut it down after citing Kenton's telegram in order to prove that Hajdu himself is indignantly on the side of racial righteousness. "See," he's saying, "Kenton is a multi-purpose monster. And I'm angry at him on your behalf, too!"

Of course he did, but that doesn't invalidate what I said: "...whacking the Kenton pinata is a handy, calculated way for a white writer to cover his flanks in the game of racial-cultural politics." But you knew that already, right?

It isn't bizarre at all, I think. Rather, as this sentence proclaims -- "Bitter about being overshadowed by his African-American superiors in the Down Beat magazine critic’s poll, Kenton sent the editors a now-notorious telegram, grousing of his status in “a new minority, white jazz musicians" -- whacking the Kenton pinata is a handy, calculated way for a white writer to cover his flanks in the game of racial-cultural politics.

Following up on the "year in sports" theme, one more time Alocis and you're going to the showers.

It just occurred to me -- that piece is the inside-out apotheosis of Kenton. He now has, at least in Hajdu's eyes, the status of Stepin Fetchit, someone whose very name is supposed to justify righteous moral outrage on the part of those who need to get off that way.

that was the whole piece-- i didn't post it because i necessarily agree with it. Wow -- the whole piece! That's insane. On what other topic would a general interest publication like the New Republic print something that tendentious and that brief? Given that, it strikes me as fueled by unjustified self-righteousness insult that's designed to puff up the credentials/protect some flank of the writer. Yuck. Also, Alocis, I didn't assume that you agreed with it. Further, FWIW, Joe Henderson was a great admirer of much of Kenton's music, Holman and Russo's stuff in particular.

Is that piece all that Hajdu wrote or just the top of it? In any case, it has, to coin a phrase, a special awfulness.

He left a lot of fine music behind and was a character indeed. Arguably, with occasional detours, he got better and better as a composer and a player. The length and the beauty of the melodies he improvised on "Jim Hall/Bob Brookmeyer at the Northsea Jazz Festival (Challenge) from 1979, is quite something. Heard him live about five years ago with the DePaul University Jazz Band, playing his pieces, and he was in great form. The Northsea album BTW is the perfect response to Andre Hodeir's semi-putdown of Brookmeyer in "Jazz Its Evolution in Essence" back in 1956: "These two young soloists [Chet Baker and Brookmeyer] have a conception of jazz that is much like his [Gerry Mulligan's]. It is based on a use of modern material (sonority, attack, various harmonic elements) in a resolutely traditional context.... The most debatable part of this conception is the resulting rhythmic vocabulary. Brookmeyer in particular seems to have a fondness for certain syncopated formulas and frankly corny accentuations that jazzmen had eliminated during the classical period [i.e. the 1930s]; he doesn't hesitate to use them side by side with a legato style of phrasing based on eighth notes. Few will deny that the result is asymmetry, a kind of hybrid.... When a writer who is qualified to speak on the subject says that Brookmeyer, in 'Open Country,' 'uses the lilt of 1930 Broadway songs with considerable wit,' how are we to imagine that he means this as praise rather than condemnation?" Yes, early Brookmeyer did seem to be the riding on a buckboard at times from a rhythmic point of view -- at times in a rather self-conscious ole-timey manner, at times I would guess not that way but just because -- but that went away eventually, while the "Broadway" strain that Hodeir speaks of just became extended into (at best) near endless mutating melodies. Both as a player and writer in later years, Brookmetyer seemed me to to be jazz's Sibelius, which is plenty OK in my book, though Hodeir might thank that the final condemenation.

Don't know what form, if any, they're available now, but the four performances ("All the Things You Are," "Centerpiece," "Body and Soul," and "Just You, Just Me") that Hawkins played in Chicago at the Playboy Jazz Festival on Aug. 9, 1959, with Eddie Higgins, Bob Cranshaw, and Walter Perkins, are sublime and very intense. I have them on an LP, Spotlite 137.

Don't know if it's been mentioned above, but a Don Byas critical biography might be very interesting if done by the right person. Certainly an intriguing guy who lived an intriguing life, and a great player of vast importance (though that last has been somewhat forgotten).

You know the drill (but I mean it). :party:

He told me that, too.