Larry Kart

It's P.D.

I agree with the beginning of the article: "It shouldn't be this way..." Though not in the way the writer meant.

It may have been one of the moderators who did that that would of been kind of a lame thing to do, though... I totally disagree. I think everyone, but especially the native English speakers here, should try to use correct English which can be understood by all, including those whose first language isn't English and may have trouble understanding mangled English. I'm with Ubu. The original heading was correct for the (presumed)text. Well, yes, but it's possible that the illiteracy of Chewy-speak is more or less a put-on or a mask, a la Moms' persona. Presumed, indeed. Took me a beat to get it, but

From the IMDB: ◄ Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got (1985) Artie Shaw agreed to do the film after being interviewed by Brigitte Berman for her previous film about Bix Beiderbecke, Bix: 'Ain't None of Them Play Like Him Yet', which he felt was an accurate documentary. After the film won the Academy Award, Artie Shaw sued Brigitte Berman in Canadian court, claiming ownership of the film (which he liked). When he eventually lost his case both in the initial trial and on appeal, he restarted the suit in California courts. The legal difficulties prevented the film's release between 1987 and Shaw's death in 2004.

Given how intensely whack-o narcissistic Shaw was, and how paradoxical that crucial strain in his nature was in relation to the beautiful music he made (this paradox may closely resemble that of Art Pepper), a Shaw bio presents grave problems. If you had extensive access to the man, as Nolan did, he would do his considerable best to seduce you, or at least pull you into his realm of fragile grandiosity. In that sense, the Canadian documentary film about Shaw from (I think) the 1980s, was almost inadvertently quite effective. The filmmakers were more or less awestruck (though they and Shaw had a big falling-out later on), allowing Shaw to ramble on in his self-aggrandizing/self-justifying manner, but because the style of the film was straight-on documentary, it was not hard for a viewer to see that Shaw was an a--hole maniac in the top class (which, again, did not preclude his being a musician of genius).

Quite a band that was, and Desmond was a fine singer. I also like the shorter version on "The Secret Broadcasts" -- great sound.

First recording of "Moon Dreams" (by Martha Tilton) was also the first recording made by Capitol Records:

In "The Glenn Miller Story," Morgan played pianist Chummy MacGregor, composer of "Moon Dreams," later arranged so handsomely by Gil Evans for the Birth of the Cool band.

Nolan's book is no bargain IMO. In particular, his overuse of emphasized words in quoted speech -- e.g. "So I said to Lou Fromm, take it down a little or you're fired" (not an actual quote but my recollection of how things go) -- is not only maddening in itself but also tends to make everyone sound the same. That is, if Shaw himself spoke that way, OK --though if he did, I'd appreciate a note to that effect from the author. But when everyone speaks that way, it feels like a damn carnival ride.

Enjoyed his dry Midwestern wit on Dragnet especially. Also, anyone know what the connection is between Morgan and the so-called Birth of the Cool band?

Mmmm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxZCu_TjO9o

A favorite track from a favorite album:

Larry -- would this be Joseph's Uptown session? Looking forward to it, whatever it may be. yes

Not a book, but i'm writing liner notes for an expanded reissue of an album by cornetist Don Joseph and hope to gather all the reliable info that can be found about this gifted but elusive musician, who was even more elusive than his good friend, the somewhat similar-in-style Tony Fruscella. Joseph doesn't even appear in Feather-Gitler.

Echoing BillF (perhaps), if it's so damn unregulated, why does so much of it look the same?

Another by the same band (or so it seems, despite the date given):

Charlie Shavers' "Serenade To A Pair of Nylons" is a gas, with a fascinating early (1945) Buddy DeFranco solo: Also, when the record starts spinning, this particular picture gets interesting.

Certainly don't want to fall into the silly trick bag that Mr. Payton has constructed, but Noj's interesting post raises an I think interesting question: Why do people who do actually like music in the sense he describes -- i.e. they don't just like singing per se or, as Jim added, a particular familiar style or two -- come to really like music and remain hungry for it, explore new pathways for a long time, maybe to the end? Is it training? Exposure? Or is it more or less something in the person in embryo that begins to grow almost no matter what? (Before I go on a bit, I'll add an observation that sociologist David Reisman made in the mid-1950s. Examining taste, he asked some girls at a local record store why they liked the current No. 1 hit. They replied: "We like it because it's popular.") In any case, arguing from my own early experience (insofar as I understand it) and from that of friends, I essentially vote for the admittedly mysterious "it's more or less something in the person in embryo" option. I can point to a few personal experiences that may contain some clues. My mother was a genuine music lover -- when she listened I could virtually see the music moving through her and could feel her reaching out to it. And that, without me being able to put it into words, gave me the feeling that for her music was an alternate language, that it "said" things that she hungered for and sought and that weren't being said/couldn't be said in words in this world. To put it another way, looking at things from the other end of the telescope, I felt the tie between her and say Mozart was that she knew why he'd troubled himself to assemble those sounds, that he too was reaching out, speaking an alternate language, and that they both knew that music, while made of things of this world, was not wholly a material matter, and that it was above all not essentially a medium of exchange -- a la Reisman's girls in the record store or my father going with my mother to hear the Chicago Symphony because in large part (if I'm not being unfair to him) doing so was a medium of exchange for him, a way of validating his sense of the kind of person he wanted to be socially. Back to my mother -- not to get too sentimental, but one of her favorite songs was one her mother (who had lovely contralto voice) sang as she did the dishes or cooked, a setting of a Robert Burns poem that goes: "My heart's in the mountains, out chasing a deer, my heart's in the mountains, my heart is not here." I know, that seems to take us back to songs per se, and words, but that piece as music would be about what those words say (and more) even if there were no words present. Experience two: When I glommed onto jazz in the summer between seventh and eight grade, I think I liked what I liked for most or all of the usual reasons. And part of it was my version of "this is my/our music," a way of validating my and my friends' social segregation, so to speak. At the same time, and probably operating on the same social-segregation principle, plus some underlying sense of psychological development , my 13-year-old self couldn't stand most classical music, especially anything with strings; I thought it was all akin to Mantovani, that contact with it would full your soul with sugar, and that you would then more or less melt way the next time it rained. In other words, it was a music alien to the world of say, Roy Eldridge or Illinois Jacquet, with its muscle-flexing demonstrations of strength and power and soulfulness. But then I happened to put on a recording of one of the Mozart String Quintets, K. 593, and the doors to so-called classical music opened once and for all. A lot more stories in that realm (especially when it came later on to encounters with the Second Viennese school) but the point I want to make is that the music simultaneously reached out to me and I to it -- or so I felt; the music taught me to listen to it, but I embryonically very much wanted to be told, without knowing so until I was. Likewise, a bit earlier on, when my best friend and I glomming onto the 1940-1 Ellington Band. This was for sure not the music of 1955-6 (in jazz terms that might have been the contemporary Basie band, which we loved), although 1940-1 Ellington didn't sound archaic; ithe appeal of this music to us wasn't that it was strange or had an aura of nostalgia to it, just that things like "Ko Ko" and "Concerto for Cootie" and "Harlem Airshaft" and "Jack the Bear" were musically and emotionally-dramatically stunning, that again in effect they reached out and taught us that here was not only excitement but also, for want of a better term, "depth," that this was a music one could listen to time and again and think about. One last note, perhaps circling back to my original point: We wanted/needed a music we could think about, into which we in our own way could try to pour as much of our dawning understanding of who we were and how the world worked (and didn't work) as the musicians who made this music had poured into it to begin with.

The first side of "Coleman Hawkins -- Disorder at the Border" (Spotlite 121), live at Birdland on 9/13/52, with Horace Silver, Curley Russell, and Connie Kay. You haven't lived into you've heard Silver comp behind Hawkins and Eldridge. Side two, from a week earlier and also on fire, has Howard McGhee, Silver, Russell, and Art Blakey!

This one: (F) ROY ELDRIDGE AND HIS ORCHESTRA: Roy Eldridge (tp), Oscar Peterson (p), Herb Ellis (g), Ray Brown (b), Buddy Rich (d). Fine Sound, NYC, September 15, 1954 1961-1 If I Had You 1962-2 Blue Moon 1963-5 Stormy Weather 1964-1 Sweethearts On Parade 1965-3 A Foggy Day 1966-1 I Only Have Eyes For You 1967-1 Sweet Georgia Brown 1968-1 The Song Is Ended Note: All titles issued on Clef MGC683, Verve MGV8068. P.S. Lots of individual tracks from the '30s and '30s, but Roy not only plays great on the one above, but the album also holds together as an album.

Be careful what you ask for: http://gorightly.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/more-on-the-tuesday-weld-psychedelic-illuminati-conspiracy/ I too have been an unpaid volunteer for the CIA.

Nicholas Payton is Maynard G. Krebs? I want Thalia Menniger.

Which part? Or everything? I did mis-spell meritricious.

As much as I like those two, "Live in Tokyo" and the recently issued "Sesjun Radio Shows" are musts IMO. Yes, he did fall -- no mystery or foul play. See Jeroen de Valk's biography, not the mereitricous "Deep In a Dream."