Larry Kart

If you mean me, how so?

The sense of self importance some critics get from ridiculing what is widely enjoyed ('Only I truly understand!'), perhaps? Speaking only for myself, "fake" would be too strong, but Moran (in the view of some) initially was a melange of shrewdly selected influences. I kind of liked the melange at first, because I like the same players Moran did (Byard, Andrew Hill, Muhal, et al.), but I've heard little growth since then. That "blues" album of a few years back was an ominous sign IMO. As for Iyer, I agree with what Allen said on this or another thread, if I remember correctly what he did say. Among other things,in jazz in my experience, that much upfront (or if you prefer, "surface") metrical complexity just gets in the way. Playing off "the clave," yes, though even that can be too restrictive depending on the players and the setup, but a whole lot more upfront rhythmic info than that, and for me it's like a riot in a wallpaper factory.

The only freebies I get are from a fellow board member and from a few musicians I know well who refuse to accept my attempts to pay them when they're selling their CDs at gigs (though sometimes I still prevail). I would have voted for two of the recent Mosaics (Duke, Threadgill) but they hadn't arrived by the time I had to file my ballot (the VV Poll time frame is Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving), and I didn't think it was right to vote for anything I hadn't heard, even though I knew those sets were going to be excellent. The Carter-Bradford Mosaic, however, I'd listened to. I certainly didn't listen to/buy as many CDs this year as I probably should have, but I tell myself that my golden ears go some way toward making up for that. Speaking of that, kind of, I think that I and one other person were the only ones who voted in the poll for that Warne Marsh Trio set, which almost certainly would have made my Top Ten list for any decade. Were we the only voters who heard it (I bought my copy)?

I have no idea, though it was quite clear that Lennie meant what he said to be ex cathedra controversial. Why else send it to Down Beat? IIRC, Dan Morgenstern, my then-boss, found the letter both interesting and somewhat amusing -- not the opinion expressed per se but the ex cathedra aspect. OTOH no one who knew of or knew Tristano could have been surprised by that tone; OTOH it was surprising that he decided to bestir himself in that manner on those grounds.

No idea if that story about Tristano & the Rhodes & The Supremes is true or not (I'm quite skeptical, but hell, you never know...), but - Tristano did send a letter into Down Beat claiming that Diana Ross was the best jazz singer since Billie Holiday. And it got published, that letter did. I was there when it arrived.

Sorry -- that should have been "pour emmerder Fry." And the person who transmitted to Fry how "idiotic" the picture was was Fry's slavish backstrapper Clive Bell.

In his biography of Sickert, Matthew Sturgis raises the possibility that Sickert's change of heart on Matisse might have been a case of "shameless journalistic bandwagoning" rather than "a considered change of opinion." OTOH, Sickert loved to play pranks. Once Roger Fry write an article in which he ridiculed the horrible painting that Sickert had above his mantlepiece. Sickert then revealed that, knowing that Fry was to pay a visit, he had placed the painting there d'enmerder Fry (sp?), i.e. "to shit upon Fry." Someone will tell me if my transcription or translation is wrong.

A quick check of the individual ballots (and one can't always tell about locale from the info given) reveals that of 120 total ballots, 52 of those were cast by people who are based in the New York City or thereabouts (I include New Jersey, Philadelphia, etc.) and/or affiliated with NYC publications. Also, though sadly I didn't count, there seem to be way more than five VV-affiliated people who have ballots. Finally, I can't be entirely sure, but it looks like there were only five or so ballots cast by people who live somewhere other than North America.

Go to the VV Poll individual ballots (including yours' trulys) for many more names than those that made the Top 50 list. (Only two of my top ten are on the overall top 50, FWTW.) Also, I haven't totaled things up, but when you see the affiliations of the various people who voted, the poll seems heavily centered on New York City; like they're maybe five people from the Voice itself.

This version of Good News isn't all that great, but Joan's Pass the Peace Pipe number is amazing!(I bet she could actually sing well, but they wanted her to give both numbers VOLUME) Interesting that she is pretty darned short for a dancer, I wonder if that's why Hollywood didn't give her more of a chance in musicals??? I think she's dubbed in the first number. Also, while I find her style of impishness attractive, there is something of the comic sidekick in her face and/or the expressions it falls into.

I'm with you all the way on what you said, Jim. I'll never forget (mentioned it here before) the high school girl, working a holiday gig at Famous Footwear about five years ago, who began to bop (and I do mean "bop") her head unobtrusively to "Jingle Bell Rock" to amuse herself/bring some enjoyment to the moment while she was wrapping up a pair of shoes for me. I know -- maybe she was stoned, but I don't think so. She was just putting her own spin on the ball and radiating that spin outwards to all who might pick up on it.

McCracken (from the same movie) sings (not very well) and dances (wow) "Pass That Peace Pipe and Bury That Hatchet." Her legs move like scissors, and she knows how to dance funny. (Go to the 2:39 mark if you can't stand the song): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb2QtM_y3vo&feature=related That insidious song was a hit when I was age five.

This by way of a Facebook friend. Notice the way, beginning at the 1:14 mark, the character played by Joan McCracken knowingly eyes the taut behind of a male cheerleader: The sadly short-lived McCracken (1917-1963) was Bob Fosse's second wife and a one-time Balanchine dancer.

I know of May, of course, but always associated him with those brassy, up-tempo charts he wrote for Sinatra, and the "slurpy saxes" thing. Then tonight I listened to a Nancy Wilson album from 1967, "Lush Life," and found myself fascinated by May's writing for strings, French horns and rhythm on, in particular, "You've Changed," "Sunny," "Too Long At The Fair" and a John Benson Brooks tune, "Over the Weekend." What tickled me is that within the requirements of the task at hand -- to cushion Wilson and serve the romantic mood -- May introduces so many unobtrusive, quite subtle, and in terms of the task at hand, more or less extraneous details in order I would guess to amuse himself. That is, virtually none of these things amplify or heighten the romantic mood, nor do they distract from it; rather these (for want of a better term) "wandering" and typically sotto voce counter-melodies, which also tend to pause (or even break off entirely) in the most unexpected places, seem to be there for May's own benefit, again perhaps to amuse himself (and some of these passages are amusing -- both in themselves and also in the "excess," in this context, of their evanescent delicacy). If so, what a strange thing this is. A man of great talent doing a piece of work in a framework in which he almost certainly would have been able to satisfy every external requirement of the job in an auto-pilot manner, and yet within this situation (and without disturbing the basic set-up/calling attention to what he's doing) he feels compelled to continually perform semi-hidden feats of musical aerobatics. Perhaps, being the kind of guy he might have been, May just couldn't turn off the bubble machine. And perhaps he wanted to amuse Wilson, too; she's certainly musical enough to have gotten what he was up to.

Right.

As fate would have it, I have a copy of "Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings On Art" -- a big, fat book that weighs a ton even in paperback -- and he eventually does a big though invisible (as in, he doesn't say why) turnabout on Matisse. In 1911, writing about Fry's "Manet and the Post Impressionists" show, Sickert (who knew many of the Impressionists and Post Impressionists quite well and was regarded by them as an artistic comrade in arms) really goes off on Matisse (though Fry is the target behind the target): "Matisse has all the worst art-school tricks. Just a dashing hint of anatomy is obtruded; and you will find a line separating the light from the shade.... The instinct of self-preservation. conscious or unconscious, must have dictated to him that this slickness of empty perfection, of a poor order, would never make its mark. So we have wilful deformations, wilful distortions, either the glutei maximi or the abdomen inflated like a balloon, or pectorals like hat-pegs. These distortions arrest if they do not please...." In 1913, it's still "the empty sillinesses of Monsieur Matisse." Then, in 1924: "Matisse ... is a great painter, as his exquisite view of an avenue from inside a motor[car] proves. The delicious window at Nice is a motive [i.e. motif] that he has made a classic. These things are important pictures -- infinity represented with the greatest economy of means -- stable decorations, eternally alive." No intervening indication of what might have brought about this change of heart, and Sickert was writing professionally about art almost all the time.

Thanks, Sidewinder. Very interesting.

Some Sickert images: http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/exhibitions/2007/sickert/index.shtml

certain jazz musicians. Writing in 1924 about a book of the drawings of Jacques Callot, Sickert says: "Modern etchers who imitate Callot are ipso facto invariably beneath critical consideration, if only because, if they were any good, they would be inventing a new manner for some other goose to imitate." Sickert BTW was one hell of painter. The belief -- most recently put forward in a book by mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell -- that Sickert was Jack the Ripper is demonstrably false. While Sickert was a man of significant oddity who painted striking and arguably quite morbid scenes of prostitutes and their clients, he was in France when the Jack the Ripper murders took place.

Crosby and Garland duetting

Allen: Hines IMO would not have been an ideal (or perhaps even a satisfactory) accompanist for Rushing -- too aggressive. I'd prefer, say, Sir Charles Thompson or Nat Pierce's neo-Basie-isms or the way Dick Cary plays behind Rushing on the all-round excellent "Eddie Condon in Japan" (Chiarascuro) from 1964. Cary might be the best point of comparison to Frishberg, albeit Cary is much farther down in the mix, because they're working in the same general style but Cary's sense of light and shade and swing, when and when not to step forward, seems to me much superior. Also, doesn't Frishberg sound rather numb-fingered on his "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" solo? Which reminds me, another thing I don't like about the "The You and Me That Used To Be" date is, by and large, Mel Lewis. Like too many more or less modern drummers who find themselves in a mainstream context with specific '30s material to work with, Lewis goes into a neo-"old-timey" bag, with (in particular) stiff, leaden backbeats. Hey, it's just music, Mel -- let it swing. A comparison with the lovely flow of Cliff Leeman (a drummer who actually was active in that era) on that Condon album is striking in this respect. Leeman was in fine form on the great Atlantic Joe Turner LP with Lawrence Brown and Pete Brown -- a model of how to pay tribute to the jazz-blues past while keeping things wholly alive and alert in the present. BTW, one of the goofiest examples of a talented modern drummer going rogue on a mainstream date was the admittedly young Andrew Cyrille on Coleman Hawkins' "The Hawk Relaxes" (Moodsville) from 1961. Apparently feeling that he was backing an old guy, Cyrille plays in a stiff, simplistic manner that might have been thought arch at a tea dance. It's so damn easy to get these things wrong and yet not that hard to get them right. The producer just has to make good choices and use his ears.

Lacking the advantage of the room sound created by the Rudy's mens' room's natural acoustics and speakers, I nevertheless gladly present to you, replete with Joe Comfort's bass lines (if it wasn't Comfort, oh well, it was still right in there): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kys-5tRDjy8 Bounce a-PLENTY! Nope, Red Callender -- same difference, though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Winter_Romance#Complete_Musical_Credits

I don't think the LP sounds too good either. Schlitten didn't get a good sound on that session, period (imo). Too dry, too "in your face", no room/space in the sound. As it happens, I picked up an unopened LP copy today. I agree with Jim's characterization of the sound there, but agree with Allen IIRC that the CD sounded much worse. The horns are in fine form, especially Zoot and Al; Rushing sounds a little weary and/or less buoyant than usual to me, certainly not as ebullient as he was on the Brubeck date some twelve years before this (Rushing only had a year left to live when he made "The You and Me That Used To Be"). Aside from the engineering, the big problem for me is pianist-bandleader Dave Frishberg, who almost drowns Rushing in intrusive, old-timey piano cliches, which Frishberg often doesn't even get right grammatically (e.g. you don't play full-bore stride behind a vocalist [and Frishberg's stride is rather oafish in itself]; overall he sounds like a hotel-band pianist's idea of Sammy Price). By contrast, Brubeck sounds fairly sensitive to what Rushing is doing; at least he tries not to step on Rushing's toes.

Estimated this morning -- 4,500 LPs, 6,500 CDs, jazz and classical. And I got rid of about half my classical LPs two years ago. But then I got started in 1955.

Before the advent of CDs, I did count my LPs and there were at least 4,000, jazz and classical, perhaps a good deal more, Over the years many of those were replaced by CDs and let go, but you've got to hold onto any jazz LP you like that isn't on CD and some classical LPs (e.g. IIRC Jochum's "Abduction From The Sergalio") for the same reason. Where I cleaned house a lot was weeding out multiple versions of many (but not all) classical works and deciding that some things I was probably never going to listen to again.