Larry Kart

For my taste, Stewart's Rollins resemblance comes and goes. There are times when I hear very specific Rollins-esque "chortles" and the like, and this turns me off because those gestures seem to me not only to be unique to Rollins but also effusions into the music of Rollins' personality, in-passing dramatizations of his particular quirks (if that's the right word) as a human being. And to my mind that's two somewhat different things. An analogy might be Rex Stewart's half-valve techniques. That he popularized that way of playing and put his own personal, expressive stamp on it doesn't mean that he's the only one who can use half-valve effects, but if you do play that way in the coy, impish, waggish manner that Stewart did, it sounds like the musical equivalent of Frank Gorshin doing a Jimmy Cagney impression. Otherwise, though, when I hear Stewart I mostly hear a Rollins-inspired player who is making real, high-level, in-the-moment contact with the material, not someone who is dipping into an anthology of Rollins licks. I'm not saying that my judgment here is infallible, but I am wary of overt emulators in general and think I am alert to the differences. Stewart seems to me to be his own man in much the same way that the late Barney Wilen (surely Rollins-inspired to a considerable degree) finally was Barney Wilen.

Assuming that Jim has not lost it entirely (which seems unlikely), is there a passing point of resemblance between the two tunes? I think there is. Bohemia After Dark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0mDBT4kRNc Johnny: "Bo-DOO ... bo-DEE-dah-dah. Bohemia (roughly): Bo-doo-DOO-doo-dah-dah-DEE-dah. Pardon my musical illiteracy, but it's the "DEE-dah" interval and the way it's accented, no?

Ira Gitler's liner notes to "Fuerst Set" explains things pretty clearly, though Farlow and Vinnie Burke disagree about whether they played after dinner or after a gig. "Back in the Forties," Gitler writes, "[Williams] sang with the Claude Thornhill orchestra (it was at this time that he and Ed Fuerst [in whose Manhattan apartment the session was held] met, and in 1949 he led his own band which mixed his romantic balladry with a jazz book that featured tenor players like Brew Moore, Zoot Sims, and Buddy Arnold at various times." Farlow, quoted by Gitler, amplifies: "[Ed] invited myself and my wife to dinner with Gene Williams. We had dinner and then we played. Eddie and Vinnie came up after dinner. It was after we [Farlow, Burke, and Costa] had played a couple of engagements at the Composer. Burke told Gitler that they got together at Fuerst's fairly often around 4 a.m., after playing at the Composer, but concedes that these recordings might have made after dinner, as Farlow recalled. Gitler adds that Williams was "well known to New York musicians in the Sixties as their favorite bartender when he was pouring the shots at hangouts like Junior's and Charlie's." Williams, it would seem, was just one of the guys. Also, it's not like jazz musicians only associated with "jazz" singers.

More on The Window, with images: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/55/window.php Paul Stewart, from the film:

"The Window" (1949) -- starring Bobby Driscoll, directed by Ted Tetzlaff, based on a story by Cornell Woolrich. Saw it at age seven, and it fried my little brain. Here's an account of what happens, borrowed and slightly modified from that of another similarly traumatized guy: One of the movies that made a big impression on me was The Window. In the story, a young boy (Driscoll) who is known for telling tall tales climbs up the fire escape to sleep outside on a hot New York night. He wakes up in the middle of the night, looks inside the window of his upstairs’ neighbor’s apartment, and witnesses a murder. The boy tells his parents (Arthur Kennedy and Barbara Hale) and the police, but nobody will believe him. His parents take him upstairs to apologize to the neighbors (Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman). They realize the kid knows, and he must be silenced. The fear it put in the pit of my stomach -- the image of Stewart's prematurely grey hair, black bushy eyebrows, sharp-featured face, and semi-crazed penetrating eyes -- was quite something.

Cymbalgroove -- We're both admirers of Grant Stewart. But what makes Stewart special is not (or not just) the that he's a bebopper (actually, I'd say he was a hard-bop inclined and inspired player, out of Rollins and Mobley, if anything) but that what Stewart plays is full of that rare and difficult-to-quantify sense of nowness and individuality, of real melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic choices being made in real time, that we like to think we recognize when we hear it (though I know at least one knowledgable listener who don't hear that in Stewart, and others who do). Several players who have been mentioned here as being Stewart's like-minded (in terms of style) musical peers strike me as fluent licks players more or less, and nothing I'm going to say is likely to convince their admirers that there a real difference involved here (nor are they likely to convince me that there isn't). But, again, I hope we can agree that judgments of the worth of individual players should be based not just on the fact that a particular player is working in (if that's the way to put it) a style that we find attractive, familiar, or comfortable but primarily on the nature and intensity of the contact that player is making with the musical-emotional material involved. After all, making that sort of intense, individual, "in-the-now" contact is what the players who made any "style" of music-making come to life in the first place did as a matter of course. Don't see why we should settle for anything less.

Do piranhas feed on piranhas?

That's what I thought probably was going on. Also -- and it may amount to the same thing -- "lye(h) if I say I won't" is much more flowing and linear rhythmically than "liar if I say I won't."

In a related vein, now that I've looked at the lyrics for "Billie's Blues," I have a question about the second stanza: I've been your slave, baby Ever since I've been your babe I've been your slave Ever since I've been your babe But before I'll be your dog I'll see you in your grave What is the distinction between being his "slave" and his "dog," and why is the gulf between the former and the latter such that before she'll be his "dog" she'll see him "in his grave"?

Thanks -- that must be it, and I just misheard "liar" as "lie" all these years.

Last night a fragment from a blues lyric began to run through my head, and I couldn't recall where it came from -- a Joe Turner recording, perhaps? The line begins with a statement of some sort, probably an excuse or a promise aimed at an angry, jealous woman, followed by the phrase "I'm a lie if I say I won't" -- "lie" presumably meaning "liar," though I've always thought the singer, whoever it is, did sing "lie" instead of "liar." If so, the use of "lie" for "liar" is/was the source of much of the lyric's poetic power for me. But who was it? I'm aware that there might more than few recordings in which that line was sung, but it has to be a recording that I owned and probably still do have, so if there are multiple answers, I probably can nail down the one that imprinted that line in my brain.

Lots of Charquet and Co. videos ((at least twelve) are available on YouTube. Just search for "Charquet."

Info on this thread: about the still-active and excellent successor band to Charquet and Co., Le Petite Jazzband, also led by Morel. Also worthwhile is Morel's larger ensemble Les Rois de Foxtrot. Both bands' recordings are available on Stomp Off, all highly recommended. As the clips above show, this is not a typical revival band at all, at least not IMO.

Thanks to a kind publicist, I've just encountered four CDs by Fujii and her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura -- Zakopane (S. Fujii Orchestra Tokyo), Desert Ship (S. Fujii Ma-Do, a quartet with Tamura, a bassist and drummer); Gato Libre (a Tamura-led quartet, with Fujii on accordion, a bassist and guitarist), and First Meeting (a Tamura quartet, with Fujii, a guitarist and a drummer). Sampling the music so far, I'm impressed that each album/group has its own flavor and that the most "out" of the four, the wholly improvised First Meeting (Tamura says it's a "noise band") is so lucid. So far I'm least taken with the orchestral record -- the writing seemed a bit perfunctory and/or frame-like -- but that was after only two tracks out of eight. Ah, yes, the lovely and very effective Ann Braithwaite! She is one of the most consistent independent promoters in the business. Unlike many who basically promote anything they're paid to promote, Braithwaite & Katz seem to have a commitment to quality. They're also behind the superb Artifacts: Great Performances from 40 Years of Jazz at NEC disc. The Satoko Fujii/Natsuki Tamura discs arrived in the mail today and I'm champing at the bit to check 'em out. I swear the woman never sleeps! In 2006 she released CDs by four different big bands based in four different cities simultaneously, so this release package is kind of deja vu. Have listened to all of Desert Ship and most of Zakopane now. My second thoughts on Zakopane are a good bit more positive than my first ones -- nothing frame-like about the writing on "Zee" or the next three pieces -- and Desert Ship is excellent (that drummer!). I've said "lucid" before, and I hesitate to say this because I'm invoking a personal Holy of Holies, but the clarity/compactness/wit amidst very rapid shifts on the best of Desert Ship brings Roscoe Mitchell's The Little Suite to mind -- perhaps in part because Tamura sounds like he's listened to Lester Bowie.

Thanks to a kind publicist, I've just encountered four CDs by Fujii and her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura -- Zakopane (S. Fujii Orchestra Tokyo), Desert Ship (S. Fujii Ma-Do, a quartet with Tamura, a bassist and drummer); Gato Libre (a Tamura-led quartet, with Fujii on accordion, a bassist and guitarist), and First Meeting (a Tamura quartet, with Fujii, a guitarist and a drummer). Sampling the music so far, I'm impressed that each album/group has its own flavor and that the most "out" of the four, the wholly improvised First Meeting (Tamura says it's a "noise band") is so lucid. So far I'm least taken with the orchestral record -- the writing seemed a bit perfunctory and/or frame-like -- but that was after only two tracks out of eight.

Jack still posts on the Jazz West Coast board from time to time (within the last few weeks, IIRC), seems to be quite alert, certainly has retained his prickly sense of humor.

I also vaguely recall that this was a Jack Tracy project.

I'm sure this has been discussed before, here and elsewhere, but given that it's a recording on the Chicago-based Argo label, and further that it's unlikely that any big-name musicians of the time would have participated in such a jape (which surely was a low-budget affair -- a jazz comedy record, after all, and on Argo to boot), I believe that what I vaguely recall reading somewhere is the case: All the musicians involved were local Chicago guys whose names would ring a bell only if one were familiar with the Chicago scene of that time. Probably also they were jazz guys who did a good deal of studio work (Chicago was a big radio and TV jingle-industry center back then and for a good while thereafter), because the various musical "satires" involved, however broad and dumb they might be (haven't heard the record myself), would have called for a fair degree of game-like flexibility, both in terms of skills and temperament.

Excellent performances, wish they'd been longer.

Nice stuff. She's accompanied by Victor Feldman, Stan Levey, and (drum roll) Scott LaFaro.

I admire Jimmy Jones (he's in fine form on that Harry Edison "Swinger"/"Mr. Swinger" compilation, gets a lot of solo space) but about the "Ben Webster and Associates" date, I agree with Coleman Hawkins' biographer John Chilton, who wrote that "inspiration is sadly lacking" there, both on the part of horn soloists and IMO the rhythm section. The chunkiness of the rhythm section seems to stem from the rather square/too explicit comping of guitarist Les Spann. Doing a Freddie Green apparently was not Spann's thing; Jo Jones seems particularly frustrated at times with how things are going (or not going). Also, as Chilton points out, the tempo for "In A Mellow Tone" is rather loggy.

I remember him when he was Virgil Pumphrey.

Maneri wasn't Jewish. Another one: bassist Absalom Ben Shlomo. Abshalom Ben Shlomo is an alto saxophonist, no? Or is there an Abshalom and an Absalom?

Lennie is in fact a landsman, Larry. I interviewed him by phone while researching my book. Good to know that Mike -- thanks. But, funny, he doesn't sound Jewish.

Which one? Not the one whom we later know as Yusef Lateef.