Larry Kart

When those men were in their prime(s), the sound of Hubbard, Gordon, Blakey, Rollins, Silver etc. wasn't a "traditional sound" in the sense you seem to mean. It was their sound, though it certainly didn't come from nowhere. What I want from any "in the tradition" player of today is the same sense of personal expression/my sound inventiveness that I used to get as a matter of course from the players mentioned above and many more. I don't hear it in a lot of them, but Grant Stewart is one who comes to mind. Otherwise, it is getting close to Jim Cullum time -- more or less a style, not so much a matter of personal expression/inventiveness. Also, wasn't the hard bop style built on the latter principle far more than a lot of earlier attractive jazz styles were? A nice re-creation of, say, the ensemble sound of the Hubbard-Shorter-Fuller edition of the Jazz Messengers without soloists of that quality and individuality (at least in terms of aspiration) would be kind of pointless IMO. As for Kevin's claim that Organissimo the band is "traditional" in the Jim Cullum sense -- that's not what I hear.

A fair bit of competition, but Gene Ammons' "Five O'Clock Whistle" from the album "Up Tight" (OJC)-- just one shapely swinging melody after another. What a player.

Better tell it now 'cause I'm going to watch a DVD. Trombonist gets a last-minute call to sub on a New Year's Eve gig. Afterwards the leader comes up to him and says, "Man, thanks for making it. You sightread the charts perfectly, and your solo spots were really creative. I was very impressed, and I'd like you to play the gig next year." Trombonist says: "Great. Can I leave my horn?"

Paul no doubt knows the arguably classic New Year's Eve gig trombonist story -- as do many others here, I'm sure. If pressed, I will tell it.

I think his MGM date , Five O'Clock Shadows has a better rhythm section , and is also more obscure . Don't know that one; who's on bass and drums? I also like his 1995 trio album "Yeah!" (with Chuck Berghofer and Nick Martinis) on V.S.O.P. Jolly picked nice seldom-done tunes -- e.g. on "Yeah!" Horace's title piece, George Wallington's "Variations," Al Cohn's "Ah-Moore," Zoot's "The Red Door" (familiar from numerous performances by the composer but not a piano trio item), and Shorty Rogers's "Diablo's Dance." Also, on "When Lights Are Low," there's a ridiculously swift, locked-in version of "Whistle While You Work" that is as cartoonishly amusing as it is hip.

Not sure what you mean by "quaint," 'cause I think the VV list beats the hell out of the ones at Downbeat and the other jazz rags. My only complaint is the lack of recognition of some great sounds that came from Chicago this past year. Sure, Vonski, Baba Fred, and Nicole Mitchell made the top 50, but where are Josh Berman (Old Idea), Jason Adasiewicz (Varmint), or James Falzone (Tea Music)? I'll tell you where - they're on Larry's list! And where might one find Larry's list? Nevermind. Also, through the link to the VV Jazz Poll results in my earlier post, one can find links to each voter's ballot, Francis Davis's introductory piece, etc.

Not sure what you mean by "quaint," 'cause I think the VV list beats the hell out of the ones at Downbeat and the other jazz rags. My only complaint is the lack of recognition of some great sounds that came from Chicago this past year. Sure, Vonski, Baba Fred, and Nicole Mitchell made the top 50, but where are Josh Berman (Old Idea), Jason Adasiewicz (Varmint), or James Falzone (Tea Music)? I'll tell you where - they're on Larry's list! "Old Idea" and "Varmint" are on the lists of some other people who voted in the VV poll. Not sure about "Tea Music."

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-12-29/music/2009-voice-jazz-critics-poll-the-results/ For the second year in a row, my record remains perfect; nothing I've voted for has made the Top 10.

Interviewer asks Shelly Manne: Have you ever gone into the studio and had someone say, "I want you to sound like the guy who did the drums on ... "? Shelly Manne: I did a date with Jimmy Bowen, the song was "Fever." I had never worked with Jim, but I had made the original record of "Fever" with Peggy Lee. It actually said on my part, "play like Shelly Manne." So I played it just like I played it originally. The producer stormed out of the control room, walked over to me and and said "can't you read English? .. it says "play like Shelly Manne". When I told him I was Shelly Manne, he turned around and went back into the booth......... ........ I think he's selling cars now.

I agree on the John Williams compilation. (Williams is of course not be confused with the film and TV composer, who recorded as a jazz pianist in the late '50s on the West Coast under his given name John Towner.) BTW, our John Williams eventually moved to Hollywood, Florida, where he became a longtime public official and eventually had a park named after him: http://www.hollywoodfl.org/parks_rec/northwest_parks.htm

Randy Weston -- Piano A-La-Mode (Jubilee); now part of the Mosaic Select Pete Jolly -- When Lights Are Low (RCA) The trio side of Duke Jordan's Trio and Quintet (Signal)

Great album, but it's a quartet in numbers, concept, and execution -- Attila Zoller being handsomely present.

I take your point about "a good amount of youngish tenor players who listened/studied [branford] intently," but has jazz come to a place where one can be "a terrific player" and be "almost recognizable"? (My emphasis.) It's been my experience over the years, and my assumption (based on that experience) that perhaps excepting figures who worked almost exclusively in ensemble settings (e.g. lead trumpeters, lead alto players, etc.) in jazz every terrific player was readily recognizable as that particular player, though of course not every readily recognizable player was terrific. yeah - oops. note the time of my edit in that posting you quoted (before your response). you must've been responding while i was fixing my mistake in my post: omitting the word "instantly" before recognizable. that's a funny coincidence. anyway, i think bran is recognizable but it may take me a few bars. hence, almost instantly. i certainly don't think he's as distinct as a hodges or rollins, but for me that doesn't discount anyone from being a possible influence or a terrific player. there are gradations... Eerie that I stepped in just as you were inserting "instantly."

Yes -- without stereo (and without Kenny Washington's excellent, detailed liner notes) it might be tricky to sort out some of what was going here.

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

I take your point about "a good amount of youngish tenor players who listened/studied [branford] intently," but has jazz come to a place where one can be "a terrific player" and be "almost recognizable"? (My emphasis.) It's been my experience over the years, and my assumption (based on that experience) that perhaps excepting figures who worked almost exclusively in ensemble settings (e.g. lead trumpeters, lead alto players, etc.) in jazz every terrific player was readily recognizable as that particular player, though of course not every readily recognizable player was terrific.

Circulated among collectors - for free - over the last few years...great music. Any comment on this Amazon comment?: "This CD, like several others that have appeared recently are wonderful historical documents of rare performances by some of my all-time favorite jazz artists. However,like the recent ones featuring Clifford Brown at the Cotton Club and the one-of-a-kind home recording of Clifford Brown with Eric Dolphy, it is marred by that fact that the music plays back at least 1/2 step above proper pitch and sometimes more...." (my emphasis)

http://www.amazon.com/Drums-Around-Corner-Art-Blakey/dp/B00001ZSXM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1261770047&sr=1-1 Can't believe that I listened to this album for the first time last night and didn't even know about it until a few days ago -- it's superb and has a flavor all its own. Personnel is Blakey, Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons, Jymie Merritt and ... Roy Haynes, Philly Joe Jones, and Ray Barretto! Obviously in the vein of "Orgy in Rhythm" et al. , the date is in one sense more jazzlike in focus (only one non-traps drummer). In another sense though this allows almost all of the frequent exotic colorations (mallets, even tympani) and rhythms to be generated by Haynes, Jones, and Blakey, which is all for the best in several ways -- first because they are the compatible percussion masters they are, second because they know that this is a meeting of masters alone and seem to be excited by (or at least highly interested in) what's going to occur. In any case, the atmosphere is electric and the mood is perforce a bit experimental, e.g. the15-plus minute version of "Moose the Mooche" begins with the four drummers "rhythmically playing the melody," as Kenny Washington puts it in his excellent liner notes -- not exactly a common thing to do, even for one drummer, and to hear Blakey, PJJ, Haynes, and Barretto work this out and make it work is something else. (It should be said BTW that Lee Morgan is on fire on this date.) I would guess that this was extremely challenging date for RVG to engineer (it was recorded at Manhattan Towers because, I assume, three drum kits would have been too much for RVG's Hackensack studio to handle), and sound quality is all one could wish for. As for mood , that seems to me to be (as I said above) experimental and questing to a quite unusual degree for a date of this time, Nov. 1958. Maybe it's my imagination, but the prominence of percussive information/intensity in a horn-plus-rhythm format virtually forecasts the feel of the vintage Impulse Coltrane Quartet, which was a fair bit down the road. As for egos, Haynes seems a bit separate from the other three in his crackling brilliance, Barretto understands that he's not part of any competition but just tastily plays fine stuff, while PJJ and Blakey do go at each other at times I think, in part because they're both in the right channel and Haynes and Barretto are in the left. On the other hand, no one does anything that's merely flashy -- going back to the experimental atmosphere that I think I detect, I'd guess that virtually all the way through no one was quite sure how things were going to work out or come off, and that they found this exciting. Finally though it seems quite clear that as loose (even wild) as thing are at times, Blakey is the undoubted leader. For one thing, the idea of the percussion-based ensemble obviously was dear to his heart; for another (and this I can only imagine) what the heck must it have been like to be Blakey (or PJJ or Haynes, for that matter), and know that your own best thoughts were going to be responded to by those other two guys? Kind of stimulating, no? Also, there are two fine duo tracks here, with Paul Chambers and Blakey, that were recorded on the same day as Sonny Clark's "My Conception" -- March, 29, 1959.

Here's a link to the NY Times obit: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/arts/television/22stang.html

Hey, guys -- sorry for screwing up this thread by substituting an inactive link (though you can still find the Stang obit by putting his name in the LA Times search box) and by somehow eliminating Jim's post, but this whole mess happened because I was ineptly trying to correct the thread-starter's not paying attention to board rules. We don't post entire copyrighted articles here, even if we also post a link to the original. A few sentences, then the link, and that's it. Sorry again, but nothing would have happened if the thing had been done right in the first place.

Wheels within wheels here, so bear with me. Yesterday I picked up an interesting Getz CD on (sorry) one of those European pirate labels , Gambit -- seven nice, decently recorded tracks with the Burton, Gene Cherico, Joe Hunt quartet from a Vancouver radio studio broadcast from 1965, three longish, not very well-recorded tracks from Newport 1961, with Steve Kuhn, Scott LaFaro, and Roy Haynes (LaFaro's last recording), and two tracks ("Four Brothers" and "Early Autumn") by a Getz-led big band at the Apollo Theatre in 1950. Personnel on the big band is promising (e.g. other saxes are Zoot, Don Lanphere, and Mulligan, drummer is Haynes), but those tracks are just reprises of the Herman charts, though there's a tasty Billy Taylor piano solo on "Early Autumn" in the spot where Terry Gibbs plays a vibes solo on the Capitol recording. The main reason I mention this, though, is that one of the Newport tracks is a striking tune that Getz announces as Alec Wilder's "Where Do You Go?" (recorded by Sinatra on the album "No One Cares") and takes medium-up rather than as a ballad. And the opening of the tune sounded a fair bit like "Joy Spring" to me. (It would have been nice if the Newport material had been better recorded -- the whole band was in top form, but you can't hear LaFaro much except when he's soloing, and Kuhn's sound breaks up a bit. On the other hand, on "Airegin" one can hear enough of Haynes to be fairly well astonished.) So here's the interesting part. Not having a copy of "No One Cares" and only able to listen to brief clips of Sinatra's and other performances on the Interent, I soon realized that what Getz played at Newport was not that Alec Wilder song. So what was it? Then I figured it out, and is the answer ever strange. I had the feeling that what Getz played was not a song-with-lyrics song but a jazz instrumental, albeit a lyrical one. Thinking of Stan's quintet with Raney, which played a good many originals, I thought, "Hmm -- Gigi Gryce?" And damned if it isn't Gryce's "Wildwood"! Now, Stan at Newport does announce the tune as Alec Wilder's "Where Do You Go?," so it's not just a labeling error. Did Stan confuse "Wildwood" and "Wilder" in his mind and just throw in the title of that Wilder song from Lord knows where? Also, what of the possible passing resemblance between "Wildwood" and "Joy Spring"? If so, "Wildwood" almost certainly came first, and Gryce and Clifford were friends.

I'm halfway through the newish LaFaro biography written by his younger sister Helene LaFaro-Fernandez, "Jade Visions," and despite what one might expect (his sister?), it's quite good so far. She and Scott were very close apparently, she was on or around the scene enough back then to get the flavor of things, has talked to a lot of the right people, and just has a lot of soul. Scott's intense drive toward perfection comes through quite clearly; he would practice all day if he could, then play the gig and come back and practice some more. One nice scene, related by Scott's girlfriend of the time, Suzanne Stewart, is when Scott is on the road with the Buddy Morrow band in Detroit in Feb. 1956 (Stewart was the band's vocalist), and the MJQ happened to be staying at the same hotel. Percy Heath walks by Scott's room, hears him practicing, knocks on the door and says, "If you're going to go to all that trouble, man, why not play guitar?" Scott replies, "Because bass is my instrument." Several months later the Morrow band was in Memphis, and it was suffocatingly hot. Stewart urged Scott to join her in the hotel swimming pool. He begged off, saying, "I can't, I've got some good callus going." Link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_12?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=jade+visions+the+life+and+music+of+scott+lafaro&sprefix=jade+visions

Pickens and Mance would certainly qualify. Grey can function in that style but came along well after the era when hardbop was an urgently "present" music in Chicago, which is what I think David has in mind as the organizing principle for the show. A guy who I'm pretty sure came to Chicago after the city's hardbop era but who spent a lot of time there, was a significant figure on the scene, and who certainly fits in stylistically would be tenorman Lynn Halliday, whose at times erratic but at best striking work can be found on several Delmark albums. BTW, in that new coffee table book about photographer W. Eugene Smith's NYC jazz loft, which is put together quite scrappily IMO, one startlingly intense passage is a transcription of a 1961 or '62 conversation between Halliday and his friend Sonny Clark (Smith had tape machines running in the loft all the time, recording just about everything), whom Halliday fears has just taken enough heroin to kill himself. It seems quite clear from what is being said that if Halliday and his girlfriend hadn't been there, Clark would have died on that night rather than (of related causes) on Jan. 13, 1963. Link to the W. Eugene Smith Jazz Loft book: http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Loft-Project-Photographs-1957-1965/dp/0307267091/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261531183&sr=1-1

The Gaia (or Gaia-ish) idea "that the fertile earth itself is female, nurturing mankind," does seem to have links with so-called "ecofeminism": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofeminism If it doesn't, that's cool too.

Saw it yesterday, in 3-D. Been thinking about what I thought. First take is that I accepted from the first the alien or avatar lead characters as characters, not special-effects creations, especially the female lead; for me, that counted a great deal. Second take is that my attention never really wandered, although the whole Gaia (sp?) basis of the alien civilization seemed familiar bordering on the cheesy -- Cameron as male feminist? Third take is that Sigourney Weaver is a treat; her performance/presence helps a lot. Fourth take is that the avatar entertains the hope that somehow he can mediate between the humans and the aliens for far too long. But, basically, it passed the Harry Cohn test. The 3-D, as others have said, is not obtrusive, but as someone who wears regular glasses, I think I might have liked it as well or better without the 3-D; I adjusted for the most part to the 3-D glasses but became conscious of them at times, felt at once that I should be closer up or farther back.