Larry Kart

OK, I've got to shut down the computer now. See you all in a week or so.

Well, yeah, of course, but if all I get is a "pretty melody" or "interesting harmony", without the sense that it's being driven by the pulse, the I get the sense that I'm expected to be a passive observer who's supposed to be blown away (or at least "impressed") by how.....superb it all is. It's like, would you rather "look at" life or get all up in it to one degree or another? I don't understand why a melody or a harmony that isn't being "driven" by the pulse but instead is in open dialogue with it has to be a merely "pretty" melody or a merely "interesting" harmony -- and merely seems to be what you mean by your use of "pretty," "interesting," "passive" and "be .... 'impressed' by how.....superb it all is." IIRC, you brought Bach into this a few posts back; check out the opening movement of the St. Matthew Passion, which certainly has a pulse to it but also (to an exceptional degree) that dialogic (top down, bottom up, sideways and slantwise) intertwining of melody, pulse, harmony, and tone color and tell me that it's aimed at "a passive observer who's supposed to be blown away..." etc. Just to be clear, I mention this is not because we're supposed to kowtow to Bach and the St. Matthew Passion for any culture vulture reasons but because it's amazing music. The spiritual aspect, too, but there YMMV. The music, though, I can't imagine you being cool toward.

To me, putting what's pretty much the same thought a bit differently, it's that melody and rhythm (and harmony, and let's not forget timbre/tone color) are always potentially talking to each other. Further, in jazz especially, any thought or act that's arguably melodic, rhythmic, etc. in origin/inspiration can be transformed into/flow into a thought/deed in one of the other "realms." In any case, if the pulse ain't in potentially open dialogue with some or all of the other realms, then my bottom will be moving with the bottom, but my mind soon will be wanting more. P.S. I'll be off-line for about the next ten days, maybe more. Major home-remodeling (paint the walls, refinish the wood floors, demolish and re-do the kitchen) calls for me to unhook the computer, etc. and take everything out of the back half of the house for starters. I could hook it up in the living room for a while, but that room probably will be stuffed with stuff until the back half of the house is done. Maybe I'll sign on at the library.

Nothing against Susan Boyle's performance, but about the song itself: I dreamed a dream some time ago About a song Uniquely nagging It sang of love, or God knows what, Please forgive the sound of gagging.

Great points above, but what I said was different: "if the rhythmic accents you'd make weren't outright dictated by the changes, they often were suggested by them -- the rhythmic implications of the harmonic framework were frequent and always potentially present." In fact, given the fluidity with which the various aspects of music can interact, it may have been as much a taste for more planed-down or "straighter" rhythms that led to more planed-down, "open" harmonic frameworks as it was the other way around.

I think the bassist is Nick Tountas. Willie is an amazing player! Right, Nick Tountas. Bruce Anderson, the pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Niles, Il., where these jazz vespers are held, is a very talented bassist himself. P.S. I mis-typed in my previous post. That video is from 2007.

Here's a rather stunning video of Pickens from 2002. The drummer is Rusty Jones; I've seen/heard the bassist before but don't recall his name: http://itsundertherotunda.blogspot.com/200...ie-pickens.html I have a nice 1987 Pickens Trio LP on Southport from 1987, "It's About Time!" with Wilber Campbell or Robert Shy on drums and Larry Gray or Dan Shapera on bass. Apparently it's been reissued on CD with extra tracks, with the original seven tracks misidentified as coming from 1997 (at least they say there are extra tracks on the CD, though I don't see them listed): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000009RM...me=&seller= Unfortunately the price probably is prohibitive.

Larry - the piece about Live at the Beehive in your book helped open my ears to things I hadn't heard in Max's playing. Thanks. Very satisfying to hear that.

"Live at the Beehive" and "Max Roach + Four" are two that come to mind.

Interesting point and way to put it. What I mean is it's a less 'loping' 8th note, and maybe straighter. Closer to a Latin feel almost. Tom Harrell does this too, to me---and I love both he and Woody. Tom is really closer to bebop than Woody to me, but that's a choice I think he perhaps made). I think it has to do with the time they came up in, a different approach to swing perhaps, possibly b/c of rock/funk/R&B influences that weren't around as much in the 40s-60s. Sweets Edison perceived 8th notes from a different point of view IMO. Woody, Tom, Joe Hen., and other great recent players came of age in the 60s-70s. They did different type gigs and were exposed to different type time feels possibly. If I understand what you're referring to, and I think I do, my guess is this change came about from playing more often on more or less modal material versus tunes of the Standards era and originals that had a similar fairly active style of harmonic movement. In the latter two cases, if the rhythmic accents you'd make weren't outright dictated by the changes, they often were suggested by them -- the rhythmic implications of the harmonic framework were frequent and always potentially present. In more or less modal settings, that was much less the case (harmonic events being less frequent and more ambiguous) and one tended to lay a "burning" rhythmically straighter line on top of what was a much more planed-down harmonic backdrop that dictated, and/or suggested, rhythmic responses much less frequently, though one could argue that for some players such rhythmic suggestions as were there became in practive even more insistent, just of a different character and spaced further apart.

Interesting point and way to put it.

I think the 1963 Monk/Overton concert and recording was much more successful than the '59 one -- both in terms of writing and solo work (Steve Lacy and Thad Jones were present, in particular). The 1986 Chicago Jazz Festival re-creation of the '63 concert was fantastic. Art Lange comments on it thusly: The ’59 concert, as everyone knows, was a huge success; the recording (Riverside/OJC) is one of jazz’s greatest treasures. Overton subsequently worked with Monk on his Philharmonic Hall concert of December 1963 (available on Columbia), and a third (unrecorded?) performance in 1966 (Martin Williams’ down beat article “Rehearsing with Monk,” which chronicles a rehearsal for this concert, has been reprinted in both his Jazz Heritage [Oxford] and Jazz Masters In Transition [Da Capo] collections). On a personal note, my small link in this chain occurred in 1986 when, as a member of the Chicago Jazz Festival programming committee, I suggested we present a recreation of the Town Hall concert. I contacted trumpeter and score-scholar Don Sickler, who was in charge of the Monk estate and let us know that only the 1963 charts were available at that time. We put together as close an ensemble to that of the Philharmonic Hall concert as we could, with three-fourths of the saxophone section present – Charlie Rouse, Phil Woods, and Steve Lacy – along with trombonist Eddie Bert. We wanted to have Pepper Adams, who played in ’59 but not ’63, play the baritone sax part, but he was too ill to participate and in fact passed away two weeks after the festival. (If you’re curious to know, we had Mal Waldron in the piano chair.) Like Martin Williams, I was privy to a rehearsal, though never wrote about it – the commitment and enthusiasm of the musicians was certainly worth documenting, but several of the stories I heard in between run-throughs are better left unpublished. The next night, out in Grant Park at the free-to-the-public festival, I was emcee, and had to literally beg the stage manager not to cut off the performance at the appointed closing time – a big deal in heavily unionized Chicago – so that the band could conclude with “Four in One,” the hardest chart of all and the one they had sweated bullets over getting right in rehearsal. We went overtime; it was a phenomenal night. Me again: The baritone saxophonist in '86 was Howard Johnson IIRC. Also, I'll never forget the way the band lit into "Bye-Ya" that night. I was out on the lawn casually watching two kids move around to the music, and they almost buckled over with delight at the rhythmic play of the first four bars.

A friend pointed me to the "Old Jews Telling Jokes" website: http://www.oldjewstellingjokes.com/ He added that "it's a little alarming to learn that these 'old Jews' are roughly our age!" The ones he liked the best ("Fidelity," "Plumber," "Hospital," "Golf") are classics (and new to both of us), but the people-watching aspect is fun too.

I'm fond of the Overton-Teddy Charles-Oscar Pettiford all-Ellington trio album on Jubilee, "Three For Duke." Date: May 29, 1957 Location: NY Label: Jubilee Teddy Charles (ldr), Teddy Charles (vib), Hall Overton (p), Oscar Pettiford (b) a. JB902 Sherman Shuffle - 7:07 (Duke Ellington) b. JB903 Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me (Concerto For Cootie) - 5:06 (Duke Ellington, Bob Russell) c. JB904 Main Stem - 4:45 (Duke Ellington) d. JB905 The Mooche - 6:20 (Duke Ellington, Irving Mills) e. JB906 Don't Get Around Much Anymore (Never No Lament) - 5:57 (Duke Ellington, Bob Russell) f. JB907 Sophisticated Lady - 9:36 (Duke Ellington, Mitchell Parish, Irving Mills) Overton plays prototypical "arranger's piano" -- a bit stolid, not quite fluent/in the moment -- but his actual arranging ideas are fine, and Charles and especially Pettiford are in top form. Wish I had a clean copy; my old LP is noisy. Fresh Sound may get around to it, if they haven't already.

Zarchy plays very well on a number of Glenn Miller AAF transcriptions. That band BTW was a good deal better IMO than the earlier stateside Miller band that had all the hit records.

That's the Puma-Wayne story I remembered.

Hall Overton was born on Feb. 23, 1920, so he was six years older than his wife and only 52 when he died in 1972.

Finally got my hands on an electronic copy of my 1987 review of "Watchmen" the graphic novel. The review says less than I remember thinking about "Watchmen," but my heart was in the right place and the tone is properly (IMO) uncondescending: A COMIC BOOK AS GRIPPING AS DICKENS:[sPORTS FINAL, C Edition] Dec. 12, 1987 Reviewed by Larry Kart, a Tribune critic. Watchmen By Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Warner Books, 308 pages, $14.95 Given their undeniable power to arouse and amuse, comic books and comic strips are tempting targets for colonization. And from time to time, any number of would-be intellectuals have tried to claim the comics in the name of art-proclaiming that, with some new effort in the field, comics at last have "come of age," which usually means that one is about to encounter a comic that is willfully brutal or self-consciously hip. But "Watchmen," a comic-book novel created by two Englishmen, writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons, is the real thing-mind -- bendingly weird, to be sure, yet with the gripping narrative power that has been crucial to popular art ever since the days of Charles Dickens. The title beings are a group of real-life superheroes who emerged in the late 1930s. Inspired by the exploits of Superman and The Shadow, these "costumed adventurers" (to use the phrase favored by their unofficial leader, Hollis Mason, alias the Nite Owl) began to roam the streets in search of evildoers, doing a good job of it and becoming famous to boot. But Nite Owl, The Comedian, Mothman, Silk Spectre, Captain Metropolis, Dollar Bill and the rest began to lose favor after the war. And even though they gave rise to a second generation of crime fighters--Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias and so forth--in the 1970s, their brand of vigilante justice finally was banned by law. So at the beginning of "Watchmen," all the superheros are retired, dead or insane, except for "the world's smartest man," Ozymandias, who heads an entertainment empire; the atomic Dr. Manhattan, whose vast powers are our chief means of national defense; and the mentally unbalanced Rorschach, who never has given up the old fight. Then, without apparent motive, The Comedian is murdered; and Dr. Manhattan, accused of causing cancer in those who have come into contact with him, angrily teleports himself to Mars, leaving the United States open to Soviet nuclear attack. Obviously something is up, and only the remaining superheroes can set things aright. If that sounds conventional so far, rest assured that "Watchmen" has some tricks up its sleeve. Self-reflexive from the first, with real-life superheroes arising from comic-book inventions, the story keeps turning back on itself, deepening the psychological and social realism of Moore and Gibbons' made-up world until, caught up in their breathless plotting, one begins to wonder whether the world we actually inhabit is any less like a comic book than the one they depict. Exciting as can be, "Watchmen" is a disturbing vision as well. Its creators have a sure sense of just how much pain and fear the reader is willing to admit, and they have a magical grip on the need to bring their tale to a satisfying, full-chord conclusion. Indeed that may be the chief source of the uneasiness that Moore and Gibbons evoke, for so much genuine anxiety runs through their tale that one looks forward to its resolution with mingled hope and dread. In any case, "Watchmen" really works. But think twice before you show it to your kids.

An e-mail I sent this morning that might as well go here, too: [bilko] was one of my favorite shows at the time. In addidtion to Bilko himself, Pvt. Doberman especially fascinated me. I think that was for at least three reasons -- Maurice Grofield was very good in the part, but I was kind of appalled /fascinated that a man who liked and acted like that had chosen a life in which the way he looked and acted was put on display. Finally, of course, there was the fact that in real life (and IIRC to some extent in the show, at times), this display of "lowness" (for want of a better term) led to success. How about a version of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" with Grofield/Doberman playing the guy who wakes up transformed into a dung beetle? On the other hand, well-played though the part probably was, I recall not having a taste for the work of Joe E. Ross as the mess sergeant, nor for his battles with his wife. By contrast, I found the battles between Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca playing husband and wife on TV to be revealing and hilarous. (I saw Coca do a Neil Simon play at a local dinner theater in the late '70s or early '80s; she was at least as funny as she had been on TV.) The reactions we have when we're kids or adolescents to TV shows are a virtual Rorschach test. P.S. Wikipedia: "Phil Silvers ... in his 1973 autobiography, said of Grofield that he had a pomposity and condescension off-screen, behaving 'like Clark Gable playing a fat man.'"

As do I! First and second in the Down Beat poll.

But is the use of 100 mg. of Valium per day (unless one somehow gets it for free or for next to that) compatible with "living in severe poverty"? Don't know myself, just wondering what Valium cost back then.

I believe that Leif Bo Peterson is a serious scholar. Also, the price of the Navarro biography, hefty though it may be, seems to be in line with those of other Scarecrow Press titles and those of would-be substantial books on music from academic presses.

The thing I love about you, Allen, is that I never know whether you're calling me a moron or not. But no worry: I don't much care. (The preceding message is written 100% light-heartedly. I respect Mr. Lowe's opinions; terms like "bone-frying" reveal my poor command of the English language...or whichever language it is he speaks. As an aside, I was a small contributor to the addition of a new marker for Navarro's grave. I don't think that his bones were fried/creamated.) Allen's elliptical remark was a reference to this recent thread: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=51128 which I started. Just to be clear, when Bob Zieff said the words that Jack Chambers understood to be "I wasn't a bone-fried bopster," what Zieff actually said was "I wasn't a bona-fide bopster."

Just to be clear, the passage about Hawkins that Drew Peacock just quoted from an old post of mine is not my work but a passage from Terry Martin's early 1960s Jazz Monthly essay "Coleman Hawkins and Jazz Romanticism."

Foolishly trying to be onomatopoeic: (rhythm section) Mop-mop ... bump-diddly-yah Mop-mop ... bump-diddly-yah Mop-mop ... bump-diddly-yah Mop-mop ... bump-diddly-yah (single piano chord, then horns plus rhythm) Bump ... dah-dah-dah-dah/dah-dah-dah-dah/diddly-a-dah Dah-dah-dah-dah/dah-dah-dah-dah/diddly-a-dah It's the horns plus rhythm part I'm thinking of. I listened to clips from "El Amor Brujo" and didn't hear this.