Larry Kart

Jim -- Geez, I should have read past the headline. That stuff is unbelievable, right up there with the best of Bob and Ray, with a hint of Jonathan Winters.

I paid a visit to Frank on Wednesday, having stopped by the week before with Terry Martin, who was playing the major role in helping Frank out as much as that could be done at this point. (I live about 30 minutes from the nursing home where Frank was; for Terry it was about an hour-and-a-half up there and as much as two-and-a-half hours getting back. When my time comes, I hope there's someone who cares that much.) Though Frank was not in good shape physically, worse off this Wednesday than he had been the week before, I was surprised that he had gone downhill so rapidly from there. On the other hand, Frank definitely knew that there was no way back for him from where he was. Wednesday and the week before, Frank was still all there mentally -- remembering incidents from the fairly distant past with photographic detail and abundant, wry (sometimes caustic) wit. Lord, could he play. He loved "sheets of sound" Coltrane almost as much as he did Pee Wee; I have a tape I made (in the mid-1970s I think) of Frank rehearsing wtih pianist Bob Wright where, among other things, they play superbly Trane's "Lazy Bird" and Dameron's "If You Could See Me Now." On Wednesday one of the recordings Frank mentioned as a particular favorite was Trane's version of "You Leave Me Breathless." He also told a very Frank story about his encounter with Lester Young in 1957 in Pres's hotel room in (I think) Indianapolis, where Frank was playing at a club and Pres was in town with a non-JATP package tour. The drummer in the band Frank was part of, Buddy Smith, suggested that they pay Pres a visit after teh gig, and when they got there, Frank ("I'm shy," he said), hung back while the other guys gathered around Pres. Having noticed this bit of behavior, Pres beckoned Frank to come closer, addressing him softly as "long-distance man." Probably a meeting of kindred souls.

I kid you not: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituar...0,4775203.story

Speaking of very dry, a bit sick though accidental humor, check out the headline on this obit in today's Chicago Tribune: "Prolific knitter kept busy."

Picked up this two-CD set of material from two nights of a Salt Lake City gig (at a place called The Lagoon) in July 1956 for $7.98 at Half Price Books (it's on Storyville, issued in 2000 with the co-operation of the Herman estate). An annoncer is heard at odd moments, but it's not aircheck material; sound is excellent, better than a lot of studio recordings of the time, recording has to have been made in the hall, very vivid, good balance, almost a stereo spread. This particular edition of the Third Herd is in some respects unfamiliar to me; it may in fact not have made any commercial recordings. Gus Gustafson, drums, rather than Chuck Flores; Vince Guaraldi, piano; Victor Feldman, vibes; Jay Cameron, baritone; the three tenors are Kamuca, Bob Hardaway, and (tah-dah) ARNO MARSH, who gets a good deal of solo space and sounds excellent -- more flowing and/or less abrupt in his phrasing than he was in the '52-or-so edition of the Herd. Annotator Mark Gardner hears a lot of Wardell Gray in Arno here; I suspect that this was more a matter of kinship than influence. Perhaps Randissimo can comment on this. Also, as always, Bill Harris plays his ass off; his solo on "Bijou" here is not a re-creation of his solo on the famous record. Trumpets are John Coppola, Dick Collins, Burt Collins, Dud Harvey, and Bill Castagnino. Coppola (who I know of but don't recall hearing as a soloist before) gets most of the trumpet spots and sounds very good and individual, has a broad, rich Benny Bailey-like sound; probably Coppola dug Navarro and Freddie Webster. Burt Collins gets some spots too. Apparently only one solo from Dick Collins, who used to be the main trumpet soloist in an earlier edition of the Third Herd. If it's still available, this is definitely recommended if you like the Third Herd. Also, you can tell from the way the band sounds on these two nights that they could hear each other on the stand and were enjoying what they heard.

BTW, MG, I'm not saying that you need consciously to be aware of or brood about these details. But genuine hotness is made up of such things, such differences between this way to do it and that way, no matter how spontaneously or casually we take them in. If we don't notice them somehow, though, what have we got?

Well, my point was to try to describe with some precision what the difference was between one night when he was hot and one night when he was not. For instance, there may be a few ways for a major league ballplayer to hit a home run by accident (or there may not be any such ways), but I'm sure that there are many thousands of ways and reasons for a major league ballplayer to miss a pitch completely. Now if both things I've just said are so, and I'm interested in how people who hit successfully do it and how those who do not do it do not, then I want to look closely at just what's going on when things work out well and likewise when they do not. It's not like I'm a coach or anything, but just by chance I was about to post something elsewhere that stems directly from this way of looking at/responding to things, so now I'll post it here. It's about Horace Silver's comping on "The Milt Jackson Quartet" (OJC). In a rather quiet way for Horace -- whom one thinks of from the way he often backs soloists in his own groups as a very aggressive accompanist -- his playing behind Bags on this album, particularly on "My Funny Valentine," is so subtly suggestive-supportive that I'm filled with a blend of something like joy and awe. Further, as one might expect, the sense of collaboration here is so total that it's possible to get kind of choked up about what artistic and emotional heights this music can attain -- and this in a performance that one can take as pleasant background music if one isn't paying attention. I'm saying then that to detect and enjoy the heights when they're there, we probably need (in our various ways) to take fairly close notice of what's actually going on. Otherwise, how do we really know when someone is hot and when they're not? But then I guess that's where my home run analogy breaks down a bit. In baseball there's an obvious external sign of successful effort: the ball leaves the park. In jazz there's only the music-making itself, its functioning details.

Nobody as far as I can tell is saying anything negative here about Peterson that they didn't say here long before his death. His playing pro and con (and why pro or con) has been a lively topic here several times over the years. I think the nub of your complaint might the second word in the phrase "negative emotions." There are times (and I've been there myself) when expressing a negative thought is, for the person who does it or who feels it being done nearby, like letting something dark and potentially uncontrollable and pervasive slip out into the social/moral landscape. Obviously not a good thing when that happens, but while YMMV, I don't think that is what's happening here. Swtiching to OP as an accompanist, I ran across a somewhat strange and interesting test case/set of examples -- the album "Stan Getz and J.J. Johnson at the Opera House." Recorded "live" during the 1957 JATP tour, the performances on the original LP issue (recorded in mono) were not from the tour's Chicago Opera House concert of Sept. 29, 1957 but from its Oct. 7, 1957 concert at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Then the album was reissued on LP in the late '70s or early '80s, with the four (recorded in stereo) performances from the Opera House concert taking the place of the Shrine performances of the same four tunes, with one of Shrine performances remaining as before. The liner notes of this LP reissue claimed that the stereo Opera House performances were musically superior to the mono Shrine performances -- not so at all IMO, for reasons that in part have to do with OP's comping (BTW the rhythm section is the same on both dates: OP, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, and Connie Kay). Then the generously filled CD version came out in 1986, with all the material from both concerts, except for the Opera House version of "It Never Entered My Mind." To finally get to my point, on the three longish "blowing" tracks ("Billie's Bounce," "Crazy Rhythm," and "Blues in the Closet") the horns and the rhythm section are in inspired form at the Shrine, and not so hot at the Opera House. In part I think that Getz is the problem, at least initially -- on what could be the first piece from the Opera House concert (it leads off the CD), "Billie's Bounce," Getz sounds quite fragmented at times and probably for that reason goes on a fair bit too long in an attempt perhaps to get his legs beneath him. In part the problem might have been that things were being recorded in stereo there, which could have called for more separation among the players than was desirable musically. But one of the main problems with the Opera House blowing tracks is OP's comping. His choice of figures is much the same as on the galvanic Shrine performances, but time and again his comping falls not inside but to one side or the other of the soloists' phrasing; and when it's on the front side, it doesn't sound anticipatory (harmonically or rhythmically), just a bit out of phase. The feeling one gets here is that Getz and J.J. are riding a horse at top speed, and the horse (and thus the saddle beneath their butts) is not moving quite in rhythm with them, which serves to distract them some and saps their energy. By contrast, on the Shrine blowing tracks, OP, the rest of the rhythm section, and the soloists are thinking and feeling "one" right together, and the whole thing takes off. Another factor, though it could be cause or effect, is that all the Shrine blowing tracks (especially "Billie's Bounce") are swifter than their Opera House counterparts. Perhaps there's not enough evidence here to draw definite conclusions, but the unsual test-case nature of these performances -- same players, on tour together, recorded nine days apart -- does suggest pretty clearly to me that when OP's comping is not what it might be/should be, it is in large part because it's literally hanging a bit outside (fore and aft) the phrase shapes of the soloist, and again not in ways that anticipate or resolve the soloist's thinking.

Yes, that's me with the squeeze box in that cartoon. I was trying to sound like Mat Mathews. It did attract girls, but after the set I could never unhook and pack away the darn thing quickly enough.

Regarding some of what Big Beat Steve and EDC said above about Tatum -- Tatum was at best and above all a surreally witty virtuoso of harmonic thinking; the digital dexterity, rhythmic fluidity, and range of/control of touch were all essentially in the service of that. Fact is -- quoting a friend of mine and a great Tatum admirer -- most jazz fans don't really listen harmonically, not that much; thus they hear Tatum's speed and flourishes but tend not to get what he is actually up to. On this, take a look at Felicity Howlett's Tatum entry in Jazz Grove or even better her notes to the 2-LP Smithsonian Tatum set (if you can find it). That the same or similar complaints were made about both Tatum and OP's virtuosity doesn't prove that they were virtuosos of a similar kind. In terms of speed, maybe. In terms of range of touch, no. And in terms of subtlety of harmonic thought, and the centrality of that thought to the rest of each man's style, not even close, although IIRC there is some overtly Tatumesque OP on the MPS solo albums that's very tasty.

The reason for starting this thread was twofold: 1) Some people on the other thread were bothered by criticism there of a recently dead artist, so here we are now; those who don't want to hear this kind of talk have an easy option 2) Trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff among jazz artists, and within the career of a single jazz artist, seems like a fairly natural and arguably necessary thing to do, unless you're one of those "It's all good" people. Don't we all do a lot of that sorting out in the course of our lives as jazz fans? Now doing that in a public forum does add some stress and suggests that mere name-calling might be not a great idea. But are you suggesting that doubts about the value of OP's playing should now never be expressed, or that the subject of what his flaws as a jazz musician might be is of absolutely of no interest?

Actually -- and I know enough OP to suspect that this is true but have never sat down to do the necessary extensive research -- within seemingly not that broad stylisistic boundaries, there's a heck of a lot of variation in OP's recorded output IMO, though not having done the research, I'm not sure how it all breaks down. For instance, I was pleasantly surprised a while back by the CD repackaging of OP's Granz-era album of Basie material -- relaxed, inventive, relatively free from the mechanical bluesiness that drives some OP listeners from the room. For another, the famous Stratford Shakespearean Fest album deserves its fame. As I think Gunther Schuller said, it is a remarkable feat of small-combo orchestration and execution and a lot of visceral fun. Likewise, OP's famous early (I think JATP) trio performance of "Tenderly" with (I think) the Kessel version of the trio, much of it in OP's version of the locked-hands style, is a formidable, albeit worked-out feat of orchestration and execution that holds one's attention (at least it does mine) throughout. OP as an accompanist is where I'd really need to do careful research to sort out what I think is going on. My sense at the time was that after a certain point in his Granz house-pianist days, maybe 1957, he was a chugging drag on many dates, though many of those had enough going on otherwise to be overall pluses. On the other hand, I recall a fair number of Granz OP sideman dates from a year or two before this (the Hampton-DeFranco "Flying Home," most of the Jam Session series, etc.) and some things from later on (e.g. the Ella and Louis albums, the album with the OP Trio and Getz), where OP seems to me to be fresh, alert, energetic, and sensitive to what others were playing. About the downside of OP the accompanist, though, echo-ing something EDC said, compare the way Jimmy Rowles plays behind Ben Webster on Harry Edison's "Sweets" to the way OP plays behind Webster on any Granz session.

Ellington's childhood piano teacher was, indeed, Mrs. Marietta Clinkscales. See "The Duke Ellington Reader," p. 6. The line about "don't sit down at the piano after..." is just Ellington recycling an old joke, a la the one about the New York concert debut of some new piano virtuoso, say the young Horowitz. Rachmaninoff and Fritz Kreisler are seated in the front row, and after Horowitz rattles off a piece or two, Rachmaninoff says, "Is it getting hot in here?" To which Kreisler replies, "Not for violinists."

I could tell you more, but then, as they say, I'd have to kill you. Actually, you'd have to write a good and good-sized novel to attempt to capture Harriet. She was smart, could be quite imperious, had terrific instincts as an editor (was at once very down to earth and very romantic about the newspaper business), liked to try to run other people's lives and had some success at doing that, loved traditional jazz first (though her tastes were broad) and got along well with musicians of that generation or two (or three) in particular. She left the Tribune after she told higher-ups one too many times that she knew how to do their jobs better than they did; she then went to work for Universal Features (handling travel writers, comic strip artists, etc.). Haven't heard from or about her in a while, but I'm sure she's still motoring along at a good clip. She'd be about my age -- 65. I see a mention for her on the 'Net under "Harriet Choice Communications." That sounds about right.

A practical comment from the perspective of a former journalist: I hated writing obits of jazz musicians for several reasons. First, if it was someone whose work I loved, then the act of writing the obit (which almost always was a tense, deadline affair) would pretty much prevent me from feeling what I would have felt if, say, Basie or Hines or Monk had died and I hadn't had to write their obits. Second, while I always tried to put the career of the deceased musician in what seemed to me to be the proper perspective -- that is, say just what I would have said otherwise (in terms of information and estimate of musical worth by both myself and the jazz community at large, should there be a significant difference there) and not let the fact that the artist had just died turn the obit into an exercise in artistic inflation, breast-beating, etc. The problem there was that at my paper, and I'm sure at most papers, there was a general reluctance to give much space to obits of jazz musicians; the only excuse to do so, one understood, was that if the obit was going to say that so-and-so was the greatest. I balked at the pressure, but it certainly was there. In fact, I recall one case where it became almost comically explicit, though the writer of this obit was my predecessor in writing about jazz for the Chicago Tribune, Harriet Choice. The musician who had died was Cannonball Adderley, and the editor involved asked Harriet, as though it were a foregone conclusion given her request for space on page one, "He was the greatest living jazz musician, right?" Harriet coolly said, "No -- he wasn't." What struck me as funny there was that Harriet not only was not a person to be pushed around, but she also thought that she should have been running the whole damn paper -- and she might well have done a good job of it, too. Also, some writers on jazz for mainstream papers seem to me to pump up the volume when writing obits in such a way as to implicitly claim that their beat, and of course they themselves, are that much more important. That's ugly.

Interfacing the computer with the trombone sounds like it would be a good answer for Lewis. Glad to hear that he and Roscoe and were interacting so well in Ann Arbor. Good luck with the little one; she sounds like a handful.

Shelton's website (lots to hear there): http://www.aramshelton.com/about.html I see that he grew up in Gainesville, not Jacksonville.

Many thanks, Red. Seems we've been listening to the very same record, which is what I'd hoped to hear from someone but didn't expect I would. I also got it a bit more this time, after a gap of many months away from it, but it could also be that my sense that I got it better was connected to my growing "better" understanding of what were and where were the problems I'd encountered the first time through. I'm pussy-footing here because I'm still prepared for someone to explain convincingly what it is that I'm not getting here and also because, for me, thinking that I've understood something that I didn't understand before can be a satisfying but delusive state of mind. About laptops and instrumentalists, my in-person experience is limited, but I know at least one excellent player, reedman Aram Shelton (priginally from Jacksonsville, Fl., to Chicago in 2001, then to Mills College in or near Oakland a year or two ago, to work on electro-acoustic things), who does some things with instruments and laptops that sounded very convincing to me -- Aram on alto and laptop with bassist Jason Ajemian on one concert and with drummer Johnathan Crawford on another. The strategy was the same in both cases and orobably fairly common -- both parties play acoustically at first, the laptop takes in what is played, then the laptop operator begins to in real time to release modified (looped, etc.) versions of what has been played while the players respond in real time to that -- and on and on. To me, whatever else might be going on in the realm of technology and with the belief that new techniques will generate significantly new art, it all resolves on the level of ear and taste. That, for example, is why I'm bewildered by the fact that George Lewis has stored chirpy bird sounds on his laptop and thinks it's a good idea to release them from the cage. Link to Shelton/Crawford album, which may still be available: http://www.482music.com/albums/482-1022.html

Listened hard (as in "paid close attention") to this when it came out in IIRC late 2006, and to some extent it threw me, despite my familiarity and fondness for a great deal of the music these men have made over the years. Put the album aside, and tonight I listened hard to it again. My thoughts on it are a bit clearer, but a good deal of confusion and doubt remain. First, IMO Muhal and Roscoe have never been on quite the same page (or perhaps even similar pages) musically, but that can work out just fine as long as the distance between them is acknowledged and accepted by both in the act -- then what one has, in effect, is two powerful different discourses going on at once, contrapuntally (not contrapuntally in literal musical terms, but in dramatic terms). I also believe that Roscoe can hear and respond (both on saxophones and here on personal percussion instruments) to anything that Muhal is doing, should that be what Roscoe wants to do, while Muhal for any number of reasons does not (or tends not) to respond to Roscoe that way. But again that can be fine, and it is mostly fine here -- though what's going on here between them is significantly colored by the fact that Muhal is in very fine, aggressive, and aggressively independent form, and that his instrument benefits from perhaps the most startlingly realistic (even super-realistic, in terms of presence and spatial breadth/depth) recording of a piano I've ever heard. Roscoe (and G. Lewis) are very well-recorded too, but one has heard them recorded this well before -- Muhal never before, not in my experience. Now on to Lewis, which is where the problems begin for me. On trombone, this time, he sounds quite empty and/or detached to me -- detached from the others and also detached from his instrument; certainly he's in full virtuoso control of his horn, but much that he plays has an etude-like feel to me, alternately flibberty and blatant (a la Milt Bernhart), sometimes both at once. On the other hand (and this may be a clue), there's a lot of laptop work from Lewis here, and this (aside from the bird imitations, which I can't stand) is IMO mostly quite effective in itself, though I believe that in part by nature (of the instrument or the medium, call the laptop what you will) and in part by intent, most of Lewis's laptop contributions here are meant to play an orchestral/suffusing-background role. The possible clue (or what I wonder is), when Muhal and Roscoe play, one knows or senses the relationship between what one hears and what they're thinking and making their bodies do in real time, as is the case with every improvising instrumentalist. With Lewis's laptop (or anyone's laptop), that relationship is, I think, inevitably altered, maybe even no longer present. That is, the laptop (in part -- it also may do many other things) stores sounds, whatever their origins and how much in what ways they've been worked over, and then produces/releases them in real time at the command of the operator, though I would assume that the release of stored sounds also can be randomized and/or be subject to random, semi-random, or fully controlled further modifications before or while they emerge as sounds that we (and the instrumentalists involved) can hear. Now there's no particular reason why a skilled instrumentalist who's also heavily involved in the things a laptop can do couldn't retain his prior fruitful relationship to his instrument, or even develop a significantly new relationship to his instrument that also would be fruitful. But Lewis sounds to me like a trombonist whose bond to that instrument has been broken -- probably, if so, because it's the orchestral implications (especially the enveloping aspects) of the laptop that have captured his imagination. In any case, while I can to some extent screen out Lewis's contributions to this album when he's playing trombone (don't need to do that when he's on laptop), I'm left then, for the portions of the album where he is playing trombone, with a two- or three-part music where one of the parts isn't working. My opinion, obviously. What does anyone else think?

Because even though many Holiday admirers, myself included, prize many of her late recordings for their emotional depth and musical inventiveness/insight, I don't see how anyone could say that in 1956 Holiday's voice (as in her vocal equipment) was "near its best." Yes, the significant lessening of her vocal resources led her to come up with striking, moving solutions that she might not have come up with otherwise. But the lessening of those resources -- range, suppleness, ability to sustain notes, etc. -- is objective fact. Now if the guy had said that her singing was near its best in 1956, some would agree, others would not, and still others would say it's a matter of swings and roundabouts. But the guy said "her voice." Further, there are some late Holiday recordings where her lack of vocal resources is clearly so disturbing/distracting to her as an artist, that things almost break down completely.

Another voice heard from: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainmen...hi_tab01_layout Viz: "The technical brilliance, unprecedented speed and hard-driving swing of Peterson's best work inspired generations of artists. But it also drove them to despair, for they knew Peterson's feats could not be matched, much less topped." Yes, the mental wards are full of jazz pianists driven to despair in just that manner.

I will forever associate "Jingle Bell Rock" with a going-off-to-college female clerk in a Famous Footwear store who was bobbing her head to it while ringing up a pair of shoes for me about eight years ago. It was a kind of animated modern-American-shopping-mall genre painting of a relaxed, fun person (or so it seemed) making some relaxed fun for herself as best she could during a long winter work day, and for that reason I smile every time I hear that silly song.

That's from a Shecky Greene routine, apparently based on fact. As I recall, the actual wording was more abrupt: "Frank Sinatra saved my life. It was in a parking lot in Las Vegas, three guys were beating the crap out of me, and Frank said, 'That's enough.'" Coming from Shecky there was additional impact because he was a big, physical guy who obviously could take care of himself. The same night I heard him deliver that, he also went into some stuff about notorious mob-connected attorney Sidney Korshak that could have got him killed -- this in front of Sidney's niece, Margie Korshak, the publicist for the venue, her presence being the reason he went off in this vein. She was not all happy. Shecky liked to take risks.

Was taken to a Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo performance at about age 12 (my younger sister was a big ballet fan, took ballet herself and was pretty good), but it made no sense to me -- just seemed like a lot of arch, frilly posing. And the tights and the tutus! Not for me. Then at about age 18 I went to a modern dance performance by Sybil Shearer: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn41...22/ai_n15943731 (my sister was among her young students for a while) and was astonished. In Shearer's solo work (she mainly worked solo, I think), every gesture "spoke," and in one ensemble piece you could also virtually see the lines of force that ran from each dancer, and his or her limbs, to the other dancers and their moving limbs. Wow. I began to get it. Then a few years later I saw the New York City Ballet do, among other things, Stravinsky's "Symphony in Three Movements." There's a moment IIRC when the whole company moves suddenly and aggressively toward the front of the stage in (probably) three horizontal lines, and it was very powerful and also damn scary -- as though they might just keep on going right into the audience, run you over, and beat you up. Yet it was still, as they, dance. That taught me that there's probably no vein of emotion that dance can't convey; it's not just about being pretty and how to jump. Have seen other good things over the years -- much less than I should have though. If I'd lived in Manhattan while Balanchine was still around, I would have tried to be at the NYCB as often as I could.

I remember catching the Buddy Rich Band at the dark (lots of black-light stuff going on -- other stuff going on in the dark too), cavernous Electric Playground in Chicago (a very Fillmore East-type place) in 1969, on the same bill as the Rotary Connection (with lead vocalist Minnie Ripperton) and other groups as well -- maybe Canned Heat. Went there with my Down Beat boss Dan Morgenstern -- the idea being that for Rich to appear at such a venue was newsworthy. Encountering Rich backstage with Dan was quite an experience; the man (i.e. Rich) was like an electric whippet, while Dan's normally mellow, laidback manner seemed if anything to become even more that way in response to how "up" Buddy was. It seemed an effective way to deal with Traps, the Drum Wonder.