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Everything posted by Larry Kart
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Musicians (any genre) with jazz musician parent(s)??
Larry Kart replied to Rooster_Ties's topic in Miscellaneous Music
Bethany Pickens -
Half woman, half Theremin. On the other hand, Benny Carter was a big fan and hired her to sing with his big band. But then, now that I think about it, and though Carter is one of my favorites, there were times when his vibrato and Olay's were somewhat similiar.
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Here's Olay with Ellington from a 1959 Timex Jazz Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOynOuc84KM It is an unusual voice -- that prominent, plush vibrato, for one thing. Also, she certainly looks the way she sounds.
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Will there be jazz fans 100 years from today?
Larry Kart replied to Brownian Motion's topic in Miscellaneous Music
It's not a matter of me or you. It's about the actual and potential life of "it." For example: Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requris. nescio, sed fieri sentio ed excrucior. I hate and I love. You ask me why. I don't know, but I feel that agony. -- Catullus If you will come I shall put out new pillows for you to rest on -- Sappho I was so happy Believe me, I prayed that that night might be doubled for us -- Sappho Here in these mountains, our farewell over, sun sinking away, I close my brushwood gate. Next spring, grasses will grow green again. And you, my old friend -- will you be back too? -- Wang Wei All these things came to us from fairly ancient times, in the case of Sappho and Catullus by mere threads and shards of accident. As Sappho said in another poem: You may forget but Let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us -
Will there be jazz fans 100 years from today?
Larry Kart replied to Brownian Motion's topic in Miscellaneous Music
Yup II. And of course it will make a difference, Jim -- how could it not? Stuff that's been shaped into art of some sort tends to give off signals, however erratically, for millenia, unless it's been pulverized into non-existence. Heck, I've been getting a big kick in recent months out of the novels of Anthony Trollope, and until I got to the age I am now, I thought or assumed (probably some of both) that Trollope's novels were as dull and stuffy as 19th Century fiction could possibly be. Now I'm picking up the signals that say otherwise, but they were always there, independent of my previous inability to detect them. -
... and what did it sound like that was coming out of the Leslie? It sounded like perfectly normal, single-note stuff. It was the visual part -- the mock (I hope) slurping and the actual twirling and wiggling of the tongue -- that was the show. Sorry if I've ruined your breakfast.
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I once saw Don Patterson use his tongue on the B-3 keyboard, "humorously" simulating cunnilingus. Showmanship.
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Playlist, WBLV / WBLU FM, 10-18-07, 10p.m.-3a.m.
Larry Kart replied to Lazaro Vega's topic in Jazz Radio & Podcasts
Lazaro -- You probably mean this, from the "book": "Marsalis remains a skilled instrumentalist, but he has never been a strikingly individual soloist. As for his orchestral works, their relative poverty of invention becomes clear when they are placed alongside the likes of George Russell’s Chromatic Universe and Living Time, Oliver Nelson’s Afro-American Sketches, Bill Holman’s Further Adventures, Muhal Richard Abrams’s The Hearinga Suite, Bob Brookmeyer’s Celebration, John Carter’s Roots and Folklore, and, of course, the more successful orchestral works of Ellington himself." -
Leo Records $3-$6 at Berkshire Record Outlet
Larry Kart replied to Dig'Em's topic in Recommendations
I think that it includes shipping It does not. -
I love the way the bird lays out toward the end.
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http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=xGJaz64lrJ4
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A post of mine from 12/06: A Frenchman, born in 1903, who settled in the U.S. in 1926 and died in 1998, Ericourt was a fabled Debussy interpreter who recorded the complete piano works for the Kapp label in the 1960-62. I'd heard of these recordings but never heard them, then noticed that they were at Berkshire on Ivory Classics: Debussy, The Complete Solo Piano Music. (Daniel Ericourt) Add to cart | Price: $ 19.96 | 4 in set. | Country: AMERICA | D/A code: Analogue | Code: 73006 | BRO Code: 123558 | Label: IVORY CLASSICS So far, they are a revelation. Ericourt tends to be on the dry and clear side, so be forwarned if you like your Debussy cloudy and dreamy, but having said that I'd claim that Ericourt's approach is not a matter of taste (as in, how do you like your Debussy?) but of insight. Seldom have I had the feeling to this degree (conductor Jascha Horenstein would be another case) that music that I thought I knew well was being understood so truly at the level of compositional intent, after which it's more or less a matter of chops, and Ericourt has them. In one sense, this is particularly evident at the level of drama/storytelling, and Debussy has that level -- witness his request to Marguerite Long, when she was working on Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the rain) with the composer: "More sun please! It is about children dancing around in the Luxembourg Gardens. The rain stopped. Now there is beautiful sunshine." For example, in Ericourt's reading of Dansueses de Delphe (Dancers of Delphi), from Preludes Book I, the dancers are simply (in fact, not so simply, in terms of execution) right there -- the sense of limbs being extended, feet planted, turns executed, etc. is palpable -- while in Youri Egerov's lovely, hazy, then imperious reading, it's all about graded shadings and textures at the keyboard; the approach is painterly, little or no sense of dance. Similarly, in the first of the Etudes, Pour les 'cinq doights (d'Apres Monsiuer Czerny), a key question is what is the composer's attitude toward the Czerny exercises that are being sent up here. Yes, they're being "sent up," but what happens dramatically in the piece, what are the impulses and reactions and their effects? Not that one needs to be literal, but Ericourt's plot goes something like this -- one's mind and fingers are irritated by the familiar, drudging dogmatic exercises; this translates explosively into rebellious anger, which then energizes/hurls the mind and fingers into triumphant/delirous fantasy. Again, I apologize for the literalness of this; but in Ericourt's hands, the realization of this story in sound clearly IS the germ of the piece (or so I'm convinced), especially when one hears readings, no matter how digitally adept, in which the interpreter's (actually, of course, the composer's) attitude toward the Czerny material is left unformed dramatically or never even comes up. The only drawback to this set is that it's dubbed from LPs -- the original tapes are not and probably never will be available -- but the bits of surface noise I hear are no problem for me.
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First thought is that there are "macro" surprises, like those that Dan mentioned -- "Klook or Max Roach transforming the sound/contribution of drums, Parker or Gillespie, Ornette, when he first got attention" -- and there are lots and lots of those, though perhaps fewer in recent years, and then there are "micro" surprises, where musicians whose styles are more or less familiar to us manage infuse their work with a sense of choice/intensity/discovery in the moment. A few examples that come to mind are Konitz, who does this pretty much always (and whose very existence musically arguably was one those "macro" surprises); then, going back a fair bit, Johnny Dodds at his best (e.g. his solo and ensemble work on "Perdido St. Blues" from 1926, with Kid Ory and George Mitchell); and Tom Harrell on a new album of his, "Light On," that I listened to for the first time tonight. All three of those examples (and thousands upon thousands of others) have a version of that "in the moment" quality mentioned above, and heaven knows that there are thousands upon thousands of jazz performances that don't have that quality, most of which I don't find interesting. What is interesting about the three that popped into my head -- Konitz (actually a performance I listened to tonight, "Hi Beck" from, purely by coincidence, the album "The Sound of Surprise"), Dodds, and Harrell -- is that their "nownesses" are a bit different. Konitz, as always, is just ("just"?) making up melodies on the spot, while Harrell, who arguably is doing or trying to do much the same thing in his way, often strikes me as being close to in a quandry as to how his lines will proceed, though I then find this air of what might be called crystallized doubt to be appealing -- because it is usually crystallized; so often, so it seems to me, on the edge of being hung up, Harrell does typically get there, by a hair's breadth. By contrast -- and this is subjective -- Konitz's risk-taking doesn't leave with me much or any sense of doubt; rather, it feels like an adventure we're sharing in a mood of mutual confidence, even though specific pathways will prove to be mutually unexpected. But Dodds now -- that's another kind of thing. First, the figures he's working with in his "Perdido St." solo are even then pretty standard ones. But damn they don't sound that way -- in part because Dodd's sound in itself is such an intense, in the moment thing. Later on, revivalists would try to impersonate that harrowingly shrill, diamond-hard and dense mass of overtones, but its actuality seems to say, in addition to whatever else it says (and Dodds's solo certainly says some lovely things rhythmically), that "I, Johnny Dodds, made this thing (and/or this way of making things), and no one can ever erase the 'presentness' and the personalness of that invention." Thus, perhaps, the sound of surprise that can exist in the work of such figures as Johnny Hodges or Milt Jackson, who might seem not to be surprise-makers at first but were so, I think, in their invention/discovery of specific musical means that were made inseperable from their personalities.
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... in the Book of Life.
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... in the Book of Life.
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More on the "Big Dick" flourish that Jaws did in that clip and that Jim mentioned -- from http://www.jazzwax.com/2007/08/index.html Lockjaw Davis was a confident, no-nonsense tenor saxophonist whose sound was infused with a raw, roadhouse sense of the blues. Lockjaw knew only one way—a full, rich, exciting sound that was both relentless and soulful. He also had an entertainer's knack for the dramatic, handling his tenor as though it were made of balsa wood. As Lockjaw explained in Stanley Dance's The World of Count Basie (1980), there was a reason why he always gave his tenor a little heave after every solo: "I deliberately handle the horn the way I do, to show I'm its master! I've always noticed how delicately so many tenor players handle it, as though it were fragile, as though it commanded them. I try to show that I have command of the horn at all times, whether I'm playing or just holding it. You take charge, it's yours, and I want the audience to feel I'm in complete command. Otherwise you can give the impression the horn is too big for you, whether you play it well or not. The visual impression is quite important."
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An excerpt from my book that may or may not clarify things a bit. The main thing is the quote from the now-deceased Bruce Turner (a lovely player): ...At one time, so the argument goes, jazz musicians were content to think of themselves as entertainers, not self-conscious artists. If the practitioner of modern jazz wants to please himself and his peers first and the audience second, if at all, he must endure the consequences of this unrealistic, willful act. The problem with that argument, though, as British saxophonist Bruce Turner says in his whimsically titled autobiography Hot Air, Cool Music, “is that scarcely any jazz musicians are able to recognize this picture of themselves. There are some jazzmen who are great entertainers. Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Lionel Hampton come immediately to mind. But they are the exception, not the rule. For the most part those of us who play jazz for a living do not know any way of entertaining an audience other than by making the best music we are capable of…. The ‘jazz is entertainment’ theory is only about money, when you boil it down. Jazz finds itself sponsored by the entertainment industry, and in return the latter feels entitled to demand its pound of flesh. Fair enough, but why in heaven's name confuse the issue? The distinction between what is done for love and what is done for quick cash is an obvious one.”
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Drug References on the Lawrence Welk Show
Larry Kart replied to Teasing the Korean's topic in Miscellaneous Music
A strain of mutants. -
Is that also the case with the "Cats of Any Color" title above? I considered all of the titles suggested above and went ahead and got most of them. Thanks everyone again for the great suggestions. HG Does he treat the subject there? Yes, probably more so in "Cats." Is what he says there b.s.? That's my opinion; YMMV.
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Usually makes me laugh out loud at least twice per episode -- which is an amazingly high standard in my experience. Also, Tina Fey has improved a lot as a comic actress since the show began; her sense of physical comedy is excellent now, without being broad. And the syncopation of the writing and directing! It's like the show is moving to a different beat and at a swifter tempo than anything else on the air.
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New Konitz book
Larry Kart replied to Larry Kart's topic in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...
Hey -- two whole real musicians have read my book. Or at least they said they did. -
No, I never at that one. Where can it be found?
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The casual horn toss @ 2:04 tells you all you need to know. You bet.