Larry Kart

No kidding! I just gave a listen to the whole disc, and I feel like I been beat up! It's just full throttle, non-stop (even the ballads, like "'Round Midnight"). Afterward, I put on Jimmy Heath's Turn Up The Heath to cleanse the palate. Swingin', ballsy writing and playing, but not nearly as rough around the edges as Tolliver's thing. About bleeding ears, I moved on yesterday to "'Round Midnight" and the next track, and suddenly felt (though this may be nuts on my part) that the harsh way this is recorded (and the harshness is in Tolliver's writing as well) is the perfect analogue to how angry I feel when I read the newspapers these days. It's like an "Ode To Rove and Gonzales."

Last season, I think it was, they established that the young Octavian had problems, conceptual and in terms of execution, when it came to sex with women. Pullo took him to a brothel and helped him get over the hump, so to speak, but I'm pretty sure I recall that there were intimations of S&M (or probably just S) -- as though without such trimmings the whole business didn't work for Octavian.

Another from Larkin, "This Be The Verse." Not a nice man, by most accounts, but not without wit. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.

I forget the guy's name, but the first jazz criticism book I ever read, in the early 70's from my local public library, was some British guy who considered Coltrane and the Miles Davis Quintent with Hancock/Carter/Williams to be "anti-jazz". It was just awful stuff to read, as 'A Love Supreme' brought me into the jazz world. Might have been poet/jazz fan Philip Larkin's "All What Jazz." Those were certainly views that Larkin held. Here is his "For Sidney Bechet," which conveys a fair bit of Larkin's, quirks, fantasies, prejudices, and affections regarding jazz: That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes Like New Orleans reflected on the water, And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes, Building for some a legendary Quarter Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles, Everyone making love and going shares-- Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles Others may license, grouping around their chairs Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced Far above rubies) to pretend their fads, While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids. On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City Is where your speech alone is understood, And greeted as the natural noise of good, Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.

Things could be very different if you were there witnessing this stuff as it happened. Part of my problem with Williams re. Coltrane is that I have the sense that he never was able to hear John Coltrane's music - at least post 1960. And That's ok - I just don't think that he should have written about it if it didn't speak to him. I stopped reading his stuff after 1966 or 1967, so perhaps he didn't write much about Coltrane's music as time passed. He must have had the sense that other listeners/critics he respected were moved by Trane's music. (Did he respect other critics?) Perhaps he should have accepted the fact that it just wasn't for his ears. I never bought the Smithsonian jazz box, but I believe that he only included one recording from Coltrane's post 1960 recordings. (I may be wrong about this. If I am, please correct me.) For me, that's the same thing as if he had written a negative review of Coltrane's music. He might have allowed someone else to have made the choice(s) as to what Coltrane recordings would be included. To my mind, there should have been more than one included. I find that I'm writing mostly negative things about Martin Williams' writings, and my feelings about his books (at least my memories of them) are much more positive than negative. I don't have any of his books anymore, but I'm going online today and see which of his books my local libarary has and do some reading and rereading. Personal note: I'm more or less responsible for the sole Coltrane recording that's in the Smithsonian set (at least its first edition; more may have been added down the road). Martin and I were friendly at the time; he got in touch, admitted (not that he needed to) his lack of sympathy for Coltrane's 1960-and-beyond work, and explained that he also had a severe space problem with the Smithsonian set because so many well-regarded later Trane performances would have consumed most or all of an LP side. I suggested "Out of This World" if he had room for it, "Alabama" if he did not. He went with "Alabama." I don't agree that Martin should not have written about Trane; his lack of sympathy for that music was honestly arrived at position, and, as I said in a previous post, what he didn't hear there and what he said about what he didn't hear there arguably helped one to define better define/understand what was there. He certainly wasn't part of the reactionary crowd who referred to Trane as "anti-jazz."

Other BG drummers from around that time were Ralph Collier and Hud Davies, maybe a few more.

Don't know what you mean by "precious little Martin stands up as writing today." If his thinking about things still makes sense -- and IMO if often does (and when it doesn't so much, what Martin had to say often still raised key issues) -- his writing was the evidence of that thinking. Surely, you don't mean that he wasn't poetic enough for you? BTW, on the "key issues" front, Martin's ""If one looks for melodic development or even some sort of technical order or logic, he may find none here" response to "Africa Brass" Coltrane, while wrong in my and your view, is a good example. That is, one has to in response realize that the kinds of "melodic development ... technical order or logic" that Martin expects to find in Coltrane of that vintage is not there but that other, new and significantly different kinds of development, technical order and logic are at work, the nature of which it was then up to us to explore and describe in our words and talk. In other words, when Martin shied away or got grumpy or worse, his underlying seriousness and acuteness still remained in play. In effect, you argued with him and in the process educated yourself. Usually.

I agree -- that's almost certainly Mel Powell.

Could that be Dave Barbour? http://www.parabrisas.com/d_barbourd.php Barbour didn't join Goodman until 1942, where he met his wife-to-be Peggy Lee, but he seems to have been West Coast-based in '37, with Lennie Hayton and doing some studio work, and if this clip is from "Hollywood Hotel," Barbour might have stepped in from the soundtrack orchestra for this solo spot. The playing certainly fits in stylistically with other things I've heard from Barbour.

Read the Jazz Review at the time when I could, got a fair number of back issues, wish I had them all. Not perfect -- what is? -- but the best jazz magazine I ever saw. And Martin was its guiding spirit and key contributor. His interview/discussion with George Russell about Ornette was a landmark and damn smart on both their parts.

Purchased today and just started to listen. Oodles of energy here; also, while this band has its own sound, it reminds me of Dizzy's '40s band, that "Let's all jump off a cliff" thing. Fascinating to hear how Tolliver himself has developed over the years. I might want to hear McBee more strongly/clearly, but from what I can tell he's playing his ass off, as is Victor Lewis, who does come through strong and clear.

OK, sorry for misreading your comment. But YES! "glancing around for cues, etc." -- this is exactly what occurs during these performances. In fact, it was my experience watching this ensemble perform at Wesleyan in fall 2005, that led me to decide to videotape these shows. There is a lot to see during the performance which helps you understand how the music is put together, e.g.: Each musician has a stack of Braxton compositions to draw from, which can be cued at any time by anyone via hand signals (Braxton has several sheets worth), white boards, and other gestures; language music improvisations are conducted via physical gestures; and musicians use signals to select other musicians with whom they want to play. OK. Thanks.

Are having fun and “really playing” mutually exclusive? In any case, this is all premature since you presumably haven’t heard the recordings. I look forward to your thoughts after you hear them. I didn't mean at all by "shrug, wink, and the like" that the these players looked like they were "having fun" (though that's certainly possible). Rather, they looked to me like they were unsure of themselves at times, glancing around for cues, etc. -- though this may be a function of what Braxton wants or doesn't want them to do in this music. Obviously, I could be wrong about how I interpreted what I saw, but I have been watching people play music -- some of it quite "advanced" -- for more than 50 years now, and I'd be surprised if these players had come with a new way to "look" while playing as well as a new way to sound. Also, there is, at least potentially, both an upside and downside to "About two-thirds of them have studied with Braxton, and a quarter of them ... have been studying with and/or performing with Braxton for over a decade." The upside is obvious; the potential downside is that a master-disciple relationship with a figure such as Braxton -- who is an actual master himself of course but probably denies the fruitfulness or meaningfulness of such relationships on philosophical/aesthetic grounds -- could leave certain players of certain temperaments feeling more confused than liberated, if in fact liberation is a goal here. Whatever, as you say, all this is premature -- though you did post the video in the hope of getting reactions to it.

A little voice in my head (got to get that taken care of) tells me that the conductor might be Frank Comstock (Hi-Los, R. Clooney TV show, etc.), though I can't find a Comstock photo. No way that's a Gil Evans chart.

Lovely.

Both excellent at best, but apples and oranges. I like the emphasis in "Rome" (no doubt John Milius's contribution) on the role physical force/violence (and the willingness to use it) plays at crucial junctures. In that vein, all of "I, Claudius" takes place in a potentially and at times actually no less violent world that that of "Rome," but it's an Imperial world (for the most part a world of courtiers and intrigues), while "Rome" is about an Imperial world coming into being, and thus it has more to do at times with largish chunks of the populace. Also, good as it is, "I, Claudius," taped for TV in the studio, can seem a bit claustrophobic after a while.

I should add that, as Chuck said, it does sound like wonderful stuff. And it might well be -- no doubt you'll tell me if this is so -- that a certain level of randomness and what might look to a semi-stranger like confusion is part of process. And yet did you hear that 16-piece work "Never Enough Hope" that Toby Summerfield recorded in Chicago in Jan. 2005? At once as loose as can be and built like the proverbial brick facility. I submit that this was in large part because those 16 players, though young (names upon request, but you probably know who they are), knew what they were doing.

Again, I have to ask: what are you referring to specifically? And who are you calling "kids"? Nicole Mitchell? Jay Rozen? No, not Nicole Mitchell; Jay Rozen I don't know. But by and large they look like rather young people and sound and look like they're not that familiar with the music they're trying to play. Is that is so tricky to understand? Or do you think that they're on top of this music as much as Braxton himself is? BTW, I certainly don't have anything against young musicians. It's just that I get spoiled listening to young musicians who can really play, and the ones who can usually don't shrug, wink, and the like while doing so.

What Chuck said -- those kids sound and look like they're at sea. On the other hand, what they're trying to deal with obviously is something else. Braxton should come back to Chicago for a while; there are players here who could jump all over this music, joyfully. Haven't seen/heard Braxton talk in many years. Heartwarming.

"Two Caesars are too many." Excellent. How does that go in Latin?

Probably Orbert Davis: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=16986

In case I wasn't clear, the killing of Caesarion wasn't just a plot suggestion -- he was actually hunted down and killed, on Octavian's orders, in the wake of Actium.

Not that anyone should care, but leaving aside the Bud Shank-Laurindo Almeida stuff from the early 1950s, which in part gave rise to the Bossa Nova back in Brazil, I wonder whether the version of Luiz Bonfa's "Samba De Orfeu" on "Ease It!" (rec. March 13, 1961) is the first American jazz version of a Bossa Nova piece. If so, the second might be Curtis Fuller's version of Jobim's "One Note Samba" (rec. Aug. 23, 1961) -- with Zoot Sims, Curtis Fuller, Tommy Flanagan, Jymie Merritt, Dave Bailey -- on the album "South American Cookin'" (Epic); these men, plus Dorham, were on a South American tour together in early '61, where their interest in Bossa Nova material no doubt was piqued. In any case, Boyd-Dorham and Fuller recordings precede the Stan Getz-Charlie Byrd album (rec. Feb. 13, 1962) that sparked the jazz-Bossa Nova craze and probably precede the Vince Guaraldi album of "Black Orpheus" material as well. (Don't have a recording date for the Guaraldi, but it was released in April 1962.)

KD is in fine form on a nice but somewhat raggedy 1961 date "Ease It," which was recorded and originally issued (at least I think it was -- I have it as a 1974 Muse LP) under the leadership of tenorman Rocky Boyd. The rhythm section is Walter Bishop (dealing with a jangly piano), Ron Carter, and the marvelous Pete La Roca. Boyd is interesting -- kind of a cross between Wayne Shorter and Eddie Harris (or Tina Brooks?); he had an unearthly purity of tone at times (e.g. "Stella by Starlight," with fine work by both horns). It would have been nice to hear how Boyd developed over the years, but that was not to be. He worked with Miles for a short while, between Mobley and Shorter.

In the show, yes. If you're asking about the historical version, this is the account from wikipedia: No, I think that was Octavian responding to Antony's comment about enjoying the smell of victory. However, in history, Cassius -- "chagrined at defeat and despairing of the future" (The Cambridge Aincient History) -- did commit suicide in the course of the First Battle of Phillipi, after his troops were routed and his camp plundered by an assault led by Antony. How they're going to wrap things up I can't imagine. In history, no less than 12 action- and drama-filled years take place between Phillipi and Actium, the logical end point. If they do somehow manage to push on that far, though, I have an idea for one of the last moves. After Actium, Caesarion, the son of Caesar and Cleopatra, is hunted down and killed on the orders of Octavian, in part because Antony had declared that Caesarion, not Octavian, was Caesar's true heir. Now who's going to kill this poor young man? Pullo, of course -- trustworthy designated assassin of very important people (e.g. Cicero) and the person who happens to be, within the context of "Rome," Caesarion's actual father.