Larry Kart

My remark was prompted not by any desire to knock Jo Jones as a musician but because several people had said things like "...the cat was so freakin' HAPPY!!! Look at him when plays; his face just radiates JOY!" And I'm not saying that his music wasn't full of happiness and joy -- for us and in some sense for him. I'm just saying that the relationship between beautiful, joyful music-making and beautiful, joyful personhood (for want of a better term) isn't always simple and is sometimes near impossible to disentangle. I've still never figured out how Artie Shaw could play like an angel and be such a pompous, egotistical jerk. By comparison, putting Art Pepper the man and the musician together is child's play.

Very interesting post, Mark -- raises some interesting questions, too, for those of us who admire both KD and Shaw but perhaps wonder at times whether the presence of diatonic linking notes in KD led to more/deeper continuity, potential variety, while the absence of them in Shaw boxed him into a corner or atmosphere of striving and strain, however noble and necessary it might have been to be there. I guess I'm saying, in part, that you can't chose what your temperaament as an artist is and how your temperament and talents fit into the your historical position, i.e. what's open to be done at a particular point in the continuum.

I'm sorry, but I've heard from many sources that Jones, great player though he was, was just ----ing nuts and often a pain in the ass to work with.

Check out the band that my son is a member of, the somewhat ironically named Crush Kill Destroy (they're certainly loud, but the name comes from what a rogue andriod keeps saying in a episode of "Lost In Space"): http://www.crushkilldestroy.net/rock/ckd/ Stuff to listen to there. Among their admirers is guitarist Ty Braxton, Anthony Braxton's talented offspring.

That's the one!! Mine is called "I Love My Baby"---Joe Newman going modal!! Great stuff! I will check out Mr. Kart's suggestions You can check out a bit of the O. Nelson/J. Newman "St. Louis Blues" here: http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/arti...,219352,00.html Perhaps there's a way to listen to all of it for free, but I'm no wizard when it comes to such things. The Verve Jazz Masters album it comes from seems to be OOP, but the piece is now on the Mosaic Nelson set. Shad Collins is good on those Prestige Basie alumni albums. There were two of them IIRC, one with just Collins and Quinichette, another with Jack Washington and perhaps others added. If you dig Collins, you need to hear the date that Dicky Wells, Collins, and two other members of the Teddy Hill trumpet section (Bill Coleman and Bill Dillard) made with Django Reinhardt in Paris in 1937. Great stuff all around, as is the rest of the date with just Coleman, Wells, Reinhardt and rhythm -- "Japanese Sandman" and "Hangin' 'Round Boudon" especially. Actually, I think Bill Coleman influenced Phil Grenadier.

Another very nice one is his own album "The Essential Jo Jones" -- rec. 1955 for Vanguard -- especially "Shoe Shine Boy," which reunites the original Basie rhythm section behind Emmett Berry, Lucky Thompson, and Bennie Green. IIRC, it's Nat Pierce on the other tracks from that date.

The weird spread is on all the tracks in the Japanese issue. It sounds like Art is to the left of my left speaker and thus, at times, in a different sonic space than Warne. (A reverse polarity thing? Oh no!) I want a mono switch too.

I agree on Shad Collins -- a good idea. On the other hand, I prefer Collins to Newman -- more individuality and rhythmic, timbral "sting," though perhaps Newman suffers a bit in my mind because there was so much of him on record in the '50s when I was young fan (all those somewhat generic RCA neo-Basie dates), while Collins didn't record that much after his Basie days, though he sounds fine w/Vic Dickinson on Vanguard from the mid-1950s. Also, Newman could be quite "eclectic," if that's the right word. He does a unnervingly good variation on/impression of Miles Davis on Oliver Nelson's setting of "St. Louis Blues" (rec. 1966). I can't imagine that Shad Collins ever could or would want to sound like Miles.

Looks like the Japanese issue has some different tunes: ... 6. Avalon - (studio) 7. Tickle Toe - (studio) 8. Warnin (Take 1) - (studio) 9. Warnin (Take 2) - (studio) 10. Stomping At The Savoy - (studio) Compared to the one available at Amazon: ... 6. Tickle Toe 7. The Man I Love 8. Autumn Leaves 9. The Way You Look Tonight Any opinions as to whether "Avalon", the two takes of "Warnin'" and "Savoy" are worth $20 more than "Man I Love", "Autumn Leaves" and "The Way You Look Tonight"? Oh hell yeah. The Japanese version is all Warne/Pepper, whereas the American issue is a straight reissue of the LP, which was Warne/Art on one side & Pepper "leftovers" from other sessions on the other. Both are certainly worthy issues, but in my world (and using the EDC method of valuistic formuology) More Warne ? More $$$ outlay. Always. Yes, but the Japanese version does have a very wide and rather weird stereo separation -- Art and Warne to the far left, rhythm section to the far right. I need the extra material (though OJC issue doesn't leave out anything great) but wish I'd also kept my copy of "The Way It Was," which if IIRC either used a mono master or tamed the wide stereo spread.

Thanks, Brownie, for mentioning this. I found a copy today of the Japanese RCA LP version of one of the volumes, the one with with "Jordu" on it. Everyone's in fine form, but Jordan is just on fire, both as a soloist and as a comper, and KD's solo on "Besame Mucho" is one of his very best.

Pepper/Marsh "All The Things" available less expensively (and can be listened to) here: http://www.amazon.com/Way-Was-Art-Pepper/dp/B000000YLN Their solos are great. but the exchanges between them toward the end of the track are from another planet.

Art Pepper and Warne Marsh on "All The Things You Are": http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/...Warne+Marsh.htm

Further details about S.'s view of the first Boulez Rite recording, from "Dialogues": "Augurs of Spring" --"this is much too fast, as well as ragged"; "Spring Rounds -- "The ritardandos before 49 and 57 are ugly solecisms"; "The Sage" -- This is more than twice too fast"; [The performance overall "is less good than I had hoped.... Apart from sloppinesses -- surprising but of no importance -- there are very bad tempi and some tasteless alterations.... None of the three performances [Karajan's, Boulez's, and one with the Moscow State Symphony, conducted by a guy whose name I can't transliterate] is good enough to be preserved." I was impressed by Craft's Rite on MusicMasters with the Orchestra of St. Lukes. I believe he recorded it again a few years later for Koch with the New Philharmonia.

In one of the Stravinsky-Craft conversation books, there are some fairly scathing (at times) remarks about this recording from S. (purportedly), though it is preferred to the recording it is being compared to, Karajan's.

Farlow's music I've known and loved for years. There's one date on the set that's kind of tepid -- the one with West Coast hornmen; nothing against them, but something was a bit off that day --otherwise it's all top drawer. The Smith set was a revelation to me; all I knew was his famous early "Moonlight in Vermont" album and one other later quartet date. It's hard to find the right words, but Smith in his highly polished, alwys unruffled, technically awesome (and some of his techniques are his alone) way is also one of the strangest, almost surreal, jazz musicians I know. I think it was Jim Sangrey who said in passing not long ago that Smith might be thought of as coming from a C&W sensibility, and he did play in such bands as a kid, but to the degree that that's there (the virtuoso guitar picker side of that scene), it gets blended with a unique, high-powered harmonic imagination -- perhaps a la virtuoso cocktail pianist Cy Walter, the so-called Park Avenue Tatum. Can't quite put this sketch of Smith together -- forgive me -- but there are lots of times on these sides where he does something, and you say, "What the hell was THAT!" Yes, you could say it's just really slick, but I'd say that while it's really slick, there's also a lot of real musical thought involved, and fairly unique, intense thinking too. I like Joe Pass on that Gerald Wilson big band date he did. Otherwise, he mostly bores me. A guitar navel-gazer.

The whole interview is fascinating -- don't just stop at the Lee Morgan part.

Just found copies of these, which all seem to be still available in one way or another: 1) Mingus Big Band, "Live in Time" (Dreyfus): Never paid much attention to the MBB, partly because ghost bands usually creep me out, partly because some of Sue Mingus's behavior creeps me out. Well, this 2-CD live set from 1996 is terrific --- a real band full of real players (Gary Bartz, Steve Slagle, Randy Brecker, Ronnie Cuber or Gary Smulyan, John Hicks or Kenny Drew Jr., lead trumpeter Earl Gardner [!], John Stubblefield, etc). And fine work from arranger Sy Johnson, who knows his Mingus (and who of course knew Mingus). Not just the old favorites either -- there's a hellacious "Number 29," "Children's Hour of Dream" from "Epitaph," "Chair in the Sky," etc. Well-recorded too. 2) Ralph Peterson Trio with Geri Allen, "Triangular" (Blue Note): Some of the best/hottest Allen I've heard -- with Essiet Essiet and, on one track, Phil Bowler on bass -- and as fine a recording as I've ever heard of a piano trio, courtesy of Jim Anderson. Exceptional space, clarity, overall realism. I have it on LP -- rec. 1989. 3) Renee Rosnes, "For the Moment" (Blue Note): Also recorded by Anderson, in 1990, and, like the Peterson, produced by the Japanese label Something Else, apparaently in collaboration with Blue Note. Lineup is Joe Henderson (Rosnes's former boss), Steve Wilson, Ira Coleman, and Billy Drummond (Rosnes's spouse). I usually have mixed feelings about these two horn players, but they're in fine, focused form (Anderson does a superb job of capturing Henderson's sound -- not an easy thing to do, I'd bet); Rosnes perhaps sounds more individual at this fairly early stage than she would later on; and the way the horns play the tunes ("Friday the Thirteenth," originals by Woody Shaw and Walt Weiskopf, four by Rosnes, and "Summer Night") speaks of a good deal of well-spent rehearsal time. A gem. CD, rec. 1990.

A discovery of all the unreleased stuff that was lost in the Atlantic warehouse fire -- Fruscella/Brew Moore, the second Hasaan/Max Roach album, et al.

I think Chuck means -- though I have a long history of not quite getting what Chuck means -- that the music was recorded in the present for the film, then altered or manipulated a bit sonically so that it sounds like something that was recorded at the time of the film. Which, if so, is cool IMO; they got it just right. Maybe Gary Smulyan.

From Fincher's Esquire interview: Fincher was a kid then, in the Bay Area. He and the other first graders talked about the Zodiac on the playground. The stories grew and grew. "It was really scary," he says. "He was the ultimate bogeyman." Fincher saw sheriff's cars tailing his school bus. Some parents started driving their kids to school. You know, police cars are following our buses, Fincher told his father. Well, his father said, you should know that a man who has murdered a handful of people has sent a letter to the Chronicle saying he plans next to take a high-power rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus and kill the children. Uh-huh. Fincher stared at his father. "And I kept thinking, You know, you have a car, you could give us a ride to school. You're a freelance magazine writer. There's really nothing to stop you," he says. "I remember being kind of appalled. My parents didn't seem that concerned about my well-being."

About "Vertigo," it just might be that the demeanor and "look" (in particular the prematurely grey hair, the height and thinness) of Anthony Edwards' character is meant to subtly evoke Jimmy Stewart's character in "Vertigo." That is, you have a string of obsessives or semi-obsessives -- played by Edwards, Ruffalo, Downey Jr., Gyllenhall, and the guy who plays Lee -- and when Edwards jumps ship on the case, ostensibly for rational real-world reasons, it feels to me more (or also) like he's saying to Ruffalo that he (i.e. Edward's character) lacks the defenses or whatever that Ruffalo's character has displayed up to that point, that Edward's character is pulling back not so much because it would make sense to most anyone to do so but because he's too vulnerable to continue, that if he did he might undergo the sort of madness/disintegration that Stewart's "Scotty" does in "Vertigo."

Excellent movie, best American movie I've seen in years. Alexander's "It looked more like a film that was MADE in the late 60s/early 70s than a film ABOUT the late 60s/early 70s" was my impression too. I was especially knocked out by the newsroom scenes; that was exactly the atmosphere, human and physical, of the Chicago Tribune when I went to work there in the mid-1970s. For instance, the Robert Downey Jr. character versus the more orthodox old-style newspaper types around him. In that era, it was fairly common to have at least one peacock-like overt eccentric on the staff, who usually was really good at what he did but also was self-destructive. And the anxious, lifted-pinky patrician publisher! Also, especially toward the end -- e.g. the final scene between Ruffalo and Gyllenhall -- it really choked me up, in large part because this was a movie that was really ABOUT something that runs deep and wide though all of our lives, or at least the lives of all of us of a certain age range: the need to/desire to/failure to (in most cases) get a grip on the swirl of seemingly significant (and seemingly external) events. One little touch I especially loved -- when Chloe Sevigny leaves and takes the kids, her note to Gyllenhall ends "Don't call." When she next shows up at the house one night, after a gap of time and in a scene where the sound of her entrance is meant to frighten Gyllenhall and us, she says to him something like "You never call." About the music, I noticed one particularly nice moment: Once Ruffalo's character has been thrown off Homicide and is being investigated by Internal Affairs, Gyllenhall calls Ruffalo's house to ask him a key question/pass on some key information. Ruffalo's wife answers, and we see Ruffalo pacing in the next room while the sound of an uptempo, Pepper Adams-ish baritone saxophone solo is heard -- the impression being, it seemed to me, that this is not at all a soundtrack-mood thing but is meant to be taken as the record that Ruffalo's character is actually playing/listening to in the scene, as his way of at once acknowledging his agitated state of mind and relieving some of the anger he feels by listening to a recording that expresses the mood that he himself is feeling. Also, that he'd be a jazz fan. This struck me as perfect all the way around. My wife liked the movie too but felt that Gyllenhall played his role in a too broadly innocent, boyish manner. I kind of see what she means but would say that the whole thing probably couldn't have worked otherwise. In that vein, in an interview Fincher has said that he grew up in Marin County, was age seven when the Zodiac killings began, and that he and his friends were really freaked out by what was going on, that Zodiac "was the ultimate boogeyman" for them. Most tellingly perhaps --and perhaps touching on something about the Gyllenhall character -- Fincher explains that his own drily matter-of-fact father told little David just what was going on, noting especially Zodiac's current threat to kill a bunch of kids as they fled a school bus after Zodiac had shot out the tires, and that Fincher's unspoken thought at the time was, "Like, couldn't you drive us to school?" So I'm thinking that Gyllenhall's character is in effect an adult and a child in one body, with the adult trying to protect the endangered child in one sense (as Gyllenhall literally does several times by driving his kid to school, though I believe that he does this for the first time before Zodiac issues his threat; and yet later Chloe Sevigny rightly accuses Gyllenhall of endangering his kids by pursuing the case), while it is the still-endangered child's vision, needs, and desires that drive the adult's behavior. Or, to put it in a slightly different way, the adult exists by and large to preserve the still-endangered child within, that the drive to so is virtually absolute, and that the adult world must give way at key points to the rage, purity, and strength of the preserved endangered child's vision, until what? See "Hitchcock's "Vertigo" here, I guess, which of course is set in San Francisco.

I too prefer "Boston Blow Up," if only for "Body and Soul."

You want some Ravel, check out Un Barque and Alborada from Naida Cole: http://www.naidacole.com/web/music/index.php Just files, though, no video. Hamelin strikes me as though I were being struck ... as in beaten, pummeled, etc.

http://tinyurl.com/2opj8a http://tinyurl.com/2m4yk7 The second one is particularly alarming.