Larry Kart

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.

A few corrections to that fine Totah memoir: Hall Overton, not Hal Overton;Teddy Kotick, not Teddy Kotik; Jerry Hurwitz, not Jerry Horowitz. Also, Hurwitz, better known as Jerry Lloyd, may have been pretty much off the scene at the time the "Jazzville" album was made, but he had been fairly active in the late '40s and early '50s, recording with Mulligan among others.

Considering how much his first quintet sounded like Miles' second quintet, I think you're off by at least five years. Yes, but he eventually turned the clock back. Marsalis Saving Time.

Listened to "Jazz Contrasts" again. Rollins sounds very fragmentary and distracted IMO; my guess is that Hank Jones' rather busy comping was not at all to his taste, nor to KD's either. Also, none of the soloists is really making the tempo that Max sets on "La Villa." By chance, the Milestone LP two-fer on which I have the "Jazz Contrasts" tracks also includes three tracks from a terrific KD album of that time -- "Two Horns/Two Rhythm," with Ernie Henry, bassist Eddie Mathias (or Wilbur Ware), and drummer G.T. Hogan. Turning to "Lotus Blossom" from that date after the "Jazz Contrasts" stuff was a revelation; KD sounds so relaxed, rhythmically locked-in, and fluid. And Ernie Henry! His solo on "Lotus Blossom" comes close to forecasting Ornette at times.

Monterose isn't on "Jazz Contrasts," Rollins is. JR was a member of Dorham's Jazz Prophets group, which recorded for ABC-Paramount; he also appears on that live Blue Note KD Bohemia date.

I love KD but recall "Jazz Contrasts" as being a virtually lifeless album, depsite the very promising line-up. I think that was a date where things were Keepnews-ized.

"Camus readers" -- I love it; should have rhymed with "'Moby-Dick' eaters," though. Also, for some odd reason, the background chorus on "Where Y'all At?" sounds to me like a gathering of the younger members of the cast of "The Sopranos."

That's probably the best, maybe the only, way to show up Wynton's stuff for what it is.

Based on what I heard of Manny Albam way back when (mostly big band stuff -- "Drum Suite," yech!) I would agree, but having encountered in recent weeks for the first time a bunch of stuff that Albam wrote for the Hal McKusick Quartet (Hal, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton, and Osie Johnson), I think he had a subtler and more individual mind than I used to think. No George Russell of course, just a craftsman as Chuck says, but at best he had his own imprint.

Who's on that one? I heard Bud in London in the early '70s at a Sunday jazz brunch at some hotel, with saxophonist Johnny Barnes and trombonist Roy Williams (both very good players) alongside Bud in the front line. It was fine mainstream Swing -- less programmed that the later World's Greatest Jazz Band things.

I sold my deceased father's house last year without a real estate agent (because it looked like there might be good offers for it before we got into the showing it off phase, which proved to be the case). But the more-than-solid real estate lawyer we had proved to be essential. We found him through friends who had used him when they'd sold their own house, a place of business, and a parent's house; he was just who they'd told us he'd be -- unflappable and very smart too. Another thing that mattered to us and might matter to you; his office was in a nearby suburb, which meant at least two things -- when we had to get something to him or from him on short notice, which happened a lot, he was 10 minutes away, not in downtown Chicago; also, when we settled on a prospective buyer, our lawyer turned out to know his lawyer (both from the same area) from previous transactions, which seemed to make things go much smoother (i.e. free from arm-twisting bullshit).

Hodeir loathed "free jazz" in any and all of its manifestations, at least at the time -- and I'd bet he still does. See his book "The World of Jazz" (though his use of multiple personae there can make it tricky to sort things out). Even more so, there was an issue of Les Cahiers du Jazz that I no longer have in which there was a long roundtable discussion about the jazz avant-garde that involved Hodeir and a bunch of other French jazz critic-intellectual types. The others were basically sympathetic to Ornette, Coltrane, Ayler, Cecil, et al. Though my French is virtually non-existent, it was clear that Hodier's stance was adamantly, even mockingly, in opposition to all this.

GUNTER HAMPEL GROUP + JEANNE LEE Gunter Hampel (bcl,vib,fl), Willem Breuker (cl,bcl,ss,as,ts), Arjen Gorter (b,harmonium on 1), Pierre Courbois (dm,perc), Jeanne Lee (voc) Soest, April 2, 1968 Leoni Antoinette - 1 Wergo WER 80001 O, Western wind (J. Lee) - The capacity of this room (collect.- Robert Lax) - The four elements: water/air/fire/earth(G. Hampel - R. Lax)- Lazy Afternoon (collect - John LaTouche) GUNTER HAMPEL: The 8th of July 1969 Anthony Braxton (as,ss,cbcl), Willem Breuker (ss,as,ts,bcl), Gunter Hampel (bcl,vib,p), Arjen Gorter (b,elb on 1), Steve McCall (dm), Jeanne Lee (voc). Nederhorst, July 8, 1969 We move (G. Hampel) -1 Birth NJ 001, CD 001 We move (take 1)-1 - - We move (take 2)-2 - - Morning song - - Crepuscule (GH) - - The 8th of July 1969 (GH)-vib solo - - The 8th of July 1969 (take 1)-vib solo - Gib mir noch ein Spiegelei mit Schinken (WB - Evan Parker) ICP 008 Breuker as Breuker probably can be heard on this date (which I don't know): GUNTER HAMPEL: Assemblage Gunter Hampel (bcl,vib,ss,fl), Willem Breuker (ss,as,ts,bs,cl,bcl), Piet-Hein Veening (b), Pierre Courbois (dm). Baarn, Dec. 21, 1966 Assemblage (G.Hampel) ESP 1042 CD 1042-2 Heroicredolphysiognomystery (GH) - Make love not war to everybody (GH) - Love that title BTW -- "Make love not war to everybody." Wonder if it was meant to be ironic?

No, it wasn't Breuker's recorded debut: http://www.xs4all.nl/~wbk/disco59-69_WB.html And it's Arjen Gortner, not Argen Gortner.

Just off the top of my head, Gunter Hampel's albums "The Eighth of July, 1969" and "Wergo Jazz" -- with Willem Breuker, Braxton, Argen Gortner, Steve McCall, Jeanne Lee and others -- struck me at the time (1969, natch) as pretty significant. It seemed clear to me for one thing that Breuker (was one of these his recorded debut?) had something new, valid, and "European" to say.

Funny -- when I was in sixth grade or so I tried to check out a Philip Wylie book from the public library -- maybe that one, maybe a novel of his that seemed to have a science fiction flavor (I dug SF then, or what SF was then) -- and the kind librarian, whom I knew quite well, didn't let me do it, saying that it was an "adult" book, with a special and new-to-me emphasis. So instead I looked on the new books shelf and checked out Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," which I liked a lot (though no doubt I didn't fully understand it then). I think I came out ahead in that exchange. BTW, Ellison was a visiting professer when I was a second-year college student and lived in our dorm. At a casual roundtable one night, he was talking about/being quizzed about "Invisible Man" and made a point that he'd made or would make elsewhere -- that whatever else the book was, he intended that much of it be very funny. I was able to then truthfully say that that's the way many scenes (e.g. the paint factory scene) hit me at age 12 or 13, which I think he beleived and was glad to hear. Also, a friend of mine during that time was walking to class one day with Ellison, discussing something or other, when my friend, suddenly realizing he was late, said goodbye and left the sidewalk to head diagonally for his destination. Ellison grabbed his arm and said quite firmly, "Don't walk on the grass." My friend was kind of astonished at the time -- thinking, he said to me when he told what had happened, that Ellison had to be a rebel at heart who certainly wouldn't care about whether someone stayed on the sidewalk and similar "minor" social rules -- but when he thought about it a bit, he realized that Ellison was, in this regard at least, not at all who my friend thought he was. Hugh Kenner? A smart guy for sure, and a great source of enlightenment up to a point, but talk about gaping partialities and limitations!

There's some fascinating information about Williams, which pretty much dovetails with what I knew and felt about the the man, in John Gennari's "Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz And Its Critics" (U. of Chicago Press), an otherwise deeply flawed, if not flat-out reprehenensible book IMO (I've gone into that at length on other threads). In any case, almost all of Gennari's information about Williams is taken (with acknowledgement) from unpublished interviews done with Williams by a scholar named Bryant Dupre. About Martin "not being that bright," I wouldn't say that at all. He certainly was no middlebrow -- Whitney Balliett among jazz writers of note might define the top end of the middlebrow crowd, with Leonard Feather and maybe Gene Lees resting at or near the bottom -- although you could fairly say that Martin's highbrowness was more or less willed. That is, he had a more or less positive and somewhat acquired vision of what highbrow behavior was and what highbrow attititudes were (though this vision also was quite personal, shrewd, and critical for the most part), and he tried to bring that behavior and those attitudes to bear on jazz criticism. You could argue that there was some status-mongering involved here, but nobody's perfect. Also, while Chuck is right about Martin's blindspot about humor in jazz, and almost any trace of showbiz as well, the breadth and accuracy of his taste (positive and negative) was almost with parallel among jazz writers during what might be called his on-the-firing-line years. Without doubt Martin was not that "hip," but 1) he certainly didn't want to be in a good many (though perhaps not all) of the interlocking senses of that term 2) I'm not aware that he presumed to be hip, in part because 3), as I'm sure he knew, given the rest of who he was, a would-be hip Martin W. would have been absurd. One more thing about the height of Martin's brow: He wrote a whole lot of things about American popular art and its place and value in the scheme of things that were sound and novel and still are important. He had a strain of willed elitisim in him, but other deep, wise, even loving strains as well. I wish he were still around to argue with.

That Louise Brooks is terrific.

Some of the accompaniments are Hal Mooney-icky, but I've never heard better Vaughan than the best stuff on the 2-LP (later 2-CD) set "Great Songs From Hit Shows." (Disclaimer: I wrote the notes for the CD reissue.)

Maybe I haven't followed it closely enough. Is every critic who gave Hatto a favorable review now behaving this way? Or is the anger against a particular set of critics who are refusing to eat humble pie? Or were there only those few to begin with? The Gramophone put out Barrington-Coupe's version which significantly softens the reality. They were pushing Hatto even when the doubts were in full flow, and one of their reviewers Jeremy Nicholas published a letter saying that anyone with doubts must supply evidence that would 'stand up in a court of law' that the recordings were not genuine, or keep quiet. To me that is fatuous bluster, where the intelligent and honest thing to do would have been to take the reservations seriously. Personally I never for one moment believed in the things that Nicholas and his ilk were saying (greatest recorded legacy since Richter etc) and found it bizarre that inconsistencies noticeable to the naked ear (as reported by others - I never got pulled in) were just brushed off by 'experts' (Nicholas, Jed Distler, Bryce Morrison). The Gramophone's ringing endorsement of Hatto supplied the copy text for all the obituaries (Nicholas spewed it all out again in The Guardian, Bryce Morrison in Gramophone, ). These guys should fall on their swords but are out in force defending their gullibility. IMO they should apologise and then vanish. I'll add that the claim that these records are great has been often repeated to defend the offending critics, but in fact few have heard them (except for the famous concerto recordings by Ashkenazy, Bronfman et al) so it is not at all clear that these really are great recordings. In any case the critics defence has been that they were picked for their anonymity - hardly a sign of greatness. I also wonder how many of these recordings the admiring critics ever actually heard, and ever possessed in other than CD-R or white label form. They have repeated that there are 120 CDs in this 'great legacy' but have they actually worked through them all? I suggest not. I'll stop now, except to say that my attempt to add a very mildly worded query about the role of critics in the Hatto fiasco to the Gramophone website was censored. That is why I am not impressed by their continued manipulation of the news. What David said.

You don't want to know.

One toke over the line. Howard has that effect on me.